Chapter Text

Introduction

Howdy! Before I get into the meat of what this document is about, I would be remiss if I didn't say this is crammed full of spoilers. You probably already know this, but just in case, you have been warned.

i. Goals

My ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive review and retrospective of the Doctor Who series and its tangentially related media, including (but not limited to) the classic series beginning in 1963, the made-for-TV movie in 1996, the modern series beginning in 2005, the second restart of the series in 2023, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, audio-only adventures, and metanalytic documentaries and memoirs on the making of the series.

This will be accomplished by analyzing these pieces of media through the lens of reader-response theory, which aims to engage with literature on an aesthetic and an efferent level. This is not to be a definitive review in any sense, because what works for some viewers will inevitably fail for others. As such, I will also judge elements of the series based on how well they align with a set of personal criteria I have for what constitutes success within this literary universe.

ii. What is Doctor Who?

Even though I don’t expect most of the people reading this to need an answer to this question, I want to include it because it’s one that I find difficult to answer when put on the spot. Even though I’ve been watching the show for over a decade, the show’s premise is complex enough that explaining it the wrong way can seem daunting to a prospective viewer. So how would I describe the show to someone who has never heard of it before?

Well, there is a man called the Doctor who travels through time and space in a wonderful machine called the TARDIS. With the flick of a switch, he can travel anywhere in the known universe, to any point in that place’s history or future. He can go back in time to experience things like ancient Rome, the French Revolution, and William Shakespeare, or he can go forward in time to faraway space stations and planets. He can witness the formation of the planet Earth, and he can watch as the last of humanity struggles against the end of the universe.

But though the Doctor may look like an ordinary person like you or me, he is not human; he is a member of an ancient and proud species of alien beings known as Time Lords. As one of the few civilizations to have mastered travel through time, the Time Lords have taken it upon themselves to monitor the peoples of the universe to make sure no one abuses time travel to mess with the proper flow of cause and effect. They rarely intervene in the natural course of events, but when they see fit to step in, their justice is swift and absolute.

For the most part, Time Lords look and sound like humans. There are some notable differences. They have two hearts, for instance, and they are able to sense when other Time Lords are nearby. But the most important quirk of Time Lord physiology is that they have a process by which they are able to cheat death. Imagine something that might kill a human, like a bullet to the chest or exposure to some toxin like poison or radiation. If a such a thing happens to a Time Lord, they enter into a state of regeneration. Everything about them changes: their appearance, their voice, their personal preferences, their likes and dislikes…even their personalities are altered. Their old body takes all of the damage and “dies,” while their new body lives on, unaffected by the experience. Each Time Lord can regenerate up to 12 times, which grants them an incredible longetivity, with many living upwards of a thousand years.

So you might be asking, what does this Doctor do? Does he travel the universe as some sort of time agent, enforcing the will of the Time Lords across time and space? Not exactly. He and most other Time Lords don’t exactly see eye-to-eye—while the High Council of the Time Lords are content to sit and watch the universe from their vaunted thrones, the Doctor wants to experience the universe firsthand, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. So he moves from time period to time period, from place to place, seeking out new sights and experiences.

And in all that traveling, he discovers something that the magnanimous Time Lords have long overlooked. There is a lot of injustice in the universe: people who are threatened, persecuted, enslaved, or killed as a byproduct of the greed and self-interest of others. And while the Time Lords are content to sit back and allow all but the greatest of injustices to persist, the Doctor takes it upon himself to stand up against aggressors wherever he finds them, seeking to establish a lasting and equitable peace for all the peoples of the universe.

But somewhere along the way, in the midst of his seemingly never-ending travels, he develops an affinity for a tiny civilization on a small blue rock called planet Earth. In humans, he sees a microcosm of the plight of the universe: he acknowledges our capacity for infighting and violence, but he sees in us an enormous capacity for empathy, generosity, and working together for the good of humanity. And every now and then, the Doctor will invite a human or two to come with him on his adventures through time and space, showing them the wonders of the universe and relying on their aid in defending the rights of persecuted people wherever they are found. That is the premise of Doctor Who.

iii. Reader-Response Theory

I am by no means a literary scholar, but I do resonate with the tenets of Louise Rosenblatt’s seminal critical framework. Essentially, reader-response theory posits that every reader has a unique and transactional interaction with every piece of literature they engage with, based upon the reader’s unique personal history and identity. This occurs on an aesthetic and an efferent level:

Aesthetic reading – a reading in which the reader is immersed in the text. This includes how one connects with characters, responds to plot points, and interacts with the text at all an emotional, visceral level.
Efferent reading – a reading in which the reader is engaging with a text intellectually, looking for the message the author intends to convey with their work. Efferent reading looks for the moral of the story.

Using this aesthetic + efferent framework, I will endeavor to answer the following questions:

How does this [episode, character, setting, etc.] make me feel?
Is my feeling what the showrunners intended, why or why not?
What do the showrunners expect me to take away from this element?
How does this element fit in with the grand narrative arc of the series as a whole?

Additionally, I will be gauging the success of the craft elements of filmmaking, like writing, cinematography, set design, and more, taking into account things like budgetary constraints and the conventions of classic sci-fi.

iv. General Observations and Personal Preferences

Because reader-response theory is, at its core, a subjective critique, this retrospective does not aim to be a definitive document by any means. However, I do want to define a set of personal preferences by which I will be analyzing the series. Here, I'll introduce a few concepts that will aid any reader in understanding what I look for in Doctor Who specifically and science-fiction more broadly.

Doctor Who and Science Fiction

Internal Consistency

With a literary universe as extensive as Doctor Who and its affiliated media, there is perhaps nothing more important than for the rules and operations of that universe to be internally consistent. This means that when the 10th Doctor makes a passing reference to a race called the Sensorites, a reader can recall the 1st Doctor’s adventures on the planet of the Sensorites. Such a reference carries an emotional payoff, even if this particular example relatively small and unimportant. Nonetheless, this is where Doctor Who thrives: small references that function as the connective tissue within the universe.

However, because of the ever-changing nature of science fiction as a genre, the unplanned nature of the show’s first few seasons, and the evolution of television over the last six decades, many aspects of the show are irreconcilably inconsistent. The rules of time are difficult to understand and are often malleable to suit the needs of the plot—and because the original showrunners didn’t seem to feel the need to codify or explain them. Similarly, Romana, a Time Lord and companion of the 4th Doctor, tries out several appearances in the midst of a regeneration, a phenomenon that has inspired many fan theories but which has never been properly explained by the main series itself. While such inconsistencies tend to diminish as the series ages, there is much—especially in the classic series—that has to be disregarded in order for the series canon to make logical sense. Over the course of this retrospective, I will be very clear when I think such decisions must be made.

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

In my opinion, science fiction and fantasy are two sides of the same coin. Fantasy is fiction with an element of magic; science fiction is fantasy when the role of magic is replaced by technology. To me, science fiction thrives when its technology is at least somewhat able to be understood by the audience. The worst science fiction has tech that’s so amorphous that it may as well be magic. It follows that the best Doctor Who serials give the viewer a framework of technological comprehension and reward the viewer for their understanding.

Like any good series with elements of drama, this often manifests as that ah-hah moment when plot elements come together and the antagonist’s plan is revealed. Take one of the series’ most critically acclaimed episodes, Blink, from the 10th Doctor’s run. There are several threads of the plot which come together to give context as to why the Doctor and Martha are trapped in the past. Throughout the episode, the viewer is trying to understand how these threads are interwoven, and there is an immense feeling of satisfaction and closure when the episode reaches its climax.

Conversely, the worst serials of Doctor Who often feel more akin to fantasy than science fiction. Classic Season 16 features two characters known as Guardians. The White Guardian is the avatar of all the good in the universe, while the Black Guardian is the avatar of all evil. Their powers are immense, but undefined. The White Guardian, secretly the Black Guardian in disguise, sends the Doctor on a mission to retrieve the six pieces of the Key of Time, a device which is supposed to freeze time so that the balance of the universe can be restored. How this works is never explained beyond a general allusion to the keys being made of a microscopically perfect material. Why this tool is needed is never actually defined. Why the Guardians cannot retrieve these keys on their own is not answered either. All of this uncertainty cheapens the premise of the season, and the payoff of the season finale is weakened as a result. Throughout this retrospective, I will be looking for how well the series communicates the rules of its technology to the viewer.

Characters

The Doctor

The show’s portrayal of the Doctor, like the show overall, needs to have an internal consistency. I’m not saying that each Doctor cannot have distinct and often contradictory personality traits. The 2nd and 6th Doctors could not be more different in this regard, but that on its own shouldn’t be used to invalidate either portrayal. No, what I mean is that the Doctor, regardless of the shifting of his personality, must always reflect the unique morality that makes him who he is.

As I move through this retrospective, I will be looking at the characterization of the individual Doctors, comparing and contrasting them with each other. I will also be paying attention to how well the actions of each Doctor align with the morality of the character across the series and where significant deviations cause friction. Like with the rest of the show, inconsistencies within the Doctor’s characterization tend to lessen overtime, though I consider the 13th Doctor to be a unique outlier in this regard, who does act in a number of ways that I consider out-of-character. In this section, I will briefly introduce each Doctor and touch on their strengths and weaknesses.

Also, as a brief aside, when I am referring to the Doctor as the sum total of his regenerations or as any specific Doctor other than the 13th, I will be using he/him pronouns. When I am specifically discussing the 13th Doctor, I will use she/her pronouns. I may use they/them pronouns occasionally if I am highlighting a smaller group of Doctors that includes the 13th, depending on the context. Just bear with me here; I’ll try to make it very clear whenever I am talking about the Doctor regardless of which pronouns are most appropriate given the situation.

1st Doctor – William Hartnell

Objectively speaking, the 1st Doctor is probably the most inconsistently characterized Doctor in the series, with traits that morph over time to suit the needs of the writers. However, I believe that without these changes, we wouldn’t have ended up with the powerhouse of a character that we get with his subsequent iterations. The 1st Doctor, much like many other elements of early Doctor Who, reflects the work put in by the showrunners to flesh out what the series should look like. This work resulted in what I like to think of as three distinct characterizations within William Hartnell’s run: one from 1.1 to 1.7, one from 1.8 to 3.8, and one from 3.9 to 4.2.

I’ll start with what I think remains the same throughout Hartnell’s run, because it helps to establish the core of the Doctor’s character moving forward. The 1st Doctor is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing old man who is fiercely protective of those he considers friends and who has a knack for getting himself into trouble. He is intelligent to a fault, with a very short temper for what he sees as the stupidity of others, and he is usually very reluctant to admit when he has made a mistake, which makes for some funny moments when another character has to make him do so. Once Susan leaves the series, the Doctor demonstrates a soft spot for young women who remind him of his granddaughter, doting on characters like Vicki and Dodo. He cares a lot about decorum and appearances and is almost always courteous, often even when speaking with those who are doing him considerable harm. His clothes are less of a costume than the later Doctors and more of an overarching style; he prefers long coats, usually dark in hue, with a striped vest, a cravat or looping bowtie, and loose-fitting trousers, often checkered.

Turning to the variations in Hartnell’s Doctor, it’s easy to see why the showrunners wanted to revise what they had initially created. For the 1st Doctor’s first characterization, which lasted for most of Season 1, we saw a Doctor that wasn’t that different from the companions with whom he traveled. Yes, he was this mysterious figure from outer space, with a time traveling blue box and a deep knowledge of science, but when it came to the narrative arcs of the Season 1 serials, the Doctor tended to be just as confused, lost, and scared as Susan, Ian, and Barbara. Though his intelligence often put him in a position to take the lead and push the plot forward, he spent much of the time butting heads with his human companions, usually Ian and especially in the first three serials. At times, like in An Unearthly Child, Ian would outright take the lead among the protagonists, with the Doctor grudgingly following along in his wake. While this characterization allowed for some interesting conflicts within the Doctor/companion relationship, it didn’t give the Doctor much mystique beyond his ability to (sort of) control the TARDIS.

From 1.8 onward, the Doctor’s characterization rapidly shifted, resulting in a Doctor that was much more prone to lead the protagonists at all times than he was in Season 1. We start to see him donning disguises and bluffing his way in and out of tight spots like he does in The Reign of Terror, The Romans, The Crusade, and The Myth Maker, time and again reinforcing the Doctor as a confident rogue who can think his way out of any situation. Additionally, he starts to represent himself more as an experienced traveler of the universe, demonstrating a lot of knowledge about the settings he finds himself in and using that knowledge to aid the protagonists in some way. These two new traits begin to create the mystique of the Doctor, a mystique that will continue to grow over the next several decades. This also allows the companions to become more of an analogue for the viewer, enabling us to experience the universe of Doctor Who through their eyes. During this period—and, I would argue, for most of the rest of the classic series—the companions are far less likely to challenge the Doctor for control like they did in Season 1, comfortable in their role as second fiddle to the man with the blue box.

As Hartnell’s Doctor approaches the end of his run, we see the Doctor’s characterization change once again in what I believe to be an attempt to set up his first regeneration. These changes try to establish the Doctor as something more than human, and the most notable of these is a drastic increase in his already formidable intelligence. In each of his last four serials, the 1st Doctor has a comprehensive understanding of events in a way that makes him seem superhuman: his knowledge of the energy transference technology in The Savages, his understanding of the War Machines in The War Machines, his assumption of a fourth member of Avery’s crew in The Smugglers, and his foreknowledge of the Cybermen’s arrival in The Tenth Planet. Additionally, there are changes to the Doctor’s physiology, hinting at his inhumanity there as well: his ability to control Jano’s mind through energy transference in The Savages and the tingling feeling he gets in his fingers when he looks at GPO Tower in The War Machines—and of course, his regeneration in The Tenth Planet. Although the execution of these elements often feels rushed and clunky, I appreciate the precedent they set for future Doctors.

Overall, I really like Hartnell’s performance throughout his run—though I must admit that I like all of the Doctors to some extent, and it will take a few more regenerations before I can really start to rank them against one another. I may come back and edit this section once I can articulate a bit more about what the end of Hartnell’s run means for the changes in the character moving forward, but I can say without reservation that I will miss the 1st Doctor. He will forever be the incarnation that started the series on its grand adventure, and he will always hold a special place in my heart.

2nd Doctor – Patrick Troughton

I will update these sections after I complete each Doctor's run.

3rd Doctor – Jon Pertwee
4th Doctor – Tom Baker
5th Doctor – Peter Davidson
6th Doctor – Colin Baker
7th Doctor – Sylvester McCoy
8th Doctor – Paul McGann
9th Doctor – Christopher Eccleston
10th Doctor – David Tennant
11th Doctor – Matt Smith
War Doctor – John Hurt
12th Doctor – Peter Capaldi
13th Doctor – Jodie Whittaker
14th Doctor - David Tennant
15th Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa

Companions

Before I delve into the contentious and combative realm of Doctor Who companion discourse, I want to first define what a companion is. To me, in order to be a companion, a character must fit the following criteria:

1) *They journey in the TARDIS.
2) They travel with the Doctor voluntarily.
3) They aid the Doctor in his adventures.
4) They are present in enough serials to show some measure of character depth and progression.
*During the Doctor’s exile on Earth, Elizabeth Shaw never travels in the TARDIS. I consider her to be an exception to this rule.

Compared to many Doctor Who enjoyers, I feel my definition of companion is rather restrictive, and while rules 1 through 3 are objective measures, rule 4 is a subjective judgment. Taken as a whole, these rules whittle away at what many consider to be a comprehensive list of the show’s companions. For example, rule 2 precludes Jackie Tyler, and rule 4 precludes Katarina, a character in the 1st Doctor’s run who, despite fulfilling rules 1 through 3, is only present in two serials.

In general, the Doctor’s companions can be grouped into a few categories:

Category 1: Classic Earthlings

This is the largest category of companions, and consists of a diverse cast of characters from throughout the classic series. There are a few traits that almost all of these companions exhibit. They have that culture shock moment upon entering the TARDIS, that bigger on the inside scene. They learn to adapt to the Doctor’s crazy lifestyle over the course of a few serials or a few seasons. And they leave the series usually having expressed some character growth. Without exception, these companions have a much shallower characterization than the vast majority of their modern earthling counterparts.

Category 2: Non-Earthling Humanoids

This category tends to induce a more limiting set of character traits than either of the earthling categories. From Susan to Romana to Nyssa, most of the non-earthling humanoid companions are characterized as more logical and emotionally detached than human companions. It comes across as a distinct effort to separate this class of companion from the more hotheaded and emotional humans, but the execution often leaves much to be desired. Characters which break this mold like Leela and Turlough are much more interesting and tend to elicit a much stronger emotional response in me, be it positive or negative.

Category 3: Modern Earthlings

While these characters share a lot of traits with classic earthlings, the modern slate of companions exhibit a much greater depth of character, demonstrating the clear advances in television writing from the 80’s to the 00’s. They have the same culture shock and growth over time, but by and large, they elicited from me a much more visceral emotional response. While many of the classic earthlings and non-earthling humanoids seem to blend together on some level, the modern earthling companions are much more distinct—for the most part—clearly discernable from the Classic Who companions and from each other.

Antagonists

Like with companions, many of the series’ antagonists can be divided into a few categories:

Category 1: Aliens

As with any series that has a wide variety of extraterrestrial life, many Doctor Who antagonists are not human. A frequent trope used in the series is the alien invasion. Whether the invasion is Dalek, Cyberman, Sontaran, or otherwise, the necessary endangerment of the human race can make this trope feel a little repetitive. In my opinion, the best serials with alien antagonists are those that play off of and subvert the invasion trope, like when the threat instead arises from the ancient-Earth-dwelling Silurians, or when the alien antagonist is not hostile but simply misunderstood.

Category 2: A Humanoid Authority Figure

The Doctor often finds himself butting heads with humanoid antagonists who have some measure of authority. These figures are often high up in a military structure, or royalty, or the captain of a ship, etc. Sometimes these figures are operating under the influence of some alien entity. Sometimes it is simple greed which motivates their actions. Regardless, there is usually some underofficer or advisor beneath them who is generally predisposed to aiding the doctor, but whose hands are tied by their lesser status. This dynamic plays out so often that it can come across as very predictable, though there are some fantastic episodes with this setup as well.

Category 3: Natural Phenomena

While not necessarily a character, sometimes the Doctor is racing to protect against some large, oppressive force, like when the 12th Doctor navigates a world suddenly covered by plant growth, or when the 10th Doctor struggles to overcome a mysterious entity on the uninhabitable planet called Midnight. These phenomena are much less common as antagonists than aliens or humanoids, but they occur frequently enough to warrant their own category.

Time Travel and Settings

Perhaps the best feature of the show’s premise is that there is infinite variety to the setting and time period in which an episode can be set. A few episodes feature the Doctor jumping sporadically through time, but generally, serials can clearly be placed in one of three time periods: the past, the present, and the future. Each period presents unique challenges to the showrunners and offers unique opportunities in entertaining the audience.

The Past

As a fan who began with the modern series, one of the aspects of the Doctor’s journey through time that I most enjoyed was how he interacted with real-world historical events. It was thrilling to “discover” that it was actually the Doctor who set off the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, or that he uncovered the reason Shakespeare’s lost play disappeared. There was almost always an extraterrestrial element that was messing with historical events behind the scenes, and having the real-world event as a frame of reference allowed for clever subversions and intricate plots with relatively little effort. Therefore, I was very surprised to discover how classic Doctor Who treated episodes that took place in the past. Many of the seasons in the late-60s and 70s rarely operate off of actual historical events, opting instead for vague medieval villages or monasteries or country estates. The stakes are much lower, and I often found myself struggling to connect with some of the plotlines because of it. Personally, I feel Doctor Who episodes set in the past are at their best when they are directly woven into actual historical events and filmed on location. They are at their worst when divorced from events of historical importance and filmed on a sound stage. Lastly, serials taking place in the past must maintain a shroud of secrecy regarding anything extraterrestrial. After all, it isn’t until 2006 that Earth has its first worldwide encounter with alien life in The Christmas Invasion. Naturally, it follows that anything set on pre-2006 Earth needs to keep its alien presence small. Unfortunately, the earliest seasons of the classic series don’t abide by this. The 2nd Doctor finds a London beset by mysterious fungi and mechanical Yetis. The 3rd Doctor must avert an alien-induced plague which takes the lives of hundreds in Britain. Events like these feel out of place because they are so inconsistent with the later logic of the series. As such, the impact of these events has to be ignored in order for canon to make sense.

The Present

In the modern series, the companions have a clear attachment to their original, present-day timelines. As such, the modern seasons place a high importance on progressing the present-day through the life events of the companions. For example, Rose’s established connections with Jackie and Mickey allow the series to be centered on a specific point in time in a way that hadn’t been done since the Doctor’s exile, way back in the 70s. And by tying the companions to the present instead of the Doctor, this still allows for a freedom of movement through time that lets the series take full advantage of the past, present, and future.

The classic series is not nearly as consistent with how it values the present-day. Like I already mentioned, a few entire seasons take place in present-day Britain, with the 3rd Doctor exiled and unable to use his TARDIS. Conversely, several seasons can pass without the Doctor landing in the present-day. In my opinion, episodes set in the present-day are much more compelling in the modern series, but the classic series has a few gems as well. The best of these episodes have strong ties between the travelers in the TARDIS and non-time travelers who live in the present-day; these give the show an emotional weight. The weakest of these episodes treat the present-day as just another happenstance adventure, as disconnected from the Earth as a serial that takes place in a far-flung time or place.

The Future

In my opinion, serials that take place in the future have the capacity to be the most or the least compelling in the series. My biggest gripe with the show is that these serials can often feel like the smallest, most inconsequential pieces of worldbuilding in the series if done incorrectly. Often, these serials are relegated to cramped soundstages or hallways dressed up as space freighters. Casts are usually small, and it makes supposedly vast frontiers and fully inhabited planets feel tiny. However, whenever the budget allows for an increased production value, many future episodes end up being my personal favorites. In short, serials set in the future that can actually deliver on conveying the enormity of the Doctor Who universe are the most successful.

As a clarifier, I see the future as more of a technological descriptor than a specific time period. There are examples of the Doctor visiting civilizations that, while technically in the past by Earth standards, were technologically ahead of the Earth. I group these examples in with the episodes that clearly take place in the Earth’s future.

Additional Elements

Classic Doctor Who vs. Modern Doctor Who

Aside from the obvious advances in television from Classic Who to NuWho, there are structural barriers that the classic series had to contend with that the modern series doesn’t. The classic series began before the invention of VHS, and it ended before the popularization of series being released for public purchase. Aside from a handful of fan-favorite serials, the vast majority of the series wasn’t available to be purchased until after it had been canceled. As a result, viewers could only view the series as it aired, or else catch missed episodes when they were rerun or aired in marathons.

This created a dynamic in which the showrunners could not expect the average viewer to have seen every episode in a season’s run. The serials were loosely connected, but rarely did they require the audience to have extensive knowledge of what came before. This both weakened the connective tissue of the classic series compared to the modern series and allowed for many more points of entry for new viewers. Almost definitionally, the modern series is permitted more depth. By nature of DVDs and streaming services, the showrunners from 2006 to today can count on the audience to seek out the series in order to catch themselves up. As a result, The Moment appearing as Rose in the The Day of the Doctor is not nearly as prohibitive to the audience as such an event occurring in 70s television.

Throughout this retrospective, I want to try to take into account the structural and historical quirks that make an episode from, say, 1966 very different from 1986 or 2016. To do this, I’m going to separate the series into the following eras:

The Early Era – Seasons 1-6
The U.N.I.T. Era – Seasons 7-13
The Middle Era – Seasons 14-21
The Late Era – Seasons 22-26, TV Movie
The Reboot Era – Modern Seasons 1-7
The Modern Era – Modern Seasons 8-2022 Specials
The Post-COVID Era – 2023-present

I’m not too attached to the names, but I definitely think the division of these eras accurately reflects the different feels the show has had over the decades—and yes, I know feel is incredibly subjective. Within these eras, I am going to rate each story on a scale from 0 to 10, based on how I think it compares to other stories within that same era. This way I don’t have to compare an excellent classic story like The Aztecs with a subpar modern story like Arachnids in the UK, even if there are qualities about the modern story that make it a better viewing experience; it lets me talk about each story within a relatively narrow historical context.

The TARDIS and Experimenting with Time and Space

I think that the best episodes of Doctor Who are the ones in which the showrunners really experiment with the flow of time. Often, this means the Doctor using the TARDIS to jump between different timelines, like when the 9th Doctor allows Rose a second go at being there for her father during his death, or when the 3rd Doctor accidentally travels to a parallel universe in which time runs slightly ahead of his own. Other times, more elaborate time travel is conceived by the writers, such as when Amy is preserved in the Pandorica for centuries, or the concept of Weeping Angels zapping people back in time. I really appreciate the dynamics that are usually produced by this creativity.

Conversely, sometimes the writers have very transparent plot devices that prevent the Doctor from utilizing his TARDIS. It gets locked within a temple, or sucked into the earth, or buried beneath rubble. In each case, there are later developments in the story which wouldn’t have occurred had the Doctor been able to analyze something back in the TARDIS or use his TARDIS to materialize somewhere else. This often comes across as cheap and convenient. Most of the time, plots which allow the Doctor to use his TARDIS are much stronger, and plots which artificially restrict the Doctor from the TARDIS seem weak.

Creature Design

Having goofy, misshapen extraterrestrial forms is a staple of the classic series. With only crude special effects and a tiny BBC budget, creature design in classic Who is understandably primitive. However, that doesn’t mean I overlook bad creature design. Instead, I try to see the classic Who creatures in the context of the time period. I ask myself, what is reasonable enough for me to suspend my disbelief, and what is bad even by classic Who standards?

Actually, I find some of the early seasons of NuWho to have the most egregious creature designs. There are several examples where the special effects are unacceptable compared to other series of the time. And while I understand that this again has to do with budgeting, I tend to critique modern creature design far harsher than the classic creatures.

v. Background and Formatting

In this section, I want to briefly touch on my personal history with the Doctor Who franchise and how I will format this document.

My first exposure to the series was in the winter of 2012 when a friend showed me their favorite episode: The Lodger. In this episode, the 11th Doctor is trapped in a London suburb while a mysterious force prevents Amy from landing the TARDIS to retrieve him. As a result, the Doctor is forced to rent a room in an apartment and function as a member of British society. Hijinks ensue. Now, I have seen The Lodger a handful of times since. I have nothing against the episode—it’s a decently funny, relatively meaningless vignette in a season filled with serious plot arcs. However, I will contend that this might be one of the very worst episodes to show to a friend who is unfamiliar with the series, because I did not get it at all. The whole point of the episode is to take this constantly moving, untethered, free spirit of a character and tie him to a place and a time, and if you don’t have any context of how this show normally goes, the comedy doesn’t land and the plot doesn’t make sense. Needless to say I wrote the show off as bad and didn’t try it again for almost two years.

That tangent aside, my real introduction to the series is when I got bored one night in the fall of 2013 and on a whim, put on modern Season 1, Episode 1: Rose. I was instantly hooked. The premise of the show was totally unlike anything I had ever seen before, and it had a whimsy and frantic pace that made for the bingeable escapism I needed after a day of college classes. I tore through the series, and less than a month after watching Rose, I was sitting on a couch with a few friends watching the 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, air live on BBC America. Ironically, one of these friends was the one who showed me The Lodger two years earlier. I yelled at them for that.

Since then, I have seen most episodes of the modern series at least once. I have watched the runs of the 9th through the 11th Doctor in order three additional times, if memory serves. In the summer of 2013, I began again from modern Season 1, got through most of Season 12, and decided to commit to watching the classic series in its entirety. This was something I had had in my head for a while, but I knew it was a sizeable commitment.

As I am currently writing this, I am still in my first viewing of the classic series. My plan is to watch the rest of classic Who and follow it up with the TV movie and the entirety of NuWho, spinoffs included. Last night, I finished the episode of season 21 where the 5th Doctor regenerates, and I feel I am far enough into the series to begin my retrospective. [Edit: As of April of 2024, I have completed the classic series.] I will be going back to the beginning of classic Who and watching each serial twice through, once for an aesthetic viewing of the serial and once for an efferent viewing. Then I will give my thoughts on what works well and what doesn’t. At the same time, I will be continuing my personal viewing of the show until I am caught up with the modern series. I think that the earliest seasons are distinct enough from the rest of the series that I feel comfortable enough commenting on them without the context of what I haven’t seen. Obviously, this is not set in stone—if I see something later which I think recontextualizes aspects of episodes I have reviewed, I will go back and edit my comments to reflect that. By the end of the retrospective, I will have seen each episode of classic and NuWho at least three times.

Lastly, I want to make a few comments on the structure of this document. I will chapter it by serial, with the numbers in the chapter titles reflecting the season and serial chronologically. Each chapter will have a plot summary along with how well the serial adheres to the preferences I have detailed above. There will probably be many tangents and intermissions for specific things I want to praise or nitpick. Again, don’t take any of this as a definitive guide on all things Doctor Who—I want to be very clear on how subjective this is. If you like something that I tear into, don’t take it personally. This is a project that will probably take many years to complete. If you got even this far, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to me ramble on about a show I like. If you want to keep going, all I can say is…

Allons-y!

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“You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them? It's like they're not quite finished; they're not done yet. Well, yes, the Doctor’s here. He came when I called, just like he always does. But not my Doctor.”
–River Song, The Forest of the Dead

If you’ve never experienced classic Doctor Who and are interested in giving it a shot, here’s a bit of advice. First of all, don’t go in expecting to see something similar to what you would see in a modern episode. Sure, if you tilt your head and squint, all of the right elements are there. There’s the Doctor, and some companions, and even a blue box. It’s still ostensibly a quirky sci-fi drama that likes to dip its toe into historical fiction from time to time. But that’s about where the similarities end. The construction of these classic serials is much different than the construction of a modern episode. And yes, there are flashes throughout the classic series where you will think to yourself, “Okay, I can see how we got from here to the reboot.” But really, it isn’t until around the 6th Doctor that we begin to see a dramatic shift in the tone and approach of the show that begins to resemble what you might expect from your run-of-the-mill episode of NuWho.

Secondly, don’t go into the series expecting an easy binging experience. For reasons I mentioned in the introduction, serials in Classic Who are much more loosely connected to each other than episodes of the modern series. It takes a long time before the series starts to feel like it has some sort of overarching direction, and it’s not until the final serial of the 2nd Doctor that the series makes a real attempt to iron out some of the major players in its own universe. Until then—and even after—it can feel like a bit of a slog to watch. It will get repetitive at times, watching serials that seem to start from scratch with every opener, with only a few lines of dialogue here and there to offer the barest narrative connection to the series as a whole. I would recommend pacing yourself. If you come to an episode or a serial that you find you just can’t get through, there’s nothing wrong with skipping it and coming back to it later (or never at all)—don’t let any Doctor Who purists dictate however you want to personalize your viewing experience.

With all that being said, I feel there is a lot of value in Classic Who. It’s like River said, “It’s like they’re not quite finished; they’re not done yet.” Half the excitement of the series is knowing that you are going to see the Doctor slowly change from the crotchety noninterventionist of Season 1 into something more. If you like the modern series and have the patience to become invested in 26 seasons of television, there is a lot to love about Classic Who. It is incredible to see the evolution of the Doctor over time, and I believe that every classic Doctor brings something valuable to the character. There are also some fantastic stories and characters that I think are very much worth the investment. If you’ve made it this far and are considering making that investment, I would highly recommend checking it out. Turn this document into a sort of watch-along; go see each serial for yourself and come back here if you’re interested in hearing what I have to say about it.

With that pitch out of the way, let’s move on to a brief outline of Season 1.

Overview

The series begins at the Coal Hill School, where a history teacher and a chemistry teacher, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton respectively, discuss a problem student of theirs, Susan. Little do they know, Susan and her protective grandfather, the Doctor, are not of this Earth. The teachers stumble upon the Doctor’s time traveling spaceship, the TARDIS, and the Doctor whisks them all off to another time and place.

The 1st Doctor in Season 1 hardly resembles what we will see from the Doctor later on in Classic Who, or even what we will see from the 1st Doctor at the end of his run. William Hartnell plays the Doctor as an eccentric scientific genius with an arrogant manner and a penchant for getting very irritated with what he sees as foolishness or stupidity. He relies on his own experience and wisdom above all else, and it is rare to see him admit to being wrong or deferring to the judgement of others. Despite this crotchety exterior, the Doctor is quick to recognize the good in others, especially those whom he has taken into his confidence. He has a soft spot for his granddaughter, Susan, and he fights fiercely to protect her safety if ever she is threatened.

Susan, played by Carole Ann Ford, is a young girl of fifteen. In the beginning of the season, she is portrayed as somewhat fearful of the strange places the Doctor takes her to, sticking by the Doctor’s side with a sort of childish dependence. As the season progresses, we watch as she begins to grow up and assert her independence from the Doctor. In The Daleks, she must venture out into the forest on her own to retrieve medicine for the others. In Marco Polo, she begins to expresses a desire to settle down somewhere that runs directly counter to her grandfather’s lifestyle. And in The Sensorites, she gets into a fierce argument with the Doctor over him treating her like a child. Of all the main characters in Season 1, Susan is the one that demonstrates the biggest evolution in how she is characterized.

Ian Chesterton, played by William Russell, is a smart, handsome man in his 20s, who throughout Season 1 is often required to defend himself and the rest of the protagonists from physical threats of violence. He goes from defending a caravan from marauding bandits in Marco Polo, to dispatching a seasoned warrior in The Aztecs, to fearlessly staring down his captors in The Reign of Terror. While he never lacked for confidence in his ability to use logic to overcome a problem, he develops an aptitude for physical defense over the course of the season, and by the time we reach the final serial, Ian is shown to exhibit a fierce, defiant bravery on multiple occasions. Early on in the series, we also see Ian butting heads with the Doctor, often disagreeing with him or outright usurping the Doctor’s leadership. This creates some interesting friction, and by the midpoint of the season, this dynamic has been largely resolved, with a greater unity developing between the Doctor and his human companions after the events of The Edge of Destruction.

Lastly, we have Barbara, played by Jacquiline Hill, an intelligent, tall women in her 20s. Of the four protagonists, I consider Barbara to have the least dramatic character arc. That’s not to say that she’s a bad character; it’s just that her characterization changes comparatively little from the beginning to the end of the season. Barbara is a motherly figure, not only to Susan, but often to Ian and the Doctor as well. She is the most compassionate of the quartet, which is demonstrated early on when, in An Unearthly Child, she rushes to tend the wounds of the prehistoric stranger, Za. The most noticeable change in her character from the beginning of the season to the end is that she loses a tendency for naïveté that she displays early on in the season. This is especially apparent in The Aztecs, where she is forced to confront two ideas: that it isn’t always possible to guide people away from the darker aspects of their nature, and that she can do nothing to save the civilization from its inevitable destruction.

In Season 1, there are four serials which take place in the past, three in the future, and one which occurs entirely within the TARDIS. For the past, we have An Unearthly Child, Marco Polo, The Aztecs, and The Reign of Terror; for the future, we have The Daleks, The Keys of Marinus, and The Sensorites; and the episode inside the TARDIS is The Edge of Destruction. Though the sample size is fairly small, Season 1 demonstrates that the series—at least, in its infancy—shows a greater capacity for telling stories of historical fiction than science fiction. As a general rule, I find the serials in the past to be more enjoyable, though I also find The Daleks to be an excellent first attempt at setting a serial in the future.

As this document progresses through the first season, be on the lookout for how the series goes about establishing the Doctor’s core morality, as well as how it defines the rules of time travel and characters interfering in the course of historical events. Also, watch how the Doctor and his companions start out as an uneasy, somewhat combative group of individuals which over time will morph into a collaborative bunch who care deeply for one another. Lastly, pay attention to how the series establishes a baseline for its tone, scope, and writing—we will be looking to see how much these elements change over the course of Doctor Who.

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An Unearthly Child

First off, I want to make it clear that although I am not seeing these episodes for the first time, I will be trying to put myself in the headspace of a brand new viewer. I know that it’s impossible to entirely divorce this viewing from previous viewings, but I will do my best. Second, the earliest serials were named individually by episode. I will use Part 1, 2, etc. as well as their given titles to describe them.

Part 1 (An Unearthly Child)

The series opens with its classic theme, a melody that remains largely unchanged to this day. The original isn’t the driving rock anthem of the modern series or the militaristic, electronic ballad of the 80s. Created by Delia Derbyshire, the original is much simpler than its later iterations and evokes a feel that is somehow both sweet and eerie. It is definitely the most restrained version of the theme, which I think really suits the gritty nature of the black-and-white production.

Unlike the rest of the series which uses a shortened version of the theme to intro each episode, Part 1 of An Unearthly Child lets the extended version play over the opening scene, letting the tune lend its air of mystery to the sight of a police officer patrolling outside of a junkyard. The camera zooms in on the address painted on the door: “I.M. Foreman – Scrapyard Merchant – 76 Totter’s Lane.” The door opens to reveal a collection of trash and a seemingly out-of-place police box. As the camera approaches the police box and the music finally fades, we hear a low, foreboding hum, a sound reminiscent of something produced by a machine.

Cut to Coal Hill School, a London secondary school filled with milling students just let out of class. There we meet Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, who teach history and chemistry at the school respectively. Barbara appears to be in her mid- to late-20s, with Ian perhaps a few years younger. Both are dressed in the prim style expected of teachers, Ian in a suit and tie and Barbara in a sweater and knee-length skirt. Ian looks to be of middling height, with his hair cut short. Barbara is tall for a woman—an inch or two taller than Ian—and she wears her brown hair in a neat bob.

The two are discussing a problem student of theirs: Susan Foreman. Rather than a problem in the traditional sense, Susan seems to be a brilliant fifteen-year-old girl whose grandfather (and presumably guardian) is stifling her academic progress by refusing to allow Barbara to tutor her at their home. Barbara tells Ian that she went to confront Susan’s grandfather one day, but the address she received from the school secretary led her to an old junkyard. Barbara suggests they do some reconnaissance by driving to the junkyard, waiting for Susan to walk home, and seeing where she goes. A bit yikes-y by today’s standards, but the 60s were a different time, I guess.

From this first interaction, it is clear that these actors have great on-screen chemistry. Jacquiline Hill as Barbara and William Russell as Ian instantly display a coyness and playful banter in their professional relationship. They are clearly close work acquaintances, if not good friends. I am interested to see how the series goes about characterizing them as two distinct people.

Ian accompanies Barbara, who delivers a book about the French Revolution to the student in question: Susan Foreman, played by Carole Ann Ford. Susan is at first glance your typical high school student, found dancing to rock-and-roll music in Barbara’s empty classroom when the two teachers arrive. Short and slim, she is deferential to her teachers and speaks politely. However, the scene makes sure the viewer understands that not everything is as it seems. First, Susan assures Barbara that she will have the book finished and returned to Barbara by the following morning. The book, simply titled “The French Revolution,” looks to be at least 300 pages thick. Odd behavior for a child, even one who is an avid history buff. Second, Susan turns down an offer from Ian for a ride home (again, a different time), saying she likes the mysterious feel of walking through the dark. But lastly, and most importantly, as soon as Ian and Barbara leave the room, Susan begins leafing through the book—supposedly a definitive text on a historical subject—and immediately says, “That’s not right!” By the end of the scene, it is clear to the audience that the title of the serial, An Unearthly Child, probably refers to Susan in some capacity.

I want to call attention to the way Doctor Who, especially classic Who, can sometimes feel as if it is talking down to the viewer. It can be very on-the-nose when the showrunners want to make certain that a point of some kind is made. Susan with the history book is a prime example. We as viewers do not need the camera to zoom in on Susan holding “The French Revolution” in front of her face as she frets over some inaccuracy. We already get the sense that something is off about Susan, and if the writers wanted to link this sensation to Susan’s knowledge of history, I think there are more subtle ways this could have been worked into the dialogue, either something from Susan directly or something hinted at when Ian and Barbara were having their private conversation. Subtlety is something that I think NuWho does much better, but it’s also a personal preference of mine that I will try not to bring up unless I find something to be particularly egregious.

Next, we see Ian and Barbara staking out the junkyard, talking about Susan as they wait for her to arrive. We see some pretty neat flashbacks which paint Susan in a very awkward light. In one scene, she is humiliated when the class finds out that she doesn’t know how many shillings are in a pound. In another, a bewildered Susan asks Ian why she can’t use the fourth and fifth dimensions—time and space—to solve an equation. To Ian and Barbara, Susan is a walking contradiction: brilliant at some things but excruciatingly bad at others.

The teachers see Susan enter the junkyard and follow her in. But before they do, Barbara delivers this line: “It’s silly, isn’t it? I feel frightened. As if we’re about to interfere in something that is best left alone.” Remember how I said I wouldn’t point out lack of subtlety unless it was something particularly egregious? I didn’t even get through one scene.

Anyway, when Barbara and Ian enter the junkyard, they don’t find Susan. Instead, they find a deserted junkyard and an out-of-place police box. “It’s alive!” concludes Ian, after he and Barbara discover that the police box is emitting faint vibrations. Confused, they hear someone coming into the lot, and they duck behind some junk to watch. In walks the Doctor. The 1st Doctor, played by William Hartnell, appears to be a man past his middle ages, with snow-white hair just shy of shoulder length and a wizened face. He looks a bit like a mad scientist in his long overcoat and pleated pants. He doesn’t seem to be in the best of health; in fact, our first impression is of him giving a hacking cough and catching his breath as he stoops to unlock the door of the police box.

As the Doctor fiddles with his key, Susan is audibly heard from inside the police box, triggering an involuntary outburst from Barbara. Hearing this outburst, the Doctor is instantly on guard, and Ian and Barbara come sheepishly out of their hiding place to confront him about Susan. The Doctor is clearly not pleased by the interaction. He gaslights the teachers when they ask him about Susan’s voice, saying they must be hearing things. He doesn’t really answer any of their questions directly, trying to manipulate them and turn them aside however he can. When it becomes clear that the teachers will not be diverted, the conversation becomes increasingly contentious, with the Doctor demanding that the teachers leave and with Ian insisting on them all going to a policeman. Just when it seems they are at an impasse, Susan calls out again. The door opens just a crack—as if opened by someone inside—and Ian and Barbara rush into the police box.

It's—for lack of better words—bigger on the inside. The shape of the TARDIS is about the same as its later iterations: roughly circular or perhaps octagonal, with large roundels covering the walls and a six-sided control panel in the middle. However, the décor seems a bit haphazard, with chairs and a few random art pieces spread sporadically about the control room floor. It almost looks as if we are supposed to think of this as the TARDIS’s sitting room as well as the control room. What lies out of frame is also left undefined, and it is implied rather than shown that there are other rooms offscreen.

The Doctor enters behind the two teachers and tells Susan to shut the door. Barbara and Ian are dumbfounded. “But this was just a telephone box,” Ian says. “I walked all round it. Barbara, you saw me.”

The Doctor isn’t having any of it, dismissing Ian’s confusion and saying he would never understand. Eventually, Susan explains that the TARDIS can move anywhere in time and space. Ian flatly denies this, and the Doctor takes this as confirmation that he was right about the stupidity of humankind. He comes off as distrustful of humans, painting them as people less capable than the children from his civilization—a civilization that is left vague and undefined. A notable line from the Doctor is “I tolerate this century, but I don’t enjoy it.” It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes the series to establish the Doctor’s love for the Earth as a whole and for Great Britain in particular.

As an aside, Susan says that she coined the term TARDIS out of its initials: Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. This is obviously inconsistent with the way other Time Lords also refer to them as TARDISes throughout the rest of the series. When I mentioned in my introduction that certain things have to be disregarded in order for the series canon to be internally consistent, this is what I meant. Susan did not name the TARDIS, even if she says so in this episode.

The Doctor gives a little more background with another expositionary line: “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day, we shall get back.” Again, this is in direct conflict with how the Doctor is portrayed later in the series as someone who stole a TARDIS by himself because he was tired of the dreary life of Time Lord observation from afar. I suppose he could have stolen the TARDIS and then picked Susan up from somewhere on Gallifrey, but it’s odd how little Susan is mentioned after she leaves the show, especially in retellings of the Doctor’s initial departure. I also suppose Susan and the Doctor could both have been exiled for running away in the TARDIS, but then how would the Doctor or Susan ever find out if they've never returned to Gallifrey?

Moving on, the Doctor threatens to do something very unDoctorly, at least compared to how he is portrayed later in the series: he threatens to keep Ian and Barbara trapped in the TARDIS. He can’t let them leave, he claims, or else he and Susan would be the stuff of rumor and gossip. I don’t consider this to be out of character for him; he simply hasn’t grown to appreciate human companions yet.

Hearing this, Susan is distraught, caught between the importance of keeping her grandfather’s secret and her love of 20th century Britain and her school. She urges the Doctor to let them go, but also says she would rather stay in the 20th century and continue as a student than be forced by the Doctor to leave.

The Doctor refuses to tell Ian which switch on the console operates the door, instead turning the console into an electric booby trap which gives Ian a nasty shock when he touches it. The Doctor is toying with them, like a cat with a mouse. Finally, the Doctor says that he will let Ian and Barbara go, and that Susan would be allowed to go with them. But instead, he suddenly throws switches on the console, and the TARDIS dematerializes. It’s a violent take-off, and Barbara and Ian are thrown to the ground, knocked unconscious.

We get a really cool sequence with images of the main characters superimposed over awesome special effects, with an extended version of the TARDIS dematerialization sounds adding wonderful tension to the scene. It’s unclear if this is supposed to be a literal or metaphorical representation of the time vortex—or whatever sort of space the writers had in mind at this point in the series. Regardless, this is one of my favorite moments of the entire Early Era of the show.

After a time, the exterior of the TARDIS is shown once more, but now it's among windswept sand dunes and gnarly, leafless trees. The silhouette of a person appears on the foreground against the sand of the desert, the unseen figure standing some thirty paces away from the police box. Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Cave of Skulls)

The silhouette is revealed to be a man staring openmouthed at the newly-materialized TARDIS. He has a wild appearance, with matted hair, a dirty face, and animal furs draped across his shoulders. Clearly, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Cut to a cave. A large gathering of people in similar dress to the gaping man are all gathered around a lone member of the tribe who is rubbing sticks and bones together in his hands. Everyone watching is grave, with sad-faced children to give the impression that this tribe has fallen on hard times.

An old woman speaks then, demanding of the man, “Where is the fire Za makes?”

A woman standing close to Za’s shoulder—perhaps his love interest—snaps, “In his hands.” This woman is named Hur, which is an awful name. Not only is it rarely said aloud in the serial, but unless you have the subtitles on, you’d never know it’s any different from the pronoun her.

We learn that Za’s father knew the secret of making fire and was killed for it. The old woman, an influential elder of the tribe, thinks life was better in the olden days, back before Za’s father discovered how to make fire. The old woman, who is referred to throughout the serial simply as Old Woman, mocks Za for his continued failure, and Za responds angrily.

In an aside to Za, Hur reveals her worries that the tribe will choose Kal to lead them if Za cannot make fire. Kal is a newcomer to the tribe and provides the tribe with meat while Za whiles away the days failing to make fire. Hur says that if Kal is made the leader, her father will give her to Kal instead of Za.

Everything in this scene is done to demonstrate the unintelligence of this prehistoric tribe. Za vocalizes his anger through grunts and shows it in his body language through quick, jagged movements. All dialogue is delivered slowly and haltingly. It’s clear the showrunners want the viewer to think of them as savage, uncivilized, and stupid. And while I think they were successful, this portrayal doesn’t allow these people much depth beyond being a simple foil to the civilized and knowledgeable main characters.

We then return to the TARDIS, with the man in the desert still looking on in awe. Inside, Barbara and Ian slowly regain consciousness and get to their feet. They find the Doctor and Susan at the main console, performing routine checks on the new environment outside. The Doctor says they have definitely left 1963, but a broken piece of TARDIS machinery—hilariously called a yearometer—prevents him from knowing exactly when they have landed. Get used to broken bits of the TARDIS; they will be used as plot devices to restrain its movement very often over the next few seasons.

The Doctor shows Ian and Barbara their new surroundings on the screen. Barbara is coming to terms with the fact that they traveled through time and space, but a disbelieving Ian says will not be satisfied until he is able to see outside for himself. Maybe Barbara is more trusting than Ian, or maybe Ian is simply more belligerent—either way, this is a good way to add some characterization.

Eventually, the Doctor opens the doors and strides out into the desert to collect some samples, and a stunned Ian finally accepts the truth of their departure. While Ian and the others venture outside to take in their surroundings, the Doctor remarks that the TARDIS is still a police box, wondering why it hasn’t changed. The real answer is the show’s budgetary constraints, but the series will eventually provide a canon answer.

Then the Doctor wanders off, just out of eyeshot of the others, to collect samples. I want to keep a running tally of a few things as I move through the series. One such thing is just how often the plot of a serial is set into motion by at least one character wandering off and getting lost, captured, or otherwise separated from the rest of the group. It's occurred often enough for it to be something of a running gag in the series. Most of the Doctors have commented on it at some point in their run, but I think the 10th Doctor put it best when he said, “I always tell them, I say, ‘Don’t wander off.’ And what’s the first thing they do? They wander off!” Joke’s on him; he originated this trend. As the Doctor is rising to his feet and lighting a pipe with a match, the awestruck man from the first scene silently approaches and kidnaps him, resulting in SomeoneWandersOff™ #1.

Ian is still overcoming his own bewilderment when he, Barbara, and Susan hear the Doctor scream. They rush over to find the Doctor’s things scattered on the ground but no sign of the Doctor himself. Susan babbles hysterically and has to be consoled by Barbara. Ian takes charge, suggesting they make for a path that leads off into a forest.

Back in the cave, we learn a little about the superstition of the tribe. A tribesman says that Orb—presumably the sun—will show some man named Kal how to make fire once Kal is made the tribe leader. Za asserts that he should be leader so Orb will show him the secret instead, even if he has to spill Kal’s blood in order to make it happen.

At this moment, the man who kidnapped the Doctor enters the cave with an unconscious Doctor slung over one shoulder. As it turns out, this is Kal. Kal says that Orb has sent the Doctor to teach him how to make fire, saying that he has witnessed the Doctor with fire coming from his fingers. After a few minutes of dialogue, the Doctor awakens to find Kal and Za arguing over who will make fire. The Doctor initially declares that he can make fire for the tribe, but upon discovering that he has dropped his matches, he insists that he cannot make fire unless he is taken back to his ship. Za uses this opportunity to make a mockery out of Kal. Kal, desperate, grabs the Doctor, shaking him, begging him to make fire.

If you find yourself a bit hard-pressed to remember which one is Za and which one is Kal, so am I, and I have visuals to help me. They look very similar, though Za usually has his love interest by his side and Kal has more facial hair. I keep mixing them up, especially in scenes where there’s a lot of movement or when at least one of them has their back turned. Just remember that Za is the current leader, and Kal is his challenger.

Suddenly bursting onto the scene are Susan, Ian, and Barbara. Susan screams “Grandfather!” jumping onto Kal’s back. In the ensuing mayhem, Ian, Barbara, Susan, and the Doctor are all restrained. As soon as it looks like harm might befall one of them, the Doctor makes himself heard, saying that if anyone is harmed, “there will be no fire!” Kal wants to kill the four strangers right away, but Za steps in, demanding that they be sacrificed to Orb the following noon so that Orb will give them fire. Za orders the four to be taken to the Cave of Skulls.

After the Doctor and his companions are escorted offscreen and the scene calms down, the Old Woman argues against Kal and Za’s insistence on rediscovering fire. “There were leaders before there was fire,” she says. “Fire will kill us in the end.” Za rebukes her, again asserting that Orb will give him fire.

The Cave of Skulls is a deeper chamber off of the main cave of the tribe, its floor covered in sediment and its corners filled with broken bones in various states of decay. In here, Ian, Barbara, Susan, and the Doctor are left with their wrists tied, knowing that they will be sacrificed to Orb the next day. As the camera cuts to a close shot of some broken skulls, Ian makes a foreboding comment: “They’re all the same. They’ve been split open.” Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Forest of Fear)

Once the fate of the Doctor and his companions has been foreshadowed, the scene moves back to the main cave. It is now night, and the camera pans slowly over the sleeping tribe, all clustered together into one large conglomeration of bodies, probably to conserve body heat against the cold. One member of the tribe opens her eyes and stirs, detaching herself from the rest. It is the Old Woman. She sneaks over to a sleeping Za and takes a shiny rock from him. Later in the episode, we learn that this rock is what the tribe considers to be a “knife”: a rock with a sharpened edge that can cut things. With a weapon acquired, she sneaks out of the cave. Her departure is noted by Hur.

