It’s nice when TV shows give homage to famous movies that may have influenced them one way or another. For this episode, entitled “The Impossible Planet”, films that come into mind upon seeing its setting, characters and plot would notably be “Event Horizon”, “The Matrix”, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the first two “Alien” movies. Though with borrowed ideas, the episode is quite entertaining as it has its own take on the “Event Horizon” story and combines the series’ charms and light-heartedness to tackle the episode’s much darker issues.

There’s certainly no doubt that Stephen Moffat would have been the best writer for the job as he seems to have mastered combining light and dark themes while still being to maintain the intensity of the film’s conflict. With writer Matt Jones and director James Strong, “The Impossible Planet” loses much of its spookiness as the setting turns cartoonish. The lighting is too bright to capture the claustrophobic horror of “Alien” which ends up turning the place into a cheerful one. All the characters are types coming from the different movies I mentioned above with some characters adding a bit more humanity into their usual roles.

The idea of hell being close to the black hole is very reminiscent of “Event Horizon” and Toby’s character is very similar to that of Sam Neil’s in the movie. Even Scooti’s death felt like a combinations of 2 different deaths in its film counterpart. The execution of these scenes in the episode wasn’t done so well, they were in fact quite messy, which makes it even worse when I compare it to the movie’s scenes. Nevertheless, it was fun seeing my childhood sci-fi horror films getting mashed-up into one sci-fi comedy episode.

I would love to have an Ood in our household and I believe everyone would want to have one as well. The feeling is so mutual because they NEED to be ordered around and to follow directions to live. It kind of makes me wonder how they survive as a race in one planet when no one is around to give them instructions or tasks to do. Having an Ood as a helper is mutually beneficial; he needs order to live and I would love to order him around to eliminate my chores. I don’t even have to pay them since the order alone is payment enough. It’s not really taking advantage of them because what the humans on board were doing was actually saving them.

To be honest, I was uncomfortable with Doctor Who tackling the demonic visions of Catholicism because I find it quite inappropriate for its PG market. The mention of 666, Satan and other references to the most evil would seem quite dark to a younger audience, especially with the continuous highlight of the Bible. Maybe to Anglicans like them, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue but to a Catholic or Christian market, it just doesn’t feel right. That opinion for mine is just for the kids because as for me, I enjoyed every bit of it. I like the idea of mixing science fiction with religious themes, as if trying to justify Biblical occurrences with the scientific method. The closing scene was frightening and it’s probably the most effective cliffhanger from the series to date.