(748) Midnight

Today’s episode is what could called a Companion-lite episode as Donna Noble doesn’t feature too much in the episode. It is also a rather cheap episode which is when this show really shines. Today is my birthday and in previous years I have watched episode two of Robot and listened to episode five of Marco Polo. It’s fair to say before I even watched todays episode that this would be the strongest birthday episode.

The Doctor ends the pre-title scene by saying “What could go wrong?”. If that doesn’t set off alarm bells in peoples head then there really is something wrong with them. It’s a cheap episode because the action takes place in a shuttle. The Doctor is stuck in a shuttle with about half a dozen people and things start ok but it was never going to last. With a lot of people in a confined space it was inevitable that they were going to start bickering.

David Troughton makes another appearance as Professor Hobbes. It’s a great performance from Troughton because at times it a nice gentle performance and then sometimes it is a rather cruel performance when he is talking down to Dee Dee. Colin Morgan appears as Jethro but would go on to play Merlin in……Merlin. I haven’t watched a great deal of Merlin but he doesn’t strike me as a particularly strong on screen presence and he suffers the same problem here because he pops up every so often and doesn’t contribute very much.

Lesley Sharp is the big name of the episode and she plays Sky who isn’t the most liked person on the shuttle but soon becomes the one who is possessed. Her interactions with the Doctor are spectacular especially when she is copying what people say in one of the more unnerving moments of the episode. She really is creepy in this episode and the moment when she appears to be normal and the Doctor is frozen to the spot is a chilling moment.

One of the things that I like about this episode is how the Doctor isn’t the one in charge and can’t force people to do what he wants. The Doctor is always in control and it’s quite good how this is tested. The moment that they all turn on the Doctor and it’s great to see David Tennant play the Doctor in a different way. With the number of his episodes running low, it’s one of the last strong performances from him. When he is being dragged along the floor as he is about to be chucked out of the chute it’s a great moment because he is truly powerless.

This might not be a physically demanding episode but it is certainly a mentally draining one. It’s good when the show does this cause it shows that you don’t need lots of visual effects to be an entertaining 45 minutes of drama. There wasn’t an alien, there wasn’t a Dalek or a Cyberman but just some superb performances. This is the strongest story of the series so far and the build up to the return of Davros starts now and it’s a good episode to watch on my birthday.