Meanwhile, back in the Cave of Skulls, the Doctor and his companions are frantically looking for something to cut their bonds, but any pieces of bone they find crumble to dust as they try to use them. The Doctor says their struggle is hopeless, as even if they do manage to cut themselves loose, they could never move the heavy stone which blocks the cave entrance. Ian notices airflow through the cave, and he and Barbara think there might be another way out. The Doctor remains pessimistic, which seems to be an intentional contrast between his realism and the hopeful optimism of the humans. We see these forces clash as the Doctor points out the futility of trying to escape, and Ian responds with, “Any hope is better than none. Don’t just lie there, criticizing us. Do something. Help us all to get out of here.” The Doctor relents, and while he doesn’t seem to believe much in the prospects of their escape, he makes helpful suggestions.

Cut back to the main cave. Hur wakes Za and tells him of the Old Woman’s treachery. They think she is going into the Cave of Skulls to kill the protagonists so that they won’t be able to make fire. Za thinks that if he can save the four, they will reward him by showing him how to make fire.

Back in the Cave of Skulls, the Old Woman suddenly appears through a crack in the back of the cave: the theorized second entrance. She says she will set the Doctor and his companions free if they promise to leave and not make fire. The Doctor agrees, and the Old Woman cuts their bonds.

Za and Hur can hear the Old Woman inside the Cave of Skulls talking to the four strangers. Za heaves the great stone aside, but by the time he enters, the Old Woman is alone, and the Doctor and his companions have fled the cave into the forest. Za strikes the Old Woman, who falls to the ground, moaning. Hur convinces Za that in order to prove himself worthy of being the tribe’s leader, he must pursue the Doctor and the rest into the forest, even though there are deadly beasts which stalk the night.

Out in the forest, Ian once again takes charge, urging a winded Doctor to continue on and comforting Barbara who is unsure they are going the right way. A pecking order seems to be in the process of forming: while the Doctor fills the role of leader most of the time, Ian is quickly establishing himself as a sort of second-in-command, picking up slack if the Doctor is incapable. Over the next few serials, I will be looking to see if this pattern holds or if Ian is simply the man of the moment.

As they continue to move away from the cave, they hear fearsome growls and other animalistic sounds. Suddenly, Barbara sees something moving in some bushes and breaks into hysterics. Again, Ian has to comfort her. When the Doctor lets the rest know how tired he is, Ian decides they can afford to rest for a moment. Then Ian suggests to the Doctor that when they start moving again, the Doctor and Susan will go in front, while he and Barbara will bring up the rear. This additional assertion of control appears to be one bridge too far for the Doctor, as, for the first time, he seems to realize the level of leadership Ian has been exerting on the group. They have a brief argument. The Doctor gives over to Ian for the time being, but not without making it known that he is unhappy with the present arrangement and that he is not one to follow orders blindly.

I find it fascinating that in the early days, the 1st Doctor and a companion are jockeying for control, albeit a very informal, flexible sort of control. Later on, whenever a new companion joins the Doctor, they almost always fall immediately into a more subservient role due to the Doctor’s overwhelming confidence and charisma. The Doctor as we see him in this serial is uncertain, afraid, and unaccustomed to interacting with humans.

Meanwhile, Za and Hur are tracking the four through the forest.

After their rest, Ian sets them moving again, mending the Doctor’s pride a bit by asking him to take the lead, rather than demanding it. Barbara trips over the carcass of a large animal, possibly a wild boar. She screams, and we get a brief cut to Za and Hur taking notice. The two quickly head toward the protagonists. Ian tells them all to hid, just before Za enters the clearing and finds the carcass. Before Za can begin to investigate the surrounding foliage, he is suddenly attacked by whatever killed the boar. Hur screams.

What follows is an exchange that reveals a lot about the kind of people the Doctor and his companions are. Ian wants to use the commotion as an opportunity to sneak away, but Barbara’s first instinct is to go help Za. Barbara struggles out of Ian’s grasp and runs to Za, with Ian grudgingly following. Then, Susan tears off after them, wanting to help despite the Doctor’s plea for her to get back to the ship. Finally, the Doctor stalks after the rest, saying to himself, “What are you doing? They must be out of their minds.” If not for Barbara, Ian and the rest probably would have escaped to the TARDIS, and if not for Susan, the Doctor definitely would have done so. Perhaps this is to distinguish Barbara and Susan as being more caring, or to show that the Doctor and Ian are quicker to think of self-preservation.

Either way, something that is quickly developing is a sense of distinction between genders. Notice how Ian and the Doctor are the ones who jockey for power, and Susan and Barbara are the ones who tear through the forest toward the sounds of screaming from Za and Hur. Is this deliberately gendered characterization? Are we going to see more caring women and aggressive men? More things to watch out for moving forward.

Moving on, Za is very hurt, his torso gouged by claw marks. Hur is initially hostile toward the approaching strangers, but Ian impresses upon her that he is a friend and begins tending Za’s wounds—again, an example of Ian taking control. With Barbara’s aid, they wash his wounds with water. Ian is rueful, saying to Barbara, “Well, we’ve lost our chance of getting away. Your flat must be littered with stray cats and dogs.”

“These are human beings, Ian,” Barbara replies. It is very interesting how it is a human character who is setting this tone of compassion. Later in the series, the Doctor is the one who often fills that role.

Then, there is an exchange in which the Doctor once again displays a level of selfishness that I am unused to seeing in his character. I want to provide this exchange in full, because I think it is very important for establishing a baseline for the Doctor’s character that the series will build upon.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” the Doctor demands.

Ian ignores him for a moment. “Have you got any antiseptic in the ship?”

“Yes, lots,” says Susan.

The Doctor talks over them. “One minute ago, we were trying desperately to get away from these savages.”

“Alright,” Ian grouses, “Now we’re helping them. You’re a doctor, do something.”

“I’m not a doctor of medicine,” the Doctor says indignantly.

“Grandfather, we can make friends with them,” Susan puts in.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, child.”

“Why?” Barbara interjects. “You treat everybody and everything as something less important than yourself.”

“You’re trying to say that everything you do is reasonable,” the Doctor replies, “and everything I do is inhuman. Well, I’m afraid your judgement’s at fault, Miss Wright, not mine. Haven’t you realized, if any of these people can follow us, the whole tribe might descend upon us at any moment?”

I think the selfishness of the Doctor’s character here speaks for itself. Can you imagine any other iteration of the Doctor dismissing any group of people as “these savages,” or choosing to abandon an injured person in any but the direst of circumstances? Like much of the characterization of the Doctor over the first few episodes, what we see here is not the Doctor acting out-of-character. The Doctor is, quite simply, unfinished. He is a clay pot not yet fired; a photo undeveloped. What we see here will eventually turn into a character with the morality and sense of humanity that we recognize as being the Doctor. From here on, I won’t call attention to how unDoctorly I think the 1st Doctor is acting, because it isn’t really unDoctorly at all. Instead, I will try to catalogue the slow but inevitable shift from what are experiencing in this serial to what we know comes down the line.

Though the Doctor’s motivations are selfish, Ian eventually recognizes the sense in finding somewhere less exposed. Ian suggests they create a makeshift stretcher to carry Za to the TARDIS.

Back in the Cave of Skulls, Kal discovers the Old Woman lying unconscious. He shakes her awake and demands to know where the strangers went. The Old Woman tells him that they are gone, and that Za and Hur went after them. She also tells him that she cut them free so they would not make fire for the tribe. Kal raises his stone as if to deliver a killing blow to the Old Woman, and the scene cuts back to the forest.

Hur doesn’t understand the strangers’ motivations and is wary of them. “You are like a mother with a child,” she says, “Why do you not kill?”

Barbara asks Hur to show them the way back to the desert in return for fire and aid for Za. Za, though weak, convinces Hur to accept this proposition.

Meanwhile, in the cave, Kal is whipping the tribe into a frenzy to go after the escaped strangers and Za and Hur. Having reemerged from the Cave of Skulls, Kal solemnly declares that the Old Woman is dead, and he is able to convince the tribe that Za and Hur killed her while freeing the strangers.

Back in the forest, the Doctor and his companions have finally made their way back to the tree line. They can see the TARDIS, but it’s too late: Kal has had time to set an ambush. Men of the tribe burst out of their hiding places to surround the four, restraining them. Kal looks on, determined. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Firemaker)

The party is forced back to the cave, where Kal accuses Za and Hur of setting the prisoners free. Hur denies this, saying they only followed the four into the forest after the Old Woman set them free. Kal mocks Za, who is still too weak to speak for himself. Then, Kal levels his most important accusation, saying that the Old Woman is dead by Za’s hands. Kal grabs Za’s knife, holding it up to the tribe and saying, “Here is the knife he killed her with.”

The Doctor notices a discrepancy, telling the tribe that Za’s knife has no blood on it. Kal throws the knife down, saying it is a bad knife and that it lies about what it has done. The Doctor, playing Kal’s unintelligence against him, praises Za’s knife, saying that it is much sharper and better than Kal’s. Kal pulls out his own knife to show the Doctor otherwise, unintentionally revealing the murder weapon still coated with the Old Woman’s blood.

Caught red-handed, Kal admits to killing the Old Woman. The tribe is incensed by this, and the Doctor gets them to drive Kal out of the caves in their anger. Ian finds Za, who has managed to stagger to his feet, and imparts upon him some advice: “Remember, Kal is not stronger than the whole tribe.” This message works on two levels. The first, and most obvious, is that the tribe is at its strongest when it acts together towards a single purpose. The second is that the Doctor and his companions are at their strongest when they look out for one another and act in each other’s best interest. I see this statement almost as the thesis of the series, a sentiment that will constantly be tested and relitigated in future serials.

Za declares that Kal is no longer a member of the tribe, and that they will all be on guard for the threat that Kal poses to the tribe on his own. Then, to the shock of the protagonists, Za he orders the Doctor and his companions to be put back in the Cave of Skulls. Ian tries to bargain with him, saying that if Za takes them back to the desert, they will make fire for him. Za is unmoved and sets guards to watch both entrances to the cave. He orders that if anyone in the tribe sees them escaping, they are to be killed on sight.

Hur relays to Za all of the events that happened while he was slipping in and out of consciousness. She speaks of Ian, naming him “Friend,” and tells Za about how the strangers cared for him instead of killing him. Za says that they must be a tribe from over the mountains, despite Hur’s assertions that nothing lives there. He tells Hur about the wisdom of Ian’s advice and makes it clear that if this “strange tribe” does not tell him the secret of making fire, they will die.

Za goes to the Cave of Skulls to speak with the strangers. He arrives to find Ian, Barbara, and Susan working with sticks and tinder to make fire. He asks Ian, “You are called Friend?” to which Ian answers with amusement, “Yes.” When Za asks Ian if he is the leader of their tribe, Ian says no and points to the Doctor. This is a pretty clever way of easing some of the tension caused by the unresolved power struggle from before. By designating the Doctor as leader in this one instance, Ian acknowledges the Doctor’s authority going forward, even if Ian does end up arguing with him now and then.

Za promises to return the Doctor and his companions to the foot of the mountains—where he assumes they are from—as long as they show him how to make fire. After a moment, the tinder ignites, and Za gazes in reverence at the fire Ian has made.

Outside, the sun is rising, and the rest of the tribe argues over whether the strangers should be sacrificed to Orb in exchange for fire. Hur says that Za is in the Cave of Skulls learning the secrets, but her father fears that Za is setting them free, just as the Old Woman had done.

Meanwhile, in front of the second entrance to the Cave of Skulls, Kal comes out of the forest and kills the man who is keeping guard there. He bursts inside the cave and attacks Za, the two of them squaring off to see who gets to claim the precious fire as their own. To the sound of drums, they engage in what is some fairly realistic fight choreography, especially well done for classic Who. The fight features some tumbling, the two combatants hurling each other around the cave, until Za finally incapacitates Kal and shatters his skull with a large rock.

Back in the main cave, the rest of the tribe is about to enter the Cave of Skulls to sacrifice the strangers to Orb when Za emerges with a lit torch. The people of the tribe are instantly quieted, throwing their hands up to take in the heat of the torch. Elated, the tribe finally recognizes Za as the unopposed leader. Za leaves to hunt for meat and cement himself as the leader, but he tells the rest of the tribe to make sure the strangers remain in the Cave of Skulls until he returns.

When Hur goes into the Cave of Skulls to give them food, Susan begs to be set free, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Later, Za returns and tells them that instead of letting them go, he will join their tribes together.

Once Za leaves, the Doctor says that they must figure out a way to escape, perhaps by frightening the tribe. Susan slides one of the human skulls onto a lit torch. The flames pour out of empty eye sockets, creating a fearsome spectacle. Reinvigorated, the four go about making more torches, hoping to convince the tribe that they had died and become vengeful spirits.

Later, Hur enters the Cave of Skulls to find a line of torches topped by flaming skulls. She screams, and the rest of the tribe crowds in behind her, instantly cowering in fear. The Doctor and his companions, who are hiding in a corner, use the opportunity to sneak out behind them and bolt into the forest. By the time Za realizes they have been tricked, the four are too far out of reach. Za and other tribesmen grab torches and chase after them, but the protagonists manage to make it back to the TARDIS, safe and sound. To the tribe’s disbelief, the police box dematerializes in front of their eyes.

The TARDIS, now in flight, whisks the Doctor and his companions away from danger. However, the Doctor has no idea where their next destination will be. Ian asks the Doctor to return them to Britain in 1963, but the Doctor says he can’t. This is shocking news to Barbara and Ian. When pressed, the Doctor says that the TARDIS isn’t functioning properly. He goes on to spout some technobabble as to why he can’t get them back, and Barbara responds with: “Are you saying that you don’t know how to work this thing?”

“Well, of course I can’t. I’m not a miracle worker.” This is a rare admission of fault from the 1st Doctor, who always likes to appear in control.

The TARDIS lands, the scanner revealing a jungle with white-barked trees. “It could be anywhere,” the Doctor says, resigned to go outside to find out where they are. Before they leave the TARDIS, he makes sure to ask Susan to read out the radiation readings. Susan says they are normal, and the four depart. But as they are leaving, the camera zooms in on the TARDIS’s Geiger counter. The needle of the meter climbs, showing dangerous levels of radiation and flashing out a warning to a crew no longer able to receive it. Credits roll.

Takeaways

Taken as a part of the series as a whole or just as a part of classic Who, I don’t think this serial is particularly memorable. However, as an introduction to the series, it does what it needs to do. It introduces the premise of the crotchety old Doctor with his granddaughter and his time traveling police box. It gives the Doctor a baseline characterization to be built upon over time, and it introduces the concept of the Doctor’s companions, establishing a push-and-pull dynamic between the Doctor and whom he initially sees as human interlopers. Furthermore, using prehistoric Earth as a setting eases the audience into the capabilities of the TARDIS, giving viewers an easily digestible first look at time and space travel before getting into the crazy stuff.

Aside from its success as an introduction, this serial’s biggest strength is in its pacing. It is only four parts—which, for this era of Doctor who, is definitely on the shorter side. With one part devoted to introducing the characters and the premise, it only leaves three episodes to deliver the meat of the story, giving the serial a breakneck pacing, especially for Classic Who. While this speed isn’t necessarily a positive or a negative for me personally, I have seen many viewers cite slow pacing as a barrier to enjoying the classic series, and that’s not an issue for An Unearthly Child. Plus, having such a fast-paced serial to open the series gives the audience a sense that they are being pulled along for the ride from the outset, which I think works to the series’ benefit.

The biggest weakness of the serial is how the writers chose to characterize the prehistoric tribe. With the exception of the Old Woman, the tribe members are fairly interchangeable. They act with one voice, a voice that’s collectively unintelligent and uninteresting. Even Kal and Za agree on what should be done; they only differ on who would be the one to do it and some minor details. It’s frustrating to watch the Doctor and his companions get stymied by a people who’re themselves stymied by their own stupidity.

As for things to look out for moving forward, I want to get a better sense of the distinctions that have been made between the male and female characters, and whether or not they are emblematic of this era of Doctor Who or the series as a whole. In the same vein, I want to see if the Doctor and Ian continue to butt heads and if Susan or Barbara begin to show more self-determination. Also, up to this point, there hasn’t been much breathing room between Ian and Barbara’s characterizations, besides the general distinctions that I have already mentioned regarding gender. What—if any—efforts do the writers make to distinguish them? Lastly, I want to see the creation of this literary universe as the series continues to unfold, how its rules and technology are explained to the audience.

I want to be able to give each serial a rating out of 10. I will not be judging them equally. It feels foolish to rate one serial from 1963 and another from 2016 using the same criteria. Instead, I want to rate each serial compared to others released around the same time. To make this easier, I will divide the series into distinct eras:

The Early Era – Seasons 1-6
The U.N.I.T. Era – Seasons 7-13
The Middle Era – Seasons 14-21
The Late Era – Seasons 22-26, TV Movie
The Reboot Era – Modern Seasons 1-7
The Modern Era – Modern Seasons 8-2022 Specials
The Post-COVID Era - 2023-Present

I’m not too attached to the names, but I definitely think the division of these eras accurately reflects the different feels the show has had over the different decades. Yes, I know feel is very subjective, but then, isn’t everything else I write? Anyway, within the context of the Early Era, here is how I rate An Unearthly Child:

Rating: 6.3/10

Chapter Text

The Daleks

Part 1 (The Dead Planet)

Having just escaped from the clutches of Za’s prehistoric tribe, the TARDIS has landed in an unknown location, distinguishable only by the jungle of white-barked trees visible on the scanner. The Doctor ventures outside to discern their exact location, followed by Susan, Ian, and Barbara, the last two wanting nothing more than to go home. However, once they exit the ship, the TARDIS Geiger counter registers dangerous amounts of radiation and flashes a warning that no one is around to see.

Outside, the jungle is described by Barbara as being ashen and white. The soil is sand and ashes, and no birds can be heard. In fact, there is no noise of any kind. The limbs of the trees don’t even move, despite a stiff breeze blowing through the jungle. Ian snaps a twig off a tree, and it crumbles in his hands like talc. The Doctor concludes that the jungle has been petrified, though he can’t pinpoint a cause. He and Susan are eager to find one.

Barbara pulls Ian aside, and they express their fears over not being able to get back to Britain in 1963. They are upset about the situation, but they accept that they can’t do anything on their own and decide to go after the Doctor. “We better keep an eye on him,” Ian says, “He seems to have a knack of getting himself into trouble.” Understatement of the century.

They catch up to the Doctor and Susan. Barbara finds a petrified creature, something like a large iguana but with skin made of metal. “Nothing on Earth could look like this,” Ian remarks. He and Barbara share a meaningful glance; they seem to have grasped the enormity of being on an alien planet.

It seems like there may be some additional conflict brewing between Ian and Barbara, who want to go home, and the Doctor, who may not be able to get them there. The Doctor heads off a complaint from Ian, pointing out that they left prehistoric Earth far too quickly for him to have made any calculations regarding their destination.

Ian takes Barbara aside, and they again discuss the prospects of returning home. Barbara is pessimistic about their chances, but Ian puts on a brave face, saying, “Barbara, all I ask you to do is believe, really believe we’ll go back. We will, you know.” Barbara is comforted by this, continuing the trend from the last serial of Barbara taking her queues from Ian.

Susan spies the edge of the forest, and the Doctor believes he can figure out where they are by using the stars to plot their location. To Barbara, Susan says this: “I don’t say that Grandfather doesn’t know how to work the ship, but he’s so forgetful, and then he will go off and…Well, he likes to work on his own.” A bit nonsensical, but I take this to mean that Susan thinks the Doctor has a fair measure of competence with the TARDIS. As we will see in the upcoming serials, there is ample evidence to the contrary.

Susan also says that the Doctor needs to perform some computations in the ship so that they can move on. Considering that the Doctor is currently trying to pinpoint their location, I think this means that the Doctor must manually input the current location of the TARDIS before it can take off. I understand how this fits into the premise of the serial: the Doctor didn’t input a destination for their current journey, so the TARDIS must have picked a random place and time, landing in a dead forest on some planet. However, this setup conflicts with the vast majority of the future of the series, where the Doctor is able to use the TARDIS’s equipment to find their location, and where—with a few exceptions—the TARDIS can take off at any time. By having to figure out their location, this serial either speaks to the 1st Doctor’s incompetence with the TARDIS, or it’s just an inconsistency in the show’s canon—and I don’t have enough information yet to say which.

The Doctor returns to Barbara and Susan, saying that although he hasn’t figured out the cause, “the planet is dead, totally dead.”

At this moment, Ian calls out from offscreen, “Barbara! Doctor! Over here!” The three rush to join him, and they discover a cliff overlooking a barren mountain. At the base of the mountain is a vast, technologically advanced city.

Now seems like a good time to talk a little about the settings and set design of classic Doctor Who. Before the proliferation of CGI and realistic special effects, the entertainment industry used a handful of techniques to emulate real settings instead of the studios where much of the filming took place. From clever cinematography to painted backdrops, the goal of set design was not necessarily to create visuals that were 100% realistic but which instead were just realistic enough for the viewer to be able to suspend their disbelief. While fantastic set design is almost indistinguishable from the place it is trying to represent, I see set design as serviceable as long as it is believable enough to avoid distracting from the viewing experience.

The prehistoric landscapes of An Unearthly Child were an example of set design that was just good enough. The desert where the TARDIS landed felt very underwhelming, as did the cave of the tribe. The saving grace was the forest, where the director utilized low lighting and very close, claustrophobic camera angles to give the foliage a sense of density. And in the chase scene at the end of Part Four, all we saw were the characters’ faces as they were bursting through fronds and tree limbs during their frantic escape back to the TARDIS. In reality, this was probably done with the actors running in place or on a treadmill.

Similar tricks are used in The Daleks, though I would argue that the visuals of this serial are much more effective. As Susan, Barbara, and the Doctor rush out onto the cliff with Ian, we see a stunning painted backdrop of a distant city at the base of a mountain, with lots of contrast and foregrounding that allows even tiny details to come across clearly in the grainy black-and-white footage. In front of this backdrop, a practical set piece allows the characters to cast natural shadows and gives the scene a sense of depth. In later scenes, the city is sometimes represented by a constructed miniature, and while the miniature is not as effective as this painted backdrop, it allows the director to show the city in greater detail and zoom in on specific buildings. We may eventually be treated to things like color, season-long story arcs, and better CGI in the later eras of the show—all of which significantly improve the overall quality of the series—but nothing quite matches the nostalgic feel of a beautiful painted backdrop from the early days.

Back to our intrepid explorers, the Doctor expresses a desire to visit the city in order to figure out why it has remained intact while the forest was so gravely damaged. It is getting dark, and Susan convinces her grandfather that they can talk about exploring the city back in the ship. Ian makes it clear to the others that he intends to stop the Doctor from venturing into the city, since the Doctor is the only one who knows how to properly pilot the ship and they can't afford to lose him. The Doctor is unhappy about this, but he lets Ian take the lead for the moment.

On their way back to the TARDIS, Susan stops to pick a flower and falls behind the others. She suddenly gets the feeling she is being watched. As she casts her eyes nervously around the jungle, something unseen touches her on the shoulder. Susan screams, and Ian rushes back to find her alone and afraid. They all return to the TARDIS; Susan is shaken but unharmed.

Barbara tries to console Susan, who has retreated to another room of the TARDIS to sulk. She is upset that no one believes her, especially the Doctor. Barbara assures her that she believes her, and about the Doctor, she says, “It isn’t that he doesn’t believe you. It’s just that he finds it difficult to go against his scientific facts.” So far, this serial seems to be trying to remind the viewer that Susan is a child, and that as a child, she is bound to do things like pick flowers and throw a tantrum or two. It’s a bit jarring, especially coming on the heels of An Unearthly Child, where, in Part One, the writers painted Susan as something greater than her peers.

Back in the control room, Ian confronts the Doctor about him and Barbara returning to their own time. “Naturally, we’re anxious,” he says. “What are we going to do? Can we live here? What do we eat?” The Doctor shrugs off Ian’s questions, using the last as an opportunity to say, “A very good idea. I’m hungry,” and he walks away.

Ian follows him to the room where Susan and Barbara were talking before. The camera has panned over slightly, and now we can see that there is a strange machine, just behind where Susan was sitting at her table. It’s tall, perhaps chin-high on the Doctor, and fronted with an array of silver and black buttons. Susan and Barbara stand next to it, and Susan passes Barbara a glass of some kind of liquid that is supposed to help with a sudden headache that has come over her. Remember Barabra’s headache; it seems unimportant now, but it is part of a pattern that emerges.

Still ignoring Ian, the Doctor walks over to the odd machine and makes a few inputs on its interface, causing it to beep shrilly. A moment later, the machine spits out some sort of food shaped like a candy bar, which he begins to eat. Then he asks Ian and Barbara if they would like anything to eat, to which they respond, “bacon and eggs.” Susan inputs a code, and out pops two more bars of food. Ian and Barbara start to eat, amazed at how much it tastes like the real thing.

This machine, referred to on the Doctor Who Wiki as simply “The Food Machine,” is one of those elements of the early seasons that simply disappears from the series canon without a trace. It purports to be able to replicate the taste of any food known to man, which would be very useful on several future occasions where the Doctor and his companions become trapped in the TARDIS. At some point, the writers must have rethought the TARDIS and its equipment, which makes sense, as the Food Machine would be something of a deus ex machina in many stories. Its existence in early serials doesn’t necessarily contradict canon, though. It’s just something we can assume stops working at some point, just like so many pieces of TARDIS equipment are like to do.

Just as the four are getting ready to tuck in for the night, they hear a tapping on the TARDIS exterior. Susan feels vindicated: “There was someone there.”

The scanner doesn’t reveal anyone outside, but the tapping has put the forest and the city back into the Doctor’s mind. He is determined to go exploring. Ian argues with him some more, and even Barbara and Susan try to dissuade him. The Doctor concedes—or at least appears to—going to the console and beginning the process of dematerialization. This contradicts the idea that the Doctor needs to establish a location before the TARDIS can leave, which makes me think that it was just a bit of careless dialogue and should be disregarded.

Anyway, as the TARDIS begins to flash and wheeze, the Doctor ducks beneath the console and fiddles around behind a panel, unnoticed by the others. Immediately, the TARDIS shudders before rematerializing with a thud back in the mysterious jungle with its white-barked trees. Glancing at the ship’s fault locater, the Doctor says the problem must be with the fluid link, which is a small gizmo located behind that console panel. He pulls it out, examines it, and announces that it needs to be refilled with mercury. Barely containing a giddy smile, he says that there is no mercury in the TARDIS, and that they must go down to the city to find some—much to the others’ dismay. Another callous act of selfishness from the 1st Doctor.

At first light, the protagonists leave the TARDIS with enough food for a day’s journey. I want to remind you that at the beginning of the episode, the Geiger counter in the TARDIS began to register dangerous levels of radiation. It seems like a plot hole that the four could spend a night in the TARDIS without any of them noticing the flashing indicator.

Regardless, once outside the TARDIS, Ian notices a metal container on the ground. He opens it to find that it contains a series of glass phials. They assume someone—perhaps whoever tapped on the TARDIS—must have dropped it, and Susan stows the metal box inside the ship before they leave.

It takes an hour or two for them to reach the city. The miniature and the painted backdrop give a really solid impression of distance, and I would estimate that it is a few miles from the TARDIS to the city. Upon arriving, the Doctor is panting, saying that he needs a rest. Ian says he isn’t feeling all that well himself, but he urges them to keep going so that they can get this over with quickly. They agree to split up into three groups: Ian alone, Barbara alone, and Susan and the Doctor. They will scout out the city a little and meet back up in ten minutes’ time.

The scene follows Barbara first, who ducks through a motion-controlled sliding door and into a very long hallway. The backdrop in this scene does a good job of conveying that this tunnel-like hallway runs arrow-straight and far enough that the human eye cannot make out the end of it. Additionally, the arches along the hallway are not quite high enough for Barbara to walk beneath without stooping. Whoever built the city probably wasn’t shaped like a human. A camera tracks Barbara’s movement through the hall, though she does not see it. As she wanders through hallway after hallway, doors close silently behind her, sealing her inside. When she finds her route back blocked, she panics, running off in a new direction.

Meanwhile, the other three find nothing of interest and return to their starting place. They decide to go and find Barbara, who has not returned.

Back to Barbara, she is running, banging on doors, and overall just not having a good time. The closing doors force her into an elevator which starts going down, descending deep beneath the city. When the door opens again, she moves carefully through, into the next hallway, eyes alert for any sign of danger. Suddenly, she gasps, recoiling away from something indistinct moving toward her, something that looks like a small black sphere at the end of a long rod. She lets out a piercing scream. Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Survivors)

Back on the surface level, the Doctor, Ian, and Susan are wandering through the halls, searching for Barbara, when they hear a strange ticking noise. The sound leads them through a doorway into exactly what the Doctor said he wanted to find: a laboratory. The room is filled with all sorts of scientific equipment. There are no people, though the Doctor does find wet ink, evidence that the laboratory has not been empty for long. Clearly, whoever lives in the city is very intelligent. “Yes,” Ian says, “but how do they use their intelligence? What form does it take?” A bit of very on-the-nose foreshadowing from the writers.

Susan finds the source of the ticking noise, a Geiger counter. It shows dangerous levels of radiation, just like the one inside the TARDIS. The Doctor links this finding with the onset of his and Ian’s feelings of illness, as well as Barbara’s headache back in the TARDIS, concluding that they are all suffering from radiation sickness. Furthermore, the fact that the city remained intact while the forest became petrified points to fallout from a neutron bomb.

When Ian asks how badly they are affected, the Doctor says they need drugs, and soon. Susan says they will have to use the TARDIS to go to somewhere where they can be cured. Ian reminds Susan that they can’t move the ship until they find mercury for the fluid link. The Doctor then admits to tampering with their last takeoff, and that there is actually nothing wrong with the fluid link. He passes the fluid link to Ian so he can see for himself.

Susan and Ian are aghast at this news. The Doctor tells them they can discuss his treachery later, and that they must focus on returning to the ship at once. Ian refuses to leave without Barbara, and he tells the Doctor he won’t give the fluid link back until they find her. “It’s time you faced up to your responsibilities,” he says. “You got us here. Now I’m going to make sure that you get us back.”

But as soon as they leave the laboratory, they find themselves surrounded by strange machines, four of them. Cylindrical, the body of the machines are covered in small round pieces that are reminiscent of the roundels back on interior walls of the TARDIS. Above these are rotating headpieces that look something like rounded trashcan lids. Two long pieces of metal protrude from the body: one is an armpiece that ends in what looks like the head of a plunger, the other is shorter, and looks a bit like the barrel of a gun surrounded by a cage of metal mesh. An eyepiece protrudes from the rotating head. One of these machines speaks, its voice a robotic monotone and each syllable pronounced deliberately. “You will move ahead of us and follow my instructions.” Lights flash on the top of its head to show which one is talking.

The Doctor and Susan obey, but Ian makes a break for it. One of the machines fires its gun, and Ian is struck, temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. The Doctor and Susan are forced to help Ian through the tunnels.

Their destination is a cell many miles beneath the city, and they find Barbara waiting for them. After a bittersweet reunion, Barbara asks, “Ian, do you think they really are just machines? Do you think there’s someone inside them?”

Fans of the series will already know that these “machines” are, in fact, Daleks: a genetically engineered, xenophobic race of creatures housed in a metal exoskeleton. I want to give credit to the showrunners—especially Terry Nation, the writer behind the Daleks—for creating such a unique creature. Their novelty has worn off a bit over the years—in my opinion, by the time we get to the modern series, they are downright tired—but the fact that the Daleks have persisted for so long speaks to the success of their design and concept. What we see in this serial is almost a prototype of the Daleks, a core concept that will be fleshed out in future encounters. Seeing them in the second serial of the series highlights the risks the first showrunners were willing to take when it came to creature design and what they thought the audience could tolerate. There comes an era of the series where it seems every alien creature is either an extraterrestrial species that is practically identical to humans or a human-sized creature that is clearly a human in a blobby alien costume. As far as creature design, I believe the Daleks are the pinnacle of what the classic series has to offer.

Barbara mentions that she feels weak, and Ian gives her the bad news that they are all suffering from radiation sickness. The camera then pans over to the Doctor, who sits against the wall, barely able to keep his eyes open. I get the impression that the radiation sickness affects the oldest more quickly. The Doctor has exhibited the most severe symptoms, while Susan hasn’t exhibited any symptoms at all. The Doctor says unless they can get treatment, they will surely die.

The scene switches to the Dalek central control room, where the Daleks have been watching the Doctor and his companions on a small screen. The room is dimly lit and decidedly unhuman—the screens and buttons on the Dalek machines are all circular to account for their plungers, and pieces of equipment pulse with light at odd intervals. A low, droning hum that will come to define Dalek technology murmurs in the background. As they watch the screen, the Daleks are confused about why their prisoners are showing signs of radiation sickness. They think the prisoners are Thals, who they say have lived on the planet’s surface despite the radiation. Hoping to discover more, one gives the order to bring the Doctor in for questioning.

The Daleks ask the Doctor why the Thals have been able to survive so long outside the city and why their drugs are failing him now. The Doctor doesn’t understand the Daleks’ questions, but they trigger a memory of the metal box of phials found on the ground outside the TARDIS. The Doctor strikes a bargain with the Daleks: one of them will go back to the TARDIS to retrieve the phials while the others remain, held hostage by the Daleks.

When the Doctor asks the Daleks about the Thals, they explain that 500 years ago, a war between the Daleks and the Thals resulted in the radiation that plagues the planet’s surface. The Daleks retreated into the city, protected by their machines, and they say the Thals that survived on the surface must be horribly mutated.

Back in the cell, Ian is still unable to walk, and Barbara has become so dizzy that she can hardly stand. The Doctor returns to the cell and collapses against the wall. He tells the others about the bargain he has made, and after some deliberation, they realize that the only one fit to return to the TARDIS is Susan. It makes sense, now, why the writers wanted to highlight that Susan is just a child. When this responsibility is put onto her shoulders, I really feel for her in that moment, even if the portrayal of her childishness was rather slapdash.

“I’m so afraid,” Susan says, trembling.

Ian reassures her and says, “Don’t stop for anything. Go straight there and straight back.” The Daleks lead Susan out.

Back in the control room, the Daleks are talking amongst themselves, and two things are made clear. First, the Daleks intend to track Susan’s movements and see if she makes contact with any Thals in the forest. And second, the Daleks do not intend to let the humans use the drugs. Instead, they want to take them for themselves and duplicate them so that they can live freely on the surface again.

Next, we see a frightened Susan making her way through the jungle. Lighting flashes, though no rain falls. She is frantic, running for a time, then stopping to catch her breath, then spurring her feet to move once more. Once, she passes what looks like a figure cloaked in some sort of scale-patterned fabric, but Susan is too focused on her task to notice. The figure trails after Susan.

Meanwhile, back in the cell, the Doctor has fallen into a deep sleep. Barbara and Ian try to care for him, but they are hardly doing any better.

In the Dalek control room, one Dalek says that they have tracked Susan back to the jungle, but they have lost the signal, presumably due to the thick foliage.

Back in the forest, a sobbing, exhausted Susan arrives back at the TARDIS. She dashes inside, cradling the metal box to her chest in a sort of weary stupor. We hear a voiceover of Ian, reminding Susan to go straight there and straight back. Susan gathers herself, reopens the TARDIS doors, and starts the journey back, a flash of lightning brightening the night as she steps back into the jungle. Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Escape)

Standing outside of the TARDIS doors is the cloaked figure from before. This time, his face is revealed to the audience. For all intents and purposes, he appears human, with very pale skin and light blonde hair. Susan is surprised by the man’s appearance. He is a Thal, but he is far from the mutated creature the Daleks seem to think they are. “You’re perfect,” Susan says. This man is the mysterious figure who tapped Susan on the shoulder in Part 1, and he has returned to make sure the Doctor and his companions understand how to use the drugs he left for them, the phials in the metal box.

The man is concerned when he learns that none of them have taken the drugs and that the Daleks have taken them prisoner. Up until now, the Thals have had no confirmation that the Daleks had also survived the war. The man suspects that the Daleks might want the drugs for themselves and might not let the humans take them—as we have already seen, this is indeed true. Just in case, he gives Susan a second set of drugs to hide on her person. He names himself as Alydon (pronounced AL-ih-dahn), gives to Susan his scale-patterned cloak, and escorts Susan back to the edge of the jungle. Susan isn’t sure if she trusts the Daleks, but she does trust Alydon. “I wonder if the Daleks have seen us,” Alydon says. “I mean, if they call us mutations, what must they be like?”

The scene changes to the Dalek control room. Some time has passed, and Susan has been returned to the cell. The Daleks say that Susan and the other prisoners could be used to bring the Thals into the city.

Back in the cell, we find that Susan has returned with the drugs and Alydon’s cloak. She has already administered the drugs to the others, and they quickly being to recover. We learn that the Daleks did find the second set of drugs, but they let Susan keep them anyway. Susan then relays to the others a lot of information that was told to her by Alydon. In this, we learn that the Thals have asked Susan to seek aid from the Daleks on their behalf. The Thals will soon starve unless they can find a new source of food. If the Daleks would be amenable to aiding the Thals, Susan has been instructed to send some sort of message to them, signed with Susan’s name so that the Thals know that the message was not coerced from her.

I want to briefly touch on a rule that is widely known among writers, especially writers of creative works: Show, don’t tell. For example, don’t tell the audience that a character is greedy; show it through how they interact with other characters and let the audience come to that conclusion for themselves. Sometimes, the writers of Doctor Who struggle to find the balance between exposition that gives just enough background to satisfy the audience’s curiosity and exposition that comes across as telling something that could have been shown. This relates back to how the series can be quite unsubtle with its dialogue choices. In most cases, it is indicative of poor writing decisions, though other things can influence this dynamic like runtime constraints or bad pacing.

In this episode, the writers have made the decision to use a time skip to pass over Susan’s extended conversation with Alydon, her return trip to the city, her interactions with the Daleks, and her giving the drugs to her friends. In order to preserve the continuity of the episode, the writers must then give a brief explanation of what happened during that time period. This is a rare instance of when I think it is actually beneficial for the writers to tell, rather than show: avoiding repetition. At this point in the serial, the audience already knows about the radiation sickness that plagues the main characters, the Dalek’s plan to let them die, and the history of the war between the Daleks and the Thals. If the writers want to advance the plot to a point where the characters can begin to act upon this information, it makes sense to jump forward in time and—when necessary—explain a little about what happened in the interim. Even though this explanation comes across as a bit rushed and clunky, I believe it is better than the episode feeling lethargic and repetitive.

In the Dalek control room, the Daleks have heard every word of Susan’s explanation to the others, watching the interaction transpire on their screen. They debate over whether to simply let the Thals starve or to use the prisoners to entice the Thals into the city. Either way, it is clear that the Daleks have no goodwill toward the Thals. They settle on using Susan to send a message to the Thals and invite them into the city.

The following morning, a Dalek enters the cell to take Susan to the control room. The others are concerned for her well-being, to which the Dalek says, “She will be returned. We are going to help the Thals, which is what you want us to do.” The others let Susan go, but once the door closes, Ian asks, “How do they know we want to help the Thals?”

Back by the TARDIS, we see Alydon sitting atop a rock formation. Other Thals slowly emerge from the surrounding forest to join him. Alydon greets a man named Ganatus (pronounced GA-nah-tiss), then speaks to him and another man named Temmosus (pronounced TEH-moh-siss).

Before I continue with the scene, I have to gripe about one of my biggest pet peeves of the series, both classic and modern. The show usually does a fairly decent job characterizing present-day Earthlings, even minor characters who only have a line or two to express themselves. But when it comes to off-planet races of humanoids, or ancient human tribes, or members of some future Earth colony, the showrunners often show absolutely no willingness to give any sort of distinguishing characteristics to minor characters. An Unearthly Child was a good precursor to this phenomenon: the prehistoric tribe consisted of characters who were largely interchangeable and very uninteresting as a result.

Likewise, the Thals we see in this serial are so similar to each other that it is nearly impossible to keep them straight, even as I sit here taking notes. This includes their physical characteristics. All the men are tall and fair, with fluffy white vests tucked into black pants. All the women are also fair and wear some sort of tan dress—though since the writers only deigned to name one of these women, it is at least easier to tell them apart. I find it really hard to care for characters like this as individual people, when the writers themselves don’t seem to care about that.

Alydon explains to Temmosus that they are waiting for a message from Susan to see if the Daleks are friendly. We learn a little more about the history of the Thals and the Daleks. The Thals were once warriors and are now farmers; the Daleks were once philosophers. In this interaction, it is clear to the audience that Temmosus is the leader of the Thals. He wears a black headband which denotes his status and allows the viewer to pick him out of the crowd. But as far as the rest of the men are concerned, even with the conversation to lend context, it is really difficult to keep Alydon, Temmosus, and Ganatus straight. Here’s a tip for any budding filmmakers out there. If you were to take a still frame of your production, the viewer should be able to correctly identify all of the named characters. If they cannot, this is an example of poor characterization.

The only other thing of note in this scene is that there is a bit of romantic tension between Dyoni (pronounced die-YOH-nee)—the only named Thal woman—and Alydon. Alydon still sees Dyoni as the little girl he used to know, while Dyoni, who appears to be in her early 20s, sees Alydon as something more. We will if this dynamic affects these characters in the rest of the serial. Also, something to look out for in future serials is a seeming reluctance by the showrunners to include women in the supporting cast. There are stories where the only woman in the entire serial is one of the companions, which I chalk up to the sexism of the time period.

Meanwhile, in the Dalek control room, the Daleks are dictating to Susan a message for the Thals. In the message, the Daleks say they have plenty of food grown in their labs using synthetic sunlight. Susan signs the message with her name, just as she told Alydon she would. The Daleks take the message from her and return her to the cell.

Sometime later, Ian and the Doctor pretend to have an argument which turns into a physical altercation. Susan jumps on Ian’s back, grabbing the camera high on the cell wall and ripping it out of the wall. In the Dalek control room, the screen suddenly goes black. The Daleks suspect foul play, but they don’t see any reason to restore the camera or move the prisoners to another cell. After all, they cannot escape.

Back in the cell, the four are plotting exactly that. The Doctor points out a design feature of the city: all of the floors are metal. This suggests to him that metal floors are essential to the Daleks in some way. Barbara points out that when the Daleks move around, there is a smell that reminds her of a fairground, specifically of bumper cars. “It’s electricity!” the Doctor exclaims. “I think they’re powered that way.” The Doctor then goes on to posit that the Daleks have developed a way to power their machines by exploiting the use of static electricity through the floor. Ian suggests they use the cloak given to Susan by the Thals as an insulator to immobilize the Daleks.

Back among the Thals, there is an odd exchange between Dyoni and Ganatus. Dyoni asks Ganatus if another character, Antodus (pronounced AN-toh-diss), is still afraid of the dark, to which Ganatus replies coldly, “My brother isn’t afraid of anything.”

I want to go out of sequence for a second, because later, we actually meet Antodus, who exhibits his fear of the dark in Part 6 of this serial. However, I was not able to connect this brief exchange to Antodus on my first viewing. In Part 3, because I haven’t met the character yet, there is no frame of reference for me to connect this character trait to Antodus. The name “Antodus” means nothing to me, so there is no reason for me to remember it. It’s also possible that I thought Antodus was one of the slew of Thal men that were introduced in the first Thal scene, and since I couldn’t keep these characters straight, the name slid off my brain like water off of a duck’s back. Either way, from the existence of this exchange, it is clear that Antodus’s fear of the dark is something the writers want us to remember. But the execution is so poor that it makes it almost impossible for the viewer to absorb this information.

One of the Thals returns from the city gates with Susan’s message. The Daleks have left a quantity of food for the Thals in the entrance hall of their main building, which the Thals are to collect the following day.

Back in the cell, the Doctor and his companions do a little bit of reconnaissance, standing on either side of the door when a Dalek comes with their food so that they can gauge its range of vision. Unfortunately, it seems the Daleks can see every corner of the cell, though Ian thinks he may be able to jam the door with a small object. Barbara thinks of a way to incapacitate the Dalek’s eye stalk. By mixing the dirt from Susan’s shoes with water, she makes a very sticky mud.

The next time a Dalek enters the cell, they put their plan into motion. The Dalek gives them their meal and leaves, but Ian jams the door, causing the Dalek to come back and investigate. When it reenters the cell, Barbara coats the lens of its eyestalk with the mud, blinding it. It whirls, panicking, and the others pull the machine onto the Thal cloak, cutting it off from the metal floor and powering it down.

Elated by their success, the next stage of their plan is for Ian to get inside the Dalek’s machine. That way, he can pretend to be escorting the prisoners through the Dalek compound. Ian and the Doctor manage to open the machine, and there is a wet, gurgling noise. They share a meaningful look, and Ian asks Susan and Barbara to stand guard in the hall. Then, using the cloak, the Doctor lifts the body of some creature out of the Dalek exoskeleton. The viewer is unable to see the creature.

Ian squeezes into the Dalek machine, and Barbara wipes the dirt off the lens so he can see. When he speaks, he makes his voice monotonous like the Daleks. He can’t figure out how to move the machine on his own, so the others push him out into the hall. As they leave, the camera pans over to the cloak-wrapped creature. A rubbery appendage stirs from beneath the cloak as the screen fades to black. Credits roll.

I think it was a brilliant choice not to show the full body of the Dalek. This gives the species an air of mystery and tension that the showrunners are able to cash in later. We will not get to see what lies inside the Dalek machines for over a very long time.

Part 4 (The Ambush)

As Ian, Barbara, Susan, and the Doctor move through the underground hallways of the Dalek city, Ian discovers how to operate the Dalek exoskeleton and is able to move on his own. They come to door, beyond which is a hallway that will take them to an elevator to the surface—but it is guarded by a Dalek. Ian tries to bluff their way past, saying that the council wants to question the prisoners. The guard Dalek, saying that it has not been informed, moves toward the communicator.

Thinking quickly, Susan screams, running toward the guard Dalek, pretending to make a break for it. Dalek-Ian helps the guard Dalek restrain her, then tells the guard to help him move Susan into the hallway leading to the elevator. The Dalek opens the door, letting them pass through the arch. Once Ian and the others are have fully entered the hallway, the Doctor disables the door behind them, locking the guard Dalek on the other side.

When the guard Dalek finally contacts Dalek central control, one of the Daleks in the control room tells it no orders had been given to move the prisoners. The guard Dalek tries the door to the hall, but finds it disabled. An alarm sounds. Daleks converge on the door and begin to cut through it with a blowtorch, which has replaced one of the Dalek’s plungers. Throughout the series, we will often see the plungers replaced by a more useful tool, and while I see this as an interesting quirk of Dalek civilization, it also highlights a weakness of their creature design—the plungers serve very little practical purpose.

The Doctor, Barbara, and Susan try to get the Dalek exoskeleton open so Ian can escape with them, but the clasp is stuck. They can’t push Ian into the elevator either, as the floor has been magnetized. The sight of the flame cutting a hole in the door terrifies them, so Susan, Barbara, and the Doctor decide to take the elevator to the surface while Ian works on the clasp by himself. Once the three reach ground level, they send the elevator back down. This is a really stupid decision. Why would the others leave Ian behind, even for a second? Let’s say Ian gets out of the machine right after the others leave. He then would have to wait for elevator to come down before making his escape, wasting precious seconds. There is no scenario where this saves time; it can only add time to Ian’s escape.

The Daleks manage to cut through the door, and they surge into the hall to find Ian’s disabled machine sitting there. They blast it with their guns, but luckily, Ian has already managed to escape and is in the elevator. He just manages to reach the surface before the Daleks recall the elevator. This is why the others left Ian behind: so that the show can have the Dalek exoskeleton alone in frame to do this one fake-out moment. I see this as very poor writing—if the showrunners want a dramatic shot of Daleks firing at an exoskeleton, they need to justify it in a way that makes sense. By having the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan acting in a way that is borderline character-breaking—abandoning Ian in his time of need—it makes the whole sequence feel cheap and unearned.

At a nearby window, Barbara spies someone moving through the Dalek city. When Susan comes over to look, she instantly recognizes a Thal. “They’re walking into an ambush!” the Doctor says. At this point, there is no way for the protagonists to know that the Daleks have set an ambush for the Thals. Sure, the Daleks may be treating them poorly and hunting them down, but they are the ones trying to escape. None of them has learned anything about the Daleks that would make them suspicious of the Daleks’ intentions regarding the Thals. This is a continuity error.

Cut to the Daleks still in the hallway on the lower level, where one of them says, “Make no attempt to capture them. They are to be exterminated.” As long as I didn’t miss one, this is the first time a Dalek has uttered their infamous catchphrase.

The Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara try desperately to get the Thals’ attention from the window, but it doesn’t work. They try to leave the room, but the door has been magnetized. What’s worse, the elevator begins to move from below, carrying Daleks up toward the surface. The Doctor manages to pry the door partly open, while Ian and the others push a heavy stone statue toward the elevator shaft. They tip it over the edge, and it slams down onto the elevator, stopping it in its tracks. Then they help the Doctor heave open the door and hurry out of the room.

Cut to the Thals moving carefully through the city. Temmosus is with the group, but he is not the point man. Alydon leads them, and says his instincts are telling him something is wrong. Temmosus disregards this, saying he will speak to them peacefully. “They’ll see that I’m unarmed. There’s no better argument against war than that.”

At the arranged meeting place, a pile of food awaits the arriving Thals. Daleks ring the room. At a command from one of them, they all slide into hiding places to set their ambush.

The Doctor and crew are making their way back toward the city wall and are close to making their escape. Susan insists on warning the Thals about the ambush—which she still shouldn’t know about, but I digress. The Doctor, ever focused on self-preservation, says, “We cannot jeopardize our lives getting involved in an affair which is none of our business.” Barbara says they owe a debt to the Thals—they would be dead without their anti-radiation drugs.

Ian says, “Yes, but the Doctor’s got a point.” At this moment, I’m expecting the same selfish man/selfless woman dichotomy that was presented in the last serial, but then Ian surprises me by saying, “There’s no sense in risking our whole party. You go back to the ship, and I’ll stay and warn the Thals.” Ian heads back into danger as the rest make for the TARDIS.

At the site of the ambush, the Thals begin to make their way toward the food, unaware of the Daleks who have them in their sights. Ian looks on from a hidden room as Temmosus calls out to the Daleks, “Let us work together to rebuild our world.”

As Temmosus speaks, the Daleks slowly creep in behind him.

“No! It’s a trap!” Ian shouts. “Get out of here! Run!”

The Daleks open fire, killing Temmosus instantly. Chaos ensues, with Thals scrambling to get away. Ian runs into a contingent of Thals, and together, they flee the Dalek city.

Back outside the TARDIS, Dyoni is showing the Doctor the Thals’ historical records, including a series of panels which show the location of the planet within the surrounding star systems. The planet is called Skaro. This is far from the last time Skaro will make an appearance in the series. Additionally, it is made clear that the Doctor can use this data to help fly the ship, which the serial has been flipping back and forth on since Part 1. Does the TARDIS need this kind of input from the Doctor or doesn’t it? At this point, the writers’ intentions are very unclear.

Ian and the Thals he met in the city have already returned to the Thals’ camp, and the people are all awaiting the return of the remainder of the Thals. When the rest make it back to camp, they learn that one additional man is dead, but the everyone else has managed to escape.

In a conference with Ian, Barbara, and a few of the Thals, Alydon agrees that he must take the place of leader now that Temmosus is dead. Alydon wishes he knew why the Daleks hated them; that way he could tailor his approach to dealing with them. Ian suggests that the Daleks hate them simply because they are not Daleks. “A dislike for the unlike,” he says, making it clear to the Thals that no matter what they do, the Daleks will seek their destruction. He urges them to bring the fight to the Daleks.

Alydon is adamant that the Thals are not fighters, that they are pacifists. Ian tries to reason with him. “You can’t go on running away,” he says. “There are some things worth preserving.” It is fascinating how Ian seems to get the type of lines that are almost always reserved for the Doctor in later seasons.

Alydon refuses to fight, and a frustrated Ian and Barbara talk about what has transpired. “Are they really pacifists?” Barbara asks, “Or is it a belief that’s become a reality because they’ve never had to prove it?”

The Doctor comes to them with some historical records which detail what the Daleks used to look like, and he hands Ian a picture of a humanoid, saying that they used to be called Dals. This is incorrect, as the forebears of the Daleks are revealed to be the Kaleds much later on.

The Doctor has decided it is time to move on. Barbara and Ian wish that they could have convinced the Thals to fight, but they have done all they can. The Doctor asks Ian for the fluid link back so they can leave. Ian freezes, suddenly recalling that the Daleks took it from him when they searched him. “It must be down there, somewhere. In the city.” Credits roll.

Part 5 (The Expedition)

In Dalek central control, the Daleks have received visual confirmation that the Doctor and his companions have made contact with the Thals. They determine that it is logical for the Thals to attack them and begin making preparations.

