Midnight

Writer: Russell T Davies OBE
Director: Alice Troughton

“But how do you know?”
“Because I’m clever!”

The Doctor and Donna are on the diamond planet of Midnight. The Doctor wants to visit the sapphire waterfall whilst all Donna wants to do is relax and sunbathe. Unable to persuade her to change her mind The Doctor embarks on the journey without her.

 On this trip The Doctor’s fellow travellers are Professor Hobbes and his assistant Dee Dee Blasco, the Cane family, Biff, Val and their son Jethro and a lone female traveller by the name of Sky Silvestry.

As they set off the Hostess activates the ‘entertainment’ package which consists of music videos, an internal light show and a cartoon all at the same time. It is an awful combination that will last the whole trip. The Doctor discreetly uses the sonic screwdriver to disable the entertainment systems.
Biff Cane asks what they do now that they have no entertainment and The Doctor says that they will just have to talk to each other instead. He is soon chatting to his fellow passengers, hearing their stories and learning about their lives.Everybody seems to get along well together even indulging Professor Hobbes when he gives an impromptu lecture on the planet Midnight, his special interest.

Suddenly the transporter comes to a stop. They are still a long way from their destination and Hobbes tells them that in all his trips to the waterfall they have never stopped before. The Hostess asks them all to return to their seats and assures them that there is no problem and that they are just stabilising the engines.
The Doctor, of course, suspects that there is more to it and gains access to the crew cabin. The driver tells him the same as the Hostess  but when The Doctor proves he knows at least as much as they do about the engines he admits that they don’t actually know what is wrong. All the systems seem to be working normally, they just aren’t moving. He tells The Doctor that he has sent out a distress signal.
The Doctor persuades the driver to open the shields protecting them from the Xtonic radiation for just a few minutes so they can see what the surface of the planet looks like. The scenery is beautiful but just as they are lowering the shields the mechanic thinks he sees something, a shadow maybe, moving towards the vehicle.

The Doctor returns to the main carriage and tries to reassure the other passengers that everything is OK. Sky in particular seems to be distressed by the delay and a chance comment about the amount of air they have left leads to confusion and angry exchanges amongst the passengers until The Doctor quietens them all down and explains that they have plenty of air left.

Suddenly they hear a knocking on the outside of the vehicle and despite Hobbes’s belief that nothing can survive on the planet’s surface the knocking continues moving around the vehicle until it appears that whatever is outside is trying to use the door to get in. Biff bangs on the door to prove how solid it is and his knock is copied. The Doctor takes over again, knocking on the hull and having his knock copied back. Sky becomes hysterical, blaming The Doctor for their predicament and saying that whatever is outside has been sent to get her.
The vehicle is attacked and rocked violently back and forward sending everybody tumbling about inside and plunging them into darkness. Once the attack is over everybody appears to be unharmed except for Sky who is frozen in her seat.

The Hostess can’t raise the driver and when she opens the door to the crew cabin there is nothing there. Sky is the only person not to have moved or reacted to the loss of the crew. Jethro says that the noise that was outside has stopped and wonders if that is because whatever was making the noise is now inside the vehicle with them, maybe inside Sky. The Doctor eventually gets Sky to turn round and look at him, she doesn’t seem to be fully human any more and begins to mimic The Doctor’s actions and then copy his words. Soon she is repeating the words spoken by anybody inside the vehicle and when she won’t stop mild hysteria sets in and all the passengers (except The Doctor) begin shouting and throwing accusations at Sky until finally the back up systems restore the lighting and allow some degree of calm to be restored.

Sky has stopped repeating everything that is being said and is now saying the same words at the same time as the speaker. She even seems to be able to predict what is going to be said next. It seems that the more the passengers say the quicker Sky is learning.

The Doctor takes all of them away from Sky and tells them that they only have to hang on for another 50 minutes before rescue arrives and that they should stay where they are and be quiet. The Doctor thinks that Sky might still be alive inside her own mind and wants to try and help her but he is reluctant to get to close to her because he is afraid that the next step in the creatures’ evolution might be to become him.

The Hostess thinks they should throw Sky out onto the planet and this idea begins to gain favour with the others despite The Doctor’s determination that nobody is going to be thrown out and killed. The more he argues to save Sky the more the others begin to turn on him. They begin to twist his words and actions to suit their paranoia until he is now also a threat to be dealt with. They now want to throw him out as well not trusting anything he says or does.
Sky has stopped repeating the words of everybody except The Doctor and this convinces Val that in fact The Doctor and Sky are in league with each other.

The Doctor tries again to reach the creature inside Sky, offering to help it find whatever it needs and as he is talking Sky’s words gradually become ahead of his until he is the one copying her words. Sky suddenly seems to return to normal, telling the others that she can move again and that she is sorry for having scared them. Now it seems that The Doctor has been paralysed by the creature. All the passengers except Dee Dee seem to think that whatever possessed Sky has now moved into The Doctor and they all turn on him again. Val and Biff are convinced that The Doctor has been ‘infected’ by the creature and Sky fuels their fears by telling them that creature is inside all their heads turning them against each other and that the only way to make it stop is to throw The Doctor out of the vehicle.

The Hostess now seems to share Dee Dee’s concerns that this is not the case but Biff grabs the unmoving Doctor and starts to drag him towards the door calling on the others to help him. Knowing that Dee Dee and her were right her were right and that Sky is still possessed by the creature The Hostess grabs Sky, hits the emergency door open button and they are both sucked out to their deaths.

Freed from the creature The Doctor is now returned to normal and all the other passengers are left to think about how their actions would have killed an innocent person just to allay their own fears.

Sadly nobody had even bothered to find out the name of The Hostess.

Written by Deryn Corner