It’s Easter time and that means we get the first of the 2009 Doctor Who specials. This follows from Christmas’ “The Next Doctor” special and after this we have three more specials to wrap up the Tennant/10th Doctor era.

And I sure hope the next three specials step up. Because this didn’t feel too “special.” It was an ok episode. Light, mostly fun, but with a pretty over-the-top last act that knocked this down a lot for me.

The episode begins with a thief doing a quick Pink Panther-esque theft of a 1,000 year old golden goblet. She sets off an alarm and on the run from the police jumps on a double-decker bus. She just happens to have picked the same bus that The Doctor is on, using a makeshift device to monitor an anomoly. The police are in pursuit and as the bus enters a tunnel, it leaps through something bigger than he expected, vanishing.

From here the episode turns into a mix between “Flight of the Phoenix” (people trapped in the desert trying to repair their vehicle) and “Pitch Black” monsters who eat anything are on their way. The Doctor does some jiggery-pokery and modifies a cell phone to contact UNIT back on Earth. Capt. Motumbo is back along with the eccentric Dr. Malcom (Lee Evans, in my opinion genuinely funny in this role). They work on figuring out how to close the wormhole, while the Doctor works to get the bus moving out of the sand.

Oh yeah, they can’t just walk back through the invisible hole because the driver tried that and got fried. The metal of the bus acts like a Faraday cage and protects them. The thief, Lady Christina de Souza takes charge. Through the course of the episode, we learn she is a parallel of the Doctor. She’s a lady, he’s a lord, but she rejected her heritage for adventure. The Doctor did the same when he stole the TARDIS. I liked their chemistry, though the episode is short.

Investigating the barren desert, the Doctor and Lady Christina find a crashed spaceship with two aliens, the fly-headed Tritivore. They may look scary, but they are reasonable and work with the Doctor. He sees through their monitors millions of flying aliens, who eat everything in their path and rush around the planet until they create a wormhole to the next planet. The Tritivore were on their way to a robust, thriving planet to trade when they crashed by hitting some of the aliens. The aliens have turned a planet of billions into dunes of sand and nothing else.

The Tritovore’s broken ship has its power source at the bottom of a shaft, which the Doctor thinks can get the bus moving and get them all out of there. Lady Christina hooks up her burglar gear and drops down to snatch it. But along the way she wakes up a few of the eater aliens who had crashed into the spaceship and they chase after everyone, killing both Tritovore.

Ultimately, the Doctor throws away the jewel from the power source and uses the clamps that hold it on the bus tires and steering wheel, welding it all together with the old gold cup. Then… the bus flies. Yeah. And so they all fly back to Earth. A few aliens come through but UNIT blows them up.

I’m not really addressing the supporting characters who I suppose were ok, but didn’t add much to the episode. Motumbo wants Malcolm to close the wormhole as soon as he figures out how but Malcolm holds off to help save his hero, The Doctor. But you can certainly understand UNIT wanting to protect Earth! Oh well, everything works out ok.

Lady Christina asks to join The Doctor but he coldly rebukes her saying he doesn’t take on companions anymore. It’s pretty sad, but he later unlocks her handcuffs from a distance with his sonic screwdriver (glad they didn’t use that to solve all the problems in this ep, I admit). She jumps on the flying bus and that’s the end.

Boo hiss. Nothing substantial. Just too light for me. It’s always fun to see the Doctor and Lady Christina and Malcolm were good characters. The Tritivore were a good design, but some of the CGI was a little weak. Maybe it was rushed, or maybe there were budgetary conerns. It wasn’t BAD, but it wasn’t amazing at all.

Feh. I’ve said enough. I give this 2.5 out of 5 sonic screwdrivers.

photo credit: leff