But Alydon has other plans. “No,” he tells Ian. “And that is my final word.” Ian goes back to Barbara and Susan, disappointed that he can’t convince them to fight. He doesn’t really blame them, though. After all, how could he expect them to fight the Daleks just to help them get their fluid link back? Barbara disagrees, saying that the Daleks will find a way to leave their city. When they do, she is certain they will attack them and the Thals. Ian is adamant that he just can’t ask the Thals to sacrifice themselves for the Doctor and his companions.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has been tinkering around in the TARDIS, and he was unable to construct a new fluid link. As it turns out, there really is no spare mercury on the ship. He and Barbara try to convince Ian that the only way for them to get the fluid link back is to get the Thals to attack the Daleks. Ian is not moved. “The only way the Thals can fight is if they themselves want to. It must have nothing whatsoever to do with us.”

I gotta say, getting the Thals to fight for their own interest is not the high moral ground that the show is trying to make it out to be. After all, if Ian had had the fluid link when the Doctor asked for it, they would be long gone, and the Thals would be left to suffer alone at the hands of the Daleks. Arguing over the Thals reason for fighting, regardless of the eventual outcome, is just splitting hairs in my opinion. The real moral dilemma already happened, when the Doctor and the rest chose to leave when they thought that events on Skaro no longer concerned them.

Anyway, in order to convince the Thals they can fight, Ian tries to get a rise out of Alydon. He threatens to trade the Thals’ historical records to the Daleks in exchange for their fluid link. Alydon is angered, but he lets Ian do as he wish. Ian changes tact and grabs Dyoni’s wrist, saying he will trade her for the fluid link. As he pulls her away from the rest of the Thals, Alydon storms up to him and knocks him to the ground. “So there is something you’ll fight for,” Ian says.

Back in the city, all of the Daleks who have taken the anti-radiation drugs are suffering catastrophic effects and dying by the dozens. They halt the administration of the drugs, realizing that their bodies have become conditioned to the radiation. Instead of looking for a way to live without radiation, they begin to make plans to release more radiation into the atmosphere. They want to explode another neutron bomb.

Night falls, and in the Thal camp, Alydon is conflicted, talking things over with Dyoni. He’s not sure whether it is more important to fight and live or to die while remaining peaceful. He wishes Temmosus were still alive to make the important decisions.

Barbara and a Thal overhear Alydon and go off to have a conversation of their own. Barbara never says the name of the person she is talking to, though at one point, the Thal mentions “my brother,” which makes this character either Ganatus or Antodus. I can’t overstate how annoying it is that every Thal man looks like every other Thal man. It’s such a lousy visual choice.

Barbara asks Ganatus/Antodus what the Thals will do, and he responds by saying whatever is the consensus of the Thals en masse. Barbara then notices a light source off in the distance and asks what it is. Ganatus/Antodus tells her that it is the lake, a dangerous place where many mutated animals live. When Barbara asks why the Daleks have never cleaned the lake out, Ganatus/Antodus chuckles, saying the lake makes the perfect defense for the rear of the city. “Only a fool would attack the city from the lake.”

In the city, the Daleks begin taking those who are suffering from the anti-radiation drug and exposing them to high levels of radiation. If the Daleks show improvement, they will know that they definitely need high levels of radiation to survive. One Dalek says this means they can never again return to the surface. Another says, “We do not need to adapt to the environment. We will change the environment to suit us.”

The following day, Alydon makes an impassioned speech on behalf of attacking the Daleks. First, he says that if they do not aid the Doctor and his companions in retrieving the fluid link, it will be as if they have condemned them to death by their own hands. Second, he points out that the Daleks hate them, and that they will eventually find a way to leave their city to kill them. This means that it is no longer an option to leave in search of food and in all probability starve to death; they face death now. He finishes with this: “There is no indignity in being afraid to die. But, there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live.”

The Thals agree that fighting is their only choice, much to the delight of the Doctor and his companions. They begin to plan their attack. Despite the danger, the Thals decide that their best course of action is to attack from the lake, as it is the only way into the city that is guaranteed to be undefended. They decide to split into two groups: one with the Doctor and Susan which will distract the Daleks on the city wall side, and one with Ian and Barbara which will try to find a way into the city through the mountains and the swamp.

In the city, the Daleks are confused as to why the Thals are dividing their forces. They also receive results from their radiation trials: the Daleks that had been incapacitated by the anti-radiation drug have been restored by exposure to radiation. The head Dalek asks for a report on how soon they can begin irradiating the atmosphere.

The scene then follows the group which includes Barbara and Ian, the group looking for a way into the city from the lake side. I will call this group the expedition. They enter the swamp, a muggy landscape with lots of mist and sloshy mud. The audio engineers have created a truly remarkable soundscape of warm, bubbly noises that made shivers run down my spine when they first came through my headphones. The soundscape sets the scene very well, adding texture to the excellent set design.

Ganatus and Antodus argue about their prospects, with Antodus being very pessimistic about their probability of survival. Ganatus gives his brother short shrift, saying they must press on or else they will have failed Alydon. Now that I have actually seen them interact in a scene together, I think I can finally tell the brothers apart. Again, this should be pretty obvious, but if your audience can’t distinguish two of your characters until part five of a seven-part serial, you’ve done something wrong.

In a conversation between Ian and Barbara, we learn that they have set a deadline for two-and-a-half days to reach the city. Ganatus directs the group to find a place to rest for the night, and they find a relatively dry patch. As they begin to set up camp, Ian goes to wash his face in the lake. Something with thick tentacles and glowing eyes rises from the water, and Ian backs away, reminded of the dangers of the swamp.

With a few of the Thals taking the first watch, Ian, Barbara, and the rest go to sleep. The following morning, one of the Thals tells the others that he has discovered a series of pipes rising from the lake and cutting through the mountains toward the city. Ian says that the pipes must signify a tunnel of some sort that leads into the city. Excited, they begin to break camp.

One of the Thals, a man named Elyon (pronounced EH-lee-ahn), goes to the water’s edge to fill up their waterbags. Just as an aside, no matter what genre of media you are watching, if a character you have never heard of before is suddenly named, that character will die 100% of the time. Writers out there, if you’re not gonna take the time to develop your character before you kill them off, don’t do them the indignity of naming them right before you chuck them into the meat grinder.

Anyway, some creature causes a whirlpool to form in the lake, and the rest of the expedition hears Elyon’s scream. Credits roll.

Part 6 (The Ordeal)

The rest of the expedition rushes to the lakeside to find the waterbags drifting lazily in a waning whirlpool. There isn’t any sign of Elyon, though a few bubbles rising in the lake give the impression of him having been dragged beneath the surface. The expedition is shaken, especially Antodus, who is beginning to lose his nerve. An ominous atmosphere hangs over them as they depart.

In the second group, which I will call the distraction, the Doctor, Susan, Dyoni, and Alydon are using binoculars to spy on the city as they annotate their findings on a map. The Doctor says that they must find a way to put the radio and television waves out of action. Without any interference, the Daleks have complete coverage in and around the city. That is the nature of this distraction: sabotage.

Back in Dalek central control, the findings of their report show that a neutron bomb is not possible in shorter than 23 days. They agree that they must find another way to spread radiation.

Next, we see that the expedition has found a network of caves that lead into the heart of the mountain. They have split up into small groups to look for a way through to the city. Barbara and Ganatus are at the end of one of these caves when they hear water flowing and find a narrow passage that looks promising. Ganatus wants to go on ahead, and Barbara makes sure he has a rope tied around his waist just in case, securing the other end to a large stone. “Remember what Ian said; we’re not to take any chances,” she reminds him.

“Do you always do what Ian says?” Ganatus asks.

This seems to strike a nerve with Barbara. “No, I don’t,” she says flatly. To this point in the series, I can recall many instances of Barbara doing what Ian says, but off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you one where the opposite has happened. Is this the series commenting on itself, or does this signal an upcoming shift in Barbara’s level of self-actualization? Is this just a throwaway dig at Barbara?

Ganatus takes the flashlight with him through the passage, while Barbara uses her foot as a pully for the rope to help lower him down a descent of about 30 feet. As she is feeding more rope through the passage, it slips through her fingers, and Ganatus falls to the bottom. Ian, Antodus, and an unnamed Thal hear this commotion and come rushing to their aid. Luckily, Ganatus is not hurt, and the others soon join him at the bottom of the gap. They have managed to stumble upon a cavern with lots of branching tunnels, one which seems to be their best chance at making it through the to the Dalek city.

Speaking of the city, the distraction has decided to use mirrors to focus the rays of the sun on the Daleks’ instruments. This sunlight causes enough interference for the Doctor, Susan, and Alydon to slip inside the city walls undetected.

Back in the caves, the expedition grows more confident as the tunnel continues to travel toward the city. Antodus pulls Ganatus aside and tells him that he wishes to go back. Ganatus insists that they go on, and Antodus says they are all going to be killed. “They are going to die anyway. We could just go back and tell the others that the Daleks killed them.” This is unacceptable to Ganatus. He shoves Antodus, who falls to the ground, triggering a large rockslide which blocks the way back. There is no way to go but onward. A rock from the slide hit Antodus, but he is well enough to carry on.

Remember Dyoni’s one-off line about Antodus being afraid of the dark? That is what is supposed to be informing Antodus’s actions in this moment. But remember, I’ve already explained why it would be nearly impossible for the viewer to absorb that information at the time it was given, never mind recall it three episodes later. It would have been great if the writers had included something in this episode to remind the audience Antodus is supposed to be afraid of the dark. But without that context, the first time I watched through this serial, I thought Antodus was stupid, selfish, and cowardly. Even knowing that he is afraid of the dark on this viewing, he still comes across as less trustworthy than any of the other Thals. It’s disappointing that the only time the writers chose to give any of the Thals some unique characterization is when they singled out a character and made him uniquely unlikable.

Back in Dalek central control, the Daleks’ instruments have picked up vibrations of people moving through the city. Despite what the Doctor may think, the Daleks are still able to locate their position. Control sends out Daleks to take them by surprise.

Cut to the Doctor, Susan, and Alydon, who have arrived at the base of an antenna. From this antenna, a single wire runs down a wall and through the ground, and the Doctor says this wire is what enables the Daleks to utilize static electricity to power their machines.

The Doctor tells Alydon to go back to the other Thals and tell them to stop reflecting the light towards the city. He also wants them to move from time to time so the Daleks will have a harder time finding them. Then he goes about sabotaging the Daleks’ power supply. Using Susan’s metal necklace—which holds a TARDIS key—the Doctor shorts out the wire, causing sparks and damaging the machinery.

Susan tells the Doctor that now that they have sabotaged the power supply, the Daleks will soon be converging on their location. The Doctor takes the time to gloat, marveling at his own genius. “We mustn’t waste time!” begs Susan, but the doctor is too busy talking about his own “superior brain.” The next moment, they are surrounded by Daleks.

Meanwhile, the expedition has arrived at a gap in the tunnel. A huge ravine cuts through their path, with a drop that spells certain death if they were to fall. Ian thinks he can get across the gap with a running start and a jump. Tying a rope around himself, he moves back away from the edge, gearing up for takeoff. There is a great feeling of tension about what is about to happen, with Ian and Ganatus sharing a nervous look and Barbara wishing him good luck. The director allows for plenty of long pauses to build this tension, until finally, Ian breaks for the edge and leaps.

There’s not much room to land, but Ian manages to latch onto the far wall and keep himself upright. Next, Ganatus takes his turn, jumping across and landing on the other side, braced by Ian. With Ian holding one end of the rope, Ganatus explores around a cleft in the rock face and finds where the cave opens up again and changes into a formation that may have been chiseled out of the rock. This is their most promising development yet.

In Dalek central control, the Doctor and Susan are once again held prisoner, with magnetic handcuffs that keep them pinned to a wall. There, the Daleks tell them of their plans to bombard the atmosphere with radiation from their nuclear reactor. This will result in the extermination of the Thals as well as the Doctor and his companions. “Tomorrow, we will be the masters of Skaro!”

Back in the caves, it is Barbara’s turn to run and jump, leaping into Ian’s arms. Ian then sends her around the rock face to join Ganatus. The unnamed Thal man soon follows, leaving only Antodus and Ian in this section of the cave.

Ian throws the rope over to Antodus, but the man is frozen in fear. He doesn’t even react to the rope, and Ian is forced to reel it in and toss it over once more. Antodus catches it, moving slowly, reluctantly away from the edge. Everything about this interaction feels as if it will lead to Antodus tumbling into the ravine, from Antodus’s fear to the sound design becoming something of a distant, erratic heartbeat.

Sure enough, Antodus leaps across, fails to latch on to Ian, and falls backwards into the ravine. The other end of the rope, tied around Ian’s waist, yanks Ian toward the edge of the cliff, and he barely hangs on to the rock wall. Antodus is holding onto the rope for dear life, but his grip is failing. “Help me!” he screams. “I can’t hold on!”

Ian’s grip is also failing, and every second drags him a little closer to the edge of the cliff. Credits roll.

Part 7 (The Rescue)

Ganatus rushes back into the scene and grabs Ian’s arm, but this seems only to be delaying the inevitable. Unless Antodus can find some sort of handhold to give Ian time to reposition himself, they are both going to go over the edge. But there is nothing; it looks like they are both goners. Suddenly, Antodus takes a knife and slices through the rope, plummeting to his death and saving Ian in the process. The camera zooms in on Ganatus, who is overcome by a wave of grief.

I get that the writers want me to feel sad for the loss of Antodus here and to respect his noble sacrifice or whatever, but I really can’t find it in me to care. You can’t go out of your way to make an especially unlikable Thal and also expect me to miss them once they are gone. We are only a few scenes removed from Antodus being fully on board with abandoning Ian and Barbara and dooming the Thals’ mission just to save his own skin. In fact, if he had just quietly slipped away, he never would have been there for his cowardly ass to fall over the edge and endanger Ian. But no, he had to grovel to his brother and put the whole mission in peril. Bye Antodus; you will not be missed. Your sacrifice means nothing to me.

Back in the city, the Doctor and Susan are still cuffed to a wall in Dalek central control. The Doctor is trying to reason with the Daleks, begging them to find a way to coexist with the Thals. “Only one race can survive,” a Dalek responds. The new Dalek plan is to convert the oxygen distribution system into something that will spew radiation into the atmosphere and pollute the land beyond the city.

“Nothing can live outside if you do that,” says the Doctor. “Nothing.”

“Except the Daleks,” a Dalek replies.

Back in the tunnels, the expedition has come upon another rockfall. Ganatus is mournful. “First Elyon died, and then my brother. And for what?”

Ian says they must go back and find another way. Ganatus wants to give up, all fight gone from him. Just then, the flashlight begins to fail, and they turn it off to conserve its power. Suddenly, Ian notices that there is still a light source coming into the cave. He digs through the rockfall until suddenly, he emerges into the bowels of the Dalek city, into some sort of water treatment facility. “We’re through,” he says, relieved.

Back at the Thal camp, a group of Thals led by Alydon returns to the forest to discover that the Doctor and Susan have not yet come out of the city. Alydon spurs the rest of the Thals into action, and they storm off to rescue them.

In the city, the power is continuing to fail: a result of the Doctor shorting out the main wire. The Daleks are down to half-power, though it strikes me as odd that this doesn’t seem to concern them. They are totally focused on filling the environment with radiation, but won’t they be unable to move once the power fails completely, regardless of whether or not they change the atmosphere? Unless whatever they do with the radiation is also meant to restore power, in which case there might be something in the plot that I missed.

As a last resort, the Doctor tells the Daleks that he has a time machine and tries to use it to bargain with them. The Daleks are doubtful of the time machine’s existence. They say as soon as all life on the surface has been exterminated, if the machine does exist, they can examine it for themselves. The Doctor then says he is the only one who can operate it, but the Daleks don’t believe him. His last card played, the Doctor sags back against the wall, defeated. Just then, Dalek sensors pick up the Thals entering the city en masse. This breathes new hope into the Doctor and Susan, as long as the Thals can reach them in time.

Meanwhile, Ian, Barbara, Ganatus, and the unnamed Thal slink through the underbelly of the Dalek city. They see a Dalek and hide, overhearing a communication that says the Thals are invading the city. Despite their efforts at secrecy, their image is soon captured by the Daleks’ security cameras, and a contingent of Daleks is ordered into the corridors to head them off.

In Dalek central, control the Daleks learn that the capsule is ready to release radiation into the atmosphere. They begin a countdown from 100. Now, any evil masterminds out there, let me give you a tip. If your underlings let you know that your super mega death bomb is ready to fire, don’t start your countdown in the triple digits. You are just begging the good guys slinking through your facility to stop you just in the nick of time. There’s no reason for you to start higher than ten.

As it is, Ian and the rest have 100 Mississippis to get themselves into Dalek central control and disarm that radiation capsule. They continue their slow progress through the hallways, where they meet up with a group of the invading Thals. Happy for the reinforcements, Ian tells them that they need to find the Dalek control room. Over the loud speakers, they suddenly hear, “Daleks go to control room immediately. All Daleks to Level 10.” This is an irritatingly convenient way of letting our protagonists know where they are in relation to Dalek central control. They are on Level 9, only one floor away.

Then they hear that all corridors except for those on Level 10 will be sealed. Immediately, doors start closing, and everyone runs for the nearest one. They manage to get through two closing doors, Ian holding the first open and Barbara holding the second. Despite the Daleks’ best efforts, the expedition makes it to Level 10.

As Ian’s group heads for Dalek central control, one of the Daleks is counting down incredibly slowly and has reached the mid-30s. It takes until 20 for the Doctor and Susan to be freed, and the countdown hits 12 before the invaders actually engage the Daleks in combat. Barbara draws a few of them off by running down a corridor. Then, in what is just an atrocious fight scene, we see Thals jumping on Daleks and tipping them over. A few of them explode from fairly benign impacts. A Thal descends from the ceiling by climbing down a rope, gets shot by a Dalek gun, and still is able to shamble his way over to the Dalek that shot him, spin it around, and hurl it across the floor into some sort of machinery. This seems to have a similar effect as what the Doctor did to the main power supply, shorting something out.

Suddenly, the Daleks start to slow down considerably. “Doctor! Doctor, I think they’re dying!” Ian says. Meanwhile, has been well into the single digits for quite some time. Why has it not triggered the radiation? Is it not an automatic launch? If it was manual, why didn’t the Daleks set it off as soon as the invaders entered the room? So many questions.

As the chaos winds down, one last Dalek scoots over to the Doctor to beg for its life. “Stop…our power…from wasting. Or it will be…end…of the Daleks.”

“Even if I’d wanted to, I don’t know how,” the Doctor replies, unable to even look at the thing. The Dalek gurgles its death rattle as the machine powers down. All in all, a rather unimpressive finale to what was six-and-a-half episodes of decent buildup.

Now, the episode starts tying up a few loose ends. The Thals start removing the bodies of those they have lost. One Thal bemoans all of this equipment, saying everything has been for nothing since they don’t know how to use it—which makes no sense; at no point have the Thals ever linked their struggle to the procurement of Dalek technology. Barbara, optimistic, tells them they must experiment for the good of the Thals and Skaro. The Doctor rushes off to look at the nuclear reactor and make sure there is no radiation leakage. Ian goes with him, but not before grabbing the fluid link with a wry remark and a smile. Susan reminds Alydon that the Daleks have developed a way of producing food with artificial sunlight, and that they should have everything they need now. Everyone leaves Dalek central control, the camera panning one last time over the ruined Daleks.

Back in the forest, the Thals asks the Doctor if he will stay and help them build a new civilization. The Doctor politely declines, and he and his companions start saying their goodbyes and heading into the TARDIS.

Barbara is the last one outside the TARDIS, held up by Ganatus. He gives her a gift of cloth, then takes one of her hands in both of his and kisses it in a romantic gesture. Barbara gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek, then slips inside the ship. That came out of absolutely nowhere. Nothing about their dialogue up to this point hinted at any romantic tension, unless you count that bit about her always doing what Ian says—which Barbara did not respond well to. So then, why did we have more romance between Barbara and Ganatus than we had between Alydon and Dyoni? The latter pair was something the writers were clearly trying to set up from the first scene with the Thals, and it totally disappeared by the end of the serial.

Moving on, the TARDIS dematerializes, leaving dumbfounded Thals to stare on in wonder. Inside, the Doctor is fluttering around the control panel, flicking at switches here and there while the rest look on. Suddenly, there is a bang, accompanied by the lights in the control room going out. All of the passengers collapse, and the sound of the TARDIS in flight develops a decidedly sickly twinge. Credits roll.

Takeaways

Well, we had a good thing going there for a while. Up until the last episode, I was considering giving this episode a rating somewhere around a 9.0, but that climax was a real stinker. Overall, this serial does a lot of things really well. Coming out of An Unearthly Child, it shows the audience a little more of what the TARDIS can do, not only traveling through time but to an entirely different planet. It also does a good job at dedicating more screentime to Susan, a character who was definitely underutilized in the previous serial. I really enjoy the sequence where she runs back to the TARDIS for the anti-radiation drugs, showing that even though she is a child, she still has agency and can do things on her own.

One of the serial’s biggest strengths is definitely its set design. Some of the landscapes are not just good for the time period; they could stand up to just about any setting Classic Who has to offer. The painted backdrop of the city first shown in Part 1 is breathtaking, the swamp is delightfully disgusting, and the corridors of the Dalek city are appropriately sterile and inhuman. The only setting I don’t feel particularly strongly about is the mountain caves—though to be fair, caves are pretty underwhelming throughout Classic Who. These caves are no worse than others.

Even beyond its successes in set design, this serial sets the gold standard for creature design in the creation of the Daleks. What can I say about them that generations of Whovians haven’t already said? They are unique, deadly, and ruthless, something that seems like it should have been impossible given their goofy shape and the fact that they cannot emote. The robotic voice and shifting eyestalk are enough to lend these creatures that uncanny feeling which makes them excellent antagonists. I also have the opinion that the idea of the Dalek gets extremely played out over the course of the next 41-and-counting seasons, but for the 1960s, everything about this creature is decades ahead of its time.

For the most part, the Thals are a missed opportunity. None of the Thal characters evoke a strong emotion from me except for Antodus, whom I hate conceptually—beyond being an unlikable coward, Antodus is a blatant device to move the plot forward, and as such is underdeveloped and two-dimensional. Despite this, the Thals are not especially bad by the standards of many of the tribal, homogenous societies Doctor Who will feature in its classic serials. Whenever the showrunners go for this sort of tribal society vs invader dynamic, my critique of the tribes will almost always be about how shallow its characters are. They act as one, with interchangeable characters, never leaving much of an impression on me. Still, I don’t think I can say the Thals were the most offensive aspect of The Daleks.

No, I have to give that honor to the piss-poor climax. What even is that? It takes the menace of the Daleks, the inhuman evil of their motivations, and just throws it all out the window, replaced by spinning idiots being knocked over like dominoes. Nothing about the final fight is satisfying, and nothing about the resolution feels earned because of it. Without Part 7, I would have been able to safely place this serial as one of the best in the early era of the series. Instead, I rate it as a good serial that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Looking forward, I want to see how future serials featuring the Daleks build on the premise established in this one. After the last serial, I mentioned how I wanted to see some distinction between Ian and Barbara’s characters, and I am still waiting on that. It doesn’t help that the show so often has Ian taking the lead and Barbara following in his shadow. I also really liked how Susan was developed in this serial. I know that she is the first companion to leave the show, so I’m expecting some more demonstrations of her independence leading up to her eventual departure. Lastly, I know this is a super long-term expectation, but I cannot wait to see the Doctor lose some of this selfish characterization and start to exhibit some more care for the people around him.

Rating: 7.8/10

Chapter Text

The Edge of Destruction

Part 1 (The Edge of Destruction)

We rejoin our travelers as they leave Skaro, with an interior shot of the TARDIS as it dematerializes. Suddenly, there is a bang, accompanied by the lights in the console room going out. I was wrong at the end of the last episode when I said that everyone collapsed. Barbara, who was not in the console room at the time of the mysterious incident, can be heard groaning offscreen. Based on this, I can’t tell if she was ever unconscious, but she is definitely negatively affected by whatever happened. She returns to the console room to find the Doctor on the ground, Ian in a chair, and Susan slumped against the control panel, all unconscious.

She walks up to Ian tentatively. “Mr. Chesterton?…Ian Chesterton?” Her speech is oddly halting, as if she is struggling to remember.

Suddenly, Susan bolts upright, then walks up to Barbara, her head askew, as if in a trance. “I know you,” she says.

Susan recoils, suffering from a pain in her head and in the back of the neck. Barbara, concerned, tries to help, but Susan says she is alright. Then Susan spots the Doctor on the ground, and Barbara kneels beside him, saying that he has cut his head open.

As Barbara examines the Doctor, Susan notices Ian, still unconscious in the chair, and says, “Who’s that? Oughtn’t we to go and help him?” Barbara does not hear this comment, occupied as she is with the Doctor. Then Susan asks, “What happened?” Barbara doesn’t know, and Susan goes to another room of the TARDIS to fetch some water from the Food Machine and a bandage for the Doctor’s head.

Finished with the Doctor, Barbara stands and turns suddenly to find Ian standing upright, staring at her strangely. “You’re working late tonight, Miss Wright.” These are the exact words Ian said to Barbara in their first scene together in An Unearthly Child, which I absolutely love. He staggers, catching his balance on the back of a chair, then asks, “Can I have a glass of water?” When Barbara says that Susan is bringing one, Ian says, “Susan Foreman, you mean?” He then notices the Doctor on the floor, but doesn’t seem to recognize him. “Shouldn’t we help him?” he asks.

At this point, we are only three minutes into the episode, and there has already been a whirlwind of little character interactions, one after another. This is my second viewing of this episode in about an hour, and I think I would have to watch this sequence a couple more times to keep everything straight if I were not writing anything down. It makes me feel disoriented, which I think is intentional. It’s a fraction of the disorientation that the characters onscreen are feeling with their addled memories.

The scene briefly cuts to show Susan cutting a roll of bandages with a pair of scissors. It’s a fairly unimportant moment—though the scissors do come back later—but I want to try to give as comprehensive a view of the TARDIS as I can, as it is by far the most repeated setting in the series. We haven’t seen this nook of the ship before; it has a trapezoidal table with a small wooden carving, a metal slat back chair, and a square bench. Again, not important in the grand scheme of things, but I want to be as thorough as I can now so I can keep track of how the TARDIS changes over the course of the series.

Back in the console room, Ian has joined Barbara next to the Doctor, crouching low to check his vitals. In a throwaway line, Ian says that the Doctor’s heart seems alright, implying that Ian has listened to his pulse and found it to be what he expected. Something that I will come back to often over the next several seasons is that the early showrunners have shown no conception of the Doctor being an alien, besides a vague allusion in An Unearthly Child to him and Susan being from another world. As such, I don’t see anything in the very early seasons as pertaining to the Time Lord mythos. The writers have not conceptualized Time Lords as a species, and therefore, an allusion to the Doctor’s single heart here isn’t a continuity error in the traditional sense—though it is something that must be disregarded in order for the series canon to make sense.

As the two teachers are checking him over, the Doctor stirs, blurting out, “I can’t take you back, Susan. I can’t.” The Doctor must be dreaming about a conversation, real or imagined, during which Susan must have asked—possibly begged—the Doctor to take her back to Gallifrey. I love the depth that this adds to the Doctor and Susan’s relationship, while at the same time making the Doctor’s departure from his homeworld even more mysterious. This comment jogs something in Barbara’s memory. “The ship,” she says, looking around the console room as if she is truly seeing it for the first time. “The TARDIS.”

Meanwhile, in the living quarters, Susan tries to get water from the Food Machine. It gives her a message that the machine is empty, then gives her a bag full of water anyway. Susan finds this strange, but all thoughts of the Food Machine are forgotten when she returns to the console room and finds the TARDIS doors wide open. “The doors!” she says to Ian and Barbara. “Well, they can’t open on their own, they can’t!”

Ian suggests that perhaps the Doctor did opened them before he bashed his head in. Barbara says the doors must have been forced open when they crashed. Susan assures both of them that it is impossible for the ship to crash. We’re only at the five-minute mark, and the plot continues to progress extremely quickly.

Susan, panicking, says that there could be something inside the ship with them. This comment goes unacknowledged by the others, and Barbara takes the bandage from Susan to patch up the Doctor while Ian goes over to the open doors. He makes to leave, but just as he gets to the doors, they close by themselves. Ian takes a few steps away from the doors, and they open again. He approaches them once more, and they close.

Susan announces that she is going to try the controls, but when she walks up to the control panel, something overcomes her and she collapses, unconscious, in much the same way as in the beginning of the episode. She lies on the ground next to the Doctor. “What’s going on here!” Ian exclaims. Then Doctor begins to wakes, and Ian scoops Susan into his arms and carries her offscreen to a bed.

The first thing the Doctor mentions when he wakes is a pain in the back of his neck, just like Susan mentioned earlier, though Barbara doesn’t see any mark there. The Doctor is adamant that he must have been hit. The camera zooms in on Barbara, as if she has had an epiphany of some kind. Perhaps she is remembering when Susan said the same thing.

Back in the living quarters, a wider camera angle finally helps to put this space in perspective. It could be considered two rooms, though they are separated by a glass wall, with a door-shaped cutout to let people move between them, offering no privacy. On one side of the glass is the Food Machine, a small circular table, and a low couch. On the other are the table, chair, and bench from earlier.

It is into this second room that Ian carries Susan. He presses a button on the wall, and a black chaise lounge folds down from the wall like a murphy bed. Ian feels Susan’s forehead, then goes to get water from the Food Machine. He gets the same empty message, but he also gets a bag of water anyway, just like what happened to Susan. He dampens a cloth and turns back toward Susan, only she is no longer lying down. She stands, her body in a defensive posture, wielding a pair of scissors in one hand like a knife. “Who are you?” she demands.

Ian tries to reason with her, then moves to take the scissors. Susan stabs at the air, then raises the scissors high as if to strike at Ian if he takes another step closer. She grunts as if in pain, wails “No!”, and stabs at the bed several times in quick succession before passing out again.

Some short time later, the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are talking in the other room of the living quarters, near the Food Machine. Susan’s pair of scissors makes a centerpiece on the circular table. The Doctor says that the ship must have put them down somewhere, but he doesn’t know where. “You don’t know, do you?” Barbara says, referring to his inability to control the TARDIS. “You’re just guessing, aren’t you?””

When Ian asks the Doctor if he has any idea where they are, the Doctor responds, “Where is not as important as why, young man.” He asks Ian and Barbara very pointedly if either of them have touched the controls, implying that he suspects them of foul play. This seems out of character, even for the very early 1st Doctor. After all, didn’t they just suffer through Za’s tribe and the Daleks together? Why would he suspect them of going against him now?

Barbara wonders aloud if the Doctor thinks something could have gotten into the ship, a man, a being of some kind, or perhaps some sort of intelligence. The Doctor says this is illogical, but Barbara argues that not everything follows neat patterns of logic. This is the second character to suspect the involvement of some outside influence, the first being Susan.

The Doctor roundly dismisses the notion, saying, “I’ve been patient with you, Miss Wright. But really, there’s no more time for these absurd theories.” The Doctor goes into the console room, asking for Ian to help him look for a fault. Ian hangs back for a moment, telling Barbara to keep an eye on Susan. He also tells her not to mention any of this business about something possibly being in the ship. Little do they know, Susan is awake and listening to their conversation. Once she hears they are keeping things from her, she snatches the scissors off of a table and retreats back to her bed.

The Doctor and Ian go to the fault locator to see if it has diagnosed anything wrong with the ship. The fault locator says there should be nothing wrong with the ship. Ian tells the Doctor to avoid the main console, as it may give him a nasty shock.

Back in the sleeping chamber, Barbara goes to check on Susan and finds her awake in her bed. “How are you feeling?” she asks. Susan doesn’t reply. Barbara bends down close to Susan, and asks, “You do know who I am, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You’re Barbara.” The reply is cold and unkind. “Where’s Grandfather?”

Barbara tells her that he is checking the controls with Ian, but nothing she says can get Susan to take a less hostile posture. Barbara sighs and tells Susan to give her the scissors she’s hiding. Susan sits up, taking the scissors from her sleeve and pointing the business end at Barbara. “I overheard the two of you,” she says. “There’s something here in the ship, and he doesn’t want you to tell me.”

Barbara tries to make it clear to Susan that no one would hurt her, but Susan is convinced that she and Ian have lied to her. Susan raises the scissors threateningly, then gasps, her hand trembling. Barbara takes the opportunity to rush over to Susan, wrestling the scissors out of her grasp.

Her weapon neutralized, Susan suddenly becomes very anxious, talking about how she never noticed how deep the shadows are before and how quiet it is in the ship. “Yes,” replies Barbara, “or we’re just imagining things.” Susan reminds Barbara that the doors were open, saying that something could have gotten on the ship. When Barbara asks Susan where such a thing would hide, Susan says mockingly, “In one of us.” From this, I gather that the showrunners want us to believe that something is inside of Susan’s mind.

The idea unnerves Barbara, who starts to babble on about how it must be something else. Ian returns to the room to tell them that, according to the fault locator, there is nothing wrong with the TARDIS. Ian tells Susan and Barbara that the Doctor has decided that the fault must be outside the ship. He says that the Doctor has gone to turn on the scanner.

“No!” Susan screams, flying out of bed and rushing into the console room. “Don’t touch!” She tells the Doctor that when she tried to touch the console, it was like being hit in the back of the neck. The Doctor says he felt it, too, though Ian and Barbara both say that they didn’t feel anything like that.

Taking a risk, the Doctor flips the switch to turn on the scanner. Nothing happens to him. The scanner shows several images that the Doctor is certain cannot possibly be outside the ship. First, there is a picture of Earth, Britain to be exact. When the scanner shows this image, the TARDIS doors open automatically, closing again after a few seconds. Next, the scanner shows a jungle that Susan recognizes as a place she and the Doctor visited before, a hostile planet called Quinnis. Lastly it shows a series of three images in quick succession: a planet, the same planet getting further away, and a solar system. The scanner flashes bright white, then shows nothing.

Ian asks what that was all about, and the Doctor says Ian ought to know, outright accusing him and Barbara of tampering with the TARDIS. “I know now who’s responsible. You are. You’ve sabotaged my ship.” He goes even further, saying Ian and Barbara must have knocked Susan and the Doctor unconscious. This outrages Ian and Barbara, and for good reason. The Doctor says they must want to blackmail him into returning them to England.

Barbara finally snaps back. “How could you be so stupid? How dare you! Do you realize, you stupid old man, that you’d have died in the Cave of Skulls if Ian hadn’t made fire for you? And what about what we went through against the Daleks? Not just for us, but for you and Susan, too, and all because you tricked us into going down into the city. Accuse us? You ought to go down on your hands and knees and thank us. But gratitude’s the last thing you’ll ever have, or any sort of common sense either.” This is a welcome change from the Barbara who has been so quick to follow the lead of the others. And it feels very justified. Like I said earlier, why would she and Ian turn on the Doctor now? How could the Doctor expect them to know how to sabotage the TARDIS? This line of reasoning from the Doctor is totally irrational and out of character, but it least it give Barbara this satisfying moment.

As soon as Barbara finishes her tirade, she turns and screams, startled by the sight of a clock with all of its numbers and hands melted into a blob of metal. Her reaction to this is extremely over-the-top, with her clutching at her head and holding back sobs. Ian checks his watch to find it has been destroyed as well. Barbara takes off her watch and hurls it at the floor, then sinks into a chair and begins crying. Neither the melted clock face nor the watch communicate very well visually to the audience—the kind of thing that you might miss if you’re not looking closely enough. And if you do miss it—like I did on my first watch—it makes Barbara’s reaction downright funny. I laughed out loud; it’s definitely some of the weakest filmmaking we’ve gotten to this point.

The Doctor leaves, returning with a tray of beverages, offering them each a drink to give them a chance to cool down. Ian is wary of the Doctor’s sudden change of heart, but takes his drink. They all do. Barbara, still shaken, announces she is going to bed. Susan asks the Doctor to patch things up with Barbara, then follows the older woman into the living quarters. Ian lingers for a moment to echo Susan’s sentiments, to which the Doctor says, “I’m afraid we have no time for codes and manners…I must think. Rash action is worse than no action at all.”

Ian says, “I don’t see anything rash in apologizing to Barbara.” Scoffing, he follows the others.

Inside the living quarters, we now see multiple chaise lounge/murphy beds pulled away from the wall, everyone getting ready for bed. Susan tries to apologize to Barbara for the Doctor; Barbara does not answer when Susan asks her to forgive him.

Later, the Doctor is seen moving around the living quarters, making certain that Susan, Barbara, and Ian are all asleep. Then he goes to the console room, smiling as if he is up to something. He looks over the console for a moment. Just as he is about to touch something on the console, a pair of hands grips him from behind. Credits roll.

This is the first example of a true mystery within a Doctor Who serial. In An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, the audience was given the full picture, sometimes even information that the Doctor and his companions did not have. If you don’t already know what happens in this serial, I want you to try and piece together why the TARDIS has broken down and who or what is the culprit. See if you can figure it out for yourself before it is revealed in Part 2.

Part 2 (The Brink of Disaster)

The Doctor whirls around. Ian is the one trying to grab him; with a shove, the Doctor sends him to the ground. Barbara rushes into the console room, stooping low over Ian, who has fainted. The Doctor thinks he is vindicated, that he has caught the culprits. Barbara tries to point out that Ian has passed out just like the Doctor and Susan had, but the Doctor doesn’t trust her. “It was you that told me [Susan] fainted, and I very nearly believed you…he’s play-acting!”

Barbara tries to reason with the Doctor, saying that something terrible is happening to all of them. The Doctor is obstinate, insisting that this is some kind of plot for Barbara and Ian to gain control of the ship.

Susan enters the console room and goes to the Doctor’s side, agreeing with her grandfather. She and the Doctor share a meaningful look, and Susan’s expression immediately softens. “No!” she begs.

“There is no other way,” says the Doctor. He doesn’t explain what he means by this, and the line hangs ominously over them all.

Barbara tries to shake Ian awake but is unable to roust him. Susan asks Barbara how he got like this, and Barbara tells her that he went near the control panel. Recognizing the similarities, Susan says that the same thing happened to her. Seeing Susan’s mind begin to change, Barbara pleads with her: “What do you think we’ve done? Hypnotized you? Drugged you? Susan, we wouldn’t do anything like that, believe me.”

Out of the blue, Ian sits upright, shouting, “Don’t touch it, Doctor!” Then he loses consciousness again.

Susan finally makes it clear that she now believes Barbara. She tries to convince the Doctor, but he still doesn’t trust the two. He says Ian and Barbara must be put off the ship. “Why are you so suspicious of us?” Barbara demands.

At this point, Ian comes fully awake, and the Doctor tells him he must get off the TARDIS. Ian is so disoriented that he doesn’t even object. “I’ll be alright when I get outside,” he mumbles.

Just when it looks like there is no going back, an alarm in the TARDIS blares. The Doctor goes to the fault locator, and is shocked to see every single indicator lit up: every piece of equipment on the TARDIS is showing a fault.

Barbara tries to join the Doctor, but, as if by reflex, Ian grips Barbara’s shoulders, saying, “No! You can’t touch it.” Barbara pulls herself free, and Ian blinks, looking at his hands as if they have a mind of their own. “The controls are alive,” he warns.

The Doctor says that he finally understands the nature of the danger that they face, even if he has no idea how to stop it. The entire fault locator lighting up can mean only one thing: the ship is on the point of disintegration. “You’re not to blame,” he says to Ian and Barbara. “All four of us are to blame!” Susan figures out that the lights on the fault locator are going off every fifteen seconds. The Doctor tells her to keep an eye on it. Then he helps Barbara to steady Ian, saying they all must work together to try and avert the danger.

The Doctor lays out the situation clearly. He doesn’t believe the ship has crashed. He doesn’t think an evil intelligence of some sort has boarded the ship. And he no longer believes Ian and Barbara are the source of the trouble.

Considering the repetitive, 15-second interval of the fault locator, Barbara has an idea. “That explains the clock face. We had time taken away from us, and now it’s being given back to us because it’s running out.” By her reasoning, the melting clocks were a very roundabout way for the TARDIS to let them all know that they are running out of time to stop this disaster. This is a little silly, because the alarm that went off in this scene has already given them that information. Why would the TARDIS send a cryptic message by melting clocks when a loud noise is so much more effective?

A quake shakes the whole console room, and the central column rises, almost coming free from the console. The Doctor says that when the TARDIS is powered down, it is usually impossible for the column to move on its own. For it to occur now means they are in danger of the column coming all the way out and unleashing the energy contained within the heart of the TARDIS. They would all be vaporized instantly. Given this development, the Doctor says that they have only 10 minutes to survive.

As the Doctor moves back toward the console, Barbara has another sudden epiphany. Why is the section of the console around the scanner safe to touch, when the rest of it knocks them unconscious? The Doctor says he doesn’t have a clue, but Barbara says, “I think, perhaps, we’ve been given nothing else but clues.”

“Like the Food Machine,” Ian says. “It registered empty but it wasn’t.” Then Barbara speaks again about how with the clock faces, it took time away from them and replaced it with the light on the fault locator.

Here’s a funny line from the Doctor for those who have seen the modern series: “‘It?’ What do you mean, ‘it?’ My machine can’t think.” Barbara disagrees. She says that because the TARDIS has a built-in defense mechanism, it has been trying to find a way to communicate that the fault lies not with the machinery, but with something the crew has done. She also suggests that the power beneath the central column trying to escape is another clue. “But why would it want to escape?” she wonders.

Ian suggests a force outside the TARDIS might be the culprit, but the Doctor rules this out, saying that any such force would need to be as strong as a solar system. Just then, another explosion rocks the console room. “You see?” Barbara says, “The machine has been warning us all along! All those blackouts we had.” But only when they went near certain sections of the console, Susan adds.

Continuing her streak of genius, Barbara has another suggestion, telling the Doctor to activate the scanner once again. Barbara is really carrying the rest of them on her back in this serial, which is great to see. It’s exactly what I wanted from her after the last serial, where she became the only protagonist who hadn’t yet shown some measure of independence.

As the Doctor switches on the scanner, he tells Susan and Barbara to go and stand by the TARDIS doors. If they open again, the Doctor wants them to get a good look at whatever is outside and relay that information back to him. The scanner displays the same set of images, and the doors once again open when the image of Britain is on the screen. Susan says that there nothing outside, except for the empty depths of space.

Barbara is able to make a bit of sense out of what the scanner is telling them. When the scanner shows them a friendly environment, the doors open, as if it is safe to go out. Then, when the scanners show a hostile environment—the planet Quinnis—the doors close again, as if protecting them. Finally, there is the sequence of a planet, the same planet further away, and a solar system, followed by the white flash which symbolizes their destruction.

At this moment, the Doctor figures it out. “It’s our journey,” he says, to which Susan adds, “And the ship refused to destroy itself.” The defense mechanism stopped the ship, and it has been trying to communicate what happened to the crew ever since.

Finally, the Doctor spells it out plain. He already mentioned that it would take a solar system to draw the power away from the TARDIS. Well, that’s exactly what the TARDIS had flown into: the earliest stages of a solar system. When he set the coordinates to leave Skaro, he had intended to go back to Earth. He pressed the “Fast Return” switch, which just so happens to be on the same part of the console as the scanner switch—the section which the TARDIS has made safe to use. When the Doctor looks at the switch, he finds that it is stuck down. Instead of sending them back to Earth as intended, the stuck switch must have sent them all the way back to the creation of the solar system, which was now endangering the TARDIS.

The doctor takes a screwdriver and unsticks the switch. The TARDIS stabilizes, its power returning to normal.

Crisis averted, the mood in the console room is still rather somber. The Doctor and Susan embrace, but Ian and Barbara are upset at having been accused of sabotage. Susan urges the Doctor to apologize. “Don’t bother saying anything, Doctor,” Ian says kindly, heading him off and choosing to forgive him.

Barbara remains angry with the Doctor’s conduct. The Doctor goes over and heaps praise on her for how she used her intuition to save them, saying that her instincts outperformed even his logic. In the end, the Doctor doesn’t really offer a traditional apology, and Barbara doesn’t receive it well. She leaves the console room, still shaken.

A short time passes, and the Doctor goes to see Barbara in the living quarters. He tells her that they have landed on a planet; it is very cold outside, and the rest are preparing to disembark. The Doctor acknowledges that he treated her unjustly, saving how awful it must have felt when he tried to kick them out of the ship. When Barbara asks the Doctor, “What do you care what I think or feel?” the Doctor insists that he does care. Barbara doesn’t verbally forgive him, but she does smile and take his arm, letting him lead her out of the living quarters to rejoin the others.

In the console room, the TARDIS doors are wide open, revealing a snowy mountainside outside. Susan giggles, excited to go out and explore. Barbara dons winter gear; the rest have already bundled up. They are only outside for a moment before Susan crouches next to a footprint in the snow. “Grandfather, look! Must’ve been made by a giant.” The camera pans over a very large footprint. Credits roll.

Takeaways

I have mixed feelings about this serial. I asked you, the reader, to try to keep an eye out for what was messing with the TARDIS. After all, that is the point of a good mystery: the viewer becomes a detective as the story goes along. In the case of The Edge of Destruction, I don’t think the clues paint a cohesive enough picture for the viewer to figure out the mystery on their own. From the clocks to the fault locator to the rogue central column, there are some giant logical leaps that we need the Doctor or Barbara to talk us through in order to arrive at the solution. Not only does this cheapen the mystery, but it also makes it really unrealistic for Barbara to be such a successful problem solver. As much as I appreciate the show letting Barbara’s character shine, I don’t think she should be able to intuit so much about the danger they face. I also think that the red herring of an intelligence hiding inside the ship—possibly inside of Susan—is a bit ham-fisted. The mystery is convoluted enough without the writers trying to come up with ways to throw the audience further off the scent.

Despite this, I think this serial works really well as a cohesive story. Even though the connections between the mystery elements are shoddy at best, they do work once they’re fully explained to the audience. The fast pacing makes it so there’s never any point where it feels like the serial is losing momentum. I’m glad the showrunners kept this as a two-part serial; any longer and the story risks getting bogged down. Overall, this is far from the worst mystery in the series, and I see this as a solid first attempt at switching things up from the more linear, omniscient-POV serials which came before.

Looking forward, I want to see the show refine how it handles mysteries so that the audience can play along a little more. In my introduction, I cited Blink as an example of where this is done really well, and while I’m not expecting that level of perfection, I do want to see a more easily understandable mystery. Now that Barbara has been allowed to express herself, I feel like I have a good baseline for how I can expect these characters to act. I’d love to see Susan come out of her shell a little bit more, and as always, I can’t wait to see the Doctor temper his selfishness. It will be very interesting to see if the showrunners keep trying to inject tension into the group dynamic, or if they will begin to rely more heavily on external friction.

Rating: 6.6/10

Chapter Text

Marco Polo

Before I begin the next serial, I need to explain a little about lost Doctor Who episodes, because, as some of you probably know, Marco Polo is the first of many serials whose official footage has been destroyed. Back in the early days of the show, the BBC wasn’t very concerned with the preservation of its media. The videocassette hadn’t been invented yet, and when the network transitioned to color, they assumed no one would be interested in old black-and-white media. In order to save a little money, BBC would reuse old film. As of March 2023, 26 serials are at least partially missing because of this.

Luckily, though the original film was lost, many episodes have been recovered, copies of film which were found in dusty storage rooms and private collections. And for those that remain lost, audio recordings still exist; over the years, recreations have been made. Some of these are officially-licensed animations which create entirely new visuals. But most of these are fan-made projects, created by stitching together the few dozen frames that were able to be salvaged because of their use in the production process. The result is something of a slide show: the complete audio of each missing serial with some added visuals to give a little more context. Recreations made in this manner are called telesnap reconstructions.

Whenever I review a missing episode, I will be watching these fan recreations. Although some of these serials have official animations, I find them to incredibly mediocre, sometimes downright bad. Plus, the use of actual frames from the missing serials gives me information about production and design choices, context that is absent from the animations. I also find that telesnap reconstructions are easier to compare to serials I can watch normally, which makes me feel more confident about rating them.

Although every fan-made reconstruction has obviously had a lot of effort and care put into it, not all of these projects are created equal. The best versions I have seen come from a group of dedicated fans who called themselves “Loose Cannon.” You can find all of these by searching “Loose Cannon [episode title]” on Dailymotion—or if you’d rather watch them without ads and have 8 GB of memory available, you can download them here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

The first time I went through these missing serials, I elected to read the transcripts. It was faster, and I wasn’t thinking about potentially writing a retrospective at the time. If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing these lost serials for yourself and find the prospect of reading transcripts more appealing, you can find these transcripts here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Although the quality of the Loose Cannon projects is stellar, there are a few more things about telesnap reconstructions that need to be addressed before I can get into one. First, although there are visuals to look at, you can’t always assume that what you are seeing resembles the original film. Sometimes, it is clear that a character or setting has been clipped from another part of the episode just to give the viewer a clearer picture of what is going on, who is talking, etc. While I appreciate the quality this adds for the casual viewer, it makes it much harder to look at these visuals from the perspective of a reviewer. Since I can’t trust myself to always know when these splices have been made, I won’t be talking about body language or facial expressions like I have been doing in the other serials.

Second, because I am looking at still frames, it can be very difficult to tell who is speaking or what is being said without seeing mouths move. I will have the transcript of each episode in front of me as I watch through each reconstruction. However, this is just for clarity on my end. I will not discuss anything that is in the transcript that I wouldn’t have been able to glean just by watching the reconstruction. I also won’t hold these instances against the serial, because I can never be sure if it was something that was lost in translation, so to speak.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get into the serial.

Part 1 (The Roof of the World)

At the end of the last serial, the Doctor and his companions successfully managed to materialize the TARDIS, having repaired a faulty switch on the ship which would have guaranteed their destruction. Now, the TARDIS rests near the summit of a large mountain. All around it are more snowy peaks. When Susan exits the ship, she finds an enormous footprint in the snow. “Must’ve been made by a giant,” she says.

Ian says the footprint could have been made by a human but enlarged by the sun melting the edges. The Doctor is having difficulty breathing, suffering from altitude sickness. He says that they are definitely on Earth. Irritable as usual, he then says he has a lot of work to do and disappears back inside the TARDIS.

Looking around, Ian and Barbara speculate on where they are, suggesting the Alps or the Andes. Susan says, “Himalayas. The roof of the world.”

Just then, the Doctor reemerges from the TARDIS, panicking. A circuit has blown inside the ship. Every system is down: the lights, the water, the heating. “But that’s serious,” Barbara says. “We could freeze to death!”

Ian suggests they try to find fuel. The Doctor shows a little bit of the pessimism he revealed during An Unearthly Child, saying, “Fuel? Now where on earth do you expect to find fuel here?” Ian doesn’t know, but he says they must try. He and Barbara go off in search of anything that might help them, while the Doctor and Susan work on the TARDIS circuit. The Doctor doesn’t like their chances. “Even if I do find the fault, I don’t suppose I shall be able to repair it before it gets dark, and then we shall all freeze to death!”

In the next scene, Ian and Barbara have arrived at a cleft in the mountainside. Tired, Barbara says she must rest. Ian doesn’t want to slow down, so he tells her to stay here and catch her breath while he explores a bit. He moves offscreen.

A moment later, Barbara sees something human-shaped and very hairy, and she screams. The figure disappears, and Ian rushes back, asking what is the matter. Barbara tells Ian what she saw, but he doesn’t believe her until he is able to examine the footprints left by the figure. Shaken, Ian says they had better get back to the ship.

Back by the TARDIS, the Doctor says to Susan that it will take him a very long time to fix the fault in the circuit. He thinks the only option they have is to get down the mountain and find shelter before it gets dark. Susan tells him about the thing she saw on the mountain, but Ian says that he thought its footprints may have been made by a fur boot.

Suddenly, Susan shouts, “Look!” Atop a nearby ridge, the same figure from before is watching them. Ian tells them all to chase it down, saying that it’s their only chance of shelter.

They don’t have far to go. Just as they reach the cleft in the mountain where Barbara was before, they are surrounded by a group of humans—not yeti, as the show has been implying. It appears Ian was right about the snow melting around the footprint. They are fiercely attired, with leather armor, pointed helmets, swords, and cloaks to keep out the cold. They appear to be of Asian descent, which would make sense if they were indeed in the Himalayas. Ian tentatively asks them for shelter, saying they are travelers lost on the mountain.

One of the newcomers, their leader, turns to the others and says, “Hear me, Mongols. In these parts live evil spirits, who take our likeness to deceive us and then lead us to our deaths. Let us destroy these evil spirits before they destroy us.”

As soon as the man gives the order, someone cries, “Stop!”

Another man enters the scene; he looks European. The Mongol who had spoken before insists that he be allowed to kill these “evil spirits,” but it seems that the European has him outranked. “I command you in the name of Kublai Khan!”

The Mongol stands down. The mysterious European tells the Doctor and his companions to follow him to his caravan further down the pass. Before the scene draws to a close, Susan asks Barbara, the history expert, who he is. “I was asking myself the same question,” Barbara answers.

