Planet of Evil is the second serial of the 13th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 27 September to 18 October 1975.
The serial is set on and above the planet Zeta Minor, the last undiscovered planet in the known universe, more than 30,000 years in the future, where the Morestran geologist Sorenson (Frederick Jaeger) seeks to exploit the antimatter minerals on the planet to use as a power source for his own planet. He and the military mission looking for him are attacked by a creature from a universe of anti-matter. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive on the planet in response to a distress call. They find the geological expedition attacked by an unseen killer, leaving only Professor Sorenson alive.
The plot was inspired by the film Forbidden Planet (1956) and the novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), with a focus on antimatter. The jungle setting was realised at Ealing Studios and shot on film.
Plot
The TARDIS picks up a distress call and the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive on the planet Zeta Minor. There they discover that a Morestran geological expedition has fallen prey to an unseen killer and only the leader, Professor Sorenson, remains alive.
A military mission from Morestra has also arrived to investigate. At first they suspect the Doctor and Sarah Jane of responsibility for the deaths of the expedition members, but the culprit is eventually revealed to be a creature from a universe of antimatter, retaliating for the removal by Sorenson of some antimatter samples from around the pit that acts as an interface between the two universes.
The Morestrans take off in their ship, but it is slowly dragged back towards the planet due to the antimatter on board. Sorenson himself becomes infected by antimatter and gradually transforms into an 'antiman', a monster capable of draining the life from others.
The Morestran commander, the increasingly unhinged Salamar, attacks Sorenson with a radiation source, but this only causes him to produce multiple anti-matter versions of Sorenson which soon overrun the ship. The Doctor finds the original Sorenson, takes him back to the planet in the TARDIS and throws both him and his samples into the pit, fulfilling a bargain he earlier made with the anti-matter creature. Sorenson reappears unharmed, and the Doctor returns him to the Morestran ship, which is now freed of the planet's influence.
Outside references
The Doctor quotes from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and says that he met William Shakespeare once.
Despite the jungle setting of this serial, the shoot was entirely studio bound, and designer Roger Murray-Leach built an intricately detailed jungle set at Ealing Studios, which director David Maloney shot on film. The BBC was so impressed with it that they kept photographs of it for several years as an example of excellent set design and producer Philip Hinchcliffe recommended that he be nominated for an award for this work.
The original script had Sorenson dying after falling into the pit, but Hinchcliffe ordered that this be changed, as he felt it would too grim an ending for "the little ones" (i.e. children), and because he saw Sorenson as a victim of the planet's influence rather than an evil man in himself. Instead, a scene was added in which Sorenson is released from the pit and cured of his anti-matter contamination.
The most visible reference to Forbidden Planet is the anti-matter monster (Mike Lee Lane), which is sometimes invisible and otherwise is seen as red outlines. It bears a close resemblance to the film's "Creature from the Id". The monster is invisible in the filmed sections of the serial (where a wind machine was used to show its progress), and as outlines in the video sections (created with Colour Separation Overlay).
Cast notes
This is the final appearance by Michael Wisher in Doctor Who. Prentis Hancock made his third appearance, having previously appeared in Spearhead from Space (1970) and Planet of the Daleks (1973). He would later appear in The Ribos Operation (1978). Frederick Jaeger (Professor Sorenson) and Ewen Solon (Vishinsky) both previously appeared in The Savages (1966), in which they played Jano and Chal, respectively. Jaeger would later appear in 1977's The Invisible Enemy as Professor Marius, creator of the robot dog K-9. Louis Mahoney (Ponti) had previously appeared in Frontier in Space (1973) and would later appear in "Blink" (2007). Graham Weston (De Haan) had also previously appeared in Patrick Troughton's final serial The War Games (1969).