Who In Review: Midnight

Following an extended break while I focus on work and move house I've reached my favourite of the Tenth Doctor's adventures, and to be honest it's a pretty difficult choice. Tennant got some really good episodes in his tenure, many from his relatively flawless third series. Accompanied by the bolshy, mature (and in no way romantic interest) Donna Noble he encountered aliens made of fat, Agatha Christie, River Song and the return of the Sontarans and Davros. The series (and Tennant's run) peaked, however, just before the season finale with two fantastic episodes separately centring around the series' two leads. Whilst Turn Left focused on Donna, and is a fantastic exploration of what the world would be like without the Doctor to save it, my favourite Tenth Doctor story is the episode which preceded it because of its themes and execution. It's unsurprising that this episode won BAFTA Cymru awards for Best Writer, Best Editor and Best Sound!

Midnight is a planet bathed in lethal radiation from its star which destroys all life within seconds, so obviously a leisure palace has been built there with shuttle-bus trips to various locations of beauty on its crystalline surface. When the trip the Doctor takes makes a detour because of a landslide on the usual route then mysteriously stops, the passengers are faced with an unknown entity which, logically, shouldn't exist.

What makes this story so great is its exploration of the Human condition under stressful circumstances. Throughout the entire episode you have an increasingly tense atmosphere and a sense of things spiralling out of control. What makes it all even more unnerving is the fact that you never find out exactly what this alien threat is. Most of the time in Doctor Who you get an answer to what's happening; it's usually an alien menace trying to take over the world, or a village, or a spaceship, and it's tangible and the Doctor explains what it is. Here we have no explanation. As the credits roll we are no more informed about what's happened than we were to begin with and, for once, that's great! Steven Moffat tried to carry off a similar idea with Listen, but failed miserably when he chose ambiguity over mystery (too many questions are posed and left unanswered on screen which just don't fit if there was no mysterious alien [as it seems to indicate by the end of the episode], not to mention the tawdry re-run of elements of Midnight itself and the appearance of a descendant of Danny Pink which contradicts events later in the same series written by the same scriptwriter!). Midnight leaves us wondering exactly what it was that took over Sky Silvestry and what it wanted; and leaves us uncertain as to whether it's still out there.

The setting for the episode is brilliantly simple - the interior of the shuttle-bus. There have been claustrophobic settings in the series before, but this is just one room and once Sky has been possessed there's no escape. When she begins to repeat what everyone is saying, the remaining passengers can only huddle together at the far end of the bus but they can still see her and still hear her. They're trapped with her and the scenario is utterly unnerving. Each character is wonderfully realised and well rounded, as well. To begin with, everyone seems quite likeable; there's the somewhat self-satisfied but nonetheless passionate and amiable Professor Hobbes; his put-upon yet bright and friendly assistant Dee Dee Blasco; average family Val and Biff Cane and their stereotypically moody teenage son Jethro; and introverted and quiet Sky Silvestry. In their brief scene, Driver Joe and Mechanic Claude come across as friendly, if a little perturbed, average guys doing their job. Only the Hostess comes across as unfriendly, but she's clearly having a bad day - given the capacity of the bus and small number of tourists on this eight hour trip I can't say I'd be thrilled in her shoes, especially when one of them gives her cheek about the peanuts and then the entertainment system breaks down! We've all had one of those days! The Doctor (responsible for the lack of entertainment) immediately starts to mingle and we see everyone getting along. Even Sky mellows as she confides in the Doctor about her being there to get over a seemingly nasty and messy break up with her ex.

The arrival of the mysterious entity which, one assumes, is responsible for the shuttle-bus stopping before it rips away the cockpit and bangs on the cabins sides until it locates the most frightened and weak occupant, builds brilliantly after Claude (and only Claude - not even we are party to this) sees it running along a ridge outside. The slow discovery that there's an intelligence behind the knocking and its sudden attack when Sky becomes hysterical is a rising peak in the drama which leads into the sinister scenes where Sky begins to repeat the others. The editing and sound design here are utterly stunning. Lesley Sharp is one of the UK's best actors and, following her role in Russel T Davies' The Second Coming, it's unsurprising that she was chosen for the role of Sky. From insecure Human to calculating monster, Sharp gives one of the best performances the series has seen and the sequences where she and Tennant speak in unison are astounding.

Davies has gone on record stating that he wrote Midnight as an antidote to Voyage Of The Damned (which, incidentally, is my favourite of the Christmas Specials). In the latter, we saw a group of people band together with the Doctor in charge and work together in order to survive. Here, we see a similar group of people in another life-threatening situation, but when they band together they do so against the Doctor (interestingly, the survivors of Starship Titanic nearly all get killed whilst those on Midnight almost all survive). Granted, the Doctor does himself no favours by telling them he's clever, but then that's the Tenth Doctor to a tee - whilst the Fourth Doctor enjoyed getting those around him to tell him he was a genius, Ten would regularly come out and proclaim it himself. This time it almost gets him killed. Having had his voice stolen by whatever is inside Sky Silvestry, the only people who can see what has happened are Dee Dee, likely emboldened to argue after being cruelly belittled in front of everyone by her mentor, and the Hostess who realises that the entity is using words which the Doctor used when speaking to her at the start of the episode. Since the Hostess was the first to state she would have no qualms about throwing Sky out the airlock from the very beginning in order to protect the others on the bus, it's no surprise that she steps forward as the passengers are dragging the Doctor to his death and does just what she said she would. Ironically, if the Doctor had allowed her to do that in the first place, events would have taken a less unpleasant turn and the Hostess may still have been alive.

It's not often a story has a downbeat ending, but the conclusion to Midnight is refreshing because of it. As the rescue team arrives, everyone is sat separately and all that is said is that none of them even knew the Hostess's name. What happens between that and the final scene between the Doctor and Donna is left for the viewer to decide, but I doubt the subdued passengers had very much to say to each other in the aftermath. Even the Doctor, in the final scene, is clearly left traumatised by what occurred and that's not something you often see. Like in Snakedance, we see what it's like when the Doctor fails to take charge. It isn't a regular occurrence, but in happening it adds a little bit to his character.

I love Midnight for its technical genius, the tightness of the script, the excellent performances from everyone involved and the way it takes you from a cheery tour to a psychological horror in the space of ten minutes. Tense and claustrophobic, I wouldn't want every episode to be like this, but it's nevertheless one of the best episodes in the shows history.