The European brings them into a tent and speaks to a girl making soup named Ping-Cho, announcing that they have guests. “Yes, Messer Marco,” Ping-Cho answers. Ping-Cho looks to be about Susan’s age.

The tent itself is large, with thick fabric lining the interior to retain heat, many with ornate patterns like oriental rugs. By the setting alone, it seems that whomever they are dealing with exudes wealth and status. The Doctor and his companions are led to skillfully carved wooden chairs arranged in a circle around a pot of soup.

In an aside to Barbara, Susan notes that their host is not like the Ping-Cho, nor like the Mongol man who wanted to destroy them. “No, he’s a European,” Barbara answers, “and he mentioned Kublai Khan.” She goes on to explain that Kublai Khan was a great Mongol leader, who conquered all of Asia. She also says that he had a European in his service, a Venetian, but before she can say the name, the conversation around them picks up again.

The European apologizes for the tepid warmth of the stew, saying it is so cold that it even takes the heat out of the flames. Ian, the chemist, says that it isn’t the fault of the fire: the lack of air at high altitudes allows the liquid to boil at a lower temperature. This concept is foreign to the European—the serial is calling attention to the European’s comparative lack of scientific knowledge, suggesting they have arrived several centuries into the Earth’s past.

Barbara asks if the European’s name is Marco Polo, and the European says yes. Polo then asks who they all are, and the Doctor says they are travelers, introducing his companions as Susan, Miss Wright, and Charlton. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it has been a running gag since the first serial for the Doctor to get Ian’s name wrong in increasingly incorrect ways. This is the fourth or fifth time that Ian has had to correct him.

Marco Polo is forthcoming with information, letting them know that they are in Cathay in 1288, though he is bewildered that they don’t know the year. He also tells them that the man who had called them evil spirits on the mountain was a warlord named Tegana. We learn that Tegana and his retinue are traveling with Marco Polo to a city called Shang-Tu. Then everyone disperses, heading for bed. Susan will sleep in a tent with Ping-Cho, the Doctor and Ian will share a tent with Polo, and Barbara will have a tent to herself.

Before I move on to the next scene, I want to talk about what I expect from a Doctor Who episode that uses real-world places and people. I don’t need the premise to be 100% historically accurate. I am not too concerned with how the show presents history, though glaring historical misrepresentations will take me out of a serial from time to time. But by and large, I am not looking to critique the series on how close it adheres to recorded historical fact. If that is what you are looking for, there are plenty of online spaces which specialize in analyzing historical fiction in that manner.

For instance, Kublai Khan was, by all historical accounts, a ruthless tyrant who, by the end of his long reign, had control of most of Asia. Does this serial accurately reflect this? Not really; he will be portrayed as more of an administrator running the territories won by his more ruthless forebears. And as a descendant of Genghis Khan, it is safe to say that, no, Kublai is not even the most ruthless of the Khans, but that is not the point I am trying to make here. Representing Kublai Khan primarily as an administrator doesn’t take much away from this serial, at least not for me. I am more concerned with whether or not the show’s portrayal of a historical figure is compelling. In this serial, I will be looking for how Marco Polo and Kublai Khan work within the context of the serial, not for how well they conform to the history books. Yes, there will be instances in future serials where racist depictions and/or the writers taking wild liberties with recorded history will negatively affect my experience as a viewer, and I will call these things out when I see them. However, I want to make it clear that—in most cases—I value Doctor Who serials that prioritize a good story over a historically accurate one.

In Ping-Cho’s tent, she and Susan get a little more acquainted. When Ping-Cho asks Susan where she is from, Susan is evasive, saying that she has had many homes in many places. Ping-Cho is 16 years old, from a city called Samarkand, in modern-day Uzbekistan, where her father is a government official. She says that they are traveling to Kublai Khan’s summer palace in Shang-Tu, where she is to be married. Susan is shocked when she learns that Ping-Cho has never seen her husband-to-be. Ping-Cho says there are only two things that she knows about him. She says that he is a very important man, then says—her voice going flat—that he is 75 years old. Susan gasps.

In another tent, Marco Polo is talking to the warlord Tegana. Tegana still insists that he should have been permitted to kill the Doctor and his companions. Polo says he was right to stop Tegana, saying they have no business killing travelers just because their clothes are strange. Tegana says they must be magicians, because their strange blue caravan has no wheels and just stands there like a warrior’s tomb. Worse, he says that it isn’t large enough for four people, yet he saw all four emerge from it.

The next day, Susan, Barbara, and Ian take Marco Polo and Tegana back up the mountain to see this strange blue caravan with no wheels. The Doctor remains down the mountain because he still has altitude sickness. When Polo asks how the caravan moves, Ian says it flies through the air. Tegana insists they must be evil spirits, but Polo says that he has seen levitation tricks performed by Buddhist monks. He doesn’t understand how a caravan could fly, but he accepts it as true. Once Polo learns that their caravan is damaged and can no longer move on its own, he orders a few men to move it down the mountain on a sledge.

Back in the tents, the Doctor talks to Ping-Cho as she cooks breakfast. We learn a little about Tegana in this exchange when Ping-Cho says, “The Warlord Tegana is a special emissary from the camp of the great Mongol Lord Khan Noghai, who has been at war with Kublai Khan.” We also learn that the war has recently ended. “Noghai has sued for peace,” Ping-Cho continues, “and Tegana travels to Kublai’s court to discuss the armistice plans.”

As Ping-Cho and the Doctor talk, Polo enters with Ian, Barbara, and Susan close behind. The Doctor is delighted to learn that the TARDIS is being brought down the mountain. He assures Polo that he will only infringe on his hospitality for a few days as he repairs the ship; then they will be on their way. Polo says they will not be able to stay in the same place. It is dangerous up in the mountains, and they need to make for the town of Lop on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The Doctor takes this in stride, saying he can work as they journey. “No,” Polo says. “The Mongol bearers still half-believe that you are evil spirits. They also believe that outside your caravan, you are harmless. However, should any of you attempt to enter, there would be trouble.” The Doctor sounds disappointed, but he concedes that they wouldn’t be alive without Polo’s aid. He agrees not to enter the TARDIS until they arrive at Lop.

Several days pass on the road. In the telesnap, we hear a voiceover from Marco Polo as the visual becomes a map. A line traces their route through the world as Polo reveals to the audience a little about the world and his plans:

“Success. My plan has worked! The strangers and their unusual caravan accompany me to Lop. Our route takes us across the Roof of the World, down to the Kashgar Valley and southeast to Tarkand. Here, we join the Old Silk Road, along which the commerce and culture of a thousand years has travelled to and from Cathay. I wonder what the strangers’ reaction will be when I tell them what I propose to do…”

This is a very nice touch from the showrunners, emulating the real-world Marco Polo’s journal which was published upon his return to Europe. It offers a very natural transition across large gaps of time throughout the serial.

Once they have arrived in Lop, Polo’s caravan settles into their accommodations at the city’s waystation. Polo says that these are located throughout the Khan’s domain and are offered to anyone who works in the Khan’s service and wears the Khan’s gold seal.

The Doctor learns that his TARDIS has been placed in the courtyard of the waystation. He goes to see it, excited to begin his work on the broken circuit, but finds his way blocked by one of Marco Polo’s guards. Outraged, he turns back to Polo and demands to know why he has been denied access to his caravan. Polo tells a story that begins when he left Venice in 1271. He was offered an appointment in the Khan’s service in 1277, and as the Khan’s emissary, he traveled all over the Khan’s domain. Unfortunately for Polo, he performed his services so well that the Khan refuses to let him leave. Now, in 1288, he grows increasingly homesick. He hopes that by offering the Doctor’s flying caravan as a gift to Kublai Khan, the Khan will finally let him go back home to Venice.

Marco Polo offers all of his resources when they all get back to Venice, telling the Doctor he will have whatever he needs to build another flying caravan, not knowing that building a new TARDIS would require them to leave the Earth altogether. The Doctor berates Polo as a lunatic, then bursts into laughter at the absurdity of the situation they have found themselves in. Polo says they have no choice but to go with him to Kublai Khan’s summer palace in Shang Tu, then leaves the room. As the scene draws to a close, Susan asks the Doctor what they are going to do. Still cackling, the Doctor responds, “I haven’t the faintest idea! Oh, ho, ho, ho…”

Meanwhile, just outside of the city, Tegana is being handed a small phial by an unknown man. “Be careful, my lord,” the man warns. “One drop will poison an army.”

Tegana says he will use it well, on all but the first of Marco Polo’s water gourds. Tegana plans to poison Polo and the rest of the caravan as they cross the Gobi Desert. He tells the man, “Now, you will follow us, and on the third night, I will walk back to you. Then, we’re gonna ride back here to Lop, wait for two days, and then return to the caravan to collect the thing of magic that will bring the mighty Kublai Khan to his knees.” Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Singing Sands)

The episode begins with another time skip, again a narration from Marco Polo as we follow the journey of the caravan across a map. The caravan has ventured into the Gobi Desert, and they are now three days out from Lop—according to Tegana’s plan, he is supposed to poison the water and leave tonight. Listening to this narration, a line stood out to me: “The old Doctor continually shows his disapproval of my action by being both difficult and bad-tempered. For three days now…I have had to endure his insults.”

On its own, there is nothing wrong with including this in the narration. However, what sticks out to me is that during this entire episode, we will only hear one line from the Doctor, and not until the final scene. It would have been great to see evidence of the Doctor’s anger, rather than hear Marco Polo glaze over it in a few sentences. Behind the scenes, it turns out that William Hartnell was very ill the week this episode was recorded and had to be written out of the script. However, I’m trying to come at these reviews from the perspective of a new viewer, one who is probably too casually invested to be trawling the Doctor Who Wiki for production details. I won’t be taking into consideration the availability of actors when it comes to how the absence of their characters affects the final product, in the same way that I won’t let a serial’s tiny budget affect how I judge the end result. I only care about the quality of the product, and unfortunately, the absence of the Doctor makes this episode feel very stilted at times.

On their third night in the desert, the caravan is resting for the night. Inside the main tent, Ian and Barbara are with Marco Polo and Tegana as they share a dinner; Susan watches them quietly. They talk about water, and about crossing the desert. Tegana delivers the following line with a bit of menace: “The bones of many men who thought they had enough [water] lie bleached in the desert sand.”

To Susan, Polo apologizes for the Doctor choosing not to join them for dinner. Susan is grateful for the sentiment, sounding as if she is very upset by the Doctor’s intransigence. As Ian and Polo begin a game of chess, Susan suddenly gets up and rushes outside, apologizing to Polo on her way out. Barbara excuses herself and goes after Susan.

Outside, Barbara finds Susan sitting and staring up at the stars. “We’ll get the TARDIS back, Susan,” she says consolingly.

Susan is worried that the TARDIS is going to end up in the hands of Kublai Khan. “We should be up there,” she says, “Another time. Another galaxy.” Although she is worried about their predicament, it is soon made clear that she is even more upset that the Doctor is refusing meals. “He won’t even talk to me,” she says.

Barbara tries to make her feel better, saying that the Doctor just feels defenseless without his ship. When Susan asks if the Doctor will ever start confiding in her again, Barbara’s response is cheery: “Oh, he’s like a rubber ball. He’ll come bouncing out of there soon, full of ideas.”

After a moment of silence, Susan speaks again. “One day, we’ll know all the mysteries of the skies, and we’ll stop our wandering.”

This line is reason why I have included so much of the context of this scene. It sheds a lot of insight into the real root of Susan’s problems. I think that when she left Gallifrey with the Doctor, she must have been under the impression that they would be going to live somewhere else for a time and eventually return home. She did not expect all of this wandering, this endless travel.

Think about what we know about her. 1) Susan really loved her time at Coal Hill School, and she begged to be allowed to stay when the Doctor threatened to leave. 2) In An Unearthly Child, the Doctor tells Ian and Barbara that they are exiles from their own planet, saying, “One day, we’ll get back.” 3) In The Edge of Destruction, the Doctor hints that this may not be the case. While unconscious, he blurted out, “I can’t take you back, Susan. I can’t,” indicating a more grim reality for Susan. And now, 4) Susan indicating that she believes they will find a place to settle down eventually, once the Doctor’s immense curiosity has been satisfied.

We are witnessing in real time Susan coming to terms with the fact that she may never see home again. At one point, she must have believed that they would get back to Gallifrey, or else the Doctor would have never mentioned that they would be going back—he might have even considered it to be a possibility himself. But now, she looks wistfully toward the stars, hoping that one day they might settle down somewhere. We are watching Susan grow up.

At the mention of settling down, Barbara tells Susan that one day, they would have to say goodbye. This finally snaps Susan out of her melancholy. More cheerily, she says to Barbara, “Oh, not yet. Not for a long time.” She says goodnight to Barbara and goes to Ping-Cho’s tent to sleep.

Inside the tent, Susan finds Ping-Cho still awake. Ping-Cho tells her that she wants to go outside once the moon rises, saying it’s the best time to see the desert. Susan wants to join her, saying, “I’ve never seen a moonlit night.” Yes. Yes, she has. There’s no way she could spend months at a school on Earth and not see the moon at some point. This is such a strange line. Anyway, Ping-Cho promises to call her in a few hours once the moon has risen so they can take a look outside.

Later that night, Susan and Ping-Cho come out of their tent. They both stare out at the moonlit desert in amazement. Suddenly, Susan spots Tegana coming out of the main tent. After briefly talking to a guard, he walks purposefully into the desert. Despite Ping-Cho’s reservations, Susan convinces her that they should follow him into the desert.

Back in the main tent, Ian and Marco Polo are woken by the sound of whinnying horses. “There’s a sandstorm coming, Ian,” says Polo. “[The horses] sense it too.”

In the desert, the girls have followed Tegana quite far from the tents. Susan is out of breath and wants to go back. Just as they begin the return trip, they hear a distant wind beginning to whip up across the dunes. Turning, they see a sandstorm fast approaching. Susan panics, wanting to try to run for the tents, but Ping-Cho asserts that they’ll never be able to find their way back once the sand hits. They hold on to each other, screaming, as they are caught in the sandstorm. Their voices are drowned out by what sounds like a combination of discordant singing and the laughter of hyenas. The audio engineers have done a fantastic job of emulating the “singing sands” of the episode’s title.

Back at the tents, Ian and Marco Polo are still in the main tent when Barbara rushes in from her connecting tent, upset by the sudden roar of the sandstorm. Polo discovers that Tegana is not in his bed and says he must be out in the storm. Barbara goes to check on the girls, only to find them missing as well. She returns, nearly in tears, screaming at Ian and Polo that they must do something; they must go after her. When they refuse, Barbara tries to go out herself. Ian and Polo have to hold Barbara back from the tent flap. She is terrified, screaming Susan’s name, as Ian tries to calm her down and keep her inside the tent. “Oh, it’s all your fault anyway!” Barbara shouts at Polo. “If you hadn’t kept us prisoner here, none of this would have happened!” The cackling sands provide a mocking answer.

Out in the dunes, Susan thinks that she can hear the sound of Ian calling her voice. Ping-Cho holds her back, saying it’s just the singing of the sands. Barbara tries to wrestle out of Ping-Cho’s grip, but before she can get away, Tegana appears above them atop a dune. Susan lets out a bloodcurdling scream.

Once the storm has finally petered out, Ian is desperate to go out looking for the girls. Polo stops him, saying that he would only miss them in the dark. He promises that they will not move camp until the girls are found.

At this moment, Tegana enters the tent with Ping-Cho and Susan. Barbara is angry at the girls for doing something so foolish as go for a walk. Polo turns to Tegana and chastises him for encouraging such a venture. Tegana says that he wasn’t with the girls; he had discovered them sheltering behind a sand dune. He tells Polo that he thought it was a pleasant night and decided to go walking alone. Tegana, Susan, and Ping-Cho all leave to use what remains of the night to catch a little sleep.

Tegana takes a detour on the way to his tent. He stops next to the water wagon with his phial of poison in hand. After all, it is the third night in the desert, the night he was supposed to poison the water and return to Lop. He appears conflicted, then slips the phial back into a pocket, deciding against it.

The following evening, they have again made camp for the night. In Ping-Cho’s tent, Susan says that she suspects that Tegana was up to something when he went for his walk the previous night. Ping-Cho says that Tegana is an important man, special emissary in charge of negotiating peace terms with Kublai Khan on behalf of Khan Noghai. “Would a man like that lie about walking in the desert?” she asks.

“No. No, he wouldn’t,” Susan replies. “That’s what’s so strange. The fact that he did.”

That night, Tegana walks again to the water wagon, examining the water gourds. Checking once to make sure he isn’t being watched, he slashes open all but one of the gourds. The precious water splashes in the sand.

The next day, the destroyed gourds are found, and the travelers convene to discuss their dilemma. Polo suggests that this follows a known pattern of bandits. It goes like this: “The bandits follow a caravan out into the desert. Then one night, this happens. The caravan is forced to turn back. Then, when everyone is weak through lack of water, the bandits attack.”

“So if we turn back, we’re bound to be attacked,” Ian concludes. Polo says yes. Ian asks if there are any other options, and Polo mentions a small oasis. It’s a week away, perhaps five or six if they push hard. Unfortunately, all that remains to them is estimated to be four days of water, and that is with strict rationing. Even though it is the longer path, Ian convinces Marco Polo that they should make for the oasis.

Hearing this, Tegana insists on going back to Lop. He asks for his share of the water, but Polo denies him. “I am the commander of this caravan, and I am responsible to Kublai Khan for your safety. We go north, together.”

Another narration portrays the caravan in dire straits. Each day has them covering less and less ground, with the heat of the sun and their water rationing making them become weaker and weaker. We rejoin the travelers on the fifth day after the gourds have been slashed. Marco Polo separates out the last of the water rations. After this, there will be nothing left to drink until they reach the oasis.

Tegana convinces Polo to let him go ahead to the oasis and bring back water for the rest of them. The others will continue on slowly, hoping for Tegana’s quick return but continuing to move just in case something were to happen to him. The Doctor is exhausted, nearly delirious. Polo suggests that they make a cot for him in the wagon, but Barbara is able to make him see that the TARDIS will allow him the comfort he needs to rest.

As Susan helps the Doctor into the TARDIS, Ian thanks Polo, but he warns that the Doctor isn’t going to last 24 hours without water. “None of us are, Ian,” Marco Polo answers. “Our fate rests with Tegana.”

Ahead, Tegana has reached the oasis, filling his water gourd and drinking his fill of the water. He holds it up to the sky. “Here’s water, Marco Polo,” he says triumphantly. “Come for it!” He pours it onto the ground, laughing. Credits roll.

Part 3 (Five Hundred Eyes)

Another entry in Marco Polo’s journal details his concern over Tegana’s failure to return, wondering if he has gotten lost. The map shows the caravan creeping toward the oasis, but they do not appear close enough to make it before they die of thirst. “I fear the end is not far off,” Polo intones.

In the desert, they have stopped; Polo says that Tegana is their only hope. Ian tries to push Polo to get the caravan moving again, but Polo is too tired and thirsty to move. Barbara enters the scene, letting Ian know that the Doctor and Susan are still in the TARDIS, where they have been allowed to stay so that the Doctor can rest.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is asleep in the living quarters. Suddenly, he is awoken by droplets of water hitting his face. He frantically wakes Susan, and they find water streaming down the interior TARDIS walls, the product of condensation during the cold nighttime temperatures. They begin to sponge the water from the walls, desperate to collect it before the ship heats up in the sun.

Outside, the caravan is getting ready to make a last, desperate push toward the oasis, when Susan emerges from the TARDIS with two jugs of water. Ian and Barbara are elated, but Polo reacts angrily, assuming that there has been water in the TARDIS all along and that the Doctor has been hiding it from him. The Doctor and Ian are able to calm Polo down, explaining to him that it was condensation that made water form inside of the TARDIS. Polo seems somewhat convinced, but he is still suspicious enough to ask Ian to take the first drink. Ian happily obliges.

From there, there is a very jarring cut to a scene at the oasis, with Polo and the rest of his caravan talking with Tegana. It almost seems like there is a scene missing from the reconstruction; it doesn’t make any sense for the writers not to show the caravan arriving at the oasis, especially since this episode is almost a full three minutes shorter than the previous two.

Tegana is explaining to Barbara and Polo why he was unable to return with the water: there were bandits, he says, so he had to hide they left. Tegana says that he overheard these bandits were headed to Karakorum, and that they shouldn’t trouble the caravan.

“Karakorum?” Barbara says. “That used to be to the north, on the great steppes.” Polo says that it still is. This highlights a dynamic that has been at play throughout the serial: of the Doctor and his companions phrasing things in such a way that hints that they are from a different time. Earlier, we saw this in a few interactions between Susan and Ping-Cho, with Susan using words like “fab” and “crazy” and having to explain to Ping-Cho what she meant. This is the third time in the serial that Barbara has referred to a person or place as if looking back at it through the lens of history. I really like the way the show uses these lines to remind the audience of the dissonance between the supporting characters and the time travelers. It is the first time the series has really cashed in on the necessary secrecy of the Doctor’s ability to travel through time. This dynamic will be explored in countless ways over the decades to come.

Polo says that they will rest at the oasis only one day and leave the following morning. Barbara goes to tell the Doctor, Susan, and Ian. The Doctor says he should be able to repair the TARDIS circuit in a week, maybe less. Barbara is suspicious of Tegana, asking why there is no evidence of a fire if what he says about the bandits is true. “I think Tegana just used the bandits as an excuse for not coming back to us with water,” she says.

Just then, Tegana enters the scene, and Ian asks him point blank if the bandits had lit a fire. Ian is clearly trying to catch Tegana in a trap: if Tegana says there was a fire, Ian can point out the lack of ashes. Unfortunately, Marco Polo arrives before Tegana can answer, saying that course there had been no fire, as evidenced by the lack of any remains, ruining Ian’s interrogation. Before the scene comes to a close, Polo tells the Doctor that before they leave in the morning, the Doctor will hand over the TARDIS key to him. The Doctor is contemptuous: “Young man, you have no concept of what is happening, have you? And you still don’t realize that you’re speaking to a man of superior intellect.”

Next is another time skip and another of Polo’s narrated journal entries. “My conscience pricks me,” he says. Despite this, he remains steadfast in his decision to hold onto the Doctor’s key as they continue across the desert. Several days pass, and the caravan arrives at the city of Tun-Huang.

In the city, the TARDIS has been placed in the courtyard of another waystation. Susan is amazed by the city, telling Ping-Cho, “I’ve never seen so many temples in my life.” Polo asks Barbara, Susan, and Ping-Cho if they have ever heard of the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. When they say no, he tells them that it was a local hideaway formerly used by the Hashashins. Ping-Cho says that she knows a story about the demise of the Hashashins, but she needs time and preparation in order to tell it.

In another corner of the waystation, the Doctor is talking to Ian about repairing the circuit. Ian is perplexed by the Doctor’s levity, having seen the Doctor give Polo the TARDIS key. The Doctor clarifies: not the key, but a key. He holds up another one that he made while they spent the night at the oasis. Having fooled Polo, the Doctor plans to sneak into the TARDIS at night to make his repairs.

Before I move on, I need to talk about a glaring plot hole in this serial. Marco Polo wants to go home to Venice. His plan is to gift the Doctor’s TARDIS to Kublai Khan so that the Khan will release Polo from his service. Why doesn’t the Doctor offer to take him there in the TARDIS? The way I see it, there are very realistic scenarios for why the ship could never be used to return Polo to Venice. Either the Doctor doesn’t know how to control the TARDIS well enough to get him there, or Polo’s honor would not allow him to leave without Kublai Khan releasing him from his service.

While either of these things would make sense, the fact that neither is mentioned is what makes this a plot hole. The audience is left to fill in the gaps. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to put one of these into the serial, either. For the first scenario, Marco Polo could simply ask if the Doctor could use his flying caravan to take him to Venice, to which the Doctor could say no. For the second, the Doctor could offer such a trip to Polo, to which Polo would answer something to the effect of, “My honor would not allow it.” Quick and easy. The absence of either makes me think that this is an oversight, and not a small one. It’s one of those plot holes that, once you think about it, you can’t help but to think after every plot twist: “Yes, but this could all have been averted if…”

Back to the story, some time has passed, and everyone has gathered in the courtyard of the waystation to hear Ping-Cho tell the story of the Hashashins. They were a sect of zealots that followed Ala-eddin, who was called the Old Man of the Mountain, murdering and pillaging in his name. Fueled by a hashish draught, they were among the most ruthless killers in the region. One day, the mighty Mongol leader Hulagu laid siege to the Hashashins, trapping them in Ala-eddin’s lair for three years until most of them perished. A few of them escaped, but were ultimately killed in the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes, which is nearby.

This is a very effective way for the serial to impart this information upon the audience. The story is beautifully told, and it is as if the viewer has joined in with the Doctor and the rest as they listen to Ping-Cho. It is a far more interesting way of giving exposition than regular dialogue, and it demonstrates the range of the writers.

Ping-Cho receives a lot of applause as she comes down from her place in front of the crowd to talk to the Doctor and the others. While this is happening, Tegana slips out of the common room of the waystation. Noticing him leave, Barbara quietly follows.

The scene changes to a cave, with carved and painted figures depicting the evil Hashashins on the walls. This is the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. The cave paintings feel a bit racist, depicting smiling figures with tattooed cheeks, crooked teeth, and large, pig-like noses. I get that the artists wouldn’t have depicted evildoers in the best light, but these appear to be calling upon well-known anti-Asian tropes and imagery to make that point.

Upon entering the cave, Tegana calls out for someone named Malik. Malik appears, an elderly man coughing and spluttering. Tegana asks Malik if there is any news from Noghai. Remember, Noghai is the Mongol leader for whom he will be negotiating peace with Kublai Khan. Malik draws him further into the cave, into a secret chamber. A few moments later, Barbara enters the cave, feeling her way through the darkness.

Inside the secret chamber, Tegana is greeted by another man, a rogue named Acomat (pronounced AH-coh-maht). They are clearly acquaintances. Acomat tells Tegana that Noghai’s armies are marching for Karakorum, and he states his disappointment at how Tegana failed to poison Marco Polo’s caravan in the Gobi Desert. Tegana says that his plans were foiled by the sandstorm, and that he was forced to change course.

Malik mentions to Acomat that Tegana spoke of gifts to Noghai. “Yes,” Tegana says. “A caravan that flies.” The Doctor’s TARDIS. Malik laughs at this, but Tegana insists that the flying caravan is real and that it belongs to an old magician who is traveling with Polo. Tegana says that Polo wants to give the TARDIS to Kublai Khan, making it clear that he means to steal it for Noghai instead. They begin to make plans to murder Polo and the rest of his caravan on their way to Shang-Tu. However, as they talk, Malik goes to leave and sees a woman in the outer cave.

Barbara is still flailing about in the darkness of the cave. She turns back, as if to make her way to the entrance. Suddenly, she is grabbed from behind, and she screams.

Back in the waystation, Tegana has returned to the others, and Barbara’s absence has finally been noticed. Polo is angry, saying, “What kind of country do you come from where a woman can wander alone through the streets at night?” Polo, Ian, and Tegana leave to search for Barbara.

In the secret chamber of the cave, we see Barbara tied to a chair. A few feet away, a group of Mongol warriors squat in a small ring, throwing dice for the honor of killing her. One turns to Barbara and draws a finger across his throat, cackling.

In the courtyard of the waystation, we find the Doctor slowly backing slowly out of his TARDIS. It seems that he has decided to take advantage of the general confusion as a chance to begin his work on the circuit. Susan and Ping-Cho approach him, both having observed him coming out of the ship. The Doctor is suspicious of Ping-Cho, not trusting her to keep his secret, but Susan assures him that Ping-Cho will not say anything to Polo about the second key.

Susan tells the Doctor that they think they know where Barbara might be. Earlier, when Marco Polo was talking about the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes, Barbara seemed very interested in it; perhaps she went off to see it for herself. Ping-Cho suggests that the manager of the waystation, a man named Chenchu, would know how to get there. The Doctor asks, and Chenchu tells him that the cave is about a mile away. Chenchu begs the Doctor not to go out in the night, saying that the cave is haunted by evil spirits, but the Doctor doesn’t listen. He takes Susan and Ping-Cho, and they leave for the cave.

The Doctor, Susan, and Ping-Cho arrive at the cave, and the Doctor is very interested in the painted faces. Susan reminds him that they need to look for Barbara, and the Doctor smiles, saying, “Let’s see if we can find the spirits.”

Back at the waystation, Chenchu speaks to Tegana, telling him that the Doctor and the girls have gone. He says that the girls found the Doctor in the courtyard, near his TARDIS, and that after that, they asked for directions to the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. Tegana throws him down atop a table, calling him a fool. It is unclear based on the reconstruction and the transcript, but I think Chenchu is supposed to have been in league with Tegana in some way, though this is never expanded upon.

In the cave, the Doctor is growing weary. They have explored the entirety of outer chamber without any evidence that Barbara has ever been there. Then, Ping-Cho discovers Barbara’s handkerchief.

In the secret chamber, we see Barbara still tied to the chair, gagged by a strip of cloth. One of the men gambling for the right to kill her moves to the cave wall and peeps through a spyhole into the outer cave. Susan screams, shrieking that she saw the eyes of one of the paintings move. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Wall of Lies)

At the waystation, Marco Polo is enraged to discover that the Doctor, Susan, and Ping-Chu have gone to the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. He and Ian leave for the cave.

Back in the cave, the Doctor is trying to calm Susan down, saying it is not possible for the eyes to have moved. Tegana then enters the cave, and the Doctor shows him the handkerchief of Barbara’s that they found on the cave floor. Tegana tries to get them to leave, saying that the caves are haunted and that it is not wise to stay in them for long. Next, Ian and Marco Polo arrive and quickly learn about the handkerchief and that Susan thought she saw the eyes of one of the paintings move. Looking closely at the painting, Ian notices the spyhole. “There must be some sort of a room behind this rock face,” he says.

As they look for a way through the rock face, Ian finds a lever and pulls, opening a door that reveals the secret inner chamber. Standing just inside the doorway, a Mongol warrior is poised over Barbara with a dagger, ready to deliver a killing blow. Susan screams, and Tegana rushes in, slaying the warrior. A very distressed Barbara is freed from the chair. “That dreadful man. There were four of them. They played dice to see who’d kill me!” Ian comforts her, and they return to the waystation.

I just want to talk about the logistics of the last scene for a moment. We had four warriors gambling over who was going to kill Barbara. The Doctor and Susan arrive, and in the process of them searching the cave, Susan screams, saying she saw the eyes of a painting move. Now, there’s no way the warriors wouldn’t have heard the scream. Wouldn’t it have made the most sense for the warriors to put aside their gambling, finish off Barbara, and leave? But instead, enough time passes that first Tegana and then Ian and Marco Polo can join the scene. And when they do find the secret chamber, why is only one warrior present? It’s all a very convenient hodgepodge that results in Barbara being found just in time, and which lets Tegana only have to fight off one of the warriors. This sequence could have been written much better.

At the waystation, Tegana speaks alone with Polo. After having saved Barbara and Ping-Cho in the desert and Barbara in the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes, it is clear that Tegana has gained even more of Polo’s trust. Sensing this, Tegana sews seeds of doubt in Polo about the Doctor and his companions. First, he suggests that the Doctor’s followers are attempting to subvert Polo’s authority within the caravan. “Has not the cunning Susan already won Ping-Cho from your side?” he asks. Then, he mentions that Chenchu saw the old magician lurking about in the courtyard next to his flying caravan. When Polo reminds him that he has the TARDIS key, Tegana says, “Does a magician need a key to open a door?”

At that moment, Ian, Barbara, Susan, and Ping-Cho join the two in the common room. Polo asks Barbara why she went to the cave, and Barbara says she followed Tegana there. Tegana feigns shock. “Me? I’ve only been their once, and you were there when I arrived.”

Polo weighs who to trust, disturbed by Tegana’s earlier words and now by Barbara’s allegations. Turning to Ping-Cho, he says, “You will remove your belongings to another room. From this night on, you will not share with Susan again.” Pleased, Tegana smiles.

During another time skip, Polo writes in his journal about how dismayed he is that he has to separate Susan and Ping-Cho. He hopes to quell the suspicion that is bubbling up within the caravan—it is unclear whether he means Barbara’s suspicion of Tegana, or Tegana’s suspicion of the Doctor, or both. Much time passes during this narration, with the caravan passing through three cities, following the path of the Yellow River toward Shang-Tu.

At another waystation, the Doctor is talking to Barbara and Ian about the state of the TARDIS. The Doctor says that Polo’s suspicion has slowed down his progress on the circuit, though he adds that he thinks he only needs one more night to finish the repairs. Barbara and Ian are excited, ready to finally be free of Polo and his caravan.

Meanwhile, Susan sneaks up to Ping-Cho’s room. Ping-Cho is sad, still upset about Polo’s decision to separate them. She suspects that the Doctor has almost finished the work on the TARDIS by now, and Susan confirms that they will leave soon. Susan promises to say goodbye to Ping-Cho before they leave. Ping-Cho says, toward the end of the scene, “This will cheer you up. I’ve forgotten hearing anything about the key.” Unbeknownst to them, Tegana is outside Ping-Cho’s door and has heard their whole conversation. That line about the key comes across as super clunky. The writers should have found some other way of letting Tegana know that the Doctor has a second key.

Three days later, the caravan stops in the town of Sinju, at a rather extravagant waystation. As they are getting settled into the common room, Ping-Cho suddenly remembers a detail that could implicate Tegana at the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. While they were there, Tegana asked the Doctor if they had found Barbara’s handkerchief near “the passageway.” This passageway was concealed at the time, behind the secret door into the inner chamber. If Tegana had never been to the cave before, as he had told Polo, how could he have known about the passageway? When the girls go to Polo with the accusation, he writes it off as a flimsy attempt at subterfuge. He shouts at Ping-Cho, reaffirming his trust in Tegana.

Meanwhile, the scene cuts to Tegana meeting with his co-conspirator, Acomat, at another inn in Sinju. Acomat is angry at Tegana, telling him that he should have killed Polo and the caravan already. But Tegana has a new plan: “The day after tomorrow, the caravan sets out to cross the bamboo forest. On the second night, I shall silence the guard, and then when all is well, I shall signal you with a burning torch. And then you will move in and slaughter them all.” Regarding the TARDIS, Tegana says Acomat to “send that on to Noghai, whilst I will continue on to Shang-Tu with terrible stories of bandit attacks.”

Later that night, the Doctor and Barbara are in the courtyard with the TARDIS. The Doctor says he only has a little work left to do. He says he won’t be long and asks Barbara to keep watch, then he crosses the courtyard and enters the TARDIS. At this exact moment, Tegana returns to the waystation and witnesses the Doctor disappear inside. He rushes off, presumably to find Polo. Having watched this all of this transpire, Barbara finds Ian and tells him what happened. Ian tells Barbara to get the Doctor out of the ship, then find somewhere to hide.

Ian goes to find Polo, wanting to head Tegana off. He finds Polo in his room, getting ready for the night, and he tries to speak with the man as a friend. Polo receives him coldly, and before Ian can say much of anything, Tegana arrives. He says that the magician is in his caravan. Polo is furious, and he marches to the courtyard, Ian and Tegana in tow.

In the courtyard, Polo watches the TARDIS, waiting for the Doctor to emerge. Tegana says that he witnessed the Doctor go into the TARDIS, and that he has a second key. As they watch, the Doctor exits his ship. Ian shouts for him to lock the door, which the Doctor just manages to do before he is confronted by Polo and Tegana. Polo takes the Doctor’s second key, but the Doctor tells him he will never be able to enter the TARDIS. “Put that key in the lock, Polo, and you will destroy the ship…You need more than a key to enter my ship. You need knowledge. Knowledge you will never possess.”

Polo demands to be told the knowledge, and the Doctor refuses. Polo shouts for guards and orders them to seize the Doctor. Then he says this: “Bear witness. I wear the gold seal of Kublai Khan, and by the authority it invests in me, I hereby seize and hold your caravan in his name. Be warned. Any resistance to this decree is instantly punishable by death.”

Polo orders the Doctor to be taken away, and the Doctor is dragged, laughing, out of the courtyard. As the scene comes to a close, Tegana turns to Polo and says, “Marco, are you now convinced which of us makes trouble?”

This scene really bugs me, for several reasons. First off, what happened to Barbara? I thought she was supposed to be getting the Doctor out of the TARDIS while Ian spoke to Polo. She should have had plenty of time to get this done. At the very least, she should have been knocking at the TARDIS doors when Polo and the rest arrived in the courtyard. Second, why is Polo so quick to believe that he won’t be able to use the key to enter the TARDIS? It seems very odd that he would have more doubts about something like condensation than he would about the Doctor telling him a key would not be able to open a lock. And third, hasn’t the TARDIS already been seized by Polo? Isn’t that the whole point of this serial? What is this declaration supposed to achieve, other than offer a rhetorical climax for this exchange? Taken as a whole, this is the weakest scene the series has given me to this point, aside from the fight in Part 7 of The Daleks.

During another time skip, Marco Polo’s narration now places the caravan in the bamboo forest. He says their progress has slowed because they must be alert for any signs of trouble from the Doctor and his companions. In order to make watching them at night easier on the caravan, he has given the protagonists a separate tent to sleep in.

In this tent, Ian is frustrated at their situation. He shatters a plate on the ground. Now that Polo has both keys, they have no way of getting into the TARDIS without going through him. The Doctor suggests they capture Polo and take the keys back. Ian says that at night, they have the advantage in numbers, as there is only one guard set to watch their tent. Looking at the shards of the plate, Ian has an idea. He tells the others that he will cut a hole and slip out of the tent on the opposite side from the guard. Then, he’ll figure out a way to incapacitate him and come back for the others.

Ian puts his plan into motion. He cuts his way through and sneaks around the tent in the darkness, finding the guard sitting on a stump, facing away from him. He tiptoes closer, but senses something is wrong. Turning the guard around, Ian discovers the man is already dead, having been stabbed through the chest. Credits roll.

Part 5 (Rider from Shang-Tu)

After Ian discovers the dead guard, the scene cuts to a contingent of Mongol warriors hidden in the bamboo forest. Acomat is among them; he watches Polo’s caravan, waiting for Tegana to wave his burning torch to signal the attack.

In Polo’s camp, Ian returns to the others to tell them that he found the guard already dead. Barbara suggests that it may be bandits and that they may be on the point of an attack. The Doctor wants to continue with their plan to steal the keys, but Ian says that the bandits are too great a threat. Ian leaves to go warn Polo.

Once Polo is rousted, he and Ian rush outside to warn Tegana. Tegana, who is on the point of raising a burning torch from the fire, drops the log and demands to know why Ian is free. Polo says that it doesn’t matter now, telling Tegana that a guard has been killed and that he needs to wake the rest of the camp to prepare for a bandit attack.

Polo tells Susan and Barbara to stay inside the tents with Ping-Cho. Then he hands swords to Ian and the Doctor. When asked if he knows how to use one, Ian says, “No, but given half a chance, I’ll learn.”

The Doctor suggests that they use the TARDIS to flee this attack—again, if the Doctor can offer this now, why hasn’t he offered Polo a trip to Venice, even if it’s done on false pretenses? Tegana says that this is just another of the magician’s tricks and suggests that the protagonists may have been the ones who really killed the guard. “Where are these bandits, if there are any?” he demands. “Why haven’t they attacked?”

Polo says that the Doctor has deceived him before and declines his offer to escape in the TARDIS. The Doctor waves his sword around, saying there isn’t much chance of them succeeding with Ian and the Doctor as two of their defenders. Then, Ian gets the idea to light some bamboo on fire to frighten the bandits. “If we throw it on the fire, it will expand and blow up. It’s a terrifying noise. It’s worth a chance, Marco.” Polo agrees to try.

Back in the forest, Acomat wonders what is keeping Tegana. He decides that if Tegana doesn’t give the signal soon, they will attack when the moon rises.

In the camp, Ian and Polo have collected a large pile of bamboo. Polo turns to Ian and asks him if he was trying to escape, to which Ian admits that he was. Ian says that the plan had been to hold Polo hostage until they were safely inside the TARDIS. Polo says he will have to be more careful in the future.

Since the bamboo will take a while to heat up, Polo decides that they must gamble on the bandits attacking soon. They light the bamboo stack on fre and wake the Doctor. Altogether, there are seven men to defend the camp.

Tegana still insists that there will be no bandits, which is a fair assumption for him, as he has not given the signal. Suddenly, the bandits begin to emerge from the surrounding forest; they attack. There is a lot of screaming and the sounds of fighting. The reconstruction does not do this justice—I have very little idea of what is going on. At some point, Tegana is called out by an outraged Acomat, but before Acomat can reveal any sort of association between the two, Tegana rushes toward him and kills him. As Acomat falls dead, the bamboo begins to explode, and the remaining bandits flee into the forest.

The Doctor and Ian laugh in their relief, Ian shouting, “We’ve won! We’ve won!” Barbara, Susan, and Ping-Cho emerge from the tent to join them in their mirth. They continue to celebrate as the scene fades.

The next afternoon, the caravan has stopped early, everyone needing a rest after the previous night’s excitement. The Doctor and his companions are frustrated. “Surely he can’t punish us,” Barbara says, slamming her fist onto the table. “By trying to escape, we saved his life!” The Doctor says that they must go on trying to escape, reminding them that the circuit is finished and all they need are those keys.

Polo and Tegana enter the tent; Polo approaches Ian. “Will you promise, on your honor, not to attempt another escape?” Ian gives no answer. “So be it.”

The Doctor says that they sacrificed their freedom to save Polo, and Polo says that in return, he has revoked the seizure of the Doctor’s caravan by official degree. Again, this is a distinction without a difference—Marco Polo is effectively saying: “Oh, I’m not robbing you on behalf of my employer anymore. I’m robbing you for personal reasons.”

The serial tries to paint this man as having an unimpeachable honor, but robbing the Doctor in this manner, no matter how Polo spins it, is about the least honorable thing he could do to him short of killing him. It’s like the writers know that they should try to make Polo a more sympathetic character, but the execution falls flat. I get the sense that I should care about Marco Polo, but I really don’t. It’s not as bad as how I felt about Antodus, the cowardly Thal from The Daleks, but the more I see of Polo, the less I enjoy him as a character. The dissonance between his supposed honor and him robbing the Doctor is a major part of it.

There are a few additional concessions made by Polo. Susan and Ping-Cho are allowed to speak to each other again, and no guards will watch the protagonists’ tent at night. Tegana thinks that they should all be put to the sword, but Polo has none of it, saying, “You are in my charge, Tegana, not I in yours.” Polo leaves the tent.

Tegana hesitates for a moment, then says to the Doctor, “Work your magic on him, but make no move against me.” Tegana follows Polo out.

When he is gone, Ian says that Tegana must know that they are on to him. They discuss the attack. The Doctor, having overheard Acomat calling out Tegana during the attack, believes that the two must have known each other. This sparks a memory in Barbara: she saw Acomat before, back when she was a prisoner in the Cave of Five Hundred Eyes. “Yes,” the Doctor says, “and [Tegana] had to kill him or be exposed.” Despite this, they have no clue as to what Tegana might be after. They don’t think it could be the TARDIS, because they believe him to be afraid of it. They all that they shouldn’t go to Polo with this information, not until they have more proof.

At this moment, a courier from Kublai Khan arrives, and Ping-Cho goes to fetch Polo. When she enters Polo’s tent, she sees him writing in his journal, and tucked away inside his journal is one of the keys to the TARDIS. Polo makes her promise not to reveal the location of the keys to the others.

In the main tent, the courier hands a note to Polo. Upon reading it, he says that they must leave at once: Kublai Khan demands his presence as soon as possible. He says by pushing their pace over the next six days, they can make it to the city of Cheng-Ting, where they can requisition horses and continue on to Shang-Tu. Their possessions, including the TARDIS, must follow them from Cheng-Ting and catch up to them at the Khan’s summer palace.

Six days later, Polo’s caravan arrives at Cheng-Ting. At this waystation, they are greeted by the most cringing, servile, nauseatingly obsequious manager that you can possibly imagine. Any fans of fantasy will know the archetype: the servant who has risen to his position in life because they were the best at bowing and scraping for nobles and the like. His name is Wang-Lo. After some sickeningly sweet niceties, Wang-Lo tells the Doctor that his caravan has been put in the stables.

In the courtyard, Susan and Ping-Cho watch some goldfish swim around in a small pond. Susan says that one of them reminds her of Ping-Cho, the one with patterns that resemble a wedding veil. Ping-Cho becomes stoney faced, holding back tears. She says she misses her home in Samarkand, and she asks Susan, “If Messer Marco does give your caravan to Kublai Khan, you will never see your home again?”

Susan says that’s right. Ping-Cho surprises Susan by saying that she knows where Polo has put the TARDIS key, but she promised not to tell anyone. Without hesitation, Susan answers, “And I promise you that no one will ask you.”

Now, this one bit of dialogue from Ping-Cho contains more honor than anything the supposedly honorable Marco Polo has done this entire serial. It would be great if the showrunners were trying to call attention to this distinction, but they are not. As I watched this serial the first time, it was at about this point that I began to acknowledge a dissatisfaction I was feeling with how the plot was progressing. I couldn’t articulate why; I just knew I wasn’t enjoying the serial quite as much as I had been the first few episodes. Now that I am going through it a second time, I can definitively say my issue is with how the writers portray Marco Polo. I’ve already touched on it, but it’s worth restating. I feel a lack of respect for a character that the show tries to portray in a very positive light. Marco Polo’s character was written poorly, in a way that gives him an unintended moral ambiguity, where nearly everything he does in the serial is meant to highlight his supposed honor except for the one thing that grounds his entire existence as a supporting character: stealing the Doctor’s TARDIS. But because this ambiguity was not intentional, the writers never acknowledge it. This creates a friction which makes everything that Polo does feel slightly off, and because so much of the serial revolves around him, my overall experience with the serial has suffered as a result.

Back to the story, Tegana approaches a shifty man in the stables of the waystation. The man’s name is Kuiju (pronounced COY-joo). After a bit of negotiation, Kuiju agrees to take the Doctor’s TARDIS away from Cheng-Ting. It’s unclear when this theft is supposed to take place, but Tegana agrees to meet Kuiju at midnight to pay him.

Inside the waystation, Ping-Cho goes to Marco Polo’s room to let him know it's time for dinner. Polo says he will wash up and join her there, leaving the room. Seeing the journal, Ping-Cho takes the TARDIS key from it and leaves.

Outside in the courtyard, she joins Susan and gives her the key. Susan is shocked because Ping-Cho had promised she would tell nobody where he hid the key, but Ping-Cho tells her how she found a loophole. “[He told me] not to tell anyone [where it was]. I haven’t. You don’t know where I got it.” Smiling, they embrace each other. While they are hugging, Tegana walks past and bids them goodnight. Susan is worried that he might have seen them with the key, but Ping-Cho doesn’t think so. Teary eyed, Susan promises Ping-Cho that she will come find her and say goodbye before they leave.

Late that night, the Doctor and his companions arrive in the stables with the key. The TARDIS is guarded, but Ian has a plan. He grabs a jug of wine and offers a drink to the guard. Once he gets near enough, he bashes the guard over the head, knocking him unconscious.

Meanwhile, Susan is looking around for Ping-Cho, but she hasn’t appeared in the stables. She leaves for the courtyard, looking for her.

From his place hidden in the shadows, Tegana watches as the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara rush into the TARDIS. Once they are inside, they realize that Susan is not with them. Barbara says she must have gone to say goodbye to Ping-Cho. “Don’t panic,” Ian says. “Give her a second.”

Out in the courtyard, Susan has found Ping-Cho in another room of the waystation. They embrace each other one last time, quietly mouthing their goodbyes. Susan returns to the stable and approaches the TARDIS. Suddenly, Tegana emerges from the darkness and grabs her. “Grandfather!” she screams. Credits roll.

Part 6 (Mighty Kublai Khan)

Tegana holds Susan close as first the Doctor, then Ian and Barbara exit from the TARDIS. Polo arrives, and the Doctor demands that Polo make Tegana let go of her. Polo says not before the Doctor gives him back the TARDIS key, and the Doctor grudgingly does so. Tegana again says he thinks the Doctor and his companions should be killed. Polo says no, then turns to the protagonists and asks them where they got the key. Ian says he took it from Polo’s room while he was out, protecting Ping-Cho. At this point of the serial, this trying to get into the TARDIS before getting caught dynamic is getting a little played out, but this is the last time we will see it before the finale.

There is another time skip, with Polo narrating about how they are now riding on horseback toward the Khan’s summer palace in Shang-Tu. Their baggage, including the Doctor’s TARDIS, is to follow on with another trade caravan.

At an inn, Barbara tries to coax Ian into asking Polo for the TARDIS back. Ian says that he done nothing but talk to Polo, but Barbara traps the two of them in conversation and then leaves them alone to talk. Ian does ask, and Polo again refuses. Polo says that he has already offered them as much consolation as he can, promising once again to take them with him to Venice so that they can continue on from there. Ian says that this is impossible, actually telling Polo the truth: “I come from another time. Our caravan, it not only covers distance. It can cross time.”

Polo doesn’t believe him, and Ian swears that he is telling the truth. Then Polo questions Ian about where exactly he found the TARDIS key. When Ian is unable to give a straight answer, Polo says Ian must have lied. “Ian, don’t you see? It doesn’t matter to me why you lied. What is important is the fact that you are capable of lying.”

Again—and I feel like I have been harping on this, but I don’t care—how is this worse than the way that Polo has treated them this entire serial? Ian lied to protect a friend—something that could be seen as noble. Whereas in Part 1, Polo deceived them about his true intentions for the TARDIS, purely for personal gain. This depiction in and of itself wouldn’t be an issue if the show were more honest about Marco Polo’s character, but instead, the writers try to shoehorn in his supposed honor at every opportunity.

The scene shifts to reveal Ping-Cho listening to the conversation from behind a nearby staircase. She hears the way Polo talks to Ian about the TARDIS key and thinks he means to punish her. Ping-Cho slips into her room, gathers her things, and says goodbye to a sleeping Susan.

Cut to the next morning. Aware that Ping-Cho has disappeared, Polo has organized a search of the city, but there is no sign of Ping-Cho. When Polo asks Susan if there is any place that Ping-Cho would have gone, Susan says that she might have gone back to her home in Samarkand. “But that’s a thousand miles from here!” Polo says. He is worried; Ping-Cho’s safety is his responsibility, but Kublai Khan would be upset if he took the time to go back for her. Ian offers to go back the way they came and search for her. Polo is wary of his motivations for doing so, but seeing that his options are limited, he lets Ian go.

Back at the previous waystation in Cheng-Ting, the unctuous manager, Wang-Lo, is approached by Kuiju, the man whom Tegana has paid to steal the TARDIS. Kuiju presents Wang-Lo with forged documents, purporting to give him permission to take the TARDIS to Shang-Tu. Wang-Lo gives Kuiju permission to remove it from the waystation.

Ping-Cho enters the courtyard of the waystation and thinks Kuiju is part of a caravan. She asks if he is headed to Samarkand, showing him all the money she has. Kuiju takes the money, saying he needs to check with the owner of the caravan. He makes arrangements with another man for the TARDIS to be transported, then he leaves.

Hours later, Kuiju hasn’t returned for Ping-Cho, and she goes to tell Wang-Lo about what happened. Wang-Lo calls her a foolish child, telling her that she has been robbed. At this moment, Ian enters the courtyard. Ping-Cho bursts into tears and rushes into Ian’s arms. Ian asks her why she ran away, and she says, “The key, and…and I can’t marry a man old enough to be my grandfather. I can’t. Please don’t take me back.” Ian says that he has no choice, that he has promised Polo.

A courier arrives in the courtyard, bearing the actual document to take the TARDIS from the waystation. Wang-Lo, realizing what has happened, tries to paint the situation as just a slight confusion, but Ian sees through his pandering. “The TARDIS has been stolen,” he says.

Meanwhile, Polo and Tegana are in the middle of an argument at yet another waystation. Tegana wants to go back for Ian and Ping-Cho, saying he suspects Ian’s true motives are to retrieve the Doctor’s caravan. Polo says that he trusts Ian’s character more than that. At this moment, Barbara and Susan enter the scene, laughing amongst themselves. Tegana points them out, saying that the Doctor’s companions are all against Ping-Cho’s marriage and that they are happy she has disappeared.

When Polo asks the two women if this is the case, Barbara confirms it, saying that they are all opposed to the idea of Ping-Cho marrying a man more than four times her age. Upon hearing this, it is clear that Polo now suspects Ian more than ever. “Take your horse, Tegana,” he says, sending him off to retrieve both Ian and Ping-Cho. Susan asks Polo why he has done this, and he says, “To make certain…that Ian has gone back to look for Ping-Cho and not your caravan.”

