The episode placed emphasis on the Tenth Doctor, with his companion, Donna Noble playing a minimal role.
It received positive reviews from critics, who particularly liked the psychological horror of the unseen creature, as well as the tense claustrophobic atmosphere of the episode.
The Tenth Doctor and Donna visit the resort planet Midnight, which is bathed in lethal radiation from its star.
The Doctor asks Joe to open the cockpit radiation shielding to see what may be causing the problem, and before they are closed again, Claude claims to have seen something moving outside.
[7] David Troughton was a late replacement for Sam Kelly as Professor Hobbes, who broke his leg and had to withdraw from the production.
David has had a long association with the series since the 1960s, appearing as an uncredited extra in The Enemy of the World, and as a guest character in The War Games, and in The Curse of Peladon.
These scenes were shot on the last day, as they included Tate, who was busy on the set of the Doctor-lite episode "Turn Left".
[3] Murray Gold completed the score for the episode in April, with re-dubbing of a few scenes and post-production also finishing that month.
The episode was also shown on the Gloucester Guildhall's cinema screen, due to an arrangement made by the BBC, similar to the one for the previous series' "Blink".
[6] "Midnight" was watched by 8.05 million viewers, a 38% share of the total television audience, making it the fifth most-watched programme of the week, and the top rated show of the day.
"[13] Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times praised the episode, stating that "psychological thrills abound", and characterising it as "containing psychodrama", which tested the talents of Tennant and Sharp.
[19] William Gallagher, in a blog for Radio Times was generally positive about the episode, but said that though he doesn't understand what is missing, he would have "liked just a beat more, just a tiny further step before the resolution".
[20] IGN's Travis Fickett rated the episode 8.6 out of 10, commenting that it was "a nice change of pace" from the more complex and emotional two-parter that preceded it.
[18] The Times's Andrew Billen noted that Davies had chosen to forgo special effects and chases in favour of dialogue, but that it "felt too much of a writing exercise to be really scary" and was an example of how the 2008 series "fails as often as it succeeds".
He found the story to be tragic, placing the Doctor in a situation where "he does everything right" but still finds himself "overwhelmed by forces he can't control".
The episode was said to have importance, showing that "without a human companion at his side, strangers don't tend to trust the Doctor".
[15] The episode has been adapted three times for the stage: by students from Salford University's BA Performing Arts and Media Performance courses in March 2011, at the Lass O'Gowrie pub theatre in Manchester in January 2012, and by Sporadic Productions as part of the Adelaide Fringe in 2016.