So... Easter Special of Doctor Who - PLANET OF THE DEAD!

It's an RTD episode - there's another writer as well but the script reads like the usual RTD-level fanfic, so the other seems irrelevant. The episode starts out with the former Bionic Woman doing a gem heist - hilariously, she wears a mask to conceal her identity... which she removes after all of three seconds, to thereby render its wearing utterly pointless.

Things of course, get off to a start when she boards a bus to escape the fuzz - and THE DOCTOR gets on. As usual, he starts talking like an escaped mental patient to endear himself to our lady thief. The police give chase when they manage to work out she is on the bus but luckily for her a rip in the fabric of space and time appears in the tunnel and the next thing you know it, our double decker bus is under alien skies... in the middle of a desert. It's actually a pretty passable intro. Not too long to get into the action - not quite the Christmas Special and it's nigh instant segue but fairly acceptable.

Naturally, a double decker bus disappearing in the middle of an enclosed tunnel warrants the attention of UNIT - it was them or Torchwood... and who would you want? As something of a deviation from the norm, back on the bus the Bionic Aristocrat Thief Lady appoints herself leader. The Doctor talks about the wormhole - prompting the bus driver to run into it and burn up. Guess you should have mentioned that bit before saying "oh, there's the way home!" So, unlike your Stargate type of wormhole, this one apparently disintegrates people who aren't surrounded by metal. Unfortunately, the bus is stuck in the sand.

We have the mandatory introduction of the other people on the bus... but really, beyond the Lady Thief, the characterisation is so shallow and the role played by the characters themselves so tangential, that they might as well just be faceless drones. Also, there's a HORRIBLY embarrassing stereotypical black woman WITH MYSTIC POWAHS! She magically works out that turning up on an alien world might be BAD. It's really quite cringe worthy - clearly RTD was trying to make up for Martha Jones.

Amusingly, the Mary Sue factor of the Doctor - which RTD is always keen to ramp up... and we learn that the sonic screw driver can apparently instantly make a phone call Earth (although - why they didn't just use the same rationale as they do in Stargate isn't really obvious) from the other side of the universe and polarise glasses - is somewhat paralleled by Lady Thief and her magic back of holding. One could be forgiven for thinking that at any moment she might pull a full length ladder out of it.

Anyway, as this is really all about the Doctor and Lady Thief, they decide to tell the auxiliary characters to stay near the bus and to not do anything interesting while they're gone - that is, after they have a wonderfully awful moment where UNIT staff gush over the Doctor (he can tell when you're saluting on the phone!). It's sickeningly saccharine and grade A Mary Sue material - because making the Doctor the LAST Timelord didn't up that enough, y'know?

So, the aliens show up! But they're nice aliens! That's actually a nice touch. As they are ugly fly headed aliens. Anyway DA DOCTOR finds out a bunch of metal coated flying stingrays - STINGRAY DADADADA! - have descended upon this planet and reduced everything to sand. There's a pointless scene where MORE - actually justified stuff - comes out the magic bag. Then a Mission Impossible moment. Then sadly, the aliens go and die. Pointlessly. This is of course after we discern the REASON this planet has been reduced to sand. Flying metal stingrays. OF DEATH. Yup, they generate a wormhole by... flying around a planet. Many times... didn't Superman do that? Oh wait, that was to do something stupid... like turn back time... this is a LOT more reasonable. Actually, in RTD land - this makes PERFEC sense. If you think that's a mispelling - no, it's irony.

The Doctor goes and does a big OH! I AM SAVING YOU - thing. He makes the bus... a HOVER BUS. There is pointless bit where a UNIT gusher doesn't want to condemn the Doctor to being trapped. Naturally, this is all false tension... because we KNOW the Doctor will get home. Or he could use the sonic screwdriver to make sand into a time badger. Y'know to burrow into the past... or... something?

The gushy scientist played by a more irritating than usual - and he's non-tolerable at the best of times - Lee Evans (for some reason a Welsh person? Did they secretly want Torchwood here? The Welsh really are rubbish... but RTD seems to have some manner of paraphilia for them) decides to grow a pair when he's instructed to close the wormhole to prevent the STINGRAYS, STINGRAYS (dadadada!) coming through the wormhole. This makes sense as apparently the wormhole is 10 miles wide... but then... it isn't about 30 seconds later when the bus flies through, as do a few STINGRAY - all in the exact same place.

Predictably, the Doctor et al (really, only one person died?) make it through. The wormhole is closed, aliens are defeated. Further - cringeworthy - gushing over the Doctor happens. He then tells the Lady Thief how he thinks she needs to be judged and how she can't be a companion - because, stealing his TARDIS and her saving people and him being moral when it fucking suits him - so she needs to get arrested. She gets put in the back of a car... but then the Doctor uses his sonic deus ex to let her out.

And the horrible evil law enforcer inevetually bangs on the bus as she flies away.

Eh... it has some pretty effects and it doesn't have the horribly clunking Christmas Special plot... but it's still an RTD episode and since Who started again there have been decent episodes and RTD episodes. No WONDER RTD doesn't want to listen to the fans. If they're older than 10 they know he sucks... unless they're retards. Which a lot of them are.

In summary, RTD is rubbish - like him at your peril.