I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Thank you, Doctor Who podcasts and RTD writing book, my obsession has now reached epic proportions. My brain is officially full of Doctor Who.

I woke up this morning, early, with a burning revelation about how Planet of the Dead could have been fixed, and redeemed beyond all measure.

(SPOILER CUT for those who haven’t seen it, or who don’t want to kick themselves for not also seeing this easy scripting fix which would make the story ten times better)

Christina De Souza should have been an alien.

Let’s face it, she practically is one. Catburglars don’t exist outside Pink Panther films and Raffles novels. They are not a real thing. Christina’s poshness clashes with everything in this story – the Doctor, the bus full of ordinary Londoners, etc. She doesn’t remotely fit.

(let’s not go into the part where the role demanded a young Diana Rigg and there isn’t one – and Michelle Ryan is most certainly not one)

There’s also the fact where, a few disapproving conversations aside, the Doctor is basically aiding and abetting her crimes, and ultimately helps her escape. I hated that part. Not the flying bus, which was a bit hateable, but the fact that he helped her. Letting her be arrested was his most interesting moment of the episode and in future, should I ever rewatch it, I plan to turn it off at that point.

So yes, if Christina was alien, suddenly everything falls better into place. It would mean we got our first alien companion, which would have made the story more of a landmark and far less throwaway. It wouldn’t have collided with RTD’s preference for keeping things ‘human and accessible’ because it’s only one episode, there are already plenty of humans in it, and Christina already comes across as inhuman and inaccessible.

Making her an alien who is stealing something as part of a plan to get off Earth would make her FAR more appealing and sympathetic. It would also make the Doctor’s decision to rescue her at the end far more appealing and sympathetic because letting an alien go to a human prison is dangerous and silly.

It wouldn’t have taken much, a word here, a sentence there, maybe a ‘SHIMMER’ moment to foreshadow the comedy routine in the End of Time. How great would Michelle Ryan be with blue spikes all over her face? Even just for ten seconds before her ‘shimmer’ was restored. And the story would have gone from ‘meh’ to slightly awesome.

That is all. I am now going to listen to Arsenal podcasts for a while, to dampen down the Obviously Far Too Much Doctor Who in my brain.

Tags: doctor who, thinkinglikeawriter, watching