Back in Cheng-Ting, Ian is frustrated. They can’t find any news of where the TARDIS has been taken. No one has seen it moved down any of the well-traveled roads out of the city. Ian wonders if there are any old roads that are no longer used, and Ping-Cho mentions the Karakorum road, the route to the old capital of the Mongol empire. Ian says that caravans would still regularly travel to the city, but Ping-Cho clarifies that Karakorum was a tent city. When the Khan moved, the Mongols dispersed. “Why would anyone take the TARDIS to Karakorum?” Ping-Cho asks—remember, Karakorum is the place where Khan Noghai is gathering his army. Ian says he doesn’t know, but he’s determined to follow his hunch that the TARDIS must be somewhere along that road.

Cut back to Marco Polo, whose caravan has finally arrived in Shang-Tu. He, the Doctor, Susan, and Barbara all marvel at the Khan’s summer palace as they are led into the grand audience chamber. The vizier appears and talks Polo’s guests through the proper procedure, telling them that they all must kneel and tap their foreheads to the ground three times. The Doctor refuses, saying that he physically cannot do so after being on horseback for so long.

A gong sounds, and Kublai Khan enters the room. The whole court does as the vizier ordered, all except for the Doctor, who struggles against his ailing back to get into the proper position. Kublai Khan is not in great physical shape himself. He is a very old man with a long silver beard, hobbling into the room with a large lump on his foot. As he mutters in pain, he sees the Doctor also crying out in agony. “Do you mock our afflictions?” the Khan asks.

The Doctor says that his back is in great pain, and Polo adds that the Doctor is not accustomed to riding on horseback. Kublai Khan perks up at the mention of a doctor, asking him if he is a physician. The Doctor replies that he is not, and the Khan is disappointed. Then the Khan asks where the Warlord Tegana is, to which Polo replies, “Riding for Shang-Tu, my lord, with the lady Ping-Cho and a companion of theirs.”

“Noghai’s army is encamped at Karakorum,” Kublai Khan says, adding, “We are very anxious to hear Tegana’s explanation of his master’s conduct.” The Khan says that tomorrow they will ride for Peking.

The Doctor is aghast at this news, and he stresses that he doesn’t think he can get on another horse. Kublai Khan considers this, then offers the Doctor a ride with him in his carriage of state. Suddenly, the Khan is struck by a great pain, and he commands the vizier to find accommodations for his guests. He also commands Polo to bring Tegana directly to him when he arrives. Then, he tells the Doctor that they have healing waters, offering them to him in the hope that it would aid his back. The Doctor obliges, and the two walk offscreen, arm-in-arm, clutching at each other for support and groaning with every step.

Susan laughs. “That’s the mighty Kublai Khan?” Polo argues that despite his old age, the Khan is still the greatest administrator the world has ever seen.

Barbara is worried about Ian and Ping-Cho, saying that they can’t leave Shang-Tu without them. Polo says they have no choice, but that they shouldn’t worry. Tegana will bring them. “Will he?” asks Barbara.

Meanwhile, on the Karakorum road, Ian and Ping-Cho have caught up to an unsuspecting Kuiju, who is resting in a clearing with the TARDIS strapped to a nearby wagon. To Ian, it appears as if Kuiju is waiting for someone to whom he will give the ship. Ian tells Ping-Cho to take cover behind a shrub, and he sneaks toward Kuiju.

Kuiju hears Ian's approach and spins to meet him, dagger drawn. “Who are you?” he demands. Suddenly, Ping-Cho pops out from behind the shrub and demands to know where her money has gone. This catches Kuiju by surprise just enough for Ian to disarm him and hold his own dagger to his throat.

Ian questions Kuiju, and the man tells him that he was meant to deliver the TARDIS to the warlord Tegana. Suddenly, Tegana himself appears in the clearing, grabbing Ping-Cho. Ian threatens to kill Kuiju, but Tegana says he is of no importance. Ian lets him go, and Kuiju moves out of their way. Tegana unsheathes his sword and waves it tauntingly at Ian. Credits roll.

Part 7 (Assassin at Peking)

Ian squares off with Tegana, still holding Kuiju’s dagger. Tegana tightens his grip on Ping-Cho, and Ian asks if the mighty warlord will kill a child. Tegana says that he would, if the child is in his way as Ian is. “And Kublai Khan?” Ian demands. “Is he in your way too?”

Tegana answers defiantly. “I serve Noghai. And with that”—he points at the TARDIS—“he will rule the world.”

Suddenly, a group of warriors bursts into the clearing, headed by a man who shouts, “Disarm them!” His subordinates quickly move through the party, confiscating Ian’s dagger and Tegana’s sword. Kuiju makes a sudden run for freedom, and one of the warriors intercepts him, killing him with a swing of his sword. The leader is angry at this; he did not give the order to kill. This seems like a pretty transparent effort to manipulate the plot so that Kuiju cannot bear witness to Tegana’s treachery. As a result, it is Ian’s word against Tegana’s, and both try to make their case. The warrior says it's not for him to judge in this dispute. He announces that he will take them to the Khan in Peking.

At the palace in Peking, the Doctor and Kublai Khan are playing backgammon. The Doctor tosses the dice and smiles delightedly, announcing that he has won another game. Kublai Khan notices the Doctor has been keeping notes of what has been wagered. “What do we owe?” he asks.

“Oh, thirty-five elephants with ceremonial bridles, trappings, brocades and pavilions; four thousand white stallions and twenty-five tigers; the sacred tooth of Buddha which Polo brought over from India; [and] I’m very much afraid all the commerce from Burma for one year, sire.”

The Khan sighs. Suddenly, the Empress approaches, and the Khan begs the Doctor to hide his notes. The Empress, illustrious wife of the Khan, eyes her husband shrewdly. “You’re not wagering, are you?” The Khan merely smiles, and his wife gives a haughty look and strides from the room. As an aside, it’s very telling about the sexism of the period that the Empress never gets a name.

The Khan laments his losses, saying that the Empress will be furious with him when she finds out. The Doctor offers the Khan one more game with the following stakes: win or lose, the Khan’s debt is wiped clean, but if the Doctor wins, he gets his TARDIS back. The Khan agrees, and they begin their game.

Just then, Polo walks in to tell the Khan that Tegana has arrived in Peking. The Khan tells Polo that Tegana will be granted an audience as soon as possible, casually mentioning the game of backgammon and the current stakes. Polo is aghast to learn that the TARDIS may be on its way back to the Doctor after all the trouble he went through to acquire it for the Khan.

Polo exits the room and runs into Barbara and Susan in the hall. He delivers them the news of the Khan’s wager, and Barbara and Susan are delighted, filled with hope for the first time since their attempted escape in the bamboo forest. Polo dampens the mood slightly, telling them that Ping-Cho’s wedding banquet is to be held that evening, with her marriage to her elderly husband taking place the following morning.

At this moment, the warrior from the Karakorum road arrives. His name is Ling-Tau, and he announces to Polo that Ian and Ping-Cho are being held under guard, having been accused of stealing the TARDIS by Tegana. Susan says that it doesn’t matter, because the Doctor will have possession of the TARDIS as soon as he wins his game. On cue, the Doctor emerges from the Khan’s throne room, his face grave. He has lost the game.

The scene changes to a prison cell. Polo and Ling-Tau are talking to Ian and Ping-Cho. Ian has told him everything, accusing Tegana of working against Kublai Khan for Khan Noghai. Ping-Cho supports Ian’s story, but Ling-Tau says that he was not there when this supposed confession occurred. Polo says that it’s just their word against Tegana’s. Furthermore, Ian will stand trial alone, as the Khan has decided to pardon Ping-Cho at the behest of her husband-to-be.

Some time later, the TARDIS has been brought to the Khan’s throne room. Delighted, the Khan inspects it with Tegana, appreciative to the warlord for recovering it. Tegana lets it slip that Ian and Ping-Cho’s attempted theft was not the first time that the Doctor and his companions had tried to recover the TARDIS. Surprised, the Khan asks Polo why he did not invoke the Khan’s laws. Polo says that they did not know the Khan’s laws, so it would have been unjust. Furthermore, he says that it was wrong of him to claim the TARDIS in the Khan’s name, because he had done it out of selfishness. Finally, the serial acknowledges the fact that Polo is in the wrong. It doesn’t quite make up for the way the writers chose to express Polo’s morality in the last few episodes, but credit where credit is due. Better late than never.

The Khan is shocked and saddened at Polo’s intent to parlay the gift into getting the Khan to let him return home to Venice. Adding insult to injury, the Khan says that Polo’s gift has failed, arguing that he won the TARDIS fair and square in a game of chance—he will not release Polo from his service. After the wedding banquet, he wants Polo to give him the key. He also wants to meet with Tegana to discuss the terms of the settlement between the Khan and Noghai. As Marco Polo exits the throne room, he closes his eyes in defeat.

Then there’s a quick cut to the banquet. The Khan is next to his wife, who is weeping. “Dead!” he declaims. “And in the middle of the feast! How shall we tell her? Terrible! Horrible! Terrible and horrible! Horrible and terrible!” Ping-Cho’s future husband has kicked the bucket. This is the first time that the series made me laugh out loud. I really enjoy this twist; it’s such a dramatic left turn in what has been a slowly paced serial.

Ping-Cho enters the hall and is immediately given the news. The Empress tries to comfort her, but the Khan notices that she is dry-eyed. The Empress scoffs at her, saying that she must be heartless. Ping-Cho replies, “My lady, I grieve an old man’s death as all would do. But how can I weep for a love I have never known?”

The Khan is impressed by her honesty. He asks her if she would like to return home to Samarkand or remain a while in his court. Ping-Cho considers the offer for a moment, then says that she would like to stay. Then the Khan asks her what she thinks about the Doctor and his companions. “They are friends, my lord,” she says. “As they always will be.” Ping-Cho leaves.

Kublai Khan turns to Polo and tells him that he trusts Ping-Cho’s judgment as he once did Polo’s. Polo is on thin ice, and the Khan lets him know that if he does not prove himself trustworthy, he will be banished from the court and left at the mercy of his enemies. The Khan sends him away, telling him to return with the key to the TARDIS once the Khan’s audience with Tegana has ended.

On his way out, Polo passes Tegana. “I underestimated you,” he tells Tegana.

Tegana smiles. “No. You overestimated yourself.”

Back in the prison cell, Barbara, Susan, and the Doctor are visiting Ian, with a guard posted just outside the door. They are trying to figure out what Tegana is really after. They finally piece it together: Tegana must have been trying to destroy Polo’s caravan—or at the very least delay it—in order to give Noghai time to move his army close to Peking. “Even so,” Ian says, “why should Kublai Khan fear Noghai? He has an enormous army, and he’s already defeated him once, surely.” Then the Doctor spots the difference. Tegana must be in Peking to assassinate Kublai Khan. With the leader of the Khan’s army dead, that would give Noghai the advantage.

They need to get out of there to warn the Khan. Ian takes the Doctor’s walking stick and hides near the door of the cell, and the Doctor calls to the guard to let him know they have finished their visit. When the guard opens the door, Ian trips him with the Doctor’s walking stick, and they all flee into the corridor.

They run into Marco Polo in a nearby corridor. Polo is angry, immediately calling upon the guards to seize Ian and take him back to his cell. But before they can, the warrior, Ling-Tau, approaches with grave news. “A messenger has just arrived,” he says. “Noghai’s army is marching on Peking.” Polo says that Tegana is in the throne room with Kublai Khan at that very moment. The danger finally revealed, all of them rush to protect him.

In the throne room, Tegana is negotiating with Kublai Khan when he suddenly pulls out his sword. An attendant rushes forward to defend the Khan, but Tegana dispatches him quickly, leaving just him and the elderly ruler. Suddenly, the doors bang open, and Polo is standing there. A fight ensues. I wish I could have seen it—all I get is about a minute of clanging and clashing before Polo finally disarms Tegana.

At this moment, the Doctor, his companions, Ping-Cho, and several warriors rush into the throne room to see Polo restraining Tegana in front of the Khan. Tegana is soon surrounded by warriors. Kublai Khan condemns Tegana to death, but before anyone can move, Tegana snatches a sword from another warrior and impales himself through the chest, screaming. Polo orders the guards to take Tegana’s body away.

Before the Khan knows what’s going on, Polo turns to the Doctor and hands him the TARDIS key, yelling, “Go!” The Doctor and his companions run to the TARDIS, Susan offering a hurried goodbye to Ping-Cho on her way inside. The doors shut, and the TARDIS dematerializes.

The Khan and Polo stare on in wonder. Polo apologizes for disobeying the Khan’s order. The Khan waves it off, saying that if he hadn’t, the old man would probably have won it in backgammon anyway. “And it is true,” he says. “A flying caravan. There’s something for you to tell your friends in Venice.” I like how this implies that the Khan will release Marco Polo from his service without outright saying it.

“No, my lord,” Polo answers. “They would not believe half the things that I have seen in Cathay. But what is the truth? I wonder where they are now…the past or the future…” Credits roll.

This is the first episode of the series that hasn’t ended on a cliffhanger. I like it; it’s like the writers have finally offered space for the audience to take a breath.

Takeaways

In reading a little about the missing episodes, I came across several threads citing this serial as one of the best of them. It seems like Loose Cannon thought so too, as it is the only reconstruction in their catalogue that they took the time to colorize. I fully agree with the general consensus about this serial. It is the first of the series where it feels like the stakes have finally been laid out. An Unearthly Child introduced the characters and the concept of time travel; The Daleks broadened the scope of the show, demonstrating how the TARDIS can take its crew to distant worlds; and The Edge of Destruction showed the dangers of time travel and provided further insight into how the main characters interact with one another. In Marco Polo, it feels like we finally understand the rules of the game and are now allowed to begin moving the pieces around the board. Despite the plot relying heavily on restricting the movement of the main characters, it seems like they’re able to freely express themselves more than ever before.

My favorite aspect of this serial is the twists and turns of the plot. Knowing Tegana’s plan and seeing the Doctor and crew foil it—sometimes intentionally, sometimes inadvertently—is very satisfying. It feels like there is a lot of variety from episode to episode, from the exploratory nature of Parts 1 through 3 to the political theater of Parts 6 and 7. The setting constantly returning to waystations is a bit repetitive, but there’s enough intrigue happening at these locations to keep my interest. The time skips being narrations of Marco Polo’s journal is an excellent touch, adding a storybook feel to the serial and creating natural transition points.

I do take issue with how the titular figure is characterized in the middle episodes. The writers treat Marco Polo as an honorable man despite his actions saying otherwise, not going far enough to demonstrate how the theft of the Doctor’s “caravan” creates an internal moral conflict. And although Polo does acknowledge his wrongdoing in the finale, this doesn’t make up for the disconnect I feel in the earlier episodes. I wish the writers had gone a little further to establish Polo as a flawed character throughout the serial, rather than tackling the concept in the final minutes, only after Polo finally discovers that his gambit to be released from the Kahn’s service has failed.

That being said, Marco Polo handles the other characters wonderfully. Ian and Barbara show an increasing measure of comfort with traveling in the Doctor’s company, despite the danger around them. At the same time, Susan starts to reveal her discontent with the Doctor’s lifestyle, expressing a longing for a home she knows she can never return to. My favorite line of the serial is when Susan tells Barbara, “One day, we'll know all the mysteries of the skies, and we'll stop our wandering.”

After a firm ending without a cliffhanger, I’m left wondering where the series is going to take me for the first time. I can’t remember what comes next, and it’s nice not knowing for a change. Though I am certain about one thing: I am desperate for moving pictures again. I appreciate Marco Polo and what it had to offer, but I can’t wait to watch a serial that doesn’t require me to follow along with a transcript. No matter what comes next, I’m excited to see what these characters have in store for me.

Rating: 8.7/10

Chapter Text

The Keys of Marinus

Yikes. This one’s a doozy.

Part 1 (The Sea of Death)

The serial opens with wide shot of an island in the middle of a large body of water—a miniature, just like the Dalek city had been. The island is fairly small and dominated by a massive structure: a four-sided pyramid with sides that rise at a steep angle and a flat top. Between the island’s sandy shore and the base of a pyramid is what appears to be a ring of foliage encircling the structure.

As the TARDIS lands on the shore, the camera zooms in, revealing that the foliage is actually a dense cluster of brown rock formations, some a few inches tall, some more than twice the height of the TARDIS. These features are rather amorphous, and for that reason, I don’t think this miniature is as good as the one in The Daleks: it does not communicate very well the intentional aspects of its design, at least, not from the distance from which the director wanted the shot framed.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions are checking out their new surroundings on the scanner; Susan is delighted to see the sea and a sandy beach. Just before they leave the ship to explore, Ian mentions that he thought he saw something moving on the scanner just as the Doctor switched it on. Then he says it was probably a shadow, and they all go outside. Ian is still wearing a silk Chinese jacket from the last serial, and he will be wearing it for the rest of The Keys of Marinus. It looks really bad, like a cheap costume you might find at a Halloween store, and I have a hard time taking him seriously while he’s wearing it.

The scene cuts to the sea, where four dark objects are moving just beneath the surface. They are metal and shaped like torpedoes, with fish-like fins to keep them oriented properly. They beach themselves on the island rather jerkily—they are very clearly miniatures being yanked onto the beach by pieces of string; it does not look good at all.

Outside the TARDIS, the crew marvels at the peacefulness of the sea. “Absolutely calm,” Ian says, “Not even a ripple.” Susan wants to go for a swim, but the Doctor discourages it, saying that they have no idea what creatures might be lurking beneath the surface. They move offscreen, meandering through angular rocks, some like stalagmites and others like crystal amalgamations. As they leave the shot, a figure appears: human-shaped and encased from head to toe in a black wetsuit, with flippers and webbed gloves.

Some ways away, the Doctor bends down and examines the shoreline, noting that it is actually made of crushed glass, not sand. A little further off, Susan has dropped her shoe into a pool of water. She starts rolling up her pants to go in after it. “No, Susan! Don’t” Ian yells. The camera angle changes to show the shoe dissolving in the water. “It must be some sort of acid,” he says.

Ian gives a shaken Susan his pair of boots so Susan can get back to the TARDIS without cutting her feet on the glass beach. As Susan leaves, Barbara comments, “Ian, this is a tidal pool.” This suggests to them that the entire sea must be acid, not just this one pool.

Now, you can’t have a tidal pool without tides, and you can’t have tides without wave action. Yet this sea has none; this was emphasized in both the original long shot of the miniature and in the dialogue. I get that having waves in the sea is leaps and bounds beyond what the show’s budget could produce. I also understand that this is a nitpick—of course early Doctor Who is going to be filled with scientific inaccuracies and gobbledygook. If a discrepancy like this were in a serial like Marco Polo or The Daleks, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. It would be a quirk that doesn’t take much away from an otherwise great experience. As it is, the mistake being in The Keys of Marinus just adds to an overall feeling of discontent that I have as this serial gets off the ground. The miniature of the island looked off, the arrival of the torpedo-like objects was poorly done, Ian’s attire is a ridiculous choice, and now this. Some very strange decisions.

Moving on, the scene cuts back to the TARDIS, around which the mysterious figure from before is lurking. It moves a hand across the lock, looking for a way inside. Before it can finish its snooping, it hears something and ducks out of frame. Susan enters the scene—oblivious to the figure—and goes inside the TARDIS, closing the doors behind her.

Back with the others, the Doctor is marveling at the sea of acid. Then he turns and notices the torpedo-shapes on the beach, exclaiming, “Good gracious!” Moving closer, Ian says they look like they could be a one-man submarine of some kind. Around a corner, Barbara finds another of the strange crafts, calling the others over and telling them that there is something inside it.

At the TARDIS, Susan exits wearing a new pair of shoes, leaving Ian’s boots outside for him. As she straightens, she sees the webbed imprint of the mysterious figure’s flippers on the ground. She calls out for the Doctor, but, hearing no response, decides to go off on her own to investigate. As she follows the footprints out of frame, the mysterious figure emerges from behind a rock and follows her. For those who haven’t read my review of An Unearthly Child, I’ll be keeping track of a few themes that repeat throughout the series. One such theme is when one of the main characters triggers a major plot point by going off on their own, usually without telling anyone. Susan’s decision to follow the footprints is the second time in the series that a character has decided to go off on their own in this manner, giving us SomeoneWandersOff™ #2.

On the beach, Ian opens the craft with the thing inside, pulling out a wetsuit. There is a large crack in the submersible and a tear in the wetsuit; the Doctor suggests that there must have been someone inside the wetsuit that came to a rather nasty end.

Just then, Ian turns and spots the pyramid-like structure. I don’t know how this massive structure could have been overlooked before. The way it’s framed in this shot makes it seem as if the building should be visible from everywhere on the island, certainly from the beach, and Ian only seeing it now really throws off my conception of how things on the island is oriented. Again, it’s all the little things in this episode that are starting to add up to a big problem. Moving on, the Doctor decides they will go to the building after they get back to the TARDIS and gather Susan.

Meanwhile, Susan is already at the base of the pyramid, having followed the footprints there. She walks toward the corner of the building, unaware that just around it, the mysterious figure waits with a knife raised to strike.

Cut back to the TARDIS, where the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are unable to find Susan. They do find Ian’s boots, however, and they see Susan’s footprints—it’s strange that the protagonists would call attention to Susan’s footprints and not the large webbed imprints which should still be there. The Doctor suggests that the acid sea may be a defensive barrier for the building, meaning that whomever is inside may view all visitors as hostile. They decide to follow Susan’s footprints.

At the pyramid, Susan still makes her way toward the corner of the building and the hostile figure. But just before she gets there, the section of wall next to the figure spins around like a trapdoor, knocking the figure into the building. Susan, unaware of this occurrence, continues around the corner and along the side of the pyramid, still thinking she is alone.

Sometime after Susan is gone, the others arrive at the base of pyramid, marveling at its composition, comparing it to the Egyptian pyramids back on Earth. They decide to split up and go in opposite directions around the base of the pyramid, Susan and Ian going one way and the Doctor going the other.

Meanwhile, Susan is moving along one side of the pyramid when suddenly, a wall she leans against revolves and swallows her up, just like it had with the unknown figure. Around a corner, Barbara and Ian hear her cry out and break into a run.

At a different point at the base of the pyramid, the Doctor also triggers one of these revolving panels, and he too is trapped inside the pyramid. The way this part of the episode progresses is very strange. It’s not as if each character has triggered the same part of the wall; they have triggered three different sections of wall. It makes it impossible to keep track of where the characters are in relation to where they started, and this sequence seems very amorphous and confusing in a way that doesn’t feel intentional.

Our first glimpse inside the pyramid is of Susan inside a dim hallway. She is walking directly towards the mysterious figure in the wetsuit, who is hiding, pressed up against the wall. I say “hiding,” and yes, that is technically what the figure is doing, but it’s not around a corner or behind a ledge or anything. It’s just standing with its back against the wall, in the middle of a fairly narrow hallway. At first, I thought maybe the director was trying to portray that the hall is too dark for Susan to make out the figure, but as she moves down the hall, she catches a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye and spins around to see a man in a white robe. This new monk-like character walks slowly into the hall, turns to regard Susan, and walks back out the way he came.

Susan continues to back away from where the man in white appeared, until she almost backs right into the figure in the wetsuit. The figure grabs Susan, as if attacking her, but only wrestles with her for a moment before the figure collapses, a knife lodged in its back. Susan screams, frozen in fear as the man in white returns, slowly approaching her and the body of the figure until the scene cuts away. This exchange leaves me with so many questions. Why couldn’t Susan see the figure in the wetsuit? Why did the man in white leave, then come back? Who stabbed the figure?

Here’s what I think this scene was trying to convey. Remember how the figure in the wetsuit was the first to enter the pyramid? I think that it must have already had a run-in with the man in white, where he was stabbed by the robed man. The figure was then hiding from the man when Susan just so happened to walk down the hall instead. The man in white saw Susan, but disregarded her because he was looking for the figure. When Susan backed into the figure in the wetsuit, it attacked, but it only had enough strength left for a few feeble swings before keeling over, dead. If this indeed is the full sequence of events, the show does a terrible job conveying what’s going on. I feel like a forensics expert trying to piece together a murder, and I still major issue with the fact that the figure in the wetsuit had just enough strength left to hide and attack Susan but not enough strength to pose a genuine threat. This scene stinks.

Back outside, Barbara is talking to Ian about what to do next when he suddenly stops responding to her. The camera pans over, and we see an empty thoroughfare where Ian should be. Alarmed, Barbara goes to where she last saw him and is sucked into one of the revolving panels, just like all the others. Only, this time, when the wall swings open, we see the man in white waiting for her. So now we are up to five characters who just so happened to lean on the right sections of wall to become trapped inside the pyramid. Get used to contrived plot elements; this serial gives us a lot of them.

Next, we see Ian inside the pyramid. He sees the body of the figure in the wetsuit, then continues down the hallway. How did Ian avoid encountering the man in white, despite only entering the pyramid twenty seconds before Barbara?

The scene cuts to the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan, who have all been taken prisoner by the man in white. They compare their stories, and it becomes apparent that the dead figure was in the same sort of wetsuit that they discovered inside one of the submersibles. The Doctor wonders why the figure had been killed while they were only captured. He is hopeful that Ian will find a way to rescue them. “That’s just it, Doctor,” Barbara says. “He isn’t free. He was captured before I was.” I don’t know why Barbara would say this unless she saw Ian captured, which she clearly didn’t, because he wasn’t with the man in white when Barbara arrived. And again, how did Ian enter the building seconds before Barbara and never even encounter the man in white?

Back in one of the hallways, the man in white is attacked by another figure in the wetsuit. Witnessing this, Ian takes the figure in the wetsuit by surprise, pulling it off the man in white and pinning it against the wall. The man in white pulls a lever, and a secret door opens behind the figure in the wetsuit. It falls down a very long shaft and lands with a splash in the acid sea. The fall is represented in miniature, with a rigid action figure falling down what looks to be a two-foot drop into a pool of water. It looks comically stupid, continuing the trend of bad visuals.

Ian asks the man in white where his friends are, and the man says that they are safe. “I saw your machine materialize,” the man says. “Until I knew otherwise, I had to treat you as potential enemies. The Voords were trying to penetrate the walls.” The Voords (rhymes with “moored”) are the figures in the black wetsuits. We learn that the Voords have attacked the island many times, but not for several years. This man is the sole defender of the pyramid. He leads Ian offscreen to be reunited with his friends, but neither of them know that their passage down the hallway is observed by another Voord.

A point of note: the man in white’s name is Arbitan (pronounced AR-bee-tan). I will always try to introduce a character once their name is made known to the audience. But this doesn’t happen for several minutes, and I’m tired of saying “the man in white.” Also, I’m not sure if the plural of Voord has an “s” or not; it is said both ways. For clarity’s sake, I’ll say the plural of Voord is Voords.

The next scene is in a laboratory or machine room of some kind. In the center of the room is a transparent dodecahedron, perhaps seven feet in diameter, looking to be made of plastic with gizmos and bits of wire suspended within. Arbitan is explaining to the protagonists, now reunited, how he came to be on the island. He points to the strange object and says that two thousand years ago, it was created as an impartial judge and jury called the Conscience of Marinus—Marinus is the name of the planet. It was infallible, and scientists spent years refining it. The machine developed the capability of extending its influence to the minds of all who lived on the planet Marinus, “eliminating evil from the minds of men for all time.” But eventually, an evil man named Yartek and his followers, the Voords, found a way to overcome the power of the machine. Free of its influence, the Voords began to rob, murder, and cheat. The rest of the planet, unable to respond to acts of violence with violence, could not resist them.

So Arbitan and the other scientists shut the machine down by removing its five microcircuits. Ian asks why they just didn’t destroy the machine. “We always hoped to find a way of modifying it and making it again irresistible,” Arbitan says. “So instead of destroying it, we removed the five key microcircuits.” One of the keys remains with Arbitan; the rest have been placed in safe locations all over Marinus.

Since the removal of the microcircuits, Arbitan has been tinkering with the machine, and he thinks that once the keys are restored, it will be able to control the Voords. Now, the time has finally come to retrieve the keys. Over the years, he has sent his friends, his followers, even his daughter to fetch the keys for him, but no one has ever returned. “Your coming’s brought new hope,” he says earnestly. “Oh, yes, yes, you must find the keys for me.” The Doctor declines, and they leave.

Let’s pause for a moment and talk a little more about the Conscience of Marinus. According to Arbitan, the point of this machine is to “influence the minds of men throughout the planet [so] they no longer had to decide what was wrong or wright. The machine decided for them.” If I were to tell you that there is a lost episode wherein the 9th Doctor encountered such a machine, wouldn’t the machine itself be treated as a force of evil? Later serials in both the classic and the modern series make it a point of emphasis that one of the things that the Doctor prizes the most about humanity is their capacity to choose to do good in the world. That free will is what makes people, well, people. We see this represented many times in the Doctor’s constant battles against the suppression and uniformity of the Daleks and the Cybermen. We also see this whenever there is a “benevolent” invasion that purports to want to control the human race for its own good. Hell, we even see this with the 1st Doctor: when the computer WOTAN tries to subjugate the human race in The War Machines.

I understand that in the early stages of the series, things were not fully fleshed out. But on its face, isn’t the morality of this episode totally backwards? Yes, the Doctor does decline to help Arbitan, but it is not borne out of some moral stance. As we will soon see, he simply thought it was too big of an ask, too much of an investment of his time, and too much of a risk. I believe in later seasons, the script for this serial would never have seen the light of day, at least, not without Arbitan and his machine being rewritten as the antagonists. As I watched through this serial for the first time and saw the Doctor’s attitude toward Arbitan’s machine—especially considering that the serial had already begun on such shaky ground—I thought it had the potential to be the weakest serial so far.

Returning to the story, the Doctor and his companions are making their way back to the TARDIS. Barbara and Ian are lamenting their inability to help “that old man,” but again, they see it as too much of a burden. When they come upon the ship, they find that an invisible barrier prevents them from getting closer than a few feet. Arbitan’s voice can be heard as if over a loud speaker: “I’m sorry you forced me to keep you from your ship, but your refusal to help me left no alternative.”

“Arbitan, where are you?” Ian grouses. Incidentally, this is the only time Arbitan’s name is mentioned in the entire episode, which makes it very hard for the audience to put that information to memory.

Arbitan directs them back to the room with the Conscience of Marinus. He refuses to release the TARDIS unless the Doctor and his companions can return to him with the microcircuits. “If we return,” Barbara points out. After all, no one has returned before. Arbitan gives them all “travel dials.” These allow any wearer to dematerialize from one place and materialize in another, much like the TARDIS but without traveling through time.

“They’re all programmed to the same destination,” says Arbitan. “You have only to twist the dial once.”

“Like this?” Barbara says, and she vanishes. The others are alarmed at first, but Arbitan tells them that they mustn’t waste time. All they need to do to join her is to twist their travel dials.

Before they do, Arbitan says the following: “One final word. If, when you return, you find the Voords have taken this building, do not let them get the keys. You understand? Destroy them!” This sounds like a clunky bit of foreshadowing to me.

They all twist their travel dials, and they disappear. As soon as they are gone, a Voord sneaks up behind Arbitan and knocks him down, killing him.

The Doctor, Ian, and Susan arrive in a new location, just outside of a pair of large metal doors, but Barbara isn’t there. Susan begins to call out for her, and Ian sees her travel dial lying abandoned on the floor. He picks it up. “Look,” he says, “there’s blood on it!” Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Velvet Web)

The Doctor, Ian, and Susan can only see one possibility: Barbara must have been moved by force and has dropped her travel dial in the scuffle. They open the metal doors and hustle inside.

When they enter, an alarm goes off and lights flash, disorienting them and forcing them to cover their eyes. After a few seconds, the alarm stops, and they are able to take in their surroundings. They are in a lavishly decorated room replete with graceful statues, silk drapes, and grand bouquets of flowers.

Barbara is lounging on a cushy chair with two female attendants at her side, each wearing a fine dress and bearing a tray of fruit for her to nibble on. She herself is wearing a decadent dress, nothing like the outfit she came in, accentuated by golden jewelry around her arms, neck, and hair. Susan rushes over to her, still worried about the bloody travel dial, but Barbara tells her that nothing is wrong. She says she had been disoriented by the teleport, gotten frightened, and tried to tear the travel dial off of her wrist in her confusion.

Ian says he is impressed by the place they have landed in, and Barbara says, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” She sends the attendants off to fetch some food for the rest of them; the two women curtsy and leave. Susan compliments Barbara on the dress, and Barbara says, “They asked me to choose the materials I wanted.”

A gong sounds, and four young women enter with trays of food. Susan and the Doctor are impressed, but Ian is a bit wary. “I don’t know the price yet,” he says. But Barbara says that she has already met the host, and that everything is alright.

I need to address something. Arbitan said explicitly that these travel dials can transport them through space but not time. The other three left Arbitan’s pyramid three lines of dialogue after Barbara, or about 20 seconds. It's impossible for things to be even remotely like Barbara has described here. Her having a fight with her travel dial alone could have taken more than twenty seconds. But she somehow stripped off the travel dial, went through the doors, learned that she would be pampered, asked for a dress of a particular material, got the dress, put it on, ate some food, and met the host? In 20 seconds?

I’ll be going a little out of turn here, but there will soon be an element of thought control in this episode. I won’t go into too much detail now, but the physical details of the opulent room are not what they appear to the Doctor and his companions: they are hallucinations. However, it will also be made clear that until someone has been subjected to a certain process as they sleep, this thought control works something like the power of suggestion. Meaning, there needs to be something of substance in order for the person being controlled to believe the lie, and once the lie is known for what it is, the suggestion ceases to work on them.

I bring this up to say that by my understanding, based on the rules of the episode, it cannot be possible that Barbara has only been here for 20 seconds and has hallucinated all of the things she said she has seen. It just doesn’t work that way. The fact that the Doctor, Ian, and Susan appear to have arrived on the scene many minutes after Barbara seems to be a horrendous oversight on the part of the showrunners. I mentioned in my introduction that it is very important to me when, in science fiction, the audience can understand some of the rules of the universe’s technology. Well, I would rather know nothing about a piece of technology than be presented with blatantly contradictory information. For everything to make sense the way it has been presented, either the travel dials work in a way that goes against their explicit description, or the thought control works in a way that is beyond the level of understanding I gleaned from my first watch. In the former scenario, the show has lied; in the latter, the show has failed to explain its premise. Neither option is good.

Moving on, the host soon arrives, a man named Altos (pronounced AL-toss). Altos looks something like a noble, with long, flowing robes and an ornate gold necklace of wide, segmented links. He presents himself regally, more like a servant of good standing than a host, acting as if the Doctor and his companions are the ones in charge. “You are in the city of Morphoton,” he tells them (pronounced MORE-fuh-tahn). “Our people are perhaps the most contented people in the universe. Nothing is denied them.”

Susan tests this statement, asking for a dress made out of the same material as Barbara’s, and Altos graciously accedes, saying one would be made. Then the Doctor really pushes the envelope. “If I had to choose, [I want] a well equipped laboratory with every conceivable instrument.”

“It will be arranged,” says Altos, astounding them all. Altos and the attendants leave, and the Doctor and his companions are ready to sleep for the night.

Susan and the Doctor nod off quickly, but Ian appears restless. Barbara asks him what's wrong, and Ian answers, “Perhaps it’s my materialistic side. How rich and powerful do you have to be to give things away free?” Despite his reservations, he supposes he might feel different in the morning. He and Barbara fall asleep.

As they sleep, the camera pans to a large wall carving of a face, whose eyes light up, while what sounds like a slow, resonant heartbeat pulsates throughout the chamber. One of the attendants returns, holding in her hands several of what look like polished stone disks. She places one on each of the protagonists’ foreheads, then departs. Barbara’s head nods in her sleep, and the disk slips off of her forehead and lands on the ground with a clink. The noise wakes her up. Before she can think much about it, the same alarm from the beginning of the episode sounds again. Barbara clutches at her ears, then falls unconscious.

In the morning, Ian, Susan, and the Doctor are enjoying their breakfast, while Barbara still remains asleep. Ian and the Doctor both mention a feeling of slight pain in the center of their foreheads, but the sensation is quickly forgotten as an attendant arrives with Susan’s finished silk dress. Susan wakes Barbara up to show her.

When Barbara awakens, the camera angle changes, and we see the room as if through Barbara’s eyes, with everyone staring directly into the camera. From this perspective, the silk drapes look something like gauze, all torn and dirty. Same with Susan’s new dress: it’s just torn rags barely held together by thread. Even Barbara’s own dress looks old and stiff in her eyes. The Doctor thinks that Barbara may not be all the way awake, so he asks Susan to give her a glass of orange juice. Susan pours into what she sees as a crystal glass, but which Barbara sees as an unwashed mug. When Susan approaches, Barbara slaps the mug out of her hands.

Ian tries to calm her down, saying that the people of Morphoton have given them everything. “They’ve given us nothing,” Barbara says. “I don’t know what they’ve done to you, or why it hasn’t worked on me, but I must find a way to show you. I must, before it’s too late.”

Altos arrives, and Barbara shrinks back with fear. “He knows it’s failed on me.” In Barbara’s eyes, Altos is no longer wearing his regal clothes. Instead, he is wearing what looks like a loose collection of dirty furs around his torso, and his thighs are bare almost all the way to his crotch. Altos says that he wants Barbara to be checked over by their physicians. Barbara panics, suddenly running out of the room with a scream. Ian makes as if to go after her, but Altos tells him that the people of the city will take care of her.

Elsewhere in Morphoton, Barbara runs to a small, closet-like room and hides around a corner from the door. Seconds later, Altos enters, but he does not see her. He leaves. Alone, Barbara sits down on some steps and cries. Despite the ragged quality of much of the serial to this point, I find the way this sequence is executed to be very well done. From the way they portray seeing through Barbara’s eyes to her frantic escape, it’s very disorienting, but in a way that I feel the writers intended, unlike the general confusion that lingers over much of the rest of the serial.

The scene cuts to Altos. He arrives in a dark room, filled with the same heartbeat-like sound that was heard the night before in the large chamber. Inside this room is a girl, the attendant that placed the disks on the others’ foreheads; her name is Sabetha (pronounced suh-BEE-thuh). She stands demurely in front of three figures that look like giant brains in large glass cases, each with two eyestalks sticking out of them. They can talk, but it is unclear how—it may be telepathy.

Altos speaks to the brains. “One of the women has resisted the power of the mesmerant. She has escaped into the city.” The brains—credited as Morphos, though this name is never mentioned in the episode—ask who placed the discs, and Altos tells them it was Sabetha.

One of the Morphos says that Sabetha must be punished for her failure, and Sabetha simply stands there, unresponsive, as if brainwashed. The Morphos also say that in four hours’ time, the Doctor, Ian, and Susan will receive another exposure to the mesmerant and be completely subjugated. Lastly, they say that Barbara has seen the truth of the city, and she must be destroyed.

Sabetha is taken and shoved into a small room, the same room where Barbara is hiding. Barbara recognizes her as the same girl who placed the devices on their foreheads, which is odd, because I went back and checked, and Barbara was asleep the entire time Sabetha was in the room—yet another mistake. Barbara tries to tell Sabetha that she is under some sort of hypnosis, but all the girl says is, “I am to be punished.” Sabetha keeps repeating the phrase, and Barbara gives up talking to her.

Elsewhere in Morphoton, we find Altos telling the Doctor and Ian that Barbara is being treated by the physicians and is showing great improvement. Altos opens a door and shows them into a “laboratory” which is really just an empty room with a single wooden table and a rusty mug. The Doctor and Ian are amazed, gazing around at all the imagined machinery and instruments. The Doctor picks up the mug, saying, “If I can have instruments like these, I might be able to overcome the fault in the time mechanism on the ship!”

Back in the small room, Barbara has noticed an odd necklace around the neck of Sabitha. Dangling from the small metal chain is an object that looks like the microcircuit Arbitan had shown them inside the pyramid. She asks Sabetha where she had gotten it, and Sabetha says that they gave it to her; it was the thing she desired more than anything. “Listen to me,” Barbara says. “Does the name Arbitan mean anything to you?” Sabetha looks dazed, as if she is trying to remember something from long ago. “Is Arbitan your father?” Barbara presses.

Back in the dark room, the Morphos are telling Altos what to do with the Doctor, Ian, and Susan once they become fully subjugated. The two men will join the working parties, and Susan will be trained as a replacement for Sabetha. And again, it is said that Barbara must be found and killed.

Meanwhile, back in the small room, Sabetha has regained most of her memories, but the effort has left her sleepy. She is indeed the daughter of Arbitan. Suddenly, they hear footsteps, and Barbara goes to hide in a corner. Altos enters and addresses Sabetha. Barbara tries to sneak out while they are talking, but Altos hears her and grabs her from behind. As they struggle, Sabetha strikes him over the head, and Altos collapses. Barbara runs to warn the others, telling Sabetha that she will come back for her.

Out in the corridor, Barbara runs into Ian and is relieved. However, relief turns to suspicion when he acts cold and distant. “You must be the one who escaped. The one they told me about,” he says. Taking Barbara by the arms, he marches her into the room with the Morphos.

Once inside, Barbara is held in place by Ian, and she lays eyes on the Morphos for the first time, revolted by their grotesque form. “We are the masters of this place,” one Morpho says. “Our brains outgrew our bodies. It is our intelligence that has created this whole city, but we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders.”

Pause for a moment. How is this morally any different than the Conscience of Marinus? The people under the Morphos are happy, but only because they have been exposed to the mesmerant. Likewise, the people of Marinus were once totally peaceful, but only because a machine compelled them to forget about war and acts of violence. Yet in the eyes of the showrunners, one is bad because it is enforced by oversized brains with eyes, and one is good because it is imposed by an impartial arbiter of moral judgement. I agree that what the Morphos have done is evil, but I also think Arbitan’s machine is evil for much the same reasons. The show makes an effort to articulate a difference, but it is all surface-level nonsense.

Once Barbara understands what's really going on, she demands to know if she is going to be turned into a slave. The Morphos say no, and they order Ian to kill her. Ian wraps his hands around Barbara’s throat and begins to squeeze, but Barbara manages to wriggle away. She runs around the room, smashing the apparatuses that keep the Morphos alive in their glass cases—and smashing a few of the cases too, for good measure. The Morphos’ eyestalks go limp as they die. Ian comes to, memory and personality rushing back into him.

The scene cuts rather abruptly. We see Ian and Barbara meeting back up with the Doctor. An amount of time has passed, but it’s not clear how much. The sounds of a riot can be heard, and Barbara says that the people are burning the city. The influence of the Morphos has broken completely. In what is an egregious piece of exposition dumping, the Doctor says that he has questioned Altos, discovered him to be one of Arbitan’s couriers, and found two travel dials which must have belonged to Altos and Sabetha. This is an astoundingly convenient sequence of events, and the audience doesn’t even get to experience it happening—we are only told after the fact.

With their responsibility to Arbitan remembered, Altos and Sabetha will be joining the protagonists on their quest to recover the microcircuits—which are also referred to intermittently as microkeys. They and Susan enter the scene and begin to discuss their departure. Sabetha is still in a ragged dress, and Altos doesn’t seem to mind his lack of pants, despite the influence of the Morphos having been eliminated. With Altos’s thighs hanging out and Ian’s Halloween costume, the costuming in this serial is getting really ridiculous.

The group decides that Barbara, Ian, Susan, Altos, and Sabetha will go on to find the second key, while the Doctor jumps two stops ahead to look for the fourth. There is some nervousness about this from the others, especially from Susan, but before long, they have all agreed that it is the best path forward.

They get ready to leave, but Susan jumps the gun, disappearing before the others. The others follow, trailing less than five seconds behind this time.

The scene then cuts to Susan. Again, she is alone for much longer than five seconds, and I don’t know why the serial made a point to say that the travel dials do not affect the passage of time if the writers contradict that statement every time they are used. Susan finds herself in a small clearing surrounded by trees. Loud screaming can be heard, apparently coming from everywhere. It’s not clear at first whether the screams are external or inside her head. Regardless, she screams back, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it! Go away! Go away!” Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Screaming Jungle)

The title of this episode makes it clear that the jungle is what is meant to be screaming, but absent that, I would have thought the screams were inside Susan’s head. A little clarification would have been nice, like maybe a camera shot panning across the jungle as the screams are happening. As it is, the scene remains a close up shot of Susan with her hands over her ears.

Suddenly, the screams stop, and at the exact same time, Ian, Barbara, Altos, and Sabetha arrive. The others are worried by Susan’s fearful behavior, and without the screams ongoing, Susan finds it impossible to convince the others that it even happened or of the enormity of it. Susan’s not even sure what it was herself, but she knows that it is not something that should be ignored. Without proof of what happened, she has no choice but to follow the others and begin exploring their new surroundings.

The group is astounded by the sheer mass of foliage around them. They see what looks like an archway into a building of some kind, but the growth of the jungle is so thick that it would take a long time to hack their way inside. Ian suggests they take a walk around the walls to see if they can find another way in. He takes Altos and Sabetha with him, and Barbara stays behind with Susan.

Theres an interesting exchange between Susan and Barbara. “I do wish Ian wouldn’t treat us like Dresden China,” Barbara says with a sigh—for those who don’t know, like me, this is a kind of fine China.

“I think it’s nice the way he looks after us all the time,” says Susan.

“Yes, I know,” Barbara concedes, “but just once in a while—”

“You rebel,” finishes Susan.

I think this dialogue is a bit clunky in the way it explicitly states what has been a more subtle conflict that has occasionally arisen between Ian and Barbara. However, I do think it is elucidating that the writers are making this a clear point of emphasis, and I will be looking for future instances when this dynamic is brought to the fore of their character interactions. To this point, Barbara and Ian have rarely disagreed, and as the overall dynamic of the protagonists continues to grow more stable, a little friction might be welcome.

Barbara sees that Susan is still shaken up and tries to comfort her, with very little success. Susan sits down on the ground as Barbara turns to examine the overgrown archway, thinking the foliage may not be as thick as they had previously thought. As Barbara is pondering a way inside, a long vine detaches itself from the wall and moves along the ground like a snake—or rather, like its being drawn across the ground by a string; the practical effects have really been exposed as a weakness in this serial. It drapes itself across Susan’s ankle. I get that we’re meant to believe that this poses a threat to Susan. There is tense music playing, and Susan screams and calls out for Barbara. But it doesn’t appear to be grabbing Susan’s leg or anything; it just lays across her calves. When Barbara rushes over, she is able to pull it off with seemingly no effort and bash it with a stone.

Barbara pulls a frightened Susan against her chest, trying to calm her down. Susan insists that the vine was alive and trying to twine around her leg, while Barbara says that it was just her imagination. “It couldn’t move by itself,” Barbara says. “You know it couldn’t.” Susan half-agrees with her, but her face still looks doubtful.

Susan keeps watch as Barbara tries to enter the building, squeezing around the undergrowth and through the archway. Once she passes through, she finds a passageway of some kind, with a fearsome looking statue at the end of it. At this moment, Ian and the others return, and Susan lets them know that Barbara has gone inside.

As Barbara approaches the statue, its features become clearer. It looks like a humanoid sitting on some sort of throne or chair, with a grotesque face and wild hair that looks like stylized flames. It’s arms are outstretched as if beckoning. They are very clearly human arms in an otherwise static set element, but passible enough for me to suspend my disbelief. Attached to the very top of this statue is the microcircuit they have come to retrieve.

Excited, Barbara calls out to the others, saying that she has found the key, and she begins climbing the statue to retrieve it. However, as she dislodges the microcircuit, she triggers some mechanism. The statue’s arms close around her legs, and she screams as it spins around, taking her through to the other side of the wall. Ian and the others rush inside, but they are too late. They only have time to see Barbara toss the microcircuit toward them before she is gone.

They all begin to panic, but Sabetha soon realizes that everything may not be as bad as it seems. After all, they have the second microcircuit, and Barbara still has her travel dial. “As long as she wasn’t injured when she was trapped, she can escape whenever she wants.”

Just then, the statue spins back around with its arms outstretched and no Barbara in sight. Ian says they must cover all of their bases. The rest will continue on, and Ian will let himself be taken by the statue to make sure that Barbara is alright. Ian and Barbara will then catch up with the others at the next location. With everyone in agreement, Susan and Altos twist their travel dials and disappear.

However, Sabetha has lagged behind a bit and is placing the microcircuit onto her necklace with the other one when she discovers that it’s a fake. “This edge is a fraction shorter,” she says. “They all look absolutely identical, so this one must be an imitation.” They haven’t found the second key after all. Sabetha twists her travel dial to join Altos and Susan and let them know about the fake key, while Ian goes after Barbara with the knowledge that the two of them must find the real key by themselves. He steps into the arms of the statue and lets himself be taken.

Beyond the statue is a courtyard, with creepers and leaves covering the walls. A statue of a man with an axe stands off to one side. Ian is moving carefully through the courtyard, but he doesn’t see the statue as it begins to raise its axe above Ian’s head. In a corner of the courtyard, Barbara sees the statue and screams; Ian ducks out of harm’s way just in time.

Ian tells Barbara that the key she found was a fake, and that the real one must be somewhere in the building. Barbara says that it will be difficult to find, noting that she has discovered that the whole place is booby-trapped just like the statue had been. They see a doorway in one corner of the courtyard, and Ian says that’s as likely a place as any to start looking.

As they cross to the door, Ian and Barbara comment again on the vegetation, saying it almost seems as if it is trying to break into the building—this echoes Susan’s sentiment about the forest being alive. They get to the door, but find it locked. Barbara mentions some iron bars she saw on the other side of the courtyard, and Ian leaves to go get one. Before the scene ends, the camera lingers on Barbara for a moment, and we can see a vine on the wall behind her slowly creeping down the door.

The scene cuts to the interior of the building, where an old man in billowing robes opens a door. Back in the courtyard, the door behind Barbara opens on its own, and implying that the man has opened it. The unseen creepers shy away from this sudden movement. Barbara passes through the doorway, into a small room with another door on the far side. As she moves toward it, a net drops down from the ceiling, and Barbara falls to the floor, tangled. Laying on her back, she sees the ceiling suddenly descending, several spikes sticking down from it, threatening to stab her. Barbara screams.

Back in the courtyard, Ian hears the scream and tries to pick up one of the iron bars to help her. However, this bar is attached to an iron chain, and pulling it causes several more bars to slide down from the ceiling, trapping him. He tries to use another bar to pry the cage open.

Meanwhile, the spikes are still descending toward Barbara, who is screaming for Ian’s help. This set piece looks absolutely horrendous. The spikes are spread so far apart that it looks like if Barbara contorted her body somewhat, she could avoid them. They look to be made out of cardboard, and when the ceiling moves, some of them rattle around as if they are in danger of falling out. The way the ceiling moves is also inconsistent, as if some folks behind the scenes are struggling mightily to make it work. Add Barbara screaming bloody murder at this ridiculous contraption, and frankly, it’s just embarrassing. And I get it—it’s 1964; I’m not expecting seamless practical effects. But what we have gotten in this serial has been so terrible, even relative to other serials of the same era, that I cannot take them seriously.

Just before Barbara is kind-of-sort-of-not-really crushed, the second door opens, revealing the feet of the unknown man. Seconds later, the trap is disabled, and the ceiling resets to its normal height. The man stands imperiously over Barbara, who is still tangled in the net—an older man, with wispy gray hair and a long beard. “Why have you come in search of the keys?” he demands. Barbara says that Arbitan sent them, and when the man asks for proof, she shows him her travel dial. The man takes it from her, saying, “I will examine this, and if it set correctly with the proper journey program, I shall know that you speak the truth.” He leaves through the second door.

Ian finally breaks out of his cage and comes to help Barbara out of the net. Suddenly, they hear the man screaming from the next room. They rush in to find the man being strangled by a vine that has broken in through a boarded-up window. They free the man and lay him down in a bed, and he says, “It’s coming again! The jungle is coming. When the whispering starts, it’s death, I tell you. Death!”

The room appears to be the man’s home, with everything all in one large room: bed, table and chairs, desk, other pieces of furniture, etc. Much of the space is dedicated to some kind of scientific study, with several pieces of laboratory equipment, specimen jars, and large glass containers marked with chemical formulas.

Next, there is a time skip; sometime later, Ian and Barbara watch as the man beginning to stir from a deep sleep. Ian thinks that he might be dying. They ask him for anything he knows about the microcircuit, but as the man grows weaker, he is becoming increasingly incoherent. Just before he passes, he pulls Ian and Barbara close, saying, “D-E-3-O-2.” Then he cries out, “Quickly, the darkness! The whispering will start!” And he dies.

They begin searching the room, looking for anything the numbers and letters might pertain to. They find a safe, but there are only letters, no numbers. After trying several combinations, they decide it must not be the answer and continue searching. Then Ian comes across the man’s notes, reading aloud a passage to Barbara: “Nature has a fixed tempo of destruction. Water dripping on a stone may take a thousand years to produce any sign of wear…The growth accelerator has changed nature’s tempo of destruction entirely.”

