Review of Planet of Evil (#81)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 27 Sep – 18 Oct 1975
Doctors/Companions: Four, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: Terror of the Zygons (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Pyramids of Mars (Four, Sarah Jane)

I know there have got to be fans out there who have a particular soft spot for Planet of Evil, but as far as I’m concerned, this is a seriously forgettable story. It came around on my calendar and I thought, “Which one is that again?” And I wasn’t much the wiser after looking at the DVD cover.

As usual, I tried writing down what I remembered of the adventure before starting my re-watch, and I am chagrinned to report that (a) I could barely remember anything beyond the story involving the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith (with that recollection being entirely due to the aforementioned cover image) and (b) everything else I remembered was in error.

To make matters worse, even after watching all four episodes again, I still don’t have much of an impression of the storyline. It’s a pretty typical story of its type: some planetary exploration team has discovered something it shouldn’t have, causing members of the expedition to die before the TARDIS crew arrive and discover what’s going on and how to resolve the situation.

The thing is, there don’t really appear to be any specific elements of Planet of Evil that set it apart or make it particularly distinct from any number of other adventures. It’s practically a script-by-numbers conglomeration of Doctor Who tropes.

There’s the aforementioned planetary exploration team. There’s a mostly invisible creature killing people. There’s something important to a misguided researcher / society at the “edge of the known universe.” There’s a scientist so blinded by his own ideas that he fails to heed the warning signs of disaster. There’s a commander who gets too big for his britches. There’s a monstrous transformation. And there’s a solution only the Doctor is fit to implement.

If I squint really hard, I can find some specifics that are unique, but they are so thoroughly steeped in other tropes that they rapidly recede again into a bland oblivion. I simply can’t keep a mental hold on the details of the plot for long enough to set Planet of Evil in my mind as a unique entity.

I suppose that’s why this adventure has found itself in the ranks of Everything Else. It’s not a bad story—the tropes it employs are tropes for a reason—but neither is it memorable enough to be good. For a show that thrives on fans’ love/hate relationship with its stories, that’s perhaps the greatest failure of all.