And now it’s again.
The June 2008 sequence 4 episode noticed Donna Noble take a while off from the TARDIS (whereas Catherine Tate filmed Doctor-lite journey “Turn Left”). Donna relaxed in a leisure spa whereas Ten, like the attractive nerd he’s, went on a sightseeing tour of sapphire waterfalls on a planet the floor of which was made from diamond. Except, he by no means made it to the waterfalls as a result of a shadowy beast attacked their Crusader shuttle and killed 4 individuals, very almost together with the Doctor.
Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Alice Troughton, “Midnight” is about two sorts of evil: the faceless horror evil of the entity that possesses the vacationers aboard the sightseeing shuttle, and the paranoid, protectionist evil of the passengers themselves. When the shuttle breaks down en-route and one of many group turns into ‘infected’ by the monster, the others activate her and plan to forged her out into the planet’s lethal irradiated environment. The Doctor appeals to their humanity, which makes them additionally activate him. It’s solely due to a heroic act from somebody on board that the Doctor isn’t killed and compelled to regenerate on the floor of Planet Midnight (after which presumably, to instantly die of radiation poisoning, regenerate once more, instantly die, and so forth, eternally. Though whereas we’re occupied with this, it was the Toymaker’s use of UNIT’s Galvanic Radiation beam that brought on the Doctor to bi-generate, so maybe if he had been thrown out onto the planet’s floor, there’d now be 1000’s of Doctors working round, all sharing the constituent elements of a single outfit. Quite the psychological picture.)
In “The Well”, Fifteen tells Belinda that the primary time he encountered the Midnight monster, he had by no means been so scared in his life. That reads, remembering the look on David Tennant’s face whereas he was paralysed by it, and whereas it parroted his each phrase via its unlucky host Sky Silvestry – brilliantly performed by Lesley Sharp. Ten was so shaken by his encounter with the creature that when Donna playfully repeats his phrases within the episode’s closing scene, he earnestly asks her to not, and stays silent when she requested him what he thought the monster was and whether or not it was nonetheless on the market. Until “The Well”, the monster from “Midnight” was a uncommon case of a baddie that the Doctor had by no means encountered earlier than and likewise wasn’t in a position to determine.
Now, showrunner Russell T Davies and “The Well” co-writer Sharma Walfall have returned to that unsolved thriller. Hundreds of 1000’s of years because it was final encountered, the Midnight creature seems to have advanced a bodily kind and the flexibility not simply to own and mimic, but additionally to cover behind its contaminated hosts and bodily assault anyone who comes inside attain. It laid waste to Colony Base 15 when their diamond mine operation woke up it, working its approach via their crew and ultimately attaching itself to base cook dinner Aliss (Rose Ayling-Ellis), a deaf BSL speaker and lip reader who now has two excellent causes to not need individuals to show their backs on her.
Even worse than that: it’s out. Ten couldn’t inform Donna whether or not or not the creature was nonetheless on the market after it was blown out of the shuttle in “Midnight”, however we have now a touch. In the closing scene of “The Well”, it’s prompt that Trooper Mo is the creature’s new host, so wherever she goes subsequent, it goes too. Another game-playing god unleashed? Is that why no matter’s bouncing the TARDIS round (whats up Mrs Flood!) despatched it again to Planet Midnight within the first place?
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