The Exploding Planet (Galaxy 4 Episode 4)

The one where the planet explodes...

Pretty much the only thing of any note that happens in The Exploding Planet is that the planet explodes. I'm not even being glib here. Most of the 25 minutes is spent hooking up the Rill ship to the TARDIS with a very long cable, and characters flitting between various locations. Maaga and the Drahvins fail spectacularly to capture the Rill ship (although they do manage to disable one Chumbley using an iron bar), while Steven spends most of his time arguing a lost cause with the Rill leader.

It's B-movie sci-fi by numbers, and brings to an end a story which comes nowhere near fulfilling its potential, but is still oddly engaging, largely thanks to its visual and aural attributes (eg, the Rills, the Chumbleys, the Drahvins and the accompanying sound effects).

Steven is sidelined once again, as the Doctor tells him to rest in the Rill ship while he and Vicki do all the work. One might be forgiven for thinking this underuse of the one stereotypical male hero figure is deliberate on writer William Emms' part, but seeing as Emms' original script submission had the Drahvins as men, and they were only changed to female on the suggestion of producer Verity Lambert, that doesn't hold water. Galaxy 4 is by no means a feminist parable. Lambert's idea to make the Drahvins female was a huge opportunity to make the story more interesting, but virtually nothing comes out of it. The Drahvins are female and that's that.

It's such a shame. With more forethought by Emms, Lambert and/ or script editor Donald Tosh the story could have been rewritten as a topical take on the battle of the sexes, playing with gender so that the women were the mighty aggressors, and the men/ Rills were the peace-seeking pacifists. Vicki could have been wooed by Maaga's intelligently reasoned feminist arguments, and Steven could have been subjugated and undermined as a prisoner of the Drahvins. Yes, it would have dated quite badly, but at least it would have meant something at the time, and been an interesting example of something. As it stands, Galaxy 4 is merely a diverting own goal.

A lot of the episode is taken up oohing and aahing over whether they will have enough time to charge the Rill ship before the planet explodes, and it's like waiting for your mobile phone to charge to 100% before going out for the night. In the end, our heroes have but half an hour to get back to the TARDIS and dematerialise before the planet goes up in smoke. Which they do successfully, with barely a hitch. Even their desperate run back to the TARDIS is all too easy.

The most interesting bit of the entire episode is the 90 seconds spent inside the Rills' inner chamber, where I am assuming we would have finally got to see the full monster costume, despite the glass partition. Without the episode to watch, without telesnaps to pore over, how this scene appeared is lost forever, captured only on tinny audio.

Back in the TARDIS, Vicki and the Doctor wonder what's happening on a far and distant planet they see on the scanner, and we then get to see exactly what is happening on this far and distant planet: not very much. The planet is Kembel, it's a wild jungle planet (so presumably the creation of Terry Nation) and we witness a man called Jeff wake up and look around him. "I must kill," he mutters to himself. "I must kill..." And then the credits roll, and we will have to wait another week to see what more is happening on Kembel (if anything).

So that's Galaxy 4. A story with loads of juicy bits just raring to be let loose on a worthy story, but which are failed by a writer whose horizons seem limited. Test tube warrior space vixens? Turtle-like robots with cutesy sound effects? Hideous monsters which lurk in gas-filled chambers? A race against time to fix a spaceship before the planet explodes? It's all so promising, but sadly let down by a singular lack of narrative imagination.

First broadcast: October 2nd, 1965

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Nothing stands out as being worthy of particular note, sadly. The Exploding Planet is just kind of there.
The Bad: Williams Emms (and in part, script editor Donald Tosh) must be blamed for failing to make The Exploding Planet more exciting. It essentially boils down to a 25 minute wait for a battery to charge.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 5.8 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Mission to the Unknown...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Four Hundred Dawns (episode 1); Trap of Steel (episode 2); Air Lock (episode 3)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/galaxy-4.html

The soundtrack to Galaxy 4 is available on CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Doctor-Who-Galaxy-4-Peter-Purves/0563477008. The extant episode 3 (Air Lock) and almost six minutes of surviving footage from episode 1 (Four Hundred Dawns) can be found on The Aztecs Special Edition DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Aztecs-Special-DVD/dp/B00AREPA1I