455 – Doctor Who – Orphan 55

54 orphan planets in all, 54 orphan planets.  If another planet should happen to fall, 55 orphan planets in all.

Simon and Eugene discuss Orphan 55.

Episode Synopsis:

Graham wins an all-inclusive vacation at Tranquility Spa, unfortunately, the vacation begins before they can adequately prepare as they are immediately teleported from the TARDIS to the spa.  Seemingly unconcerned by being isolated from the TARDIS and with only the clothes on their backs, the gang immediately split up to enjoy the amenities.  All except the Doctor who pokes around looking for trouble.

In the spa control facility, Kane and Vorm are dealing with both a virus incursion into the spa systems and a breach.  An alien lifeform has entered the spa.

Yaz meets Beni and Vilma, an elderly couple and intrudes on their special moment as Beni is about to propose – signifying that one or both of them are dead meat walking.

Ryan finds trouble almost immediately, when a vending machine gives him a Hopper Virus.  The Doctor cures this by pulling his ear and having him sneeze in a plastic bag, then sucking his thumb.  A virus remedy that every Microsoft Windows administrator knows by rote.  While Ryan is recovering he meets, and rather successfully, chats up Bella, another guest at the resort.

With a creature on the loose, the guests are asked to come to muster stations, disguised as a drill.  But when Ryan sees security with a gun, he and Bella follow to find out what’s happening.

The Doctor has found the control room, hidden in a linen closet.  She quickly deduces that, not only has a virus been attacking all the systems, including the now-inoperable teleport, but that something has gotten in and is killing the guests.  She redirects all the guests to the linen closet – at least all that are alive or bother to listen.  Amongst those that failed to listen: Ryan and Bella.

The Doctor repairs the ionic barrier, a biological filter that forces the creature, known as a Dreg, back out of the spa.

With the creature expunged, it is now revealed that this spa is a “fake-cation” location, a walled-in simulation of a vacation, typically located conveniently in cities so that people don’t have to travel to an “exotic” spa, but this one is different, it’s built off-world, on a planet known as Orphan 55.  Orphan planets are worlds where the 1%ers are able to escape their dying world, leaving behind the others – one might even call them the “dregs” of humanity – to die.  Somehow on Orphan 55, life has survived.

Beni has somehow gotten outside, and Vilma pleads that they go get him.  Kane reluctantly agrees and everyone left piles in the van and heads out across the wastelands, but when it becomes apparent that the Dregs have him, Kane wants to turn back.  Vilma pays her to continue on.  The Dregs lay a trap and the vehicle is destroyed.  Casualties start to mount up as they make their way to an access tunnel.  They reach a teleport, but then Bella throws a metaphorical bombshell.  She’s the saboteur that unleashed the virus because she has mommy issues.  You see, Kane, unknowingly, is Bella’s absent mother, and Bella is disproportionately upset about it.  In fact, she’s here to burn the place to the ground in a fit of pique.  She is about to be killed by a Dreg when Ryan rescues her by pushing her, and himself, into the teleport, returning to the spa.  Alas, there’s no more power to use the teleport again, and the others must continue through the tunnels on foot.

At the base, Bella reveals she’s got not just metaphorical bombshells, she’s got real ones, too, and goes about planting them… sort of with Ryan’s help. Certainly, Ryan puts up little or no resistance.

In the tunnels, the Doctor discovers they are on the planet Ravalox – sometimes call Earth – and it’s been destroyed by global warming.  This greatly distresses Yaz and Graham, but, what can you do except demand accountability and action from your elected officials, and/or overthrow the capitalistic system which exploits people and resources, generating a filthy rich class of elites who can afford to abandon their world leaving the poor behind in the thoughtlessly ravaged world their own apathy perpetuated?

The Doctor runs out of oxygen because, just like I’ve been saying for years, she talks too much, but she’s able to refill from the Dregs because… they oxygenate.  Kane appears to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor.

Finally back at the control room, the Doctor hatches a bit of a plan.  Nevi and Sylas (two characters I haven’t bothered to mention up to this point because they’ve been mostly superfluous) are to fix the teleport, but Sylas – Nevi’s son – runs into the danger area in a fit of pique because he’s mad at his dad.

Does anyone else think that writer Ed Hime is mad at one of his parents because they don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and wrote this episode in a fit of pique?

Apart from the fact that Sylas is actually the brains of the pair, they also need Syrillium 4 to power the teleport, and they only have Syrillium 3.  I know what you’re thinking, why not just add two Syrillium 3s, and subtract 2, but apparently you can’t do that, but you can take a Hopper virus, conveniently stored in a plastic bag in the Doctor’s pocket and infect Syrillium 3, transmuting it into Syrillium 4, because apparently that’s how computer viruses and particle physics do…

There’s some running about, rescuing the boy, setting off bombs, getting the teleport working, there’s a surprise moment when Bella sacrifices herself to save the others, and then Kane shows up to sacrifice herself (again) to help Bella sacrifice herself and they all escape back to the TARDIS for downer lecture from the Doctor about the Earth’s future being a choose-your-own-adventure book and it’s not too late to pick the right choices, otherwise, humanity will turn into a race of vicious, carnivorous, CO2-breathing, cruel monsters.