Doctor Who: One Mile Down

The future-set story of this particular triad sees the Doctor and Donna visiting an underwater city on an alien planet that is now a major tourist attraction. It's obvious from the opening teaser that something is wrong, and that all the tourists are in imminent danger. It's also not especially hard to guess what it is that's causing the trouble although, for once, it's not monsters hiding in the shadows (as in the excellent The Macra Terror or the... um... less excellent Orphan 55).

Despite the cover picture, the Judoon aren't in it all that much, although their presence is important to the plot. Instead, we have the indigenous aliens of the planet, an aquatic species using a technology similar to that of the Hath (from The Doctor's Daughter) to interact with humans in an air-filled city that is no longer hospitable to them. This leads to some, at times rather blunt, criticism of tourist exploitation and imperialism, with the aliens standing in for various victims of colonialism in the real world. I didn't find this got in the way of the story, and I liked the way that two of the tourists showed opposing sides of this particular coin without being entirely one-dimensional, but I can see that others might feel otherwise.

Despite that, this can hardly be described as a deep story, and it's not up there with the strongest episodes of the season it's emulating. Nonetheless, it's a fun romp, with hidebound Judoon, oppressed fish-people, a particularly incompetent main villain, and a slowly developing menace that puts everyone in danger. With a few plot holes here and there, it's enjoyable, but perhaps not much more than that.