This is a crazy week for me, and these entries are all going to be short. In fact, the odds are very good that I am going to miss Wednesday and Thursday completely (which by extension means I am going to get halfway through Pyramids of Mars tomorrow and then have to wait three days to see the conclusion). But before I get to Mars I have to finish up with Zeta Minor. So let's talk about that.

Planet of Evil - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

One thing I think I neglected to mention yesterday was how truly excellent the forest sets were for the titular planet. I compared the planet to Kembel, but what really sells the scenery is the fact that the dense vegetation looks less like plant life and more like vivid crimson viscera. As settings go, the planet-side scenes are wonderfully dark and claustrophobic and contribute greatly to the mood of the piece.

Where the first half played very much like Forbidden Planet, the second half shifts completely to Jekyll & Hyde. The surviving scientist from the expedition begins shifting back and forth from himself into a hairy beast that literally sucks the life out of crew members and leaves behind their desiccated corpses. There is some predictable ship-board drama between the paranoid captain and the more level-headed second in command, and a part three cliffhanger where the Doctor and Sarah Jane are very nearly jettisoned into space, but of course it all works out in the end.

All in all it is not a bad story by any measure, it just has the misfortune of coming after a string of particularly amazing stories. Looking back, I see that writer Louis Marks was also responsible for Planet of Giants (dreadful), and Day of the Daleks (mediocre). This one definitely stands out as his best contribution of the three.

And that's all I got for today. Sorry. I have  a rehearsal to get to for my show this weekend, so I don't have much time to think deeply about today's story. Ah, well.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Sarah Jane Smith
Episode(s): Planet of Evil - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 6,276 today, 1,400,773 total
Distance Walked: 3.10 miles today, 695.33 miles total
Weight: 259.90 lbs (five day moving average), net change -47.4 lbs