Doctor Who - Midnight (2008)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episode Midnight.

As I told earlier, this is my favourite Doctor Who episode. This is clearly filler episode. Small, simple set and few actors. Probably didn't take much time to shoot. This came just before season finale. Being filler in Doctor Who doesn't mean a bad episode. This episode shows what good director can do with good script and good actors. You don't have to spend lots of money to make good tv or movie. I planned to do this during october, because this is one of my favourite horror stories. It still works after I have seen this several times.

Midnight is leisure planet, where light makes outside lethal to any life forms. People has to be protected from light all the time. Doctor takes shuttle to see sapphire water wall. His companion Donna doesn't want to take four hour shuttle ride to there and another four hour back. Regular route to waterfall is blocked and shuttle has to take detour. Passengers get to know each others. Everything is fun and games until shuttle stops. This should never happen. Passengers start to freak out. Doctor, Hostess and Dee Dee, one of the passengers, try to calm others down.

When passengers calm down, something starts to knock walls of shuttle. Sky, one other passengers start to scream that something is coming after her. Something attacks the shuttle. Electronics malfunction. Cockpit with pilots is gone. Shuttle has stopped in middle of nowhere. Passengers has to stay inside waiting for rescuers. They can't go out side because it is deadly outside. Sky starts to act strangely. She repeats everything anyone says. This freaks out the passengers. They start to argue what they should do with Sky. Majority wants to throw her outside. Doctor want to keep her alive. Some passengers think they should throw the Doctor outside too.

Then Sky starts to repeat everything they say at same time person speaks. Then she stop repeating everyone else than Doctor. This goes on until she says things before the Doctor says them. Slowly Doctor start to repeat what Sky says and other passengers see Doctor as problem. This is one of few times, when Doctor is alone and no-one in shuttle knows who he is. He doesn't help his situation by not telling who he really is.

I don't want to spoil the episode any more. There are no weak links in this episode. Every character acts realistically and we see how different kind of people act in this kind of situation. Group doesn't always do best choices, if wrong people are too loud and people who see what actually happens are not loud enough. This shows how dysfunctional groups work. I like how passengers justify their actions at the end. I think you could do academic work based on this episode.