Doctor Who-Midnight

                     The doctor and Donna visit the planet Midnight,consisting of massive diamond structures bombarded by the massive amounts of extonic radiation from it's sun. Donna wishes to stay behind at the Leisure Palace while the doctor goes on a Crusader truck tour to visit Sapphire waterfalls.  In the truck itself he uses his sonic screwdriver to stop the entertainment barrage the hostess has used on the crew so he can talk to them. He meets the Cane family Val and Biff and their adolescent son Jethro,to whom they are very disrespectful. There's also Dee Dee Blasco,an enthusiastic students from a family of mechanics. And then there is  Professor Hobbs-who has taken the trip many times to study the planet. Mid voyage the truck abruptly stops. Its apparently never done this before. The hostess attempts to pretend nothing is happening until the power goes out and there's the sound of someone knocking on the door outside,even when their can't be.

                    Using his sonic paper,the doctor convinces the trucks drivers to issue a distress call. Soon after somehow,the cockpit and them with it. Another passenger,revealed to be named Sky Silvestry She panics and claims something is coming for her. When the power comes back on, Sky is in a catatonic state. She begins repeating every word the passengers say. All of them begin panicking intensely. They all begin to chide the doctor for being mysterious and believe that that he should be thrown out into the extonic light of the surface along with whatever life form is inhabiting Sky. The doctor is formed to actually face up to this life form face to face in order to prove his good will to the frightened passengers. Realizing whatever is inhabiting Sky is learning by cognitive conversation,the unknown life form steals the doctors voice from him. She plays on the paranoia of the crew in order to get them to throw him out of the truck. Realizing nearly too late that Dee Dee's observation of the truth is correct, the hostess sacrifices herself to ride the crew of the unknown life form within Sky before the rescue truck arrives. When the doctor returns to Donna,he cannot bare her repeating back anything he says.

             This intensely dramatic thriller story presents the doctor with all of the things that he actually fears. He is simply not in control of anything that is happening around him. The life form affecting the ship is unknown to him. The passengers paranoia and questioning of his identity is overwhelming even for him. As a result he misses a few interesting cues. For one,Sky's insistence that something is after her-as if she knew all along. And the image we the viewer (but never the doctor) see on the screen of the truck of Rose Tyler voicelessly trying to communicate with him from beyond the universe itself.  In the end,the doctor loses total control to an unknown life form that a human being,not himself, had to defeat at the cost of her own (and non-regeneratable) life. David Troughton appears in his second time in the series since 1972's The Curse Of Peladon as Professor Hobbs-an overconfident character but one who attempts to see reason-even as the usually cool mannered doctor is frazzled by.