I’m not sure what the episode is implying with this reveal. Has the unknown man been experimenting in some way to speed up the growth of the jungle, or has he been trying to stop it? In either case, why was this deemed a place of safety for the microcircuit by Arbitan? Is the growth acceleration of the forest in some way connected to the key, or is it just coincidence? None of these things are ever explained.

As they keep looking, Barbara notices that darkness has fallen outside. Not long after, they begin to hear what sounds like whispering out in the jungle. Vines and tree limbs begin to break into the room, and the two begin to panic, frantically searching for the microcircuit. A creeper wraps around Barbara’s leg, and she screams, Ian rushing over to help her tear it away. As he does so, he notices a glass jar labeled NH4NO3. “Look, Barbara! It’s a chemical formula! DE3O2. The micro-key’s in one of these glass jars!”

After a brief search, Barbara finds the correct jar, unscrews the lid, and finds the key. They turn their travel dials and disappear, leaving the doomed building behind.

The scene cuts to what appears to be a mountainside during a snowstorm. Ian and Barbara don’t have time to recover from their encounter with the jungle, as now they face another threat from nature. Ian says they must move, and Barbara says it’s too cold to move. “Barbara, you’ve got to,” Ian urges. “If we don’t find shelter, we don’t stand a chance.” Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Snows of Terror)

Not even a full minute after arriving on the snowy mountain, Barbara and Ian collapse, unconscious. I don’t know much about hypothermia or surviving in a cold environment, but this feels incredibly unrealistic. I get that humans are not designed to survive in frigid temperatures, but wouldn’t it take much longer for someone to be affected this strongly?

As it turns out, yes. At -40°C/F, it takes about seven minutes for someone to develop widespread hypothermia, and anywhere from 20 mins to an hour to lose consciousness. I’ve already mentioned in this serial that I don’t expect early Doctor Who to always present me with accurate science, but seeing two people appear on a mountainside and drop unconscious within the span of a few seconds feels so off that it takes me completely out of the serial for a scene or two. And just like with the lack of waves in Part 1, while this wouldn’t make much of a dent in a solid serial, The Keys of Marinus already exists on the thinnest of ice. Any mistake becomes amplified by those around it.

The hulking figure of a large man wearing animal furs appears over Barbara and Ian. He bends low over the pair and takes the microcircuit from Barbara’s hands.

The scene cuts to a fire burning in the hearth of a small cabin. The large man enters the cabin, where Barbara and Ian are sleeping. He wakes Barbara, who reacts with fear, but he calms her down, saying that she and Ian are safe. He takes her hand in his and rubs it, showing her how to bring back the circulation in her frostbitten hands. As he’s still rubbing, he says, “Are you afraid of me?” Barbara says no, and he says, “Last year, I broke the back of a wolf with my bear hands. I’m Vasar. Most men fear me, so I have few visitors.” All of this is said while looking Barbara straight in the eyes, rubbing her hands. It feels very predatory.

Vasar (pronounced VAY-sahr) moves to get a warm drink for Ian and Barbara. Barbara goes over to wake Ian, waking him and showing him how to rub his hands. Ian asks if Vasar is responsible for saving them, and Vasar says yes. Barbara says that without him, they would have frozen to death. “The wolves would have eaten you first,” Vasar says cynically. “There are more than ever of them this winter. I’ve counted a dozen packs, twenty in each. They’re hungry. They’re even raiding the villages at night.” A very cheery fella, isn’t he?

Ian asks if they are near a village, and Vasar says that the nearest one is three miles away. Vasar also says that one of them would have died anyway if it hadn’t been for some other stranger who helped carry one of them back to Vasar’s hut. “A madman,” Vasar says. “Came in here early last night, raving and ranting. I couldn’t talk to him. Gave him some clothes and went with him up the mountain. He was searching for a couple of girls.”

Ian and Barbara realize these descriptions must be Altos, Sabetha, and Susan. They ask were Altos is now, and Vasar says that he thinks Altos went to the village. Ian asks Vasar if he can lend him some furs to go after Altos, and Vasar says no, making Ian trade for the firs. With nothing else to his name, he leaves his travel dial behind in return for the furs. Vasar points Ian in the direction of the village and slings a sack of provisions over Ian’s shoulder. As soon as Ian has left, Vasar locks the door. He walks across the cabin to place a hand on Barbara’s shoulder; Barbara stiffens at the contact. Vasar laughs darkly and says, “I’ll go and get us some food. We must fatten you up, eh?”

So far, this episode is starting off better than any other in The Keys of Marinus to this point. There is a clear impetus for the plot, with Altos, Sabetha, and Susan missing. There is an omnipresent danger in the raging snowstorm. And there is the dangerous Vasar who provides a potential threat to Barbara even in the relative safety of the cabin. Having such clearly defined stakes is a breath of fresh air after three episodes of vague sludge.

Next, we see Ian out on the mountainside, where wolves can be seen howling from the tops of ridges. Suddenly, Ian comes across Altos laying in the snow, unconscious. His hands are bound together.

Back in the cabin, Barbara and Vasar are eating a meal. They hear wolves outside, and Vasar says, “You’re safe here. That door’ll keep anything out. Or in.” His dialogue is getting more and more blatantly threatening as time goes on. Once they finish eating, Vasar clears the dishes away, and Barbara puts some unused silverware away. In a drawer, she finds several travel dials and Sabetha’s necklace of microcircuits.

When she asks Vasar about them, he says that he found the girls in a cave up the mountain and that the girls traded these things to him in exchange for food and flint. Barbara accuses him of stealing them, saying, “They might have given you the wrist bracelets, but the keys and the chain? Sabetha would never have parted with them.”

Barbara tells Vasar that when Ian gets back, he’ll make Vasar take them to where he saw the girls. “What makes you think he will get back?” Vasar says darkly. “He doesn’t know what’s in the bag I gave him.”

Back on the mountain, Ian and Altos are rubbing Altos’s still-exposed legs to try and get the circulation flowing again. Every time I feel like I’m starting to enjoy this serial, it reminds me of how shoddily put together it is, like when I’m reminded that Altos is basically naked from the waist down for no good reason. Seeing Ian rubbing up Altos’s inner man thighs is just absurd. Ian asks Altos who tied him up, and Altos says that Varas did it. He also says that Varas only recued Ian and Barbara because Altos forced him to, otherwise he would have left them to die without a second thought.

Looking in the bag Vasar has given him, Ian discovers that it’s filled with raw meat, Vasar’s attempt at sabotage. Right on cue, the wolves’ howling increases. Ian tosses the bag away and helps a hobbling Altos to his feet. Together, they hurry back toward the cabin.

Back inside the cabin, Vasar stalks around the small room, chasing after a terrified Barbara. She picks up the fire poker to defend herself and manages to deliver a glancing blow before Vasar takes it away from her. He knocks her down, but right at this moment, there is a pounding on the door. Barbara uses the distraction as a chance to roll away from Vasar, and she rushes over to the door. Vasar wraps his arms around her, pulling her away from the door, but Barbara digs her teeth into his hand. He recoils, and she is able to unlock the door and throw it open.

An angry Ian and Altos enter. Barbara lets them know that the girls are alright, in a cave on the mountain. Altos makes as if to strike Varas down, but Ian stops him. “We want him unharmed,” he says. “He’s going to show us where the cave is.”

The scene cuts to a mountain cave, its white walls glistening with ice. Susan and Sabetha are staring forlornly at the dying embers of their fire, having used up the last of their wood. They decide that they must take a chance in the cold outside, as they don’t think that they would fare any better in the ice caves without a fire. Two passages lead out of the scene, and they can’t agree which one will lead them back out of the cave. Picking one at random, they head off.

Back outside, Ian and Altos prod Vasar forward through the snow. They are nearly at the cave.

Inside, Susan and Sabetha have hit a dead end and are forced to turn back.

In the cave entrance, Ian, Barbara, Altos, and Vasar stand over the remains of the girls’ fire. “Look, there’s been a fire,” Vasar says. “I told you I helped them.” Altos asks him how far the caves go, and Vasar says that they go all the way through the mountain. Ian tells Vasar to lead them further into the caves, but Vasar pleads with him, telling him that there are demons in the cave. Ian has none of it, and soon, Vasar is grudgingly leading the way.

Further in the cave, Susan and Sabetha must have taken a wrong turn; they are going further and further into the mountain, and neither can remember the way out. They come across a rope bridge over a ravine. This set in particular looks really flimsy—the ravine can’t be more than five feet across, and it has no sense of depth to it, seeming as if there has to be a floor just out of frame. Nonetheless, Susan and Sabetha treat this gap as if it’s a mile wide and several miles deep. With enormous trepidation, they cross and continue on.

Back in Ian’s party, Vasar continues to prattle on about demons, and Ian forces him on. They arrive at the rope bridge spanning the narrow chasm.

Ahead, Susan and Sabetha find a room with what looks like four armored knights defending a block of ice. They are completely still, but Susan and Sabetha look at each other, terrified, and run back the way they came. They make it back to the room with the rope bridge while the others are still crossing. Barbara and Altos have already crossed; they embrace the two girls, happy to be reunited. Ian rushes across the bridge to join them in their celebration, giving Susan and Sabetha some furs to warm them. Vasar uses this opportunity to dislodge his side of the rope bridge from the wall and fling it down into the chasm. The man cackles, saying, “There’s no other way out!” before leaving.

Barbara asks how they’re going to get back across the gap, to which Ian answers, “I don’t know. It’s too wide to jump.” No, it’s not. It might be six feet across—definitely narrower than the gap that Ian and Barbara vaulted over in The Daleks. Anyway, Ian suggests they find planks to lay across the gap, and they continue on to look for them.

Susan wants to go back, still afraid of the knights from earlier, but Ian says they must go on. “We must search all these tunnels properly,” he says. “That key’s probably hidden somewhere here, inside the mountain.” I’m not sure what has given Ian this idea. They came here for the girls, and it would be awfully convenient if the microcircuit was there too (Spoiler: it is).

Once they enter the room with the knights, Ian says that they must be the demons that Vasar talked about. Taking a closer look at the block of ice they are guarding, Sabetha says, “Look, right in the middle of the ice. It’s the key!” Barbara discovers a pipe that runs around the block of ice, and turns a valve. Warm water flows through the pipe, and the ice begins to melt.

While they wait for the ice to melt, Ian takes some convenient planks of wood back to the ravine. He and Altos lay them across the gap.

Back in the room with the knights, the ice has fully melted, and Sabetha is able to retrieve the key. Suddenly, the one of knights straightens, beginning to heft its weapon. “He’s alive!” Susan screams. “He’s alive!” They all run out of the room, Ian bringing up the rear. The knights gather themselves and follow.

At the chasm, Susan slides slowly along the planks, careful not to fall. Meanwhile, Ian, fending off the knights, pulls a load-bearing rock away from the wall, causing a partial collapse that temporarily traps the knights on the other side. The knights quickly clear a way through though, still following.

Susan finally makes it across, and Altos tosses her the other end of the rope bridge. She hooks it in its place and they all scurry over. Ian, the last across, unhooks the rope bridge behind himself. One of the nights falls to its death, while the other three knights are trapped on the other side.

Back in Vasar’s cabin, the man is preening over all of his stollen treasures when suddenly, Ian and the rest come bursting through the door. Vasar is in disbelief. Ian and the others grab the travel dials and the microcircuits and prepare to leave, while a fearful Vasar runs for the door. Vasar looks outside, then says, “They’re coming! The devils from the mountain are coming here!” The knights begin to hammer at Vasar’s door. How did they leave the mountain? I thought they were trapped. At the very least, it should have taken them long enough to find another way out that they shouldn’t have been able to follow Ian and the others.

Vasar grabs Susan as a hostage, saying they must stay and help him or else he’ll kill her. He backs slowly towards the door, until one of the knights skewers him right through a seam in the wood. He falls to the ground, dead. With no time to lose, Ian urges everyone to twist their dials, and they disappear.

Cut to an well ordered room. It appears to be a vault of some sort, or perhaps a room in a museum, with display cases placed at intervals around the room. There is a man lying on the ground next to one of these cases. Whether dead or just unconscious, it’s not clear. Ian enters this room alone. Why he is alone, I have no idea. They all left Vasar’s cabin at exactly the same time, and up to this point, the dials have dropped each of them in the same place. It makes no sense for Ian to be alone now.

Ian stoops down to look at the man on the floor, but his eye is caught by the display case: specifically, the microcircuit contained within. He takes a step toward the case, when suddenly, he is struck over the head from behind, falling unconscious next to the other man. The mysterious assailant is kept hidden, always just out of frame. A gloved hand places a weapon of some kind in Ian’s outstretched hand. Then they open the display case, which sets off an alarm. The mysterious thief takes the microcircuit and leaves the room. Credits roll.

Part 5 (Sentence of Death)

When Ian wakes, he is disoriented, rubbing at the back of his sore head. He stands, gathering himself, finding that he is still in the strange vault. Suddenly, a man speaks: “Do you want to tell me where you’ve hidden it?” Ian whirls around to see a man dressed in what looks like black military fatigues, sitting in a wooden chair in the corner of the room. He introduces himself as Tarron (pronounced TARE-ahn [tare rhymes with care]), “an interrogator in the Guardian Division.”

Tarron begins to question Ian about what has happened in this room. Ian says that he doesn’t know: “I just came through that door…I saw the body on the floor, I bent down to have a look, and someone hit me on the head from behind.”

Tarron says that this room is a maximum security vault, contending that there’s no way Ian could have entered without tricking or being in league with the dead guard. Becoming increasingly confrontational, Tarron asks Ian a series of questions, to which Ian gives his name, says he’s a visitor to the district, and that he works as a science teacher. Then Tarron asks what Ian knows about the micro-key, and Ian doesn’t respond. This only increases Tarron’s suspicion. He wants to know where Ian has hidden the microcircuit, saying that the guards were unable to find it when they searched the room. Ian insists that it must have been taken by whomever attacked him.

At this point in the story, why wouldn’t Ian tell Tarron about their mission from Arbitan? If Sabetha is in the city—which she should be; she used the travel dial at the same time as him—couldn’t they use the other microcircuits to verify their reason for seeking the key? And again, how did Ian end up adjacent to this maximum security vault when no one else did, despite them all turning their travel dials at the same time? I really hate how the more I learn about the workings of the technology and motivations of this serial, the less I understand them.

Finding Ian to be uncooperative, Tarron says that Ian will be taken to the Guardian building to be charged formally with murder. Ian, suddenly realizing the seriousness of the situation, tries to assert his innocence, saying that all the evidence is circumstantial. Now, I’m not a legal expert, but even if Ian had been framed, being found unconscious with a murder weapon next to a dead body is direct evidence, not circumstantial evidence. Just like how a bag of weed or a gun planted in a car by a cop is direct evidence. The fact that it was planted does not make it circumstantial. Regardless, Ian says that Tarron’s Guardians need to prove that he did the actual killing, which would ordinarily be true: innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz.

However, Tarron drops this bombshell on their way out of the vault: “That is contrary to our legal system…You are already guilty of this crime. The burden of defense is entirely yours. You must prove without a shadow of a doubt that you are innocent, otherwise…you will die.”

I get the shock value of this premise. I get that the viewer is supposed to clutch their pearls and think, Wow, what an unjust system. However, I don’t think it takes much thought to understand why this type of legal system makes this episode inherently worse.

In anything less than a perfect society with perfect information, a legal system where one is guilty until proven innocent makes absolutely no sense. I get that we are looking at a murder case here, but just imagine for a second that we have an accusation of theft. A shopkeeper says a man stole a bracelet, and the man denies it. The man has no way of proving that he never stole the item—after all, how does one prove that they don’t have an item stashed away somewhere? Yet the man can be declared guilty, and, unable to prove a negative, can never prove his innocence and is therefore punished for a crime he may or may not have committed.

A narrative twist is not inherently good or bad; it depends on the context. What are the writers trying to subvert by making an unexpected turn, and how well does this play off the viewers’ expectations? This is an example of an issue that, in my opinion, plagues Classic Who: the writers putting a twist into the narrative just because they can. They don’t seem to have thought through whether the twist makes sense, or even if it raises the stakes of the episode. The choice to have a quirky legal system does not change the plot in any meaningful way. This is not substantively different from the legal system of most modern democracies, where Ian would face the death penalty if the prosecution could prove his guilt. Instead, we have a situation where Ian faces the death penalty unless the defense can prove his innocence. The scenario is functionally the same in either case, except that with the latter, the audience might get distracted by thoughts of why such a system exists and how it works. These questions are never broached by the plot, and unless the writers intend to call attention to the distinctions between the two systems—which, they do not—the twist only detracts from the viewing experience.

Two days later, Susan, Barbara, Sabetha, and Altos are allowed to visit Ian for the first time since his arrest. Where they have been this whole time—or why they didn’t appear in the same location as Ian—is never explained. Susan suggests that they all make a run for it, but Barbara says it’s too risky. Ian asks about the Doctor, but there has been no sign of him anywhere in the city since their arrival. Remember, in Part 2, the Doctor jumped two stops ahead of everyone else to see if he could find the fourth key. He should have been in the city for a while. “We must find him, Barbara. We must,” says Ian. “The laws in this country are a mockery.”

“I quite agree with you, my boy,” says the Doctor striding into the room. Everyone is overjoyed, and the Doctor says that he will be the man to defend Ian during the trial.

The case opens with the head judge reading Eyesen’s account of events and declaring Ian guilty, sentencing him to execution three days after the conclusion of the trial—remember this detail; it will be completely forgotten by the writers. The Doctor’s first motion is to ask for more time to review the facts of the case, which is granted by the judge. It isn’t until this exchange that we learn that the name of the city is Millenius, which seems like a bit of information that should have been given to the audience much earlier on. Increasingly, I am finding the poor naming conventions of the series to be one of my biggest pet peeves.

The case opens with the head judge reading Eyesen’s account of events and declaring Ian guilty, sentencing him to execution three days after the conclusion of the trial. The Doctor’s first motion is to ask for time to review the facts of the case, which is granted by the judge. It isn’t until this exchange that we learn that the name of the city is Millenius, which seems like a bit of information that should have been given much earlier on.

The court is adjourned for two days. Eyesen comes over to congratulate the Doctor on his minor victory before sneering and saying, “It will not alter the outcome.” Eyesen leaves, and the Doctor has all of his friends gather close to strategize. In order to discover the identity of the real killer, they need to find the missing microcircuit. He tells Altos and Sabetha to go to the library and find as many case histories as they can get their hands on, looking specifically for reasons why people have been exonerated of murder charges in the past. Meanwhile, Susan and Barbara will help him as detectives.

Cut to the library, where we see Sabetha and Altos thumbing through comically large books.

Back at the scene of the crime, the guard from the first scene, Tarron, is walking the Doctor, Susan, and Barbara through the events of the crime. He reasserts Ian’s guilt, but there is one element of the case that he doesn’t understand: the missing microcircuit. “My men did a heat reflector search of this room. It is absolutely certain that the micro-key isn’t in here. It is equally certain that it’s not been taken from here…Every person that came in here was checked by the autho-ray scanner as they went out. If anyone had the key on them, the scanner would have detected it…The body was searched. It wasn’t there.”

The Doctor asks Tarron to leave the room so that he, Susan, and Barbara can discuss the case in private. Once Tarron has gone, the Doctor says that he knows where the key is, but he doesn’t reveal this information to Susan and Barbara. He doesn’t give a reason for withholding the information—the real reason is that the writers want to withhold such a dramatic reveal until later in the serial. For now, the Doctor’s silence comes across as extremely arbitrary.

Moving on, the Doctor says that Tarron’s grave error is that he never suspected that anyone other than Ian could be responsible for the murder, whereas they know that he is not. The Doctor has Barbara and Susan recreate the crime. Barbara, acting as Ian, pantomimes stumbling upon a body (Susan lying on the ground) and then seeing the microcircuit in its display case. The Doctor mimes striking Barbara from behind, stealing the key, concealing it, and rushing out into the hall. “But he can’t go any further because already, the security guards and officials are on their way. So he decides to pretend that he is the first on the scene!” Susan wants to rush off and tell Tarron their suspicions, but the Doctor tells her that they need more proof and sends Susan and Barbara on another errand instead.

In the next scene, Susan and Barbara arrive at the home of Ayden, the relief guard they suspect of having done the murder. He is not there when they arrive, and they are received by his wife. They ask questions about why someone would want to steal the microcircuit, and she says, “Because there are only five of them in the entire universe. It was brought to the city years ago by a man called Arbitan. It was the sworn duty of the Elders to protect it…But you know all this. Why else would your friend steal it?”

At this moment, Ayden enters, saying something about people in the Guardian building asking questions. He falls silent when he sees Susan and Barbara, his posture immediately becoming defensive. He says he doesn’t like people prying into his private affairs, to which Susan says that the Doctor will do as much when he calls Ayden as a witness. Angered, Ayden tells them to get out, and Susan declares that they know where the key is hidden. Shocked, Ayden says, “But you couldn’t know where it is, I—” Ayden cuts himself off, trying to gather himself. “Yes, yes, you know where it’s hidden because Chesterton told you where he hid it. And now you’re trying to throw suspicion on me.”

Ayden throws them out. On the other side of the door, Susan and Barbara press their ears to the door to eavesdrop. Ayden and his wife are talking frantically. “What did she mean about the key?” Ayden asks. His wife tells him that she doesn’t know, saying that it was very foolish of him to have lost his temper. We hear a loud smack and a yelp from Ayden’s wife. Then Susan and Barbara hear footsteps and quickly leave.

Back inside, Ayden places a call to the prosecutor, Eyesen. The scene cuts to the Guardian building, where Eyesen says, “Don’t say any more, there are people near. I’ll take it on the personal.” Once the call is private, we hear Eyesen say, “You really think she knows something?” A pause, as he listens to Ayden’s unheard reply. “You mean that our young friend might not be able to go through with it?” Another pause. “Well listen carefully, and I’ll tell you what you may have to do.” I really enjoyed this exchange, one of the few bright spots in this serial. I like that this implicates the prosecutor in the theft, and that there is more depth to the conspiracy than a simple frame job by Ayden.

Cut back to the courtroom. Two days have passed, and Eyesen is now making his case before the court. He holds up the weapon from the crime scene, a mace, and says, “Under psychometric examination, this mace was found to have been held in the right hand of the prisoner.” The crowd oohs and ahs at this, but wasn’t this mace discovered in Ian’s hand at the scene of the crime? It’s being treated as new information when it was already public knowledge.

Eyesen ends his presentation, and it is the Doctor’s turn to call witnesses. He calls Sabetha to the stand and holds up a picture of the microcircuit. “Do you recognize this, young lady?” he asks, to which she says yes. The Doctor asks her to tell the tribunal where it is.

“It is here.” Sabetha holds up a microcircuit. “It was given to me by the man who killed the guard.” The Doctor asks if this man is currently in the room, then tells Sabetha to point him out. Sabetha points at Ayden.

Ayden bolts to his feet. “But she can’t have found it. I—” He makes a break for it, but Susan and Barbara grab him. “Alright,” he cries, “I’ll tell you everything. I’m not in this alone. They made me do it. I’ll tell you—” There is a bright flash, and Ayden drops dead. Silence falls, broken only when his wife rushes across the courtroom and falls to her knees, sobbing over his body.

Altogether, this would make for an excellent climax, if this scene weren’t immediately kneecapped by what comes after. The courtroom has calmed down, and the Doctor is speaking with the judges and Eyesen. It is then made clear that the murder trial of Ian will still continue. The lead judge makes a statement: “It is clear that Ayden was involved in either the theft or the killing. It is also clear that he had an accomplice. Bearing in mind that the accused came here with the express purpose of recovering the micro-key, and remembering the evidence against him, his guilt becomes even more obvious… Though it has deprived us of more detailed evidence, the unfortunate death of Guardian Ayden has surely not affected the issue… If [the defense has] nothing to add, the accused will be taken from here and executed in the prescribed manner.”

I think this soliloquy really calls attention to how stupid this judicial system is. Think about the judge’s first sentence for a moment. It is clear that Ayden was involved in either the theft or the killing. They don’t know which. This means that by their own logic, Ian could also be involved in either the theft or the killing. In any rational legal system, this would require the prosecutor to submit a new report, or for the judges to change the charges from murder to conspiracy to commit murder, or any number of bureaucratic hurdles other than sentencing Ian to death without further deliberation. So when the show frames this development seriously, to be taken as a miscarriage of justice instead of as a complete joke, it breaks my suspension of disbelief even further.

Back in the Guardian building, Barbara, Sabetha, and Altos are distraught. It’s unclear if this is immediately after the trial or if some time has passed—either way, it’s the same day. A clerk hands Barbara a message; Barbara opens it and reads, “There will be another death if you disclose where the key is hidden.”

The phone rings, and the clerk answers it. He passes it to Barbara, and when she speaks into it, Susan is on the line: “Barbara, they made me call you.” Concerned, Barbara asks who. After a pause, Susan says, “They’re going to kill me.” The line goes dead. Credits roll.

Part 6 (The Keys of Marinus)

Barbara is shockingly clearheaded after this call, arguing that they cannot tell the Doctor about this because, “He must keep his mind absolutely clear in order to concentrate on Ian.” I’d go as far as to say this is out-of-character for Barbara, who throughout the series has demonstrated a tendency to react emotionally and to rely heavily on the Doctor for guidance. Nonetheless, Barbara gets Altos and Sabetha to agree that they must find Susan themselves, arguing that something that has happened to them since they’ve landed in Millenius must provide a clue.

Like I mentioned in my commentary on Part 5, there’s no indication that any significant amount of time has passed between Ian being condemned to death and Barbara receiving Susan’s phone call. All that we know is that enough time has passed for Susan to be captured, which could be as little as a few minutes. By having this scene immediately after the courtroom scene, the sequence of events leads the audience to believe that however much time has actually passed, it’s more likely to be measurable in minutes than hours. This perception makes the following scene feel really odd:

The next thing we see is Ian in the execution chamber, waiting for his death. He asks a clerk how long it will be until he is killed, and the clerk points to a clock and says, “Execution is set to take place when the pointer reaches the star.” There is only one hand on the clock, so if it correlates with Earth time, it could mean about twenty minutes or four hours. And remember, at the beginning of Ian’s tribunal, the judges stated that he could be executed three days after the conclusion of the trial. So either the writers forgot about this, or the serial failed to acknowledge some passage of time. Either way, it comes across as incredibly incoherent.

As they are brainstorming what to do, Barbara has an idea. Ayden was the only person whom they know for certain was involved in the crime. He had co-conspirators, which is probably why he was killed in the courtroom. Altos picks up on where Barbara is going with this, saying that perhaps his wife, Kala, knows something. This is the first time that Kala’s name is mentioned in the serial, despite the character being introduced a full episode prior—again, poor naming conventions.

They arrive at Kala’s home. She is tearful, but reluctantly lets them inside. Barbara tells her that the people who murdered Ayden have now kidnapped Susan, asking if there is anything at all that Kala remembers of Ayden’s dealings. Kala says that she knows nothing, and Barbara implores her to try to remember anything that might help. “Leave me alone,” Kala says, crying. “I do understand, and I sympathize you. You must have been sick with worry since you spoke to Susan, but I just can’t help you. I know nothing.”

Kala tells them to leave, sobbing into her hands, but the moment the door closes, she smiles. Laughing, she crosses to a door in the rear of her sitting room and opens it. Behind it, Susan is bound to a chair and gagged with a strip of cloth. “Your friends were here looking for you,” Kala sneers. “No, don’t look hopeful. They’ve gone. They won’t be back. They’re all like the rest of them. Stupid. Stupid.”

Kala’s phone rings, and when she answers it, Eyesen is on the line. “The trial has just ended.,” he says. “Chesterton is to be executed at the beginning of the next zenith.” So the writers just forgot about the conditions of Ian’s tribunal, which is a pretty egregious continuity error.

Kala asks him if the Doctor has any idea where the key was hidden, and Eyesen says that he is certain that the Doctor doesn’t know. He tells her that he will collect the key from its hiding place, then come and get Kala, presumably to run off into the sunset. Then Eyesen says, “[Susan] is no more use now, and she can identify you. Kill her.”

Outside, Barbara is upset with herself, saying that they should have gone to the Doctor for help from the start. Just as they are about to look for him, Barbara has a realization: “Kala said, ‘You must have been sick with worry since you spoke to Susan.’ Well, how did she know we’d spoken to Susan? We’ve told no one.”

Alarmed, they return to Kala’s home. When they enter, Kala doesn’t see them; Kala is too busy slowly approaching Susan with a gun, ready to kill. Altos sneaks up behind Kala and restrains her, and Barbara unties Susan. Relieved, Susan embraces Barbara.

Back in the Guardian building, the Doctor is sitting on a bench, disconsolate. Eyesen approaches, giving the archetypal no hard feelings speech that the winning lawyers always seem to give the loser. A clerk enters to ask where he should put the exhibits from the trial—including the mace—and Eyesen identifies the cabinet in the back of the room. Then Eyesen leaves.

Tarron enters the room and tells the Doctor that it is time to leave, but the Doctor is adamant about finding new evidence and reopening the case. At this moment, the clerk receives a phone call from Barbara. She says that she knows Kala is the one who murdered her husband, telling everyone that they should come to Kala’s home.

After a short time skip, Barbara is telling the Doctor about how she figured out Kala had kidnapped Susan, and the Doctor hopes that this will finally allow Ian to be set free. Unfortunately, Tarron arrives and lets them know that Kala has made a confession that still implicates Ian in the crime. Everyone is shocked, and even Tarron has doubts about the statement’s veracity. Yet he says, “Just doubts aren’t enough to ask for a stay of execution. They’d need positive proof.” Again, what a dumb system for the show to take at face value with almost no substantive commentary.

At Tarron’s insistence on proof, Susan mentions the man that she overheard talking to Kala on the phone. She remembers him saying something about collecting the key, and the Doctor laughs. “What a wonderful opportunity it gives us to catch him red-handed. And to release Chesterton!” Now is finally the time where the Doctor’s knowledge of the key, hinted at nearly thirty minutes of runtime ago, finally comes to fruition.

Back in the execution room, Ian is staring at the clock, which shows that about half of the time until his execution has elapsed. Then the scene cuts to the Guardian building. Some time has passed, and the lights are off. I am getting increasingly confused about the passage of time. It seemed like Ian’s execution was imminent, just based on how clocks function on Earth. But now it looks to be nighttime, many hours later. Are we to believe that a clerk and Ian are supposed to be standing in a room for all this time, just waiting for Ian’s execution? Why wouldn’t they be waiting somewhere else? It feels like Ian waiting in the execution room is supposed to give the episode a sense of immediacy, but then the rest of the episode lacks that immediacy. This serial really is just one long sequence of baffling writing decisions.

Anyway, in the Guardian building, a masked figure dressed in black enters the darkened room. Unbeknownst to them, the Doctor lingers in a dark corner, watching their every move. The figure crosses to the evidence cabinet, unlocks the door, and takes the mace from within. Suddenly, two guards appear and restrain the figure. The Doctor throws on the lights, and, in a very Scooby Doo-esque maneuver, rips the mask off. It’s Eyesen. “Call the prison,” says Tarron.

Some more time passes, and the Doctor, Barbara, Susan, and Tarron have all gathered in the Guardian building with Ian, who is now free. The Doctor is explaining how he knew the key was hidden within the mace. Every person and object from the maximum security vault had been thoroughly checked except for the mace—therefore, it could be nowhere else. Susan asks where Altos and Sabetha have gone, and the Doctor says that he has sent them ahead to Arbitan to deliver the news of their success. Then, a clerk arrives, delivering an official authorization permitting the Doctor to take possession of the key to return it to Arbitan. With the microcircuit in hand, the Doctor and his companions turn their travel dials and disappear.

Back in Arbitan’s pyramid, the Voords have completely taken over now that Arbitan is dead. Remember them? The serial does a pretty poor job reminding the audience who the main antagonist is supposed to be. In case you forgot, the last time we saw them, the Voords were in black wetsuits, having just emerged from their submersibles. They still wear the wetsuits, despite supposedly being in the pyramid for some time, perhaps as long as a week or more.

Their leader—Yartek, also in a wetsuit—is in the room with the Conscience of Marinus, interrogating Altos, who is tied to a chair. Sabetha is escorted into the room against her will by a Voord. Another Voord is seen holding four of the five microcircuits. Seeing Altos, Sabetha tries to lie, telling Yartek that Altos is just a servant and knows nothing of value.

Yartek calls her bluff, saying that if Altos is so insignificant, Sabetha would not care if he was killed. Sabetha cries out, “No!” and Yartek laughs. He demands to know where the final key is, and Sabetha refuses to say. Yartek tells Altos that he will kill Sabetha if he does not give up the information, and Altos relents, saying that the key is with the Doctor.

One other thing of note happens during this exchange. Sabetha says of Altos, “The man who loves me cannot betray me.” Just like the end of The Daleks when the Thal man kissed Barbara’s hand, I didn’t pick up on this love interest at all during the rest of the serial. I remember one instance where Altos had his arm draped over Sabetha’s shoulder, but it was brief enough that it never occurred to me that it signified any romantic feelings. With as unsubtle as the series is with a lot of its plot elements and dialogue choices, you’d think there would be more obvious signs of burgeoning romantic relationships. This seems to be a blind spot for the writers, and I’ll be on the lookout to see how romance comes across in the future.

I gotta say, at this point, I am suffering through this serial. I have nothing much to say about the rest of the episode, so I just want to run through the major plot points quickly so I can get on to the major takeaways:

The Doctor, Ian, Susan, and Barbara arrive in the pyramid, but are suspicious that Altos and Sabetha are nowhere to be found.

They find a Voord in the hallway and knock it out, their suspicions confirmed.

They find Yartek in the room with the Conscience of Marinus, disguised as Arbitan, wearing Arbitan’s white robes and hiding his face. Ian gives him the final key.

The Doctor and the rest leave Yartek and find Sabetha and Altos tied up in a cell. The Doctor tells them that Ian gave Yartek the key, but that they saw through Yartek’s deception. Instead of the actual key, Ian says that it was the fake key from Part 3.

The protagonists free Sabetha and Altos, and everyone runs out of the pyramid.

The Conscience of Marinus blows up, killing the Voords.

The Doctor and his companions say their goodbyes to Altos and Sabetha—who, now that I think about it, are trapped on a deserted island with no shelter and no way to cross the acid sea. RIP them, I guess.

The Doctor and his companions enter the TARDIS, and it dematerializes.

Takeaways

That serial was miserable. I usually like to include a bit in these ending segments that highlights what a serial did well. And while there were some parts that weren’t terrible—like some bits in the city of Morphoton and others on the mountain with Vasar—I want to focus instead on two things that this serial does incredibly poorly.

The first is worldbuilding. We get to spend six full episodes—over two hours—with our heroes on the planet of Marinus. We are introduced to the planet by Arbitan, who takes us through the history of its pinnacle of technological achievement: the Conscience of Marinus. But what do we really learn about it? How did its people react to the machine being shut down? How do they feel about the prospect of it being turned on again? How far apart are the locations which the main characters visit? Do the people of Millenius know about the city of Morphoton? If so, why have they just allowed the people there to languish under the rule of the Morphos? If not, how does a planet have a machine capable of global mind control but nothing which allows for global travel? Why is the jungle growing so rapidly in Part 3? What is the origin of the knights in Part 4?

You see the problem, right? It’s the scope. There is a way to do this serial justice, even with as massive of a scope as it has. It needs a thorough rewrite and perhaps an additional episode or two to flesh out the plot, but most of these issues could be resolved to one extent or another. However, the writers and producers were not equipped to pull off a serial with this large of a scope this early on in the life of the series. They didn’t have the resources, neither the time nor the finances. So instead of creating a massive serial full of holes, the writers should have narrowed the scope and simplified the plot. How about three keys of Marinus, with two episodes to focus on each? Let the pot elements breathe, and eliminate whatever adds unnecessary complication to the world being created on Marinus. Trim the fat.

The second issue is the overly contrived nature of the plot. Sometimes, events need to happen in such a way that unlikely things will happen. A character needs to be in a certain place at a certain time to hear a crucial piece of information, or it needs to rain in the desert in order for the antagonist to become trapped in quicksand, that sort of thing. The more unlikely the event, the more this event feels contrived or unrealistic.

The Keys of Marinus, more than any other serial thus far, is so full of contrivances that its plot comes across as nearly impossible. Here’s just a few extremely convenient moments off the top of my head: 1) Despite Arbitan having weathered countless attacks from the Voords in the past, Ian just so happens to be there the one time Arbitan is about to be finished off. 2) In a very short time after the Morphos were destroyed, the Doctor is able to find Altos, discover that he has been sent by Arbitan, and find Altos and Sabetha’s lost travel dials, all offscreen. 3) The group arrives in the jungle just in time to retrieve the key, the very same day that the jungle is set to destroy the building once and for all. 4) The cave where Varas encounters Susan and Sabetha just so happens to be the location of the third microcircuit. 5) Ian just so happens to arrive in the maximum security vault as a crime is being committed, somehow arriving there without the others.

Under normal circumstances, any one of these contrivances would be enough to gut the stability of a serial, but with all of these together, the ability of The Keys of Marinus to tell a coherent story completely falls apart.

Looking forward, I’m really hoping that this is a low point in the series. I want the writers to have learned from these mistakes. With scope, I’d like to see a serial air on the side of too narrow rather than too broad, and rely less on freak, one-in-a-million occurances. Let this failure mean something. Aside from that, I want to see the temporary friends of the Doctor and his companions exist more as characters of their own, rather than an extension of whatever the rest of the group thinks and feels. I don’t get the sense that Altos and Sabetha have any purpose outside of giving the writers someone else to say things that could easily have been said by Susan, Barbara, or Ian. Lastly, I want to see more explicit romantic elements if that’s what the writers are going for in a serial. Show the love, instead of waiting until the end and implying it was there all along.

Rating: 0.8/10

Chapter Text

The Aztecs

Part 1 (The Temple of Evil)

Part 1 is my longest single episode breakdown so far. I tried to trim it where I could, but this episode does a lot of things very well, and I really enjoyed talking about them.

After a brief shot showing the TARDIS dematerializing from the planet Marinus, the scene cuts to what appears to be a decaying body dressed in ceremonial garb, its skull encrusted with jewels and its eyeholes filled with large, polished gemstones. The camera pulls out to reveal that this figure is laying on a narrow bier in the center of a dark room, as if it were once a body lain in state and left to decay over the centuries. The TARDIS lies just beyond the bier. The title of this episode suggests that this is a temple of some kind.

Barbara and Susan exit the TARDIS. Seeing the decaying figure, Barbara instantly identifies the thing that looks like a bejeweled skull as an Aztec mask, even placing it as an artifact from around 1430. Susan is amazed by Barbara’s knowledge, and Barbara tells her that the Aztecs were one of her specialties. Susan is disgusted by the Aztecs, specifically the practice of human sacrifice and the cutting out of people’s hearts. Barbara counters with what I think is a good introduction to one of the major themes of this serial: “Oh, that was only one side to their nature. The other side was highly civilized. [The Spanish] only saw the acts of sacrifice. That was the tragedy of the Aztecs. The whole civilization was completely destroyed, the good as well as the evil.”

Now, this line is one of those instances that is so ahistorical that I would be remiss if I didn’t focus on it for a moment. The way Barbara frames it, the Spanish conquered the Aztecs because of their perceived barbarity—that the Spanish conquerors were the arbiters of good and evil and, in their judgment, the Aztecs were evil and deserved to be destroyed. To Barbara, if the Conquistadors had only been exposed to the better side of the Aztecs, perhaps they would have decided against doing their butchery. In reality, the Spanish wanted the land, so they took the land. The Aztecs were not the first, and there were many other civilizations that did not partake in human sacrifice who were wiped out by the Spanish. Any attempt to bring up human sacrifice in its relation to the conquering Spanish is only an attempt to excuse the atrocities committed by bloodthirsty marauders in service of a colonialist empire.

That being said, I will be continuing this commentary as if what Barbara has said is at least somewhat plausible. Though it is misguided, Barbara believes it to be true, and it motivates her actions throughout the serial. In this way, she believes that she is acting in the best interest of the Aztecs. Barbara isn’t malicious, just wrong. Throughout the serial, she will often be doing what she sees as the right things for the wrong reasons. And although the show is not aware of the historical inaccuracies it perpetuates, it does not ultimately take much away from my viewing experience.

As they talk, Susan and Barbara move about the temple, revealing ornate carvings and other decorations. Barbara finds a snake-like bracelet that coils around the wearer’s forearm. Susan goes to inspect some wall paintings and discovers a door that swings outward when she presses against the wall. Barbara exits through this door, absentmindedly winding the snake-like bracelet around her arm, and Susan warns her not to go too far.

Barbara doesn’t take more than a few steps before she is approached by a man wearing black robes, gold jewelry, and a ceremonial headpiece made to look like flames rising from the top of his head. Old, with straight brown hair falling past the shoulders of his robe, he says, “Woman, how came you here? The temple is sacred to the memory of the High Priest Yetaxa. You trespass and must be punished! Warriors!”

Barbara turns to go back but finds that the door to the temple has swung closed. Warriors come and surround her, taking her by the arms. Then the priest’s gaze is shown lingering over the bracelet wrapped around Barbara’s arm, the bracelet that came from Yetaxa’s tomb (pronounced yeh-TACK-suh).

Back in the temple, Susan has told the others about Barbara leaving the temple, and the Doctor is angry. “I don’t care if she is interested in them. I told her repeatedly not to go off on her own!” Since the first serial, I have been keeping track of how often a major plot point is triggered by the Doctor or one of his companions deciding to leave the group without asking the others about it. While she may not have gotten very far, I think Barbara’s sudden exit qualifies as SomeoneWandersOff™ #3.

Susan shows Ian and the Doctor the door she has found, and they all exit the temple. By now, the man and the warriors have taken Barbara away, and the others wander around a bit, giving us a better view of the temple exterior. They are very high in the air, with a painted backdrop portraying the view of a city and some Aztec pyramids. Everything is made of stone, from the balcony overlooking the view to the intricately carved and painted stone edifice of the temple proper. Even though it’s obviously a studio set, the design does just enough to let me suspend my disbelief.

As they admire the view, the door closes behind them, thudding as it falls back into place. There’s no obvious way to open it, causing the three to panic. Susan says that there must be some way of getting it open, and the Doctor responds with, “Yes, you push from the other side. These tombs were designed to prevent grave robbers, not to aid and abet them.”

At that moment, the man with the headpiece of flames returns, his demeanor much less combative. He introduces himself as Autloc (pronounced OUGHT-lock), the High Priest of Knowledge, and offers humble greetings to the servants of Yetaxa.

The Doctor, Ian, and Susan are confused, at first. The Doctor asks if there is a way through to the tomb from the outside, and Autloc says no, it is sealed. Then Autloc mentions the snake bracelet, and Susan remembers Barbara taking a bracelet from the tomb. Soon, it is made clear that Autloc will be taking them to “the one who wears the bracelet of Yetaxa.”

Before they leave the entrance to the tomb, another man appears. Though he wears similar ceremonial garb to Autloc, it is there that the similarities end. He is short and slouching, with shifty eyes and curly, matted hair. A thick stripe of black face paint begins beneath one ear, covers his lips, and wraps behind his other ear, giving him a bestial appearance. Instead of a tall headpiece and gold jewelry, he wears a sturdy leather circlet and a beaded necklace, with two long, thin ornaments like insect antennae rising from the top of his head. Right from the jump, he looks evil.

This is another area where the series demonstrates an annoying lack of subtlety in its writing: antagonists just about bash the viewer over the head with how overtly evil they are. Take the previous serial for example. In The Keys of Marinus, the Voords were figures in black wetsuits that jumped out at people from the shadows; the Morphos were bug-eyed brains; and the trapper, Vasar, was a massive bear of a man who demonstrated his bad intentions with every line of dialogue. There was very little room for doubt in my mind as to the quality of their character.

That’s not to say that an antagonist can’t look evil—there are brilliantly done antagonists throughout the series that look stereotypically evil. However, with what The Aztecs has just presented to us, it feels a bit cartoonish and flat. Have you ever been to one of those musical productions for kids, like Dora the Explorer Live, the Wiggles, etc.? There’s a trope in that genre where the bad guy comes out onto the stage, and the good guy will say something to the effect of, “Alright kids, everybody boo them to take away their power!” And all the kids in the audience start booing. When the obvious baddie walks into frame in The Aztecs to dramatic music and Susan recoiling in fear, I get the same vibes as Dora the Explorer asking me to boo Swiper the Fox. It feels like I’m being talked down to.

The warriors lead the Doctor, Ian, and Susan offscreen, and Evil Man™ stays behind to talk to Autloc. He asks Autloc when it will rain, and Autloc says, “This day. When the sun’s fire first touches the horizon to the west.” This line is a bit odd—Autloc is not a soothsayer, and it will soon be made very clear that he values logic very highly. It is strange for him to predict the weather with such certainty, simply because it’s impossible for him to be that accurate. It undercuts the logical Autloc the writers will portray for the rest of the serial.

Regardless, the shifty man responds with a soliloquy: “At that moment shall I present [Barbara] to the people. A vision is with us and shall stand before them. And I, in supplication to the Rain God, shall offer human blood. The rains will come.” Autloc tries to tell him that the rains will come regardless of whether or not there is a human sacrifice, which the evil man rejects. A sacrifice will be made.

Elsewhere in the temple, the Doctor, Ian, and Susan are being led by a warrior toward a room behind a curtain. They enter and find Barbara sitting on a throne of chiseled stone, looking quite intimidating, wearing elaborate ceremonial garb and surrounded by a coterie of warriors. “Leave us,” she says, and the warriors depart.

The other three are incredulous at this turn of events, learning that Autloc saw the bracelet of Yetaxa on Barbara’s arm and assumed that Barbara is the reincarnation of the dead high priest. Furthermore, Barbara has convinced the Aztecs that the other three are the servants of Yetaxa. Barbara says that this will allow them free movement in and out of the tomb, letting them leave in the TARDIS as soon as they wish.

The Doctor says that it will be harder than Barbara thinks, breaking the bad news about the temple door only opening from the inside. He also tells Barbara that under no circumstances can she ask questions about the construction of the tomb. “As Yetaxa,” he says, “you’re supposed to know everything. If the Aztecs decide you’re not what you’re supposed to be, then we shall die.”

At this moment, Autloc and Evil Man™ enter and introduce themselves. We learn that in addition to Autloc, the High Priest of Knowledge, Evil Man™ is also a high priest, the High Priest of Sacrifice. His name is Tlotoxl (pronounced tlah-TOC-sohl). Autloc and Tlotoxl pay homage to Barbara, exchanging pleasantries. Then Autloc asks Barbara to grant him two requests: that Barbara shall present herself to the people at sunset, and that Barbara allow her servants to go into the city and let themselves be seen mingling with the commonfolk.

To the second request, the Doctor turns to Barbara and delivers this grandiose bit of acting: “O, Great Spirit, grant us this our wish, that we may be your eyes and ears among the people to do our best and serve in all our interests.” This line in particular works by playing off of the viewers preconceived notions of how the Doctor is supposed to act. He is not normally one to ask permission to do anything, but he shows that he can play the role of cringing servant if it suits his needs. When I said after Marco Polo that it felt like the main characters had been fully established, this is where that starts to pay off. We know the Doctor is acting out of character here, but because it is done intentionally by the writers, it adds something to the interaction rather than take away from it. I know I’m explaining a joke to death, but seeing the Doctor act like this is funny. It adds a comedic tone to The Aztecs that no other serial has had so far.

Barbara grants Autloc’s request, allowing the Doctor and Ian to go into the city while Susan remains by her side. Autloc and Tlotoxl depart, and the Doctor is overjoyed. This arrangement will allow him and Ian to find out about how to get into the tomb, while Susan and Barbara remain in a place of safety. Ian thinks it would be wise to keep an eye on the two high priests, but the Doctor dismisses this. “Oh, I shouldn’t mind them,” he says. “They’re far too busy timing their miracle…Presenting Barbara to the public one second before it rains.”

Once the Doctor, Ian, and the high priests are away from Barbara, Tlotoxl and Autloc deliberate over what exactly they ought to do with the servants of Yetaxa and how they can best serve the people. Tlotoxl suggests that Ian would be best used by leading the Aztec warriors, though Autloc says they already have a commander named Ixta. “Let Ixta prove himself more worthy than the servant of Yetaxa,” Tlotoxl says. Ian accepts, probably thinking that denying such an honor would lead the high priests to doubt Yetaxa’s divinity. Autloc then leads the Doctor offscreen, headed for a place called the Garden of Peace, while Tlotoxl leads Ian to meet Ixta, his rival for command.

Tlotoxl and Ian enter some sort of military barracks or command post, with shields and weaponry in piles and displayed on the walls. Inside, a warrior, Ixta, is training with a wooden stave. He is yet another warrior with long, dark hair; only his jewelry sets him apart, with enough gold to befit his rank as a commander. Ixta is impressed by Ian’s supposed divinity, and wants to impress Ian in turn. “Would the High Priest care for me to demonstrate my skill?” he asks. Tlotoxl nods, and Ixta squares off against another Aztec warrior.

What follows is a very slow, rudimentary fight sequence. I mentioned in An Unearthly Child that the fight between Za and Kal in the climax was well done, especially for Classic Who, but the overall quality of the fight choreography in the early seasons is particularly poor. I believe this has to do mostly with how the episodes were filmed. In the earliest seasons, the entire process—from building the sets to the actual filming—took just one week. Set designers had the studio for roughly 16 hours, from Sunday night into Monday morning. Rehearsal and blocking took place from Monday to Thursday. Then the actual filming took place in the span of a few hours on Friday night. The episodes were always shot in scene order, with the actors literally running from one set to another to film their next scene. The scenes were rarely cut short, even after significant mistakes, meaning that everything was designed to be achievable in one take.

Unfortunately, this meant that fight sequences and other dynamic moments had to be choreographed in such a way that they could be performed reliably in one take, resulting in uninspired, rudimentary fight choreography. As a result, these scenes are almost always underwhelming, with what should be the most captivating moments in a serial instead being the least. The fight in An Unearthly Child, seemingly the exception to the rule, was achievable only because the head of drama at the BBC demanded that the pilot be completely reshot. In essence, the actors had two weeks to prepare for an episode instead of the typical one-week timeframe, and the actors who played Za and Kal could really shine as a result.

In this scene, Ixta and the warrior trade a handful of very slow blows before Ixta eventually disarms the man. Triumphant, he slams both staves into a round wooden shield, crushing it. I get that this is supposed to impress upon Ian that his life may be threatened, but with as slowly as the fight was choreographed, I, as the viewer, am left thinking that if I had had a few beers to get my confidence up, I might be able to take Ixta.

Ixta turns to regard Ian with a smirk, saying, “Tell Yetaxa that I shall serve well.” Tlotoxl then tells him that Ian will be remaining in the barracks as a challenge to Ixta’s command. Ixta speaks to a stoney faced Ian: “I tell you, Ian, six warriors dwelt here. Only I remain. There is no fear of you in me. Rather, I welcome you. For one day, all men shall fear Ixta: the Aztec commander who killed the chosen servant of Yetaxa.”

Before Tlotoxl leaves, he tells Ixta to dress Ian appropriately so that he can serve as a chosen warrior in the ceremony of the Rain God. When Ian asks what duty he is to perform, Ixta says that they have the great honor of delivering the human sacrifice to Tlotoxl. The camera pushes in on Ian’s concerned face, as he realizes what he is being asked to do: deliver a person to their death.

Cut to the Garden of Peace, where Autloc is showing the Doctor around. It’s a sort of pensioner’s retreat, where all above the age of 52 are allowed to “pleasurably pass the remainder of their lives, free from responsibility and care.” Doesn’t that sound lovely? I’d love to not have to work until my late sixties. Anyway, the Doctor spies a woman who looks to be in her mid-50s, whom Autloc calls Cameca (pronounced kah-MAY-kah). Autloc leaves, and the Doctor goes straight to Cameca, who is gathering flowers.

“In spite of the drought, there’s plenty of water for the flowers,” he says.

“Better to go hungry than starve for beauty,” Cameca replies. She passes him a flower.

The Doctor sniffs it. “Mmm, all the perfume of the gods.”

It’s clear from the beginning of the interaction that the Doctor has found a kindred spirit in Cameca. It’s hard to say whether or not he feels an attraction toward her, but Cameca’s body language hints at one she harbors for the Doctor. There’s also a Shakespearian quality to this dialogue that speaks to the writers influences. I try not to bring other works or authors into my critique of this series, but the set design and easy banter of this scene would not feel out of place in Hamlet or Macbeth.

