Doctor Who: 10 Reasons Why The Rings Of Akhaten Sucks

10. There's A Rubbish Smiley Face On The Planet

At the conclusion of The Rings of Akhaten, the Doctor confronts a really big foe - a parasite the size of a gas giant. This confrontation is presaged with some amusing dialogue ("I've seen bigger." / "Really?" / "Are you joking? It's massive!") but the final battle is robbed of all tension by a single, deeply odd, creative decision.

The planet-sized parasite has a smiley face.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it's a crudely drawn smiley face, like a finger painting. This part of the CGI effect unfortunately strips the one-sided face-off of all drama. Actually, if the "face-off" had only involved one face (Matt Smith's), it would have worked much better. In the final analysis, there's just no reason for a planet to have a human-like face.

The solution: Clearly some sort of effect was required to show the planet had woken up. Rather than a less-than-sinister smiley face, massive storms like Jupiter's Great Red Spot could have formed on Akhaten. These cyclones, each many times the size of the Earth, could even have joined together to form huge depressions in and bulges on the surface, giving the world "features" of a truly alien nature.

Also, the planet never actually talks, robbing the parasite of an opportunity to give its side of things. Usually in Doctor Who, this type of situation is handled by having the vast, immeasurably alien being communicate with the puny humanoids via a medium. In this story, there's a ready-made medium who could have been used as a focal point for the Doctor's anger: the mummy in the glass box. The mummy could have been so much more than just a soul-sucking alarm clock for the planet.