The Lost Stories were
supposed to end after the third season with The
Rosemariners, but the extras on that release hinted that a search would be
in order to see if Big Finish were able to scrounge up some more scripts to
adapt into audios. Luckily four scripts
were found to make up a fourth season.
Released in the Fiftieth Anniversary Year for Doctor Who, these four
Lost Stories went back to the eras of the first three Doctors to provide an end
to the range. The first of these is The Dark Planet, which while written in
the 1960s feels like something Andrew Cartmel would write. Hayles originally wrote the story to be the
fifth story in the second season, but it wasn’t made for a very simple
reason. While it is an instance of hard
science fiction with amazing concepts and highly relevant themes, it could
never be realized on a budget of even the most expensive films of the
1960s. Much like The Web Planet, The Dark
Planet is an experimental story whose only humanoid characters are the main
cast and the rest of the characters are living embodiment of light and
shadows. It’s a story rooted in pulp
fiction of the time and it wears it proudly on its sleeve.
The story is a story
about futility of war and how communication, or a lack thereof, can prolong
conflicts and drive even the best sorts of people to the depths of
depravity. The two factions in the war
are the Lights and the Shadows. The
Lights live in a city of crystal and take crystalline forms when the need is
required. They are a people of science
who are in a bad way as they have been at war with the Shadows for the longest
amount of time. It also has a message of
not judging people by outward appearances much like Galaxy our, but it the story never really goes above that
message. The Lights are actually
committing awful acts, preparing to kill themselves so they can save their
planet and defeat the Shadows, while the Shadows, a minimal presence in the
story, just want to talk things through and share in the Lights’ glory. The depravity of the story is reflected on by
the Doctor, who acts very human in the story.
William Russell of course is brilliant at imitating William Hartnell,
and that helps as the Doctor wishes almost to be able to change history and
allow the science of this early age to live on.
Of course this is an impossibility as the course of history cannot be
changed and the consequences will be severe if there is even a slight
change. Hayles and Fitton make these
scenes in the story be extremely tense as the atmosphere which is already very
alien, feels very tense. For once you
really don’t know what is going to happen and if the main crew are going to
make it out of the situation in one piece.
William Russell also
reprises his role as Ian Chesterton, and while he always gives a good
performance, doesn’t have much to do in this story which is a detriment to the
plot as only the Doctor really has a good presence. Maureen O’Brien’s Vicki however has much more
to do as she makes friends with one of the Lights which is how Fitton and
Hayles decide to reveal the darker nature of the planet to the audience which
is a great way to pull it off as we are allowed to see the good and the bad
along with tension. A lot of the tension
comes from the images of things you see in your head and what you don’t
notice. Take for example one of the
cliffhangers reveals that a Shadow has made it into the city because it hid in
the Doctor’s black cloak. On television
this would come out of nowhere as everyone has a shadow, but in your head you
imagine the lack of shadows which really does work.
To summarize, The Dark Planet is just as ambitious as
The Web Planet, but it is for the
best that this story was stuck in an audio format. The effects required to adequately adapt the
script to the screen would never have been realized. The story itself has some great messages, but
the pacing is such a slow burn like a lot of the 1960s stories while the
characters don’t do much. 78/100.
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