Four episodes
Aired between 27th September 1975 and 18th October 1975
Written by Louis Marks
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by David Maloney
Synopsis
On a distant jungle planet known as Zeta Minor, a human science team works near a deep pit in the bowels of the jungle. They collect strange crystal deposits until they get a radio call from their ship stating that night is falling. The caller, Braun, is nervous at this prospect, as is Baldwin, the guy who receives the call. Baldwin tells his companion, Professor Sorenson that they need to go as something apparently stalks the jungle at night but Sorenson is adamant that he wants to stay as the crystals are the purest form of a mineral that he has sought for some time.
It seems that they've found similar veins before, but according to Sorenson, the planet took them back and killed their crew.
Baldwin eventually leaves Sorenson and heads back, only to find that whatever stalks the jungle has been and killed Bruan. It attacks Baldwin in the ship too and he disappears, screaming just after he manages to send a distress signal.
The Doctor picks up on the signal from the TARDIS console as he's trying to explain to Sarah-Jane how he could overshoot London by 30,000 years.
He becomes interested in the call and using a small tracking device, heads out of the ship with Sarah to find the source of the distress. They too find themselves in a deep, alien jungle.
After searching for a while, Sarah gets momentarily transfixed by a sound she hears in the distance.
In the orbit of Zeta Minor, a human spaceship approaches, it too catching the distress call. The ships commander, Salamar orders his deputy, Vishinsky to head up a search party and go down to the planet. Vashinsky questions some of Salamar's processes, such as not scanning the surface before going down there, but ultimately obeys orders.
Back on the planet, the Doctor and Sarah find the science team's ship. They discover the bodies of Braun and Baldwin, both mummified.
The ship is dark and abandoned and the Doctor theorises that they're months too late. The Doctor decides to do some tests, for which he needs a Spectromixer. Sarah volunteers to go back to the TARDIS and find it whilst he waits there.
Unusually, she gets back to the TARDIS without incident and finds the equipment the Doctor needs.
Unknown to her however, Vishinsky and the search party have found the TARDIS and Salamar orders it to be teleported back to the ship. Strange clamps are placed around the blue box and the TARDIS is taken away with Sarah in it. Once it's gone, the party encounter Professor Sorenson hiding in the jungle. He claims he's found something magnificent and important to Earth. He takes them to the base, believing Baldwin to still be alive. Vishinsky questions Sorenson on the way, who is more than a little apprehensive to reveal details, confirming that some of his former crew are dead but he stresses that the important thing is is breakthrough.
When they get to the ship, they discover the Doctor working on the controls and they immediately suspect that the Doctor has killed Braun and Baldwin.
Sarah meanwhile exits the TARDIS to find herself orbiting the jungle planet. Salamar puts her under arrest and contacts Vishinsky. He orders him to keep an eye on the Doctor whilst he questions Sarah about how they got there. He ignores their protests on stumbling over the distress call, as Zeta Minor is at the very edge of the known universe.
Salamar's crew take the ship down to rest next to Sorenson's small craft.
Sorenson explains to Vishinsky and Salamar that they'd only been working there a few weeks when the killings began, always at night. Salamar immediately suspects enemy interference and warns the Doctor to confess before he's interrogated. When he finds out that there's no sign of life anywhere else on the planet, he immediately sentences them to death. They are put into a room to await execution and manage to escape just as a semi-transparent creature approaches and attacks.
The guards fire at it, but it begins killing them systematically. They disappear screaming, only to reappear as the mummified husks.
Salamar discovers that the Doctor and Sarah have escaped and orders his men to shoot at them as they flee into the jungle.
The creature disappears as the sun breaks the horizon, leaving the crew to regroup. They send out the occuloid tracker after the fugitives. It catches up to them as they reach a huge pit.
Back at the ship, Sorenson exclaims that the creature was obviously what killed his old crew, but insists that the only thing that matters is his discovery of the crystals as a potential new energy source to replace their dying sun. He demands the crystals be taken aboard immediately and they get off the planet, but Salamar is adamant that he wants the Doctor and Sarah re-captured. He sends out another patrol after them and they catch them at the pit.
After a minor struggle, one of the men falls into the pit and finds it bottomless. The others look to rescue him, but the Doctor warns them all to stay away from the pit as they're tampering with the balance of the planet and it could already be too late. He and Sarah are taken back to the ship. Once there, the Doctor tries to explain to Salamar that he thinks Zeta Minor is on the threshold between two dimensions, and that the pit is a gateway between matter and anti-matter universes. He says that if they try to take the crystals off the planet, then the planet will stop them. Salamar dismisses them and locks them up in the ship's cargo hold where the TARDIS is also.