When the Doctor asks Cameca about where he might learn about the workings of Yetaxa’s tomb, he learns that the builder of the temple is dead, and all his knowledge gone with him. However, his son, a warrior, still lives. Cameca suggests a meeting between him and the Doctor could be arranged. Then Ian arrives, fully bedecked in ceremonial armor: leather padding and an enormous headdress that makes it look as if he is peering out of a crow’s maw. Cameca excuses herself so they can talk.

The Doctor chuckles to himself. “Charming person,” he says. “So intelligent and gentle.” I change my mind; he is definitely into her. This is exactly what I was looking for from the romantic plotlines in The Daleks and The Keys of Marinus. Actual hints at romance.

Ian anxiously relays to the Doctor that he must hold down a human sacrifice in the ceremony for the Rain God. “Doctor, I can’t—”

“Do it, man!” the Doctor interrupts. “Do it, but don’t interfere.”

“But—”

“There’s no buts about it. If human sacrifice is essential here and it’s their tradition, then let them get on with it. But for our sakes, don’t interfere. Now promise me, please. Promise.” In my opinion, the Doctor’s noninterventionist approach to history is very close to what most Time Lords later in the series would consider appropriate. Perhaps they wouldn’t have gotten themselves directly involved in the course of events, but other than that, the distinction is almost nonexistent. I understand that the idea of Time Lords hasn’t even been broached at this point in the series, at least not in any way that resembles the fully fleshed out concept we get in a few seasons, but I find it fascinating how much the Doctor’s position on getting involved in history will change over the next several years.

The Doctor returns to the temple to warn Barbara about what will happen. Inside, Susan is trying on Barbara’s headdress. She strikes a pose, and she and Barbara laugh about their fortuitous situation. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Susan asks.

“You know, that’s what gets me,” Barbara says, her joy turning a bit sour. “I mean, take Autloc. He’s sensitive. Intelligent. And then there’s…”

“And then there’s Tlotoxl,” Susan finishes for her. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? Beauty and horror developing hand in hand.”

Just then, the Doctor enters, telling Susan to go outside and not let anybody in. Then he delivers the news of the imminent sacrifice to Barbara. Barbara is horrified. The Doctor says that Ian is to partake in the sacrifice, and Barbara forbids it, saying, “There will be no sacrifice this afternoon, Doctor. Or ever again. The reincarnation of Yetaxa will prove to the people that you don’t need to sacrifice a human being in order to make it rain.”

She also reinforces the theme of beauty and horror in this line: “Don’t you see? If I could start the destruction of everything that’s evil here, then everything that is good would survive when Cortes, [the Spanish conqueror], lands.”

Then the Doctor says this: “But you can’t rewrite history! Not one line!…What you are trying to do is utterly impossible. I know. Believe me, I know.”

Let’s pause for a moment to consider how the mechanics of time travel work in this universe, because this is one of the things that is wildly inconsistent throughout the series. Consider what the 9th Doctor says to Rose in The Unquiet Dead: “Time is constantly in flux. Your cozy little world can be rewritten like that.”—he snaps his fingers—“Nothing is safe.” Although they appear contradictory on their face, I believe that the 1st and 9th Doctors’ statements are somewhat reconcilable, though I need to broaden the scope of the conversation for a second.

Whenever I think about the effect time travelers can exert on their own world, I like to ask a common sci-fi theoretical: Can I kill my own grandfather? In answering this question, most literary universes fall into one of two basic camps: yes or no. There are some which offer more complicated scenarios, but for the sake of this review, let’s ignore those.

In worlds where the answer is yes, it usually looks something like this: a time traveler goes back in time, they kill their own grandfather, and they disappear, having removed a causal factor for their own existence. I’ll call this the “Back to the Future” model.

A no usually looks like this: a time traveler goes back in time, but no matter what they try, they cannot kill their own grandfather because it would create a paradox. Nothing they do in the past can change the present, although they can play a role in making sure that the present is preserved. In an odd way, whatever they do in the past is guaranteed, because it has already happened. I’ll call this the “Harry Potter” model.

I’d posit that Doctor Who’s time travel mechanics lie somewhere between these two extremes. To explain this, I like to think of how fate and destiny works in the fantasy series The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. In this series, fate is described as a giant tapestry made up of millions of individual threads. These threads are human lives, and together, they make up the pattern of the ages. This tapestry is a broad-strokes outline for the grand arc of history, though it is not set in stone. It is resistant to large changes, but has ample room for smaller ones. For example, a small change would be someone deciding one day that they want to move across town. The tapestry has room for the shift, and the change is seamlessly woven into the pattern. However, a large change would be someone deciding one day that they want to be a king. The tapestry cannot accommodate such a dramatic shift, and no matter how much the individual tries, they cannot succeed. The pattern forces the person to a path that will upset less threads in the weaving, and life goes on.

This is how I think the Doctor Who universe is supposed to function, at least according to the rules of the modern series: resistant to large changes but amenable to small ones. What really points me in this direction is the concept of “fixed points” that is introduced in NuWho. Essentially, this functions the same way that dramatic changes function in The Wheel of Time. We see this in action in an episode with the 10th Doctor, The Waters of Mars, where the Doctor is unable to save the life of a person whose death is a fixed point. In contrast, smaller changes, such as saving the lives of two characters whose deaths are not fixed, are acceptable. In essence, these smaller changes cause a sort of reverse-butterfly effect. Instead of triggering a cascading sequence of events that dramatically alters the future, the Doctor’s adventures seem to be largely swallowed up by the prevailing winds of fate, just like threads being woven back into the pattern in The Wheel of Time.

So theoretically, what would be the fixed point in the downfall of the Aztecs? It’s obviously the arrival of the Spanish, right? It can’t be the human sacrifices; those are just a series of small events, though perhaps their origin could be fixed. What the Doctor could be suggesting is that any effort to deviate the Aztecs from their current trajectory is futile, and that nothing they do could prevent the annihilation of the Aztec civilization at the hands of the Spanish.

And I get it; in reality, it’s just that the new series thought much more critically about the mechanics of its universe than the old. There was no such thing as a fixed point in Classic Who, and what the Doctor is insisting here deserves to be taken at face value. He is telling Barbara that any attempt to end human sacrifice among the Aztecs is in itself impossible, which does clash quite a bit with how the Doctor views history from Season 3 onward. I just think it’s fun to consider how the 1st and 9th Doctors’ statements are not necessarily mutually exclusive if you remove some context. I’ll be looking out for when the series begins to shift its depiction of the Doctor’s noninterventionism and if they make an effort to reconcile it with the rules of time travel in the early seasons.

At sundown, Barbara is standing near the entryway to the temple, awaiting the beginning of the ceremony. She is resolute, determined to use her role as Yetaxa to end the practice of human sacrifice. The Doctor and Susan are just offscreen. The Docter has decided to keep Susan in the dark about what is about to happen, perhaps to spare her innocence—though this doesn’t make much sense after the death Susan has witnessed over the course of the first five serials.

A group of warriors in ceremonial dress—Ian included—escorts Barbara to the edge of the temple, where the people have gathered below to witness the ceremony. Autloc announces the return of Yetaxa, and Barbara walks to the edge of the balcony to the sound of thousands cheering below. Then Barbara takes her place behind a slab of rock, on which is positioned a nearly naked man, poised to be killed in sacrifice.

Tlotoxl begins his part of the ceremony, talking about blood offerings to the Rain God. Hearing this, Susan screams and rushes to Barbara’s side. Barbara halts the ceremony, saying, “Stop! I, Yetaxa, command you. There shall be no more blood spilt.”

The man being sacrificed looks distraught. “You have denied me honor,” he says.

“Honor us, then, with your death,” Tlotoxl says, gesturing toward the balcony. The man runs and jumps off the balcony, falling to his death. At that moment, the rain begins to fall. “With death, came rain,” Tlotoxl says triumphantly.

Barbara says that rain would have come with or without the sacrifice, to which Tlotoxl asks if she speaks with the voice of the gods or as the protector of a handmaiden. Barbara says that she speaks as a god. “Then let the handmaiden be punished,” Tlotoxl says. “She cried out and desecrated sacred ground.”

Barbara orders her not to be punished. Instead, at Autloc’s suggestion, Susan will be taken to the seminary of the Aztec priests and taught respect for Aztec customs. “The Great Spirit of Yetaxa has spoken,” Autloc says as he leads Susan away.

“No,” Tlotoxl says, “this is not Yetaxa. This is a false goddess!” The camera moves close to his face. “And I shall destroy her.” Credits roll.

I think that this is the best opening episode of a serial so far. It has me asking a lot of questions, but in a good way, not like the why-the-hell-did-they-do-that kind of questions that have been more common. It’s a breath of fresh air, especially after the rotting carcass that was The Keys of Marinus.

Part 2 (The Warriors of Death)

Alone in the temple with Barbara, the Doctor chastises her for what she has done. “Well, young woman, I hope you’re satisfied. A happy day for you…You wouldn’t be advised, would you? Oh, dear me, you knew better.” In short, I told you so. Barbara is distressed by her failure, and the Doctor’s rough treatment nearly brings her to tears. The Doctor apologizes for his harsh words, and Barbara admits that what she did was a mistake, although she still insists that she had to try.

They realize that their situation has become dire. Barbara has lost the faith of Tlotoxl, and Susan has been taken away to the seminary, out of their reach. The Doctor suggests that Barbara play Autloc and Tlotoxl against each other to buy some time. Meanwhile, the Doctor will pursue Cameca and the son of the temple builder, hoping to find a way back to the TARDIS.

Tlotoxl enters unannounced, and when he is called out on this, he says, “I proclaim myself only to my gods,” all but declaring Barbara to be a false goddess once again. The funny thing is, he is right. Throughout this serial, it seems like Tlotoxl has a greater understanding of the situation than any other Aztec. But in order to maintain their own safety, Barbara and the others must perpetuate a lie.

Tlotoxl then spends some time questioning Barbara about the Aztec religion. Luckily, she is a specialist, able to correctly answer his questions. Then she the displays some of the haughtiness of a god, saying that if the truth of her divinity lies in her mind, then Autloc, the High Priest of Knowledge, should be the one to seek it.

In response, Tlotoxl says that Autloc shall do so, just as Ixta shall challenge Ian. Barbara is visibly alarmed by this and demands to know Ian is being challenged, to which Tlotoxl says, “To discover who shall live to command our armies.”

At this point, we begin to see the development of what is a fairly common plot convention in modern television: the separation of the broader plot into distinct elements, where characters operate with distinct goals. You’ll often see these referred to as the A Plot, B Plot, C Plot, etc. Generally, the storyline with the primary focus gets the label of A Plot, with each subsequent plot diminishing in importance. Different genre conventions usually dictate how much or how little the separate plots interact with one another. In sitcoms, for example, there are countless instances where the A Plot and B Plot have no plot interactions whatsoever. In Doctor Who, these separate threads will usually have some level of interaction before eventually coming together and being resolved as one plot.

This serial is not the first instance of this plot convention appearing in the series, but it is the most robust example to this point. If you think back to The Daleks, in Part 5, the protagonists split into two groups: one I called the expedition and the other I called the distraction. The expedition—featuring Ian, Barbara, and some Thals trying to find a way into the Dalek city from the swamp—was the A Plot. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Susan leading some more Thals on a sabotage mission was the B Plot. These two threads eventually came together to resolve in the climactic fight inside Dalek central control.

In The Aztecs, we have four separate subplots, which I list in order of importance:
A Plot – Barbara maintaining her disguise as Yetaxa, potentially ending the practice of human sacrifice if she has the opportunity
B Plot – The Doctor finding a way into the temple so they can reach the TARDIS and leave
C Plot – Ian playing the role of warrior and fending off his rival, Ixta
D Plot – Susan learning about Aztec culture in the seminary

Splitting the plot four ways is quite uncommon for the series. For starters, the Doctor rarely has three companions at once. But even when he does, negotiating four subplots requires a small scope and a slow pace that Doctor Who serials rarely have. Take the last serial for example. In The Keys of Marinus, the Doctor and his companions were trying to find four artifacts in order to save the planet from the Voord. There were five separate settings over the span of six episodes, and this necessitated a breakneck pacing. Despite the writers having access to the Doctor, his three companions, and Altos and Sabetha, they did not have the space to develop multiple subplots. When the characters separated within an episode, it was never for any great length of time, and they rarely had separate goals.

Contrast this with The Aztecs. Here, the scope of the serial is not saving a planet from peril, but finding a way back to the TARDIS. Sure, Barbara would like to change certain aspects of the Aztec religion to make it more palatable to the Spanish, but this is not treated as an imperative. By centering the plot around their departure, there are very few limits on where the writers can direct the plot or how much time they can dedicate to individual plot elements. As long as the plot comes back together by Part 4 in some sort of climax, the writers have done their job. This is also why I said early on that I have no preference when it comes to the pacing of a story. A serial can be brisk with no subplots or slow with multiple interweaving storylines. It all depends on the scope and what the writers are trying to accomplish.

Cut to the C Plot, where Ian watches Ixta practice with a spear in front of Autloc. He and Ixta exchange some banter, where Ian tells Ixta that he uses stealth and cunning to win his fights, not brute force. Ian holds up his thumb, saying, “This is all I need.” Ixta thinks that he is mocking him, and Ian tells him to pick up his stave from the ground. As Ixta bends over, Ian squeezes his thumb into Ixta’s pressure point between the shoulder and the neck, and Ixta falls unconscious, slumping over the table.

At this point, Tlotoxl arrives and sees Ixta knocked out. Autloc explains that Ian won with just his thumb, and Ian swaggers offscreen, saying he is going for a walk. Ixta stirs, and Tlotoxl hurries over to him, still disbelieving until Ixta says that he was powerless against Ian.

Another warrior enters the scene and says that the Perfect Victim desires to be admitted—the Perfect Victim is the next Aztec in line to be sacrificed. “All his requests must be granted,” Tlotoxl says. Then he pauses, a hand going to his chin to express a thought as he says again to himself, “Must be granted.” A plan of some kind is forming.

The Perfect Victim enters, and Tlotoxl voices his doubts about Ixta beating Ian in a fight. Ixta clearly resents this, and Tlotoxl presses on, implying that once the Perfect Victim is sacrificed, he needs to be able to tell the gods about the purity of the Aztecs’ earthly commander. The Perfect Victim says, “Then he who defeated Ixta should be our commander.”

Ixta blurts out, “No!” and Tlotoxl says that a second contest would shed more light on who deserves to lead the armies. Yet Tlotoxl says that he cannot order such a contest. Only the Perfect Victim, who must be obeyed at all times until the moment of his sacrifice, can order it. As this sequence progresses, Tlotoxl flashes hidden grins, hinting that his plan is close to fruition.

It pays off when the Perfect Victim commands Ixta and Ian to fight in a second contest. As the Perfect Victim has ordered, so must it be. The Perfect Victim leaves, and Tlotoxl leans close to Ixta, telling him, “This, I promise you: all honor and glory shall be yours, if you destroy him.”

The scene switches to the Doctor, who is in the Garden of Peace with Cameca. They sit on a bench together, and the Doctor holds up a leaf and asks Cameca what it is. Cameca says that its sap can be used as a sedative, but that the leaves are harmless. The two talk for a little while, and the Doctor steers the conversation around to the construction of the temple. “The tomb is sealed,” he says. “Now surely the builder had some way of opening it.”

Cameca says that she doesn’t know, but that she can arrange a meeting between the Doctor and the son of the builder. When the Doctor says he would prefer if the meeting were today, Cameca smiles and says, “An interested mind brooks no delay.”

The Doctor says that this is true of Cameca as well, and Cameca makes a rueful comment about age and about how she is content to spend the time in the garden with the other old ones. Then the Doctor says, “Oh, but their minds are old, Cameca, and that’s something I’m sure yours will never be.”

Cameca flashes a flirtatious smile and says, “Your heart is young, too, Doctor.”

Back at the temple, Tlotoxl approaches Barbara and tells her that Autloc will soon come to test her knowledge of the Aztec faith. He also says that until this questioning is complete, Ian, the Doctor, and Susan may not enter the temple of Yetaxa. “A false goddess and her servants could conspire against us,” Tlotoxl says. “This is a danger we are not prepared to face.” This makes Barbara anxious, but she agrees to bar her servants from the temple.

In the warrior’s barracks, Ixta is training against a wooden dummy when Cameca enters. As it turns out, Ixta is the son of the builder of the temple. She arranges a meeting between Ixta and the Doctor, though the Doctor has no way of knowing that Ixta is Ian’s rival. As Cameca leaves, Ixta smiles mischievously and says to himself, “What better way to destroy your enemies than to let them destroy themselves.”

The scene cuts to Susan in the seminary, giving us our first glimpse at the D Plot. This is by far the least important storyline of the four, as it receives much less airtime than the others. Susan is reciting to Autloc from something called “The Code of the Good Housewife.” It’s a lot of traditional axioms about how a woman ought to keep house, be frugal, etc.

As she is finishing her recitation, a man enters whom Autloc introduces as Tonila (pronounced toh-NIH-lah), one of the priests of knowledge. Susan goes to shake Tonila’s hand, and Autloc corrects her on how to greet her elders, telling her to stand still and keep her eyes fixed on the person she’s being introduced to. “Unless you’re meeting your future husband for the first time,” Autloc says. “Then you keep your eyes downcast.”

Susan asks Autloc how she is to know if the man is to be her future husband, and Autloc tells her that she will be told. Aghast at the idea of an arranged marriage, Susan says, “I’m not going to be told who to marry…It’s my life. I’ll spend it with whom I choose, not someone picked out for me.”

Back in the Garden of Peace, the Doctor is approached by Ixta, who is wearing the stuffed head of a jaguar as a headpiece. I haven’t mentioned it much, but the costuming in this serial is superb. I think Ixta’s costume here is my favorite; he looks genuinely fearsome. Ixta says that his father built the temple, and when the Doctor asks about the entrance to the tomb, Ixta mentions that he has some of his father’s drawings. He says that he can bring them to the Doctor at sunset, if the gods are willing.

He takes the Doctor away from prying ears and tells him that he will be facing another warrior in combat, though he makes sure not to name Ian directly. Ixta says that he fears defeat and that if he is beaten, the dishonor will prevent him from speaking to the Doctor for many days. The Doctor says that he may be able to help Ixta. Ixta leaves, and the Doctor stoops down to pluck a leaf from the soil of the garden, the same one with the sedative that he talked with Cameca about earlier. He sticks a needle through the stem of the leaf and says to himself, “Yes, I think a little horticulture might go a long way.”

Once again, the scene returns to the warrior’s barracks. Ian is practicing with a stave, and Tlotoxl watches on, mocking him. Ixta enters, turning to Ian and announcing, “I challenge you to a contest of strength…Without weapons. Your hands have defeated me. Let mine try to win a victory over you.” Ian accepts, and they arrange to fight at sunset.

Tlotoxl takes Ixta aside and whispers, “You are confident of victory?”

“If you wish it,” Ixta whispers back, “he shall die.”

Tlotoxl smiles. “Let him die.”

At the temple, Barbara is talking to Autloc, saying that she suspects Tlotoxl of wanting to destroy her. Autloc says that as long as he believes her to be Yetaxa, she cannot be harmed. Autloc then reaffirms his faith in her, saying, “We send messengers to the gods. Why should the gods not send a messenger to us?…I shall not oppose the gods if it is their will that such sacrifices cease.”

Barbara’s voice becomes heavy with sadness. “Famine, drought, and disaster will come, and more and more sacrifices will be made. I see a time when ten thousand will die in one day…Your civilization will pass forever from the land.” Autloc is shaken by this prophecy of doom, and he leaves to think upon Barbara’s words.

In the garden, Ixta is once again with the Doctor. Remember, the Doctor doesn’t know Ixta’s name or that the opponent he will be fighting is Ian. The Doctor gives Ixta a needle laced with the sedative from the leaf. He says it will not kill Ixta’s opponent, but that it will slowly drain his strength, telling Ixta to scratch him on the inside of the wrist. Ixta thanks the Doctor, promising to return after sunset with the drawings of the temple. The Doctor chuckles, thinking he has manipulated events in his favor.

At the temple, Tlotoxl and Autloc speak alone in an alcove. Tlotoxl doesn’t believe it when Autloc relays Barbara’s prophecy, saying that it proves she is a false goddess. Autloc doesn’t know who to believe, saying that he will question her again. At this moment, the Doctor arrives, and the two high priests hide behind a doorway so that the Doctor does not see them.

The Doctor enters the area with Barbara’s throne, and immediately Barbara tells him that he must go away. It seems that no one has told the Doctor that Yetaxa’s servants are banned from the temple. The Doctor says that he will leave, but before he does, he lets Barbara know that he shall soon know more about the entrance to the tomb. “All I had to do was make certain some warrior won a fight,” he says.

Barbara goes rigid, asking the Doctor, “What warrior?” The Doctor describes him as someone wearing a mask like a cat. “But that’s Ixta, Doctor,” Barbara says, “and he’s fighting Ian!” The Doctor is upset by this news, and says that he must warn Ian.

The Doctor leaves, and he is immediately apprehended by several warriors who say that he has broken the law. The Doctor is outraged, and Tlotoxl orders him to be taken to the barracks. Barbara emerges as he is being led away, telling Autloc that the Doctor did not deserve to be treated so because no one had told him about the restriction. Autloc says that he will secure the Doctor’s release. When Barbara tries to forbid the fight between Ian and Ixta, Autloc says that it cannot be avoided. “Only one of them can command our army,” he says. He reminds Barbara that it is not a mortal combat, and Barbara tells him to make sure that it remains that way.

I really enjoy how the subplots are interweaving with one another. Ixta and Tlotoxl interacting with multiple protagonists is a really great way to show how they are engaging in deception in order to undermine what they see as a greater deception. This is exactly what I would have wanted from a serial that takes this sort of approach, and I love the way that the characters, both the protagonists and the antagonists, have been given space to express themselves.

Cut to the warrior’s barracks. The time of the fight has arrived, and the Perfect Victim, Autloc, Tlotoxl, and many warriors have gathered to watch Ian and Ixta’s contest. The Perfect Victim orders the fight to begin, and Ian and Ixta square off. Right away, it appears that Ian may actually have the upper hand in this fight. Without weapons, Ixta seems uncertain, and Ian is able to throw him to the ground three times. I enjoyed this fight much more than the one in Part 1; I think that this slower, wrestling style of combat is much more suited to the ease of choreography necessary for how these episodes were filmed.

As the fight is going on, the Doctor is escorted in by two warriors. He pulls his arms free and rushes to Ian's side, telling him not to let Ixta scratch him. Unfortunately, this is exactly the distraction Ixta needed to grab the needle from where he had concealed it and scratch Ian across the wrist, just as the Doctor had suggested. The camera closes in on Ian’s bloody wrist, lingering to let the gravity of the situation settle into the audience.

For the next thirty seconds or so, Ian still has the upper hand and is able to throw Ixta to the ground twice more. Then Ixta gets Ian on his back, slamming his head on the floor a few times before trying to force his heel into Ian’s throat. Ian manages to throw Ixta off and stand, but he is very woozy. It is clear that the sedative is slowly weakening him.

Taking advantage of this, Ixta pins Ian against a table, pulling out a stave to deliver a killing blow. Tlotoxl yells out, “Destroy him, Ixta!” Autloc says that Yetaxa forbids it, but Tlotoxl says, “A false goddess forbids it. Destroy him!”

At this moment, Barbara enters the Barracks, regal in Yetaxa’s headdress. “Stop!” she orders. Tlotoxl says that her place is in the temple, and Barbara answers, “I am loyal to those who serve me.”

The camera pushes in on Tlotoxl, who gives an evil grin and points at Ian, who is still pinned by Ixta. “If you are Yetaxa, save him.” Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Bride of Sacrifice)

Barbara snatches a belt knife from the waist of one of the warriors and holds it to Tlotoxl’s throat. “If my servant dies, so does Tlotoxl. Put it down.” Ixta drops the stave, and Barbara continues, “I did as you commanded. Now you must obey me. Those who serve me shall not be punished.”

With a knife still pressed to his throat, Tlotoxl says, “So be it.” Barbara lowers the knife. The Perfect Victim declares the contest to be over, making it clear that Ixta cannot claim the victory, despite Ian now being passed out on the table. The Perfect Victim and several warriors leave the barracks.

Tlotoxl goes to Ixta’s side and examines the needle he was given by the Doctor, asking Ixta why the Doctor aided him. Ixta says that it was a trick and that the Doctor gave him the needle in exchange for information about how to open the entrance to the tomb of Yetaxa. Tlotoxl says that he must question the Doctor about this. Then Ixta asks what they should do about Ian, and Tlotoxl promises him that Ian shall be at his mercy again. To this point, Ian and Ixta have defeated each other, but they both have used trickery. I like how the plot is building toward a third contest as a means of settling the score—it’s a great way to develop tension.

Back at the temple, Autloc is speaking with Barbara. He makes it clear that although Barbara did find a means of stopping the contest, everyone in the barracks expected a miracle of some kind. “Why should I use divine powers when human ability will suffice?” Barbara counters. Autloc bows his head in acquiescence, but it is obvious that he is uneasy.

Then Barbara asks him if he has considered her prophecy of doom, to which he says that he has. Barbara says that Tlotoxl’s way must be destroyed, because it runs counter to the will of the gods. She asks Autloc when the next sacrifice will be, and he says that in three days, there will be a solar eclipse. A sacrifice will be made, and the gods will allow the sun to shine again. “But it’s a trick!” Barbara entreats him. “As the High Priest of Sacrifice, you know the sun will shine again…Am I not a god? Support me. Tlotoxl won’t dare defy us both.”

Autloc looks at Barbara gravely. “If I take that course, there is no way back for me. In all humility, I beg you, do not deceive me or prove false to me.” Hearing this, Barbara is unable to meet Autloc’s eyes.

I love the moral ambiguity here. Barbara is operating under the assumption that the ends will justify the means. She wants to end human sacrifice so that the Aztecs may avoid destruction, but in order to do so, she has to lie to the one man who has given her his complete faith. It pains Barbara to do this, but she is doing what she thinks is right. Furthermore, it sets up a dynamic where I, as a member of the audience, am forced to question: is what Tlotoxl is doing really wrong? Barbara is a threat to not only his status, but the entire Aztec religion. What would you do if you were in Tlotoxl’s place? Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to stop her? My only qualm with Tlotoxl’s portrayal is how the writers chose to make him so stereotypically evil. If he were just a little more sympathetic, I feel like he would be a top-tier antagonist.

In the garden, Tlotoxl has found the Doctor and confronts him about why he wanted to help Ixta. “You deceive Yetaxa,” he says. “You try to get into the tomb without her knowledge. What is it you want from the tomb?” The Doctor evades the question, and Tlotoxl says that he wants proof that Barbara is a false goddess. I think Tlotoxl is feeling the Doctor out, trying to see if he might be a potential ally or if he really is firmly behind Barbara. “In whose service are you?” Tlotoxl demands.

“I serve the truth,” the Doctor says enigmatically. “Help me, Tlotoxl, and I promise you, you will find it.” The Doctor leaves Tlotoxl, who is unsure what to make of the exchange.

In the barracks, Ian slowly wakes to see Ixta kneeling near him with a knife. Ian tries to sit up, but he is still woozy, slowly emerging from the influence of the sedative. Ixta tells him to relax, saying, “Now that I can defeat you openly, I have no need to destroy you in secret.”

This is not much comfort to Ian, who says that whatever Ixta scratched him with was the real victor. Ixta rejects this, reminding Ian that he had been the one to suggest that a warrior should use stealth and surprise their enemy. Ian concedes the point, and Ixta helps him up, telling Ian, “Now that I have proved that I can be the victor, we two can be friends for the little while that you have left to live.”

Tlotoxl and Tonila enter the barracks, and Tlotoxl takes Ixta aside, saying that he has need of his father’s drawings. It seems Tlotoxl wants to exchange the drawings in return for the Doctor’s help in exposing Barbara. Ixta says that the drawings don’t exist and that the whole thing has been a ruse to get help from the Doctor. Having eavesdropped on the whole conversation, Ian finally understands why the Doctor gave the needle to Ixta.

Ian and Ixta exit, leaving Tlotoxl and Tonila alone in the barracks, though Ian stays just outside the doorway to eavesdrop some more. Tlotoxl tells Tonila that he needs help to destroy the false Yetaxa. Ian hears this, his eyes widening, before a call from Ixta forces him to go out of earshot.

The conversation between Tlotoxl and Tonila continues. Tonila insists that he cannot, as she is a god. Then Tlotoxl suggests that they test Barbara with a poison. After all, if she dies, then she must be a fake; if she lives, then her divinity would be proven beyond all doubt. Tonila agrees, but he suggests that Autloc should be present. Tlotoxl vehemently rejects this, saying that if Autloc catches wind of what they are planning, he would put an end to it. “For once,” Tlotoxl says, “the High Priest of Knowledge shall be in ignorance.”

In the Garden of Peace, Autloc and Cameca are talking while the Doctor looks at a wall in the background, analyzing some carving. Autloc has noticed an unusually cheery disposition in Cameca, and he asks her what is the source of her happiness. She nods toward the Doctor. Then Autloc notices her holding a small sack full of cocoa beans, and asks her if she intends to use them to barter. She says no, and Autloc concludes that they must then be for drinking. Talk then returns to the Doctor, and it is unclear why, at first, with Cameca saying, “He is a gentle companion, and most dear to me.”

“Then prepare these beans as a love potion,” Autloc suggests.

Cameca looks scandalized. “That would be too bold. Rather he should show his love for me.”

“You wish him to prepare it?” Autloc asks.

Cameca says yes, and Autloc wishes her good luck and leaves. At this point, I realized what was going on. They are talking about marriage, and the brewing of cocoa beans is a formal proposal.

Cameca approaches the Doctor, who is still examining the carving on the wall. Cameca tells him that this is the sign of Yetaxa. Suddenly, the sack of cocoa beans slips from her hands, and the beans spill across a bench. The Doctor gathers some as Cameca explains that they use the beans to barter.

“What an excellent idea,” the Doctor says. “A currency you can drink.”

“Do you know our custom?”

“Yes, my dear, of course,” the Doctor answers.

“The drinking of cocoa has its own special meaning,” Cameca says.

“Yes, I agree. A rare delight. We should take a cup together.” The Doctor looks like he is just trying to be friendly; he obviously is unaware of the marriage proposal he has just made.

Cameca asks him if he is sure, to which the Doctor gives an emphatic yes. Cameca looks as if she has never been happier. “The gods are smiling favor through your eyes. May it always be so. My dear Doctor, I accept with all my heart.” Still unknowing, the Doctor leaves to prepare the drink.

I wanted to show so much of this scene because I love the way it's put together. The aside between Autloc and Cameca was a vehicle for the writers to give the audience the double meaning of the cocoa beans, and it was done in such a way that it didn’t feel like the writers were holding the viewer’s hand. This is the series’ first real attempt at situational comedy, and I find it very endearing. The tone the writers struck in this scene was delightfully lighthearted, offering just enough comedic relief to provide a contrast to the threats posed by the antagonists.

Back at the temple, Ian is alone with Barbara, who asks him why he has taken such a risk to enter a place he is forbidden to go. Ian says that he overheard Tlotoxl and Tonila plotting something, and Barbara is surprised that the two of them are in league. She warns Ian that Tlotoxl is dangerous, that he seems able to get people to agree with him. Frustrated, Ian insists that the Aztec people all share Tlotoxl’s views, and that Autloc is the odd man out, not the other way around. They have a brief argument about this, and Barbara becomes distraught, saying that if what Ian says is true, everything that she has done has been for nothing. Ian tells her that she can’t fight a whole way of life, and Barbara concedes. “I’ve just been fooling myself,” she says sadly.

Just then, Barbara hears someone coming, and Ian goes into a dark corner to hide. Tlotoxl and Tonila appear. For once, Tlotoxl is civil, saying that he seeks common ground with Yetaxa. He offers a drink to share as a token of their new friendship. He swears to serve her if Barbara drinks with him.

Barbara brings the cup to her lips, but Ian catches her attention by waving his arms from his hiding place, warning her not to drink. Barbara stops and smiles at Tlotoxl, telling him that if their friendship is to be true, then he should do her a service by drinking first. Tlotoxl balks at this, and so does Tonila when Barbara offers him the cup.

Enraged, Barbara hurls the cup, smashing it on the floor. “You defile this temple. Get out of my sight. Go!” Tonila flees, but Tlotoxl stays behind to defend himself. Tlotoxl says that he only meant it to be test and that if Barbara’s divinity was true, she would have lived. Then Barbara says this: “Well, I would have died. I am not Yetaxa.” All of Tlotoxl’s suspicions are confirmed, but Barbara says that no one will believe him if he says anything. “I warn you, Tlotoxl, you say one word against me to the people and I’ll have them destroy you. Destroy you!”

Tlotoxl slinks off, and Barbara is visibly deflated, perhaps realizing how close she came to death, or maybe regretting the revelation she made in the heat of anger. Ian comes out of hiding to comfort her.

Back in the garden, the Doctor and Cameca are seated on a bench, taking the first sips of their cups of cocoa. Cameca is blissful, and she tells the Doctor: “Oh, sweet-favored man, you have declared your love for me, and I acknowledge and accept your gentle proposal.” The Doctor, finally realizing what he has done, nearly chokes on his cocoa, his eyes going wide.

Like I mentioned in Part 1, one of the things that I will be keeping track of as I move through this retrospective is how often a major plot point is caused by either the Doctor or his companions wandering off. In a similar vein, I also want to keep track of how often how often the Doctor has some kind of love interest. This idea is much more nebulous than someone wandering off, representing all the times the Doctor gets romantically involved with someone—both on purpose and inadvertently. This will range from accidental engagements, to one-sided attractions by either the Doctor or another party, to reciprocal love. Some will be obvious, and others will be dubious judgment calls. Regardless, the Doctor accidentally becoming engaged to Cameca makes her TheDoctor’sLoveInterest™ #1.

Sometime later, Autloc and Tonila are discussing the seminary and its pupils, including the progress that Susan has made. Tlotoxl is nearby, included in the conversation but brooding and unresponsive. Tonila tells Autloc that Susan is far more intelligent than the other students, and Tlotoxl chimes in, “She serves other gods than ours…I know [Yetaxa] is false. She has come amongst us to destroy us.” Autloc is dismissive of this and leaves.

Tlotoxl turns to Tonila and asks him if he believes in Yetaxa’s divinity. Tonila is unsure who to believe. Suddenly, Tlotoxl has an idea; he asks Tonila to tell him a little about Susan. Tonila says that she is intelligent, but self-willed, recounting the time when Susan said she would not be told who to marry. Tlotoxl grins and says, “Then we must find a suitable husband for her, Tonila. Yetaxa’s weakness lies not in herself, but in her servants.”

In the seminary, Autloc is testing Susan’s knowledge of the Aztec myths, and she recites the myth of the Five Suns in the Sky without fault. Then, Tonila appears with the Perfect Victim. When Autloc asks what the Perfect Victim is doing in the seminary, he says that he wishes to look upon Susan. Autloc tells Susan that in a few days’ time, there will be an eclipse, and the Perfect Victim is to be sacrificed so that the sun will once again shine.

Susan says that it’s horrible, and the Perfect Victim insists that it’s a great honor to be chosen for the sacrifice. Then the Perfect Victim says that he will have Susan for his bride. Susan refuses, even after Autloc tells her that to refuse the Perfect Victim of anything is to defy Aztec law. Tonila says that Susan must be reported to Tlotoxl, and Susan calls them all monsters.

At the very end of this scene, Susan goes into a corner and begins to cry, saying, “Oh, grandfather.” I get that the events of the scene are meant to be distressing, but this seems like a bit of a backslide for her characterization. Two serials ago, in Marco Polo, Susan demonstrated growth in a conversation with Barbara in the desert, showing how her view of her and the Doctor’s exile has matured. Then, in The Keys of Marinus, Susan was separated from the Doctor for two episodes, showing that she can function away from her grandfather. The choice to have her crying for him in the seminary seems out of character for me. At this point in her character arc, she should be showing more independence, not less.

Back in the Garden of Peace, Cameca finds the Doctor to present him with a gift. It is a medallion with Yetaxa’s sign on it that she claims came from the tomb. She said it was given to her by Ixta’s father the night before he disappeared from the garden, and now she gives it to the Doctor as a sign of her love.

In the temple, Tlotoxl and Tonila approach Barbara on her throne. As a gesture to win Tonila’s faith, Barbara makes a show of forgiving his earlier offense with the test of poison. Then Tlotoxl asks what the punishment should be for someone who talks out against Aztec teachings—he means Susan, but he doesn’t name her outright. Tonila says that the penalty is public scourge and ridicule, with the offender’s tongue and ears pierced by thorns. Barbara finds this abhorrent and initially forbids it, but she relents when Tonila insists that discipline must be upheld. Unknowingly, she has signed off on the punishment of Susan, which is to be carried out at the ceremony on the day of the eclipse.

In the warrior’s barracks, the Doctor has arrived to speak with Ian. He shows Ian the medallion from Cameca, saying, “That came out of the tomb. And the man who discovered it later disappeared in the garden. And on the wall is a stone with Yetaxa’s sign on it.” He suggests that there is a secret tunnel from the garden into the tomb. When Ian asks where he got the medallion, the Doctor says his fiancée.

Ian does a doubletake. “Your what?”

“Yes, I made some cocoa and got engaged. Don’t giggle, my boy, it’s neither here nor there. We must find that tunnel tonight.” They agree to meet in the garden once darkness has fallen to see if the Doctors suspicions are correct.

Ian agrees, and as the Doctor makes to leave, he says, “Oh, by the way, Doctor. Congratulations.” The Doctor exits in a huff, and Ian laughs deeply as the scene comes to a close. I adore this sequence—the comedy of the Doctor accidentally getting engaged is fantastic.

At the temple, Autloc tells Barbara that if she still intends to intervene at the human sacrifice, he will match her courage and follow in her example. He also says how sorry he is that Susan must be punished for speaking out against the Aztec teachings. Barbara puts two and two together and realizes that Tlotoxl has tricked her into authorizing Susan to be maimed. She says that she must put a stop to it, to which Autloc asks, “Will you sacrifice us to save your handmaiden pain?” Barbara gives no answer.

Late that night, Ian rises from his pallet next to Ixta and leaves the barracks. Awoken by Ian’s departure, Ixta grabs his knife and follows.

In the garden, the Doctor is struggling to move the stone panel in the wall bearing the symbol of Yetaxa, but he is not strong enough to shift it on his own. Ian arrives, and with his strength, he is just able to move it aside. There is a tunnel behind the panel, just as the Doctor has suspected. Taking a flashlight from the Doctor, Ian ducks into the dark passageway.

While Ian is still inside the tunnel, Ixta enters the garden. Seeing the Doctor standing next to the open panel, he sneaks up next to him. The Doctor turns and, seeing Ixta, is startled. He tries to make nervous conversation, but Ixta clearly suspects what has happened. He puts the heavy stone back into place, saying that his father designed it to be a channel to divert water from a lake in the hills, and that he must replace the stone before the tunnel fills with water and floods the garden. He grins knowingly at the Doctor, whose face shows panic.

Inside the tunnel, Ian is suddenly sealed in darkness. Then we hear water, first a trickle, then a steady flow that begins to swirl around his ankles. His eyes widen as he realizes he may soon be drowned. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Day of Darkness)

Using his flashlight, Ian discovers the symbol of Yetaxa carved into one of the slabs in the ceiling of the tunnel. Pushing on it, he slowly manages to slide it to the side, revealing an opening big enough to crawl through. He pulls himself up, shimmying into the opening.

Back in the garden, the Doctor begs Ixta to open the stone panel, finally revealing what Ixta already knows: Ian is inside the tunnel. “I thank you, old man,” Ixta says with a grin. “This time you have really given me my victory.” He leaves, laughing, as the Doctor tries hopelessly to get the tunnel open again.

Meanwhile, the scene cuts to the interior of Yetaxa’s tomb. The decaying figure of Yetaxa is shown; then the camera pulls out, revealing Ian crawling out of a hole beneath Yetaxa’s bier. He is back inside the tomb with the TARDIS. However, he needs to figure out how to make it so that the door can be opened from the outside. He takes a long strip of linen from Yetaxa’s bier and ties it above the door, rigging up a system that will allow someone to pull the strip and open the door from the outside. He leaves the tomb, taking the other end of the linen strip with him.

Ian emerges from the tomb, the door opening directly behind Barbara sitting on her throne. Barbara runs to greet him, shocked to find him exiting the tomb that they have been trying to reenter all this time. Ian excitedly tells her about the tunnel. Then Barbara hears someone approaching, and Ian quickly ducks behind the throne. It is the Doctor—he babbles, almost incoherent, about something terrible that has happened. Ian pops out from behind the throne, and the Doctor is overcome with joy, telling them about how Ixta put the stone back.

Ian tells them about how he has the door rigged to open with a tug. “All we have to do is get Susan up here.” Unfortunately, Susan’s upcoming punishment means that she is in under constant guard. Ian tells the Doctor and Barbara that he will get her, telling them to wait in the temple for them.

In the barracks, Tlotoxl congratulates Ixta on killing Ian, telling him that he will be rewarded. Then warriors bring in a captive Susan, and Tlotoxl tells Ixta to guard her. Tlotoxl and the warriors depart, leaving a terrified Susan with Ixta. As soon as they are gone, Ixta taunts Susan, saying, “Do you ask yourself where Ian is? I can tell you. He is dead.” As he speaks, Ian sneaks into the barracks, creeping up behind Ixta. When he gets close enough, Ian announces himself and knocks Ixta unconscious. Susan is overjoyed, and Ian tells her that they are going to the TARDIS.

Back in the temple, Barbara and the Doctor wait for the other two. It’s almost morning, and they are worried about their safety. Barbara says that she wants to leave as soon as possible.

“Hmm, and the history?” the Doctor asks.

“Remains unchanged,” Barbara answers with a rueful smile.

“No rewriting?” the Doctor presses. Barbara shakes her head. The Doctor has made his point. History cannot be changed.

Their focus turns to the door of the tomb and the linen strip that Ian has rigged up. The Doctor is worried about their prospects of raising the door, saying that they could really use a pulley. Barbara points out that the Aztecs have not invented the wheel.

At this moment, Ian and Susan enter the scene. The Doctor greets his granddaughter warmly, all four of them relieved to finally escape the Aztec city. This is notable, as it’s the first time that the four of them have been together since Part 1—the relief feels very authentic. Beyond ready to leave, the four gather up the linen strip and begin to pull. The door refuses to budge, so the Doctor suggests that they use the back of Yetaxa’s throne to create some leverage. They start to pull again, but the friction causes the strip to break. The camera moves in on Susan as she lets out a frustrated sigh.

In the barracks, Tlotoxl finds Ixta just regaining consciousness and confronts him, infuriated that Ixta had been incorrect about Ian’s demise. The priest also laments the escape of Susan, saying she must be taken back under their power if they are to regain control of the situation. Tlotoxl suggests that they move quickly, saying that if Autloc discovers Ian has returned, then the High Priest of Knowledge will be forever convinced that Barbara is Yetaxa. Therefore, he tells Tlotoxl to take Ian’s stave and strike Autloc down in the garden, leaving the weapon behind to implicate Ian.

Back in the temple, Ian decides that they should try the tunnel in the garden again, saying that if he and Susan can get the stone free, they can let Barbara and the Doctor into the tomb from the other side. Ian and Susan leave.

In the Garden of Peace, it is now morning, and Susan keeps a lookout while Ian tries to move the stone. Suddenly, Susan cries out, and Ian rushes over to find Autloc unconscious next to Ian’s stave. Ian realizes it’s a trap, but it’s too late. Ixta and a group of warriors instantly surround them, and Ixta declares that Ian has struck Autloc down from behind. As Ian and Susan are led away, Autloc gets unsteadily to his feet and says, “You are the servants of a false goddess.”

In the barracks, Tlotoxl and Tonila discuss what to do now that Autloc has declared Barbara to be a false goddess. Tlotoxl says that he shall make Barbara disappear by sealing her inside a room with no windows and no exit.

Cut back to the garden, where the Doctor is carving away at a piece of wood, making a pulley. Cameca is on a bench with him, talking about the events of the morning. The Doctor convinces her that Ian was not responsible for knocking Autloc unconscious. He says that everything would be cleared up if only Autloc would speak with Barbara, but Autloc refuses to go to the temple. Cameca says she will speak with him and persuade him to talk to Barbara.

In the temple, Autloc deigns to speak with Barbara. She emphatically tells him that Ian did not strike him, saying that it’s a ploy by Tlotoxl to break up their friendship. Autloc’s belief in her divinity is still uncertain, but he says that he trusts her in this matter. He will see that Susan is freed, but he warns that Ian is too closely guarded for him to aid.

Notice how much the pace has picked up in the finale of this serial. Every exchange is short and to the point, with scenes typically being around 30 seconds. It gives the impression that we are racing toward a climax, although it's such a drastic change from the previous episodes that I find it to be a bit jarring.

Back in the garden, the Doctor has completed his pulley and is showing it to Cameca, telling her that it is finished. “As is our time together,” Cameca says sadly. “I do not know what its purpose is, but I’ve always known it would take you from me.”

The Doctor admits that he will be leaving, and they exchange somber remarks. The last thing that the Doctor says to her before she walks off is, “You’re a very fine woman, Cameca, and you’ll always be very, very dear to me.”

Elsewhere in the garden, Cameca finds Autloc holding a large gold emblem. Autloc is also morose, telling her, “The sunlight of the truth is darkened, and I must know the reason for that darkness.” He explains that he has lost his faith in the Aztec traditions, and that he has decided to leave the city to seek the truth out in the wilderness, away from the influence of others. He gives the emblem to Cameca, saying, “See this ornament? It proves the title to my dwelling house and all my wealth. You will take it to the one who guards Yetaxa’s handmaiden. It will serve to turn his head away while you take the girl up to the temple.” Having fulfilled his promise to Barbara, he leaves the Aztec city for the last time.

In the barracks, many people are gathered, including Susan and Ian, still under guard. Tonila, the priest of knowledge, assembles a retinue to escort the Perfect Victim through the city on the way to the temple to be sacrificed at the moment of the eclipse. Ixta will lead the procession, and Tonila says that Ian and Susan are to be punished just before the sacrifice. Ixta tells a warrior to bring them to the temple once the Perfect Victim has reached the steps, saying, “We shall have one more meeting, Ian.”

“Yes,” Ian says, resolute. “A final one.”

At the temple, the Doctor is fitting the pulley into place, using the procession as a distraction while a nervous Barbara looks on. He tells Barbara that she should order Autloc to release Susan and Ian during the ceremony. This would probably exhaust whatever good will remains in Autloc, but it would provide just enough time for them to slip into the tomb and leave.

Barbara hears someone coming, and the Doctor hides behind the throne. Tlotoxl enters, strutting confidently. Barbara asks where Autloc is, and Tlotoxl tells her that he has gone into the wilderness, never to return. Her last remaining ally has gone.

Back in the barracks, Ian and Susan are alone with the one warrior that has stayed behind to guard them. Cameca enters, carrying Autloc’s emblem, offering it to the warrior in return for him to close his eyes and let the captives go free. The warrior looks apprehensive, and Ian makes up the man’s mind for him by bashing him over the head and knocking him out. Cameca takes Susan’s hand, ushering her offscreen to the temple, while Ian steals the unconscious warrior’s headdress for a disguise.

In the garden, Tlotoxl and Tonila speak about their plans. They will kill Ian and Susan just before the sky goes dark. Then comes the sacrifice, and while the sky still offers the cover of darkness, they will take Barbara into the temple and seal her in a room without escape. By the time the eclipse has ended, they will be back in their places.

In the temple, the Doctor has just finished fitting his pulley into a contraption that will help them pull the door open. At this moment, Cameca arrives with Susan, who rushes offscreen to greet Barbara. Why didn’t Ian just go with Cameca and Susan? They could have just left before the ceremony and no one would have been the wiser—this feels like a very odd turn of events. As it is, they are without Ian, and Cameca uses this opportunity to speak alone with the Doctor. “I honor Autloc’s trust,” she says. “I bring you your handmaiden.”

“That was a very brave thing for you to do, Cameca,” the Doctor says, turning away from her, “but you can’t stay here.”

“I’d hoped I might stay by your side,” she says, standing just over his shoulder. He says nothing, and she turns to go. “Then think of me. Think of me.” She leaves. For a moment, the Doctor looks conflicted, and it’s unclear if he’s tempted to ask her to come with them or if he’s regretting having deceived such a lovely woman. Either way, he sighs as the scene comes to a close. Thus ends the first romance involving the Doctor.

In the barracks, Tlotoxl and Ixta have discovered the unconscious guard and the absence of Ian and Susan. Tlotoxl orders Ixta to kill the man, after which they hurry to the ceremony.

Tonila and several warriors escort Barbara toward the balcony to partake in the ceremony. One of these warriors is Ian in disguise. Tonila orders the warriors to go and gather Ian and Susan to be punished, still unaware that they are no longer in captivity. All of the warriors leave, except for Ian who remains in the temple.

Suddenly, Tlotoxl appears, knife in hand, and he raises it to strike Barbara down. Ian lunges and grabs his arm, saving Barbara, and Tlotoxl starts screaming for Ixta. At the base of the temple, Ixta hears his name being called and starts to climb the stairs.

At the entrance to the tomb, the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan are struggling to open the door with the Doctor’s pulley system.

Meanwhile, Ixta has arrived at the balcony and squares off with Ian for a final contest. Ian has been a match for Ixta in hand-to-hand combat, but now they are both armed. They trade a few swings, but it is clear that Ixta has the upper hand now. In a devastating blow, Ixta knocks Ian onto his back, just at the top of the temple steps. Ixta thinks he has won, but as he moves in for the killing blow, Ian uses his feet to fling the warrior down the stairs. Ixta lands limply, either unconscious or dead—it is not certain.

The Doctor and the others finally manage to get the door to the tomb open, and all four of them rush inside, just ahead of a coterie of guards led by Tlotoxl and Tonila. Tlotoxl orders the warriors to let them go, then turns back to the ceremony. He smiles over the Perfect Victim, stretched out on the ceremonial slab, thinking he has seen the last of the false Yetaxa. The moon passes across the face of the sun, and the temple is shrouded in darkness. Tlotoxl raises his knife. “Great God of the Sun and the warriors, I, Tlotoxl, thank you for this victory. In your honor, let perfect sacrifice be made.” The knife falls.

Inside the tomb, the Doctor and his companions express an odd blend of relief and remorse. Ian and Susan enter the TARDIS, as Barbara sheds some of the Aztec relics and baubles she had been given to wear, leaving them on Yetaxa’s bier. The Doctor hangs back to talk to her. Barbara sees their adventure as a failure. “What’s the point of traveling through time and space if we can’t change anything? Nothing. Tlotoxl had to win…And the one man I had respect for, I deceived. Poor Autloc. I gave him false hope, and in the end, he lost his faith.”

“He found another faith. A better. And that’s the good you’ve done,” the Doctor offers as consolation. “You failed to save a civilization, but at least you helped one man.” They enter the TARDIS, and the Doctor dematerializes them. If Barbara’s soliloquy in Part 1 about the Aztecs being composed of both good and evil is the serial’s thesis, I see this exchange between her and the Doctor as the serial’s conclusion.

A short time later, the four are gathered around the TARDIS console, and the Doctor appears concerned. One of his instruments says they have stopped, while another says they are still moving. Ian suggests they may have landed on top of something. “Or inside something,” Barbara adds. Credits roll.

Takeaways

This serial hits all the right notes for me. It’s not perfect, but more than any other serial so far, I feel like my criticisms are on a much more granular level. Where in past serials I have been left to ask questions about gaping plot holes, The Aztecs has me thinking about the nature of time travel, about the morality of lying for the good of a civilization. Let me ask this: do you think what Barbara does is just? Not what she tried to do, mind you, but the overall outcome of her actions. The Doctor claims that they at least helped Autloc, but did they? Yes, he came to reject the Aztec religion, but it came at the expense of his trust in those around him. On the other hand, the serial ends with Tlotoxl having strengthened his hold on the Aztec people, with a much stronger ally in Tonila rising to take Autloc’s place. Is the externality of what a success would mean for the Aztecs enough to mitigate the negative outcomes of Barbara’s failure?

To me, the biggest success of the serial lies in its narrow scope. It allows room to bring in the moral ambiguity of Barbara’s actions, as well as space for the characters to develop as individuals. If you think about the broad strokes of this story arc, it could have been written in a much more condensed manner. The plot could have focused solely on Barbara leading the charge to end human sacrifice, and it could have wrapped up neatly in two or three episodes. But instead, the four-episode run allows the writers to ask questions, like what would it mean for the Doctor to develop romantic feelings for a human, and how would Ian fare when forced to fight for his continued existence? The only subplot I didn’t like was Susan’s, as I thought the writers regressed her character development by infantilizing her a bit. Luckily, this subplot received minimal focus by the writers.

There is not really anything that this serial did poorly. I do think Tlotoxl would have been a more compelling character if the writers had made him more sympathetic, and the plot hole in Part 4 where Ian doesn’t just follow Cameca to the temple with Susan is perplexing. Trying to pick on anything beyond that feels like I’m just clutching at straws. This is the most well-crafted serial I’ve reviewed to this point, and there is very little that I would have done differently.

Looking forward, I’d love to see the writers explore more about what it means to travel into the past. The next serial that goes back in time is 1.8: The Reign of Terror, which takes our protagonists into the turmoil of the French Revolution. I’ll be interested to see if the Doctor’s insistence on noninterventionism holds. Meanwhile, the next serial is The Sensorites, a story that takes place on a far-off planet. I’m a little apprehensive about this one—I don’t recall all that much about it, but I remember disliking it on my first watch. As always, I’m going to go in with an open mind and hope that there is more to like this go around.

Rating: 9.2/10

Chapter Text

1.7 – The Sensorites

I think I’m gonna change it up a bit for this one. Up to this point, I feel like I’ve had a lot to say about each serial. I’ve tried to introduce different storytelling and production devices with each one. And by going really in depth with the plot summary, I hope I’ve been able to give readers a sense for who these characters are, what the structure of a serial generally looks like, and what I like/don’t like as a viewer.

But I’ve been getting way too long-winded with these reviews. The first episode of The Aztecs was almost ten full pages in my Word doc, when ideally, I’d like an episode to be no more than five. And to be honest, with The Sensorites, I have one main point I want to make and not a lot else to say about it. So instead of laboring through a detailed plot summary, I want to introduce a thesis up front and keep the summation more brief.

Thesis: The Budget Serial

The struggle for Doctor Who showrunners to make a science fiction program on a BBC drama budget has been well documented. In the first season of the show, producers were given a budget of £2,500 per episode, or just under £44,000 in 2024’s money. Compare that with the £770,000 the show had per episode shortly after the series reboot in 2007, which would be the equivalent of almost £1.25 million in 2024. Even without the expensive digital effects prevalent in the modern series, it’s easy to see how ridiculously small this pool of funds was.

In Season 1, there were four serials in particular which came in significantly overbudget: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, Marco Polo, and The Keys of Marinus. In order to appease the financiers of the BBC, the series had to make ends meet with two serials that came in drastically underbudget: The Edge of Destruction and The Sensorites. Going forward, I will be referring to this type of serial as a “budget serial.”

Right from the jump, I want to make it clear that a serial being cheap to make doesn’t necessarily make it a bad serial. It imposes severe limitations on the producers, but there are many examples throughout the series when a story thrives despite obvious budgetary limitations. Take The Edge of Destruction, for example. It saved the producers lots of money because it used only two sets, both of which were interior rooms of the TARDIS that had already been fabricated for prior episodes. Yet despite that limitation, it was a fairly successful, character-driven mystery that offered a chance for the writers to flesh out the protagonists. It isn’t a favorite of mine, but it did what it had to do over the span of two episodes, both in terms of advancing the season’s plot and coming in underbudget. And just to drive the point home, consider The Keys of Marinus. This serial featured five unique settings, each with its own batch of sets which required unique props and set pieces. Relatively speaking, tons of money were poured into the serial, but the scope of the story still far outstripped what the producers were able to comfortably create. The result was ugly.

I think this gives us a template for what a good budget serial looks like. First, it needs to be relatively character-driven, allowing the serial to compensate for its dearth of visual diversity with interesting character interactions. Second, it can’t overstay its welcome. Remember, The Edge of Destruction did what it needed to do in two episodes. The 50-minute runtime put less of a strain on the writers and actors to carry the serial with character interaction. Plus, if the serial is not a success, at least the audience only has to suffer through it for a relatively short time.

The Sensorites is neither of these things. It is a slowly paced, six-part serial with a runtime of almost 150 minutes. The plot has some character-driven moments; after all, in a serial with six episodes, it would be difficult to not present the audience with at least some interesting characterization. But I wouldn’t call it character-driven by any stretch. Instead, what we will see is an attempt by the producers to create a series-typical serial while also saving money by using sparse sets and cheaply-designed creatures. Over the course of this review, I will try to demonstrate how The Sensorites is a budget serial done poorly, with a dreadfully slow plot and money-saving efforts that render it formless and unremarkable.

Part 1 (Strangers in Space)

After leaving the Aztec tomb in the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions are presented with conflicting readings on the main console. One instrument says that the ship has landed, while another says that it is still moving. When Susan tries to see outside using the scanner, the screen shows nothing but static. The Doctor says that they must go outside, and they all leave to investigate.

Outside the ship, they discover that they have landed on the flight deck of a spaceship. This spaceship is by far the most interesting, detailed set produced for this serial. The four exit the TARDIS on the far left side of the room, and as they slowly move away from it, the camera pans across two large circular doors made of metal, separated by shelves and what appear to be a computer’s mainframe. On the side of the room opposite the TARDIS is a large bank of controls, complete with a vast array of buttons, several screens, and flashing indicator lights.

In front of these controls, two people sit slumped over in chairs, apparently unconscious: a man and a woman. Ian checks the man’s pulse, and Barbara checks the woman’s—they have none. The Doctor notices that they both have watches that have stopped. He says that these futuristic watches are built to use the motion of the wrist to charge the battery, and therefore, the two have been dead for at least 24 hours. Yet the bodies are still warm. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?” says the Doctor. “But the facts are all there. I think it would be wise if we returned to the ship and left these people. There’s nothing we can do for them.” Imagine that: the Doctor walking away from a mystery without a fuss.

The four turn back to the TARDIS, but before they can enter, the man at the controls suddenly groans and slumps forward over his desk. He mutters something, and Ian manages to figure out that he wants something from a shelf: what looks like a small metal box. Ian gives it to him, and the man presses it against his chest. We hear the sound of a strengthening heartbeat, and the man sighs, recovering from whatever it was that had given him the appearance of death. “Carol,” he says, passing the box to Barbara. “Place this against Carol’s chest.” Barbara places the box against the woman’s chest, and she too recovers.

The man introduces himself as Maitland, and he names the box as a heart resuscitator. He also says that he and Carol were in a very long sleep, but they were not dead.

They have a brief exchange with the Doctor and his companions, during which they discover that Barbara and Ian have come from the Earth just like them, but from the 20th century. Carol and Maitland seem to take this in stride, which is odd to me. They are from the 28th century, so sure, time travel could very well have been discovered by Earth-dwelling humans, or at least made known to them in their travels through space. But I was always under the impression that time travel is exceedingly rare in the Doctor Who universe, considering that at several points throughout the series, people tend to make a big deal over it, sometimes even millennia into the future. I chalk this exchange up to being yet another one of those details that the series won’t flesh out for several seasons.

Carol says that the Doctor and his companions must leave the spaceship immediately; they are in grave danger as long as they remain. Barbara says they might be able to help with whatever it is, but the Doctor responds with this banger of a line: “No. No, Barbara. I learned not to meddle in other people’s affairs years ago.” Ian bursts into laughter, and the Doctor continues, “Now, now, now, don’t be absurd. There’s not an ounce of curiosity in me, my dear boy.” He then immediately undercuts his own statement by asking, “Tell me, why are you in danger?” Ian, Barbara, and Susan all chuckle.

Maitland explains that their spaceship is in orbit around a planet called the Sense-Sphere, and the creatures who live there, the Sensorites, have prevented them from leaving this area of space. They have some sort of control over their minds which prevents them from operating the ship properly. Yet their hostility doesn’t extend to violence or murder, just imprisonment. The Sensorites have kept them in a deep sleep, occasionally waking them to feed them. Maitland warns that if the Sensorites discover that the Doctor and his companions are here, they may try to prevent them from leaving.

The camera changes to show a closeup of the lock of the TARDIS door. A gloved hand feels around the edges of the lock. It leaves the frame, then returns with some sort of high-tech device with two metal prongs connected by U-shaped metal wires, roughly the size and shape of a ping pong paddle. The hand holds this instrument up to the TARDIS lock, and a faint ringing sound can be heard.

Back with the others, Barbara thinks that she can smell something burning, though this comment goes unacknowledged. Susan asks the Doctor if they could take Maitland and Carol with them, but Maitland says that they cannot leave their spaceship. “You see, there’s John to think of, too,” adds Carol. When the Doctor asks for clarification, it is revealed that John is another member of Maitland’s crew.

Back at the TARDIS, the hand still holds the instrument up to the lock, which is giving off a lot of smoke. Then the hand grasps the edges of the lock and pulls it clear out of the TARDIS door.

Maitland once again insists that the Doctor and his companions leave, and the Doctor relents, directing the others back to the TARDIS. They notice that the smell seems to be stronger by the TARDIS, and Susan discovers the missing lock, much to their shock. They have no way of getting inside. When Ian suggests that they break the TARDIS doors down, the Doctor says that they dare not, because disturbing the dimensional barrier may kill them all. This is a bit of an inconsistency with the rest of the series, where the TARDIS doors are portrayed as nearly impervious, though they are breached from time to time.

When Barbara asks if the missing lock is the work of the Sensorites, the Doctor says “Who else?” Suddenly, the ship lurches, and Maitland and Carol say that the Sensorites have taken control of the ship. Both seem to have had their will to resist the Sensorites sapped from them; Maitland seems especially hopeless.

The Doctor isn’t willing to give up so easily. He is able to stabilize the ship somewhat, but a new threat soon emerges. The ship is accelerating directly toward the Sense-Sphere. Standing over a helpless Maitland, the Doctor calls out commands to Carol, who seems to be slightly better at resisting the influence of the Sensorites. With the Doctor’s quick thinking, he and Carol are able to veer the ship away from the planet, back into a stable orbit.

A little while later, Maitland seems to have recovered from his brief bout of hopelessness. The Doctor says that the Sensorites are cunning, though he is still befuddled by why they have gone to such lengths to restrain them here. When he asks if anyone has seen a Sensorite, Carol says that John, the remaining member of their crew, has. But when the Doctor asks to talk to him, Maitland says it would be impossible.

Meanwhile, Susan and Barbara have gone off to get water. They have misunderstood Carol’s instructions, going well past the water dispensing station and leaving the flight deck altogether, going through one of the large circular doors and into a dim hallway. As they move down the hall, a man closes the door behind them. He is dressed the same as Maitland and Carol, though he has a glazed-over look in his eyes as he shuffles along after Barbara and Susan. Context dictates that this is probably John.

Further along the hallway, Barbara and Susan have found a small room with some personal affects, perhaps a cabin or a relaxation room of some sort. They hear the sound of someone shuffling out in the hall and put their backs to a wall, instantly on guard.

Throughout the scenes that take place on Maitland’s spaceship, there are lots of good cinematography decisions that give the audience a sense of where the characters have gone in relation to where they started. When the Doctor and his companions left the TARDIS, we were given a view of the flight deck from the interior of the TARDIS, looking outward. Similarly, we are also given shots of the flightdeck from the hallway Barbara and Susan have entered, and we can see the hallway from the interior of the cabin. More than in any episode thus far, the configuration of these sets has been created to accurately convey a confined space, rather than to disguise it. This is a great design element for a budget serial, and we will soon see a departure from this ideal beginning in Part 3.

On the flight deck, the others suddenly realize that Barbara and Susan are no longer with them. Terrified, Maitland tries to go through the same door that the women went through, only to find it locked. He runs through the second circular door off of the flight deck, but a doorway beyond that one is locked as well. Barbara and Susan are cut off from the flight deck. “Are there Sensorites in there?” Ian asks gravely.

Ian’s question lingers as the scene cuts back to the cabin. Susan and Barbara cower against the far wall as John staggers into the room, lurching like some sort of zombie. His legs collapse, and Susan and Barbara dash past him, back into the hall. They find the door back to the flight deck locked, so they hide in a store room instead, pressing up against a metal locker.

Seconds later, John enters, but it's as if he doesn’t see them, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to. He starts to cry, holding his head in his hands, before turning and shuffling back out into the hall.

Back on the flight deck, Carol is arguing with Maitland, who is adamant that it's too dangerous to see John again. Carol convinces him that they must get through to save the girls, and Maitland relents, going to get the necessary equipment. Ian asks Carol to explain what they are afraid of, and Carol says, “John’s in there with your friends. He and I were going to get married when we got back to the Earth. The Sensorites attacked him far more than Captain Maitland and me. I had to sit there helplessly and watch him get worse and worse…He’ll be frightened of strangers. He may become violent.”

In the storage room, Barbara and Susan take a chance, running out of the room toward the second of the circular doors. Finding that locked as well, they realize they are trapped, with a shuffling John slowly closing the distance between them. Terrified, Susan and Barbara back against the door. Just as it looks like John is about to attack them, he falls to his knees, sobbing. “Who are you?” he cries. “You look like my sister. Have you come to help me? Four years.” Keep this “four years” in mind; it complicates things later. Barbara tries to comfort him, saying that they will take care of him.

On the flight deck, Maitland has already begun to cut through the door when everyone hears a loud, high-pitched whine. “Sensorites,” Maitland says, distraught. It’s the noise of the machines they use to propel themselves through space. The Sensorites are coming to board the spaceship. Soon, everyone can see distant lights approaching the ship through the viewport.

In the hall, Barbara, Susan, and John hear the noise as well. John says that he will protect them, sounding like a young child trying to muster up the courage to do something brave. So far, I really like the portrayal of John. His actor does a wonderful job of expressing John’s detachment from reality.

Back on the flight deck, Maitland tells them not to use violence unless the Sensorites attack them physically. Ian says they should have the right to protect themselves, but the Doctor suspects that the attack will be mental, not physical, and that they should therefore use their intelligence as their defense.

The whine goes silent, and Carol says that she can sense Sensorites all around them. Suddenly, Ian calls their attention to the viewport, where a creature can be seen against the exterior of the ship. It is hard to make out from this shot, and we only see its bust—it looks goblin-like, with a bald head, pointed ears, and a wispy white beard, pressing its hands against the glass of the viewport. Credits roll.

So far so good, right? As an opener, the episode presents a serviceable premise: escape from the Sensorites. It gives us a decent pacing, and it has some really great cinematography and set design choices which allow for a fairly comprehensive understanding of the layout of the spaceship. As I go through these episodes, I try to have a rating in mind, adjusting it up or down in response to things I like or don’t like. At this point in the serial, I’d put it somewhere around a 6 or 7 out of 10. I promise, it’s all downhill from here.

Part 2 (The Unwilling Warriors)

At the sight of the Sensorite in the viewport, Maitland and Carol freeze, as if paralyzed with fear. The Doctor tries to get Maitland’s attention, but the man is unresponsive. “Fear, my boy,” he says to Ian. “It’s loosened his mind. It gives the Sensorites a chance to control it.” The Doctor keeps trying, and eventually, Maitland and Carol both begin to show signs of coherence, as if coming out of a trance. Once they have fully regained control of themselves, everyone returns to their task of freeing the girls from John, whom they still think is a threat.

On the other side of the locked door, Barbara asks John to let them back onto the flight deck. John is inchoate, babbling that the rest are dead despite Barbara’s insistence that they were just talking with them. Squatting low to the ground, John beats at his head, saying, “They’re here. Inside here.” At first, I thought he meant the spaceship, but soon, John has a conversation with someone that only he can hear. The Sensorites are inside his mind, trying to get him to frighten the girls. John refuses.

On the flight deck, Maitland has once again begun to cut through the door. Carol says that the Sensorites have gotten onto the ship through the loading bay, and Ian, frustrated, begins to bang on the door, shouting for Susan and Barbara.

In the hallway, Susan and Barbara hear the thumping, and they try to comfort John, telling him that they are not afraid. Barbara takes his hands in hers, and she tells John that she and Susan are his friends. This seems to have an effect on John, who turns away from the girls and shouts at the voice in his head, “No! They are my friends!”

Elsewhere on the ship, we see two figures walking into frame. They are only shown from the knees down, at first. The feet of these figures are shaped like formless ovals, almost as if the actors were standing on top of oblong dinner plates. Legs and feet together are enclosed in what looks like formless beige footed pajamas. The camera slowly pans up to reveal that the outfit of these creatures is all of one piece, like a formless beige adult onesie. We see the same gloved hands that removed the lock of the TARDIS, and the odd wire instrument holstered at the hip of each creature. Continuing upward, we see the creatures’ faces. They are bald, with formless black holes for eyes and formless white wisps of facial hair where their mouths should be. It is unclear whether their ears come to points, or if the tips are more wisps of hair. It could be either or both.

In case you couldn’t tell, formless is the operative word for Sensorites. Nothing about their features comes across distinctly to the viewers. I hate them. They are my new baseline for horrible creature design in the series. I feel like over the next few seasons, I’ll be able to point to poorly designed creatures and say, well, at least they’re not as bad as the Sensorites. I’m going to add a third bullet point for what makes a good budget serial: no non-humanlike aliens.

Back in the hallway with Barbara and John, Susan has an idea. She says that this situation has reminded her of a time when she and the Doctor were on a planet where all the plant life communicated using a thing called thought transference. Together with Barbara, they try to picture the same phrase very clearly in their minds to fend off the Sensorites’ influence: “We defy you.” Susan suddenly faints.

In another part of the ship, the two Sensorites suddenly keel over as if in pain.

On the flight deck, Maitland and Ian are finally able to get the door to the hallway open. They go through, and the scene fades to black.

Sometime later, everyone except for John is on the flight deck, discussing what to do about the Sensorites. Susan, woozy, is slowly recovering from her experiment in thought transference, saying that she heard hundreds of voices in her head. John is offscreen, sleeping, and Maitland comments that John’s hair has become white with age since he last saw him, despite the man being only in his 30s.

Ian has a thought: “Doctor, John muttered something just now, before he passed out. Sounded like, ‘the dreams of avarice.’ Now, on Earth, we have a saying: ‘Rich beyond the dreams of avarice.’ I think he’s discovered something. Would explain why he’s had the worst of it from the Sensorites.” Maitland says that John is their mineralogist, and the Ian continues, “I think he must have discovered something that the Sensorites wanted to keep secret, so they silenced him and kept all of you prisoners about their planet.” The Doctor says that they must speak with the Sensorites to learn more.

Elsewhere on the ship, the two Sensorites make contact with the planet below, one receiving instructions through a stethoscope-like instrument that he presses against his forehead. This instrument allows the Sensorites to talk to one another telepathically, even across great distances. When they speak, the creatures’ voices are a raspy hiss, almost like a stage whisper. Someone called the First Elder is interested in the human voice that said, “We defy you.” The two Sensorites are then commanded by the First Elder to watch the humans, and if the humans try to attack, they are to summon Sensorite warriors to destroy them. Sidenote: I’ll be referring to the Sensorites by he/him pronouns. It is unclear in the serial if the species has more than one gender, or if there are any distinctions between Sensorites of differing genders. The actors present as male, however, so to avoid confusion, I’ll just keep it to he/him.

Maitland shows the Doctor and his companions the spectroscope that John had been using to analyze the mineral components of the Sense-Sphere. Carol remembers that the first time the Sensorites attacked them was right after John had taken a reading of the planet. Ian is unable to find anything out of the ordinary in the spectrograph produced by the machine, but when the Doctor takes it for a closer look, he manages to find something: molybdenum, a rare element which can be mined and sold for a lot of money. Suddenly, Maitland and Carol clutch their heads, saying the Sensorites are here on the ship. I find that odd—I thought it was obvious that they never left, given that the humans never heard their space transport machines a second time. Ian and Barbara rush off to confront them.

I say rush, because they rush out of the room, but what comes next is almost two and a half minutes of Ian and Barbara crawling through the corridors at an absolute snail’s pace. Suspenseful music plays—it’s clear the director wants to build tension, but it comes across as an attempt to pad the runtime.

They come across a door which leads a way they haven’t gone before, and down a short hallway, where they finally come into contact with the two Sensorites. Ian grabs a wrench-like tool and holds it menacingly, keeping them at bay while Barbara goes back to the others to find out how to lock the doors. She rousts a sleeping John and gets him to lock a door just as Ian is backing through it, shutting the Sensorites on the other side. The three humans go back to the flight deck. As soon as they are out of frame, it is made clear to the audience that the Sensorites can just unlock the doors using the same tool that removed the lock of the TARDIS. They don’t seem eager to follow the humans, however. A line Ian says during his retreat is very pertinent: “I think they were as frightened of me as I was of them.”

The Sensorites place the thought transference instruments against their foreheads—on the flight deck, Susan suddenly looks away from the others, responding to a voice only she can here. “Yes,” she says, “but they won’t agree to that.” She turns to the others. “The Sensorites want to know if it’s all right for them to talk to you.” The others are surprised that she can communicate with the Sensorites, and they agree to talk as long as they are not harmed.

Susan opens the door, and the Sensorites enter the flight deck. They tell the humans that they can never leave the area of the Sense-Sphere, confirming the Doctor’s suspicions that the crew’s discovery of the planet’s molybdenum is the cause of the conflict. The Sensorites say that they have had dealings with Earthlings before, and they do not trust Ian when he says that no one is interested in the molybdenum.

Things start to become contentious. Ian threatens violence if the Sensorites do not leave the ship, and the Doctor shouts at them to return the lock of the TARDIS. The Sensorites appear to be negatively affected when the Doctor raises his voice, using their hands to cover their ears. The Sensorites leave the flight deck to consider their options.

Once the Sensorites have left, the Doctor proposes a theory about them: they cannot see in the dark. He points out that their eyes were completely dilated, even in bright light. Therefore, it is only natural for him to assume that they would be almost blind, in even semidarkness.

At this moment, Susan is contacted again by the Sensorites. “Oh. Oh, alright,” she says, agreeing to something. “But none of the others must be harmed. Don’t move, any of you.” The others look at her in confusion as she crosses to the still-open door, the Sensorites coming up behind her. She is standing with them when she says, “Grandfather, it was the only way. They knew I’d agree.”

“Agree?” the Doctor says, agitated. “To what?”

“To go down with them to their planet. Otherwise, we’ll all be killed.” The Sensorites close the door to the flight deck, taking Susan with them. Credits roll.

Not a bad episode by any stretch, though it isn’t as good as the first. We are starting to see some really slow pacing, especially in the second half of the episode. And the design of the Sensorites is just unacceptably bad. I can’t look at them without being distracted by how bad they look, and it’s nearly impossible for me to take them seriously. My rating of the serial has dropped to 5.5 out of 10, and it only gets lower from here.

Part 3 (Hidden Danger)

The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara open the door and follow Susan and the Sensorites out into the hall. “She must not go with you,” the Doctor commands. Susan balks at this, saying that the Sensorites trust her because she can use telepathy. She thinks that she can be a conduit between the humans and the Sensorites.

The Doctor raises his voice. “I don’t believe you have the ability to represent us.”

“Stop treating me like a child,” Susan snaps.

“You will do as you’re told, Susan. Come here.”

“I’m sorry, Grandfather. I can’t do it.”

“This instant!”

This represents the first real divide that we’ve seen between Susan and the Doctor. To this point, there have been hints at Susan’s growing independence. In The Daleks, she grew sulky when the Doctor didn’t immediately believe that she had been touched on the shoulder by the Thal man. In Marco Polo, she had that wistful exchange with Barbara about her and the Doctor settling down somewhere, an obvious departure from the Doctor’s ideals. And in The Keys of Marinus, the Doctor was out of the picture for two episodes, leaving Susan to fend for herself for a while. Despite that, we’ve never seen Susan openly opposing the Doctor like this, and their argument isn’t about the Sensorites at all, not really. The Doctor says outright that he doesn’t believe in her ability to parlay on their behalf, and Susan resents this—rightfully, in my opinion.

Susan accedes to the Doctor’s wishes, and she moves away from the Sensorites to join the humans on the flight deck. One of the Sensorites says that they must stun the Earth biengs with their weapons. But before they can act, the Doctor says, “Now, Chesterton!” and Ian throws a switch that cuts the lights. The Doctor is right about the Sensorites; they wallow about helplessly in the dark.

The Doctor sends Susan to join Carol and Maitland on the flight deck, and Ian turns the lights back on. The Doctor makes it clear to the Sensorites that he can leave them stranded in the dark. Then he demands the lock of the TARDIS back. Saying that they need new orders, the Sensorites relay the Doctor’s demands back to the Sense-Sphere, using the thought transference devices.

The Sensorites say that it will take time to receive a reply, and the Doctor storms off angrily back to the flight deck. Just before the scene ends, Ian and Barbara speculate on why Susan disobeyed him. Ian says that it might be some sort of hypnosis, and Barbara responds, “No, I don’t think so. She’s just growing up, Ian.” A bit unsubtle, but it drives the point home for anyone who might have missed it.

On the flight deck, the Doctor asks Susan why she has set herself against him. Susan says that she hasn’t, and the Doctor says that his age and wisdom make him a better judge of what is best in the circumstances.

“So I’m to be treated like a silly little child,” Susan says.

“If you behave like one, yes.”

“Look, I’m not saying I’m as clever as you. Of course I’m not. But I won’t be pushed aside. I’m not a child anymore, Grandfather. I’m not.”

At this moment, the Sensorites enter with Barbara and Ian. Perhaps to present a unified front, or perhaps just to end the argument, Susan says, “Alright, Grandfather. I’ll do as you tell me.” The Sensorites say that they have communicated with their ruler, the First Elder. The Doctor wants to speak to the First Elder face-to-face, saying that his only desire is their freedom.

In the crew’s quarters, Carol is sitting with John, who is still asleep. Suddenly, John sits up, and Carol asks if he remembers who she is. He tells her that he knows she is good, and that the voices are begging him to forget. He hates the voices, and wants silence in his head. Throughout this exchange, Carol can hardly look at John for what he has become. Then Maitland arrives, and Carol says to him, “It’s no use, is it. He might as well be dead…Look at him. Listen to him. Can you imagine what it’s like being in love with someone, to look at them, to see them and know they’ve been destroyed?”

Maitland tries to calm her down, saying that she and John are going to be taken to the surface of the Sense-Sphere, where John is to be cured. Carol says that it’s too late. John catches her arm and says once more, “You’re good.” This scene is rather touching, especially considering that none of these characters are mainstays in the series. It seems like with this serial and The Aztecs, the writers have done much better at writing compelling romance then they had done earlier in the season.

Back on the flight deck, it is revealed that the Doctor, Ian, Susan, Carol, and John will be allowed to go down to the surface of the Sense-Sphere. John will be cured by the Sensorites’ scientists, and the others will be able to speak to the First Elder. Meanwhile, Barbara and Maitland will stay on the spaceship so that the Sensorites still have a bargaining chip. Ian is unhappy with the arrangement, but Barbara agrees to stay.

While waiting on their transport, the Doctor asks the Sensorites why they have taken such pains to imprison Maitland, Carol, and John. One of the Sensorites says that ten years ago—ten years, remember that—ten years ago, five human beings landed on the surface of the Sense-Sphere. They were welcomed by the Sensorites, though the Sensorites sensed in their minds that they thought the planet was rich in minerals. One day, the five men were arguing, when two of them suddenly took off on their ship. It exploded in the atmosphere of the Sense-Sphere. The three remaining humans were never seen again, and they are presumed to have also been on board when their ship exploded.

Ever since that time, Sensorites have begun dying of a mysterious disease, more and more every year. They fear contact with more humans, which would surely occur if Maitland and his crew were allowed to leave with the knowledge of the molybdenum that exists on the Sense-Sphere. However, the First Elder has sensed great knowledge in the Doctor, and he hopes that the Doctor can discover a cure. “Ah ha!” exclaims the Doctor. “I thought so. Yes, some kind of bargaining ahead of us.” The transport ship arrives. The humans say their goodbyes, and those heading to the surface depart.

Our first look at the Sense-Sphere is about as underwhelming as our first glimpse of the Sensorites. Picture a large room, rectangular in shape, roughly 20 feet by 30 feet. One corner of the room narrows into a short hallway, constructed from tall arches. The rest of the room is bordered by curtains—it is unclear if one can move through them or if they are functionally walls. Except for one large ornament in the shape of a sun, these curtained walls are unadorned, formless things. If you want furniture, you’re out of luck. The only things inside of this room are two tiny stools and two tiny circular tables. This will be the set for many of the scenes we will see on the Sense-Sphere. In an effort to make it all-purpose enough to be anything, the set designers have made a room that looks like nothing.

The set looks even worse once you realize that this is supposed to be the reception hall for the Sensorite rulers. In it are three members of the ruling class: the First Elder, the Second Elder, and the City Administrator. They look like every other Sensorite, with their formless shapes in their formless beige footed pajamas. The only way to tell them apart is by an additive to their dress: the First Elder wears two black sashes crisscrossed across his torso, the Second Elder wears a single black sash, and the City Administrator wears a black collar. The First and Second Elders sit on the small stools, and the City Administrator stands next to them. They are talking about the arrival of the humans.

The Second Elder fears that the deaths of the Sensorites will only increase with the coming of the humans, but the First Elder disagrees, saying that the new humans’ superior science shows promise for a cure for the mysterious disease. “Do we possess a spaceship that can cross the barriers of the universe?” asks the First Elder. He holds up the TARDIS lock. “This small mechanism, which my men brought to me, looks like an ordinary lock but in point of fact is an electronic miracle which reveals a mind of science far beyond ours. And this new arrival known as the Doctor. His mind was quick to realize our weakness in the dark and use it against us, but, I would remind you, not unfairly. Merely to protect the girl called Susan.”

The First Elder stands, turning to the City Administrator and asking him what he thinks about the situation. The City Administrator says, “Sir, you were elected to lead our people because of your great brain. I would not dare to question your actions.”

The First Elder stares at him for a moment before saying, “No opinion can be worse, sometimes, than a very dogmatic one.” Then the First Elder leaves the room.

Sensing the City Administrator’s displeasure, the Second Elder asks him to speak his mind. The City Administrator says that he is very distrustful of the humans, and adding that he has ordered the disintegrator to be beamed into this room. The Second Elder is taken aback by the presumptuousness of such an action. “I am the city’s administrator,” the second Sensorite counters. “It is my duty to protect the one who rules. You say that these Earth creatures will not use force? I am only guarding the First Elder. One suspicious act, and the disintegrator will destroy them.”

“Very well,” says the Second Elder, “but you will do nothing further until I have considered the matter.” The Second Elder leaves.

Alone, the City Administrator talks to himself. “I shall not wait. We will not be safe until these Earth creatures are dead.”

In another part of the city, a Sensorite is leading the Doctor, Susan, Ian, Carol, and John through a courtyard. This is by far the most pleasant Sense-Sphere set, with a flowing fountain in the center and archways in the background revealing painted backdrops of the city. Several Sensorites are milling about, walking and talking. Prop-wise, it’s nearly as empty as the previous scene, but just the fact that it's supposed to be outside makes it feel much more natural.

As they approach the door to some sort of compound—probably whatever building houses the room from the previous scene—a Sensorite comments on the cold reception that the Doctor and his companions have received thus far, saying that Earth people are not popular. He also says that they cannot speak to the commonfolk, telling them, “You are forbidden to talk to the lower caste.”

Susan is visibly disillusioned by this, asking, “Do you have such distinctions?”

“Yes,” the Sensorite answers. “How else can we tell what each man is best fitted to do? The Elders think and rule. The warriors fight. The Sensorites work and play.”

I want you to recall the premise of The Keys of Marinus. There was a machine that was purported to remove the capacity for evil in the minds of the citizenry, thereby quashing personal freedoms by making benevolent deeds compulsory rather than a choice that one makes. I argued that in later seasons, the Doctor would be fighting to destroy such a machine instead of searching for the means to enable it. The Sensorites is very similar in this regard. In later seasons, the Doctor would probably be meeting and mingling with the commonfolk no matter what the uppity Elders forbade him from doing. The system itself would probably be the focus of the episode, if not a constant source of friction between the protagonists and the ruling caste.

Instead, the writers have created a caste system not to call attention to the injustice of such a society, but to provide for quick worldbuilding without putting in any effort. Think again about the constraints of a budget serial: cheap and easy. Nothing of the greater city can be shown on screen—that would cost far too much. And as a general rule, not much time should be dedicated to what isn’t explicitly shown. The solution is to write something simple that is easy for the audience to latch onto. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. Fast and dirty worldbuilding. And it would have been effective, if they hadn’t opted for a system that contravenes just about everything the Doctor stands for, even for this selfish, early 1st iteration.

While we’re on the subject of worldbuilding, I want to point out a concerning trend that I’ve begun to notice with serials that take place in the future. Don’t these planets feel tiny? And I don’t mean in terms of sets or settings; I’m talking strictly in terms of worldbuilding. Currently, our valiant protagonists have just arrived on a brand new planet, a whole world of people and places and ideas. And how is it described? All the people have their place. Yes, they all like that place. No, you can’t see or talk to them. It’s a utopia that you shouldn’t question, neither as a character within the universe nor a viewer without.

And I know that the same budgetary constraints that led to a caste system probably led to the sameness of the people on this planet. But there are some pretty easy writing tricks that can broaden the scope of the worldbuilding with relatively little effort. At any point in the exposition, casually slip in some specific details, like any of the following: 1) put the city not just vaguely on the Sense-Sphere, but in a named country, or on a prominent land feature like an archipelago or a grassy plain; 2) mention something of recent history, like a war recently ended or a marriage of state that recently took place; 3) talk about upcoming elections, the change of the seasons, the phase of the moon, anything to give the viewer a real sense that time is progressing in this place that you have created. And the best part is, you don’t have to be that detailed about it, and it doesn’t have to have much, if anything, to do with the main plot. You’d be surprised at how much color that a few of these details sprinkled in can add to a setting, even if they are only mentioned in passing and never shown. Oftentimes in the classic serials, the writers don’t seem to have attempted to do any of these things. It’s a real shame, especially in serials that take place in the future. The writers really struggle when there is no built-in historical frame of reference for the viewer to fall back on.

Moving on, the group begins to move through the doorway, but John stops suddenly, saying something about “the evil minds.” Carol and Susan have noticed his odd behavior. Carol wants to write it off as nonsense, but Susan thinks that he may be trying to tell them something. “Remember, his mind is open,” she says. “He can tell the difference between good and evil people.” They go inside.

Cut to a dim room, where the City Administrator and another Sensorite are standing before a control panel of some sort, with levers and flashing lights: the disintegrator. The City Administrator is relaying to the Sensorite exactly where the humans will be seated in the reception room at the Palace of the Elders. This disintegrator can be beamed to any point in the palace, perhaps even any point in the city. As soon as the humans are seated, they are to be killed.

Meanwhile, the protagonists have arrived at the reception room. The First Elder orders for John’s treatment to begin and for two rooms to be set aside for John and Carol. The two start to leave, but as John approaches the First Elder, he stops and says, “He is a good man. Not like…” He trails off. The Doctor tries to get John to elaborate, but his self-control slips away again. Carol and John leave, and the First Elder gestures for the others to take their seats.

In the disintegrator room, the engineer tells the City Administrator that the humans are currently taking their positions. But just before the disintegrator is fired, the Second Elder enters the room ordering the City Administrator to disconnect the machine. The City Administrator objects to this, trying to convince the Second Elder that the humans need to be destroyed. “I say that the trust we give to each other, we cannot show to these Earth creatures.”

The Second Elder is not dissuaded, and he commands the engineer to remove the disintegrator’s firing key, which the Second Elder then pockets. “I am doubtful about you,” he tells the City Administrator. “You question orders; you question authority. Take care, lest my doubts become reality.”

Back in the reception room, the First Elder gives us a lot of exposition. Rather than rephrase it, I’ll include it in full: “If foreigners visited your planet with intention to steal, what would you do? Would you imprison them? Would you kill them? The man, John, was like the other humans who came here. He became so excited when he found that our planet contained a valuable ore that his mind just opened up and shouted out the secret to us.” The Doctor mentions molybdenum. “That is correct. He thought of a fleet of spaceships to come here and mine the metal and transport it back to his own planet. We saw the pictures he formed in his mind, and we saw that it was the end of our way of life. We had no alternative but to imprison him and his friends in orbit round the Sense Sphere.” Ian says that it is no excuse for driving John out of his mind. “This happened only, I assure you, because of his excitement. His mind had no reserve, no defense. We caused the others to sleep, but he heard the full power of our voices in his brain.”

At this moment, a Sensorite enters with a tray of water and hands each of the protagonists a cup. When the First Elder discovers that this is normal water from the city aqueducts, he is annoyed. He demands that the Sensorite instead fetch some crystal water, which is a special water from the surrounding mountains that only the Elders have access to. Thirsty, Ian drinks from his cup of ordinary water. Then the Sensorite returns with crystal water, and they begin to discuss the current situation.

In the disintegrator room, the engineer voices his disgust that the First and Second Elders have grown weak enough to side with the humans. He pledges his allegiance to the City Administrator, who says, “The First and Second Elders are deceived. I question their leadership. If they do not change their attitude, they may have to give way to one of stronger thought and action.”

In the reception room, Ian has started to ask about the mysterious disease that has affected the Sensorites when he has a sudden coughing fit. He is able to get it under control, but he doesn’t look very well. The First Elder says that the disease resists all attempts to stamp it out, and that it has affected every group of Sensorites except for the Elders. The Doctor thinks this might be a clue, and says that if he is able to cure this disease, he should receive the lock from the TARDIS as compensation.

Before the First Elder can answer, Ian suddenly chokes up again, saying that his throat is burning. The Doctor asks the Sensorites if this is a symptom of the disease, and the First Elder nods his head. Suddenly, Ian collapses onto the floor, unconscious. “There is no hope,” the First Elder says. “Your friend is dying.” Credits roll.

It should be very obvious what is causing the Sensorite illness at this point. The writers damn near smack the audience upside the head with the knowledge that the crystal water is the only water the Elders will drink, and all manner of Sensorites have been affected by the disease except for the Elders. There is a two-minute exchange dedicated to making sure the audience see Ian drink the regular water while no one else does. I know I said that the mystery was a little too opaque in The Edge of Destruction, but this is an overcorrection, in my opinion. I wish the writers had left a little to the imagination.

My opinion of the serial continues to suffer with each new episode. The pacing still feels sluggish, and there has been a slew of worldbuilding concerns that make the Sense-Sphere feel exceedingly small. Barring a complete trainwreck, my rating for the serial won’t fall too far given its relatively strong start. Still, I’d currently put it at a 4.8 out of 10. After the next episode, I expect it to be firmly below average.

Part 4 (A Race Against Death)

Though Ian appears to be in dire straits, the Doctor and Susan do not panic. They ask some probing questions about the disease, and the First Elder tells them that sickness comes on suddenly, never affects the Elders, and is not contagious. Susan suggests that it doesn’t sound like a disease at all, and after a bit of brainstorming, the Doctor realizes that Ian was the only one who had drunk the regular city water. I really appreciate that the mystery of the source was resolved so quickly. Normally, I’d like to let a little bit of tension build up over a few scenes, but it would have been infuriating to see the Doctor and Susan spending time to search for an answer that’s so obvious to the viewer.

Ian regains consciousness, though he is quite dazed. His voice is hoarse, and he is confused as to how he ended up on the floor. Now that the Doctor knows it’s a poison and not a disease, he tells the First Elder to give the citizens only crystal water until he can find a cure. In the meantime, he requests the lock of the TARDIS so that he can retrieve some equipment from his ship. The First Elder tells him that he will have at most three days to save Ian, and the Doctor is optimistic about his chances. Then the First Elder leaves to consult the Second Elder about giving back the lock.

Out in the courtyard, the First and Second Elders deliberate. I mentioned in the last episode that this is the best Sense-Sphere set by far, but in this scene, it is criminally underutilized. It’s dimly lit, and the camera is pressed in close to the two Sensorites. This wouldn’t be a problem for most scenes, but artists have taken pains to detail some excellent painted backdrops and they’re not even in frame here. Why not use the space as intended? As it is, we only see a bit of the fountain over the head of the Second Elder.

The First Elder is ready to give the Doctor the lock, but the Second Elder isn’t so trusting. The Second Elder suggests that it may just be a ploy for the Doctor to fetch an army of Earthlings to invade. The First Elder hadn’t thought of this, and he says that he needs some time alone to think on it.

Meanwhile, in a laboratory, John is seated in a chair with his head hooked up to dozens of electrodes and wires. He looks like a human pincushion; his eyes are unfocused. The City Administrator enters and asks a Sensorite scientist what is going on. When he learns that the First Elder has ordered John’s brain to be cleared, the City Administrator says, “It would have been better to kill him than cure him.”

The Second Elder enters as the City Administrator says this, and he asks the scientist to leave the room. When the Sensorite has left, the Second Elder scolds the City Administrator. “Once again, you question the voice of authority,” he says, unamused.

When the City Administrator hears that Ian has begun to suffer from the disease, he calls it an evil scheme invented by the Doctor in order to get access to their water supply. At this moment, John locks eyes with the City Administrator, a look of clarity washing over his face. “Evil. Evil.”

“You see?” the City Administrator says. “Even this half-broken creature here admits the truth.” The Second Elder takes this as a serious admission of the Doctor’s guilt and leaves to warn the First Elder. When he has gone, John looks horrified, saying that the evil is still in the laboratory. “He cannot hear you,” the City Administrator says. “Your mind is closed by the machine. Your voice is not believed…I am the enemy of all Earth creatures, and any Sensorite who defends them shall be swept away.” John passes out.

Carol enters the laboratory, mistaking the City Administrator for a scientist. She apologizes, saying, “When all your backs are turned, it’s very difficult to see [who you are]. I don’t know what we’d all do if you changed your badges and sashes. We wouldn’t be able to tell you apart.”

“I have never thought of that,” the City Administrator says ponderously.

Back in the reception room, a cot has been brought in for Ian to lay on. The Doctor is shouting at the First Elder, who has not yet decided if the Doctor can be allowed back into his ship. The First Elder cringes; like on the spaceship, loud noise seems to affect them almost as much as darkness. Just as it appears like the First Elder will grant the Doctor access to the TARDIS, the Second Elder enters the scene and communicates telepathically with the First Elder. Susan says she can almost make out what they are saying, though she says it’s not very distinct. So far, she is the only human to display an aptitude for telepathy.

After talking to the Second Elder, the First Elder says that the Doctor’s request cannot be granted. The Doctor shouts some more, and it takes a bit of soothing from Susan before the Sensorites will deign to continue the conversation. The Doctor must find a cure with nothing but what is available to him in the Sensorite laboratories, and that is final. While he works, Susan will stay and watch over Ian.

Back in the courtyard, we have another poorly framed shot of the City Administrator and his engineer lackey discussing the disintegrator key—again, the shot eschews the fantastic painted backdrops of the city. The lackey has seen the Second Elder deliver the key to the Senior Warrior. Suddenly, the two go silent as the First Elder enters the scene. It looks like the First Elder has not heard any of their scheming; he lets them know that the laboratory has been placed under the control of the Doctor. The First Elder leaves.

The two schemers detest this, thinking that the First Elder is delivering the Sensorites to their doom at the hands of the humans. The City Administrator says, “Bring the Second Elder to me, alone. The girl, Carol, gave me an idea. How would you recognize the Second Elder at a distance?”

“By the sash he wears,” the engineer responds.

In the laboratory, we see the Doctor interacting with a group of Sensorite scientists, telling them to test water from each of the ten districts in the city. In this exchange, it is made clear that three in every ten Sensorites have died over the last year, following two in ten the year before. I did some quick math, and that would mean that the city has lost 44% of its population in just the last two years. I know I’m nitpicking something that the writers clearly didn’t think about all that much, but how can there be a perfect caste system when the society should be collapsing all around them? Especially considering that the Elders, the ruling class, have not been affected at all. There should be riots in the streets. Imagine if, instead of having some passing remark about all Sensorites living in harmony, the writers made a remark about all Sensorites living in terror. It would solve the moral ambiguity of the Doctor striving to help such a people, and it would add emotional weight to the conflict that the serial otherwise undermines with every cheap worldbuilding tactic and casually ignorant remark.

Anyway, what follows is a rather comedic montage, though the writers didn’t intend for it to be funny. It involves testing vials of water and recording the results on a piece of paper with comically large script, intermingled with flashes of Susan tending to Ian in his sickbed. After about half a minute of this, the Doctor holds up a test tube and says triumphantly, “I’ve found it. And just as I suspected, atropine poison.”

On his way to meet with the City Administrator, the Second Elder tells the First Elder and Susan that the Doctor has found the cure for the poison and is very close to perfecting a remedy. Then the Second Elder goes to the disintegrator room, where he is immediately restrained by two of the City Administrator’s lackeys. Initially outraged, the Second Elder is cowed once the City Administrator tells him that his “family group” has been taken hostage. Then the City Administrator takes the Second Elder’s sash and places it on himself. He says that Ian is only pretending to be sick so that the Doctor can spread a toxin disguised as a remedy. The City Administrator orders the Second Elder to be bound and leaves.

Next, we see the Doctor and Carol in the laboratory with John, whose head is still bristling with electrodes. A Sensorite enters the scene with a dose of the completed antidote, and the Doctor orders him to give it to Susan so that she can administer it to Ian. Then the Doctor and Carol’s focus turns to John. They think he is showing signs of progress, but his recovery is not yet complete. Suddenly, John begins to speak. “Enemies…Making plots.” He still isn’t making much sense, but the Doctor suspects that he may know more than he appears. Asking Carol to take note of anything John may say in his absence, the Doctor leaves.

Out in the courtyard, the City Administrator—now dressed as the Second Elder—talks to one of his lackeys. I only know that this is the courtyard because the transcript with which I am following along said “Scene 10 – Courtyard (ext.)”. Then I noticed the faint sound of trickling water in the background that I’m not sure I would have noticed otherwise. Again, this is the most creatively designed, liveliest set made for the Sense-Sphere. The director has chosen to completely ignore the painted backdrops of the Sensorite city that we haven’t seen since midway through Part 3. I don’t know how long it took the artists to paint them, but they wasted their time by the look of things. We don’t even get to see the fountain in this scene. It’s a complete dereliction of the most basic rules of cinematography. I have to add a fourth bullet point to what makes a good budget serial: cut what you have to, but maximize whatever assets remain at your disposal. Every courtyard scene beyond the first has been a wasted opportunity to break up the visual monotony of the rest of the Sense-Sphere.

A Sensorite messenger carrying the antidote for Ian walks through the courtyard and bows to the City Administrator. The City Administrator’s theory was correct: except for a few of the ruling class, the Sensorites have only ever seen the Second Elder at a distance—all that is required to fool them is the Second Elder’s sash. The City Administrator takes the antidote from the messenger, saying that he will deliver it to Ian. Side note: if you’re designing creatures and they are so indistinguishable from one another that it can be turned into a plot point, scrap the design and start over. It’s not a good choice.

Once the messenger has gone, the City Administrator turns to his lackey, saying, “It’s a trick. They are trying to poison us all. I will prove it to you. They say without the antidote the young man will die. I say he will live because he is pretending.” He smashes the vial on the ground. “This will prove it one way or another.”

In the reception room, the First Elder and Susan are looking after Ian. Susan wonders why the antidote hasn’t yet arrived, and Ian tries to console her with a few calming words and a smile. It’s heartwarming to see Ian still looking out for Susan, even in his weakened state. He can be an excellent father figure sometimes, when he isn’t off fighting Aztec warriors or arguing with the Doctor. Come to think of it, Ian hasn’t argued much with the Doctor since the scare during The Edge of Destruction, and aside from wanting to change the nature of the Aztecs, the same can be said of Barbara. Neither have they said much about wanting to go home since Marco Polo, half a season ago. Ian and Barbara have slowly grown to enjoy the Doctor’s wandering lifestyle, just as Susan has been slowly moving in the opposite direction.

Back to the plot, Susan decides to leave for the laboratory to investigate the delay.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has asked a scientist to show him the aqueduct. The fact that the poison has affected different parts of the city at different times strikes him as odd, and he thinks it would be beneficial to not only develop a cure for the poison but to stamp it out at its source. The set for the aqueduct is dark and dingy, with what looks like a chamber carved out of the bedrock of the city leading to the narrow mouth of a tunnel. The scientist says that they have heard monsters down here; the Sensorites all avoid the aqueduct. The Doctor lets the scientist leave, giving him time to explore the aqueduct on his own. “How very convenient,” he says to himself. “Noise and darkness. The two things the Sensorites dislike. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”

Back in the reception room, Susan has returned to Ian with another dose of the antidote that she has fetched from the laboratory. The scene begins after she has already administered it to him. The First Elder is puzzled as to why the Second Elder failed to deliver it. When he asks the scientist why he hasn’t been making his regular reports as required, the scientist says that he was busy leading the Doctor to the aqueduct. The First Elder is alarmed by this, as are Susan and Ian once they learn that the aqueduct is full of monsters.

Ian convinces Susan that he has recovered enough to go down into the aqueduct to look for the Doctor. The scientist agrees to take them down to the aqueduct, and Ian rises to leave. He is clearly struggling, but he hobbles offscreen, using Susan as a crutch as they trail after the scientist. Alone, the First Elder says, “These people have fine qualities. The Second Elder and I have misjudged them, and I will tell him so.” He presses his mind transference device to his forehead.

In the disintegrator room, the Second Elder is tied to a chair, with the City Administrator nearby, still wearing the Second Elder’s sash of office. The Second Elder hears the First Elder’s mind calling out to him. He is reluctant to relay what the First Elder says at first, but the City Administrator once again threatens his family group. Relenting, the Second Elder says that the Doctor has gone down to the aqueduct, and that Ian and Susan have gone down to rescue him. The City Administrator is ecstatic. “No one can come out of the aqueduct alive. The one known as the Doctor is near death. The other two approach death. I see victory for all my plans!”

At the entrance to the aqueduct, the scientist gives Susan and Ian a flashlight, and the two protagonists go into the tunnel.

Meanwhile, in pitch blackness, the Doctor explores with a flashlight of his own. He comes across what looks like a nest of creepers or weeds. “Yes. I thought so. Atropa bella-donna. Deadly Nightshade.” Somewhere out in the darkness, something roars. Credits roll.

I have had more to say about these episodes than I thought I would. Most of it is bad, though. My rating has dipped to 4.4 out of 10.

Part 5 (Kidnap)

Venturing through the dark, Ian and Susan suddenly hear the Doctor cry out and rush to help him. When they find him, he is lying on his back. They help him to his feet, and we can see that the back of the Doctor’s jacket is in shreds. Whatever did this to him seems to have gone away.

At one point, Susan says, “Ian, what do you think this is?” Then we get a close up of Susan next to a small white piece of machinery, perhaps an empty light socket or some sort of surveillance camera. I gotta be honest, I don’t remember this at all from my first watch through, but from the way it is given a close up, I feel like this device is something I am meant to remember. But I know for certain that we never see this device again, which is almost like a continuity error by omission. What is the point of calling attention to something so inconsequential? Anyway, the three humans scurry out of the aqueduct.

Back in the laboratory, Carol is worried. She has just found out that the Doctor, Susan, and Ian have all gone down into an aqueduct filled with monsters, and she fears for their safety. The scientists and the First Elder tell her to take solace in the fact that John only requires one more treatment and that later today he will be as good as new. “You are sad for the friends you have lost,” the First Elder says. “Rejoice for the friend who is being returned to you.” This is a shockingly callous view of life—they have already written the Doctor and the others off as dead. I knew the Sensorites were fairly cold, but this severe emotional detachment is irritating. Why should I care about these creatures if they’re just gonna act like assholes?

Outside the entrance to the aqueduct, the Doctor, Susan, and Ian regroup. Ian says that the marks on the Doctor’s back are strange: they look like claw marks but don’t reach the skin. The Doctor says he has no idea what it was. The creature hit him beneath the sternum and he was knocked to the ground.

During their conversation, the Doctor discovers that Susan never received the antidote that he sent her, and he becomes angry. “The water, and those monsters in there, and now it appears that there’s someone among the Sensorites that bears us ill will,” he says. “That’s two separate enemies.”

“Don’t you mean three?” Ian asks.

“No, no, no, no. No, don’t mistake me. The water and those monsters are distinctly connected. I’ve more or less solved that problem. But this Sensorite who’s against us is a much greater danger. Now, I suggest we go back and try to find out which one it is.” It seems like we have another mystery on our hands, one where the Doctor has a key piece of information that he arbitrarily refuses to divulge. It would be nice if the writers would at least give the audience a straw to grasp at until the Doctor decides to elaborate.

As they leave, a Sensorite can be seen watching them. He doesn’t wear any of the signifiers of the ruling class, so I have no way of knowing which Sensorite this is—though a dramatic musical stinger would suggest that he is in the service of the City Administrator.

In the laboratory, John is still recovering, muttering things like “Treachery” and “Warn you” and “I must tell you, but it’s so difficult.” Carol tells the scientist that he must have overheard something important, and the scientist insists that Sensorites are incapable of such devious plotting. I really hate how the Sensorites have been framed this entire serial. They live in a perfect society despite the mass poisoning and death that should have thrown everything into disarray. And now I’m expected to believe that no Sensorite has ever been