Sarah suggests just leaving in the TARDIS, something that the Doctor admits is tempting but says that it wouldn't just be Salamar and the crew that would buy it, it would potentially be the entire universe. Looking around, he finds Sorenson's crystals and puts a few in an old toffee tin.
As the Doctor predicted, the ship tries to take off, but the controls don't respond quite as expected. The creature shows up again and Salamar sends his men out to fight it whilst also putting up the force field.
Neither of them do any good and the creature begins working its way through to the ship. The Doctor implores Salamar to connect the force field with the atomic accelerator, but Salamar is reluctant due to their limited energy reserves. Vishinsky grows impatient and yells at Salamar to do it. Low and behold, the boosted force field does the trick and drives the creature off.
With renewed hope, the Doctor tries to reason with Sorenson and the crew once more, asking them to dump the crystals and look at another way of fueling their home. He suggests making it obvious that they've left the stuff behind and that he could go back to the pit and re-negotiate with the creature on their behalf. Salamar eventually agrees but only if the Doctor goes with another occuloid tracker following him.
The Doctor sets off as the soldiers dump the crystals and makes his way to the pit. Once there the creature rises from the pit and engulfs the Doctor, sending him careering into the blackness.
knowing the Doctor is dead, Sorenson begins to argue with Salamar to keep some of the crystals onboard. This debate allows Sarah enough time to escape into the jungle once more. She goes to the pit and finds the Doctor climbing back out of it, half delirious.
On the bridge, Vishinsky sees the Doctor alive again and disobeys Salamar to go and retrieve him.
In the chaos, Sorenson goes to the hold and takes one of the canisters of crystals away. A short time later as he's making notes on the substance, he doubles over in pain and goes to the mirror, terrified to find that his eyes are glowing bright red.
He scrambles to his desk for a flask of odd smokey liquid which he drinks and is cured.
The Doctor is taken by Vashinsky and Sarah to the ships sick bay and they set off.
The Doctor comes around and begins to panic, but Sarah assures him that all they crystals are off board and he relaxes. As the ship starts to malfunction again however, he realises that he still has the crystal samples in the toffee tin in his pocket (apparently the only thing that stopped him from being killed in the pit of anti-matter).
The Doctor still weak, passes the tin to a crew member called Morelli. He goes to fire it into space but is attacked by something clearly anti-matter and drained to a husk.
Sorenson returns to his room, looking more feral and sick. He drinks more of the liquid and returns to normal.
The crew find Morelli dead and deduce that one of them must be the murderer. On the advice of Soernson, Salamar goes and accuses the Doctor and Sarah of being the ones to kill him. Vashinsky objects but is told to tow the line and they take the Doctor to the TARDIS and demand that he open it up or be shot.
Their discussion is cut short as the ship stops moving. The Doctor tells them that they've reached the end of their 'elastic' and will begin to head backwards towards Zeta Minor, picking up speed until it crashes into the planet.
As this discussion is taking place, Sarah sees Sorenson beginning to change and goes into a trance again. When she wakes up, he is gone. She tries to find him but only finds another dead crewman.
The Doctor hears her cry and rushes to her, punching Salamar to do so. When Salamar gets to them he again believes them to have killed the crew and orders them executed. They are taken to the ejector tubes and strapped into them despite Vashinsky objecting again. He refuses to obey Salamar and ends up fighting him, accidentally throwing the ejector switch in the struggle. The Doctor and Sarah slide from view, as a scream is heard over the intercom. The scream indicates another crew member being attacked. Salamar rushes off with the rest of the men to help his crew, leaving Vishinsky to retrieve the Doctor and Sarah just in time.
In light of the new evidence, Salamar is forced to admit that the Doctor couldn't have done it. Vishinsky relieves Salamar of his command and steps the ship up to red alert.
Back in the ejection room, Sarah explains to the Doctor the peculiar feeling she'd had when confronting Sorenson. This allows the Doctor to conclude that Sorenson is the attacker and is somehow influenced by the anti-matter crystals. The Doctor decides to go after Sorenson and leaves Sarah to go and tell Vishinsky about what they discussed and tell him to close all section airlock doors.
Once on his own, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to enter Sorenson's room, finding the crystals and the flask of solution. Sorenson arrives and allows the Doctor to spell out his theory that Sorenson thought the solution would protect him from the crystal's anti-matter radiation, but it only help it to interact with him in strange ways, precipitating the change in his DNA instead.
He says the next time he changes, it could be the last, as he is slowly transforming into an anti-matter creature. He gives Sorenson one last chance to save everyone by ejecting the anti-matter. Sorenson does take the crystals but change into "anti-man" before he can flush them out into space.
On the command deck, Salamar breaks free from custody and takes the atomic accelerator, exposing himself to radiation. He intends to find Sorenson and shove it at him, probably killing them both but solving the problem.
The Doctor finds the crystals abandoned, and runs into Salamar, hunting Sorenson with the accelerator. The Doctor calls Vishinsky and tells him to open all the hatches again and rushes after him. He's too late however. He finds that not only has Salamar been drained to a husk like the others, but also, the "anti-man" has fed from the radiation and is now even more powerful and can duplicate itself!
The Doctor, surrounded by "Anti-men" manages to ward them off with the crystals and fight his way to the command deck. He fills in Sarah, Vishinsky and the rest, nothing that they only have 15 minutes left before the ship crashes, then rushes off again with a pistol. He finds and stuns the real Sorenson with the gun and then takes him to the TARDIS and sets off into the time vortex.
The Doctor takes the TARDIS back down to Zeta Minor and takes Sorenson and the crystals to the giant pit. There Sorenson wakes again and begins attacking the Doctor.
Meanwhile, the ship is accelerating towards the planet and the duplicated "anti-men" are burning their way through the crew and the hull doors towards the command bridge.
Back on the planet, the Doctor eventually bests Sorenson as he slips and falls into the pit. The Doctor throws the canister of crystals in after him and the duplicated "anti-men" all disappear, leaving the ship to slow and then climb back out of orbit, away from the planet.
To his surprise, the Doctor sees a newly restored Sorenson climb out of the edge of the pit, suffering from amnesia. The Doctor takes him back to the TARDIS and they leave again, flying back to the ship.
Sorenson begins to ask for an update on the crystals, but the Doctor fools him into thinking that he was going down another, more feasible answer of research that would help his people.
The Doctor ushers Sarah back into the TARDIS after a short goodbye with Vishinsky and says they're late for an appointment in London, by over a thousand years.
Trivia
- The production team originally worked on this story to have the actual planet killing people (hence the title name), but through revisions etc. the idea shifted more towards aliens linked to the planet
- The jungle set was so good that the BBC used photos of it in training manuals as an excellent example of set design
- Tom Baker was asked to work without his scarf for most of episodes 3 and 4 so that the filming of him falling into the pit would work easier.
What worked
- The jungle set WAS fantastic
- I liked how the Doctor suddenly got a bit more serious as it offered more gravitas to the threat they were facing
- I think they deserved points for trying to make different futuristic guns, even if they did look like flashbulbs on a piece of wood
- The scene where Sorenson's eyes glow red is pretty cool
- The shape of the creature is also pretty good I think
What didn't work
- The "Anti-man" looked crap
- The logic of anti-matter in your pocket protecting you
- The overacting of Salamar and many of the other cast
Overall Feelings
You don't need to be a genius to see that this story was a hybrid of ideas. It's widely regarded that the Planet of Evil was a re-imagining of The Forbidden Planet. The invisible energy creature being a big give away. The other aspect, of course, is Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The latter has been tried before in the Third Doctor's run (see Inferno) with some degree of success but when they coupled that with an alternate universe yarn, the two ideas were mutually exclusive so neither made a big impact on the other. The Planet of Evil is different.
Louis Marks (or perhaps even Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe) has combined the ideas in such a way that they don't really make a lot of sense. Granted, this is family viewing and as a TV show, it's passable if you do want to switch your brain off and just enjoy, but the second you start to consider the logic, it starts becoming a headache. The least of which is how can matter and anti-matter exist in the same place, why does the crystals protect the Doctor at all, why doesn't Anti-Man just go straight to the control room seeing as nobody can stop him etc.
Overall, there's elements of this story that are good, but this is a rare occasion where you'll see me saying it comes more from Tom Baker and Lis Sladen and the cool jungle set than it does from the actual story.
Rating
6 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- Survival
Consulting the Matrix
Do you think this story would have worked better without Sorenson and the "anti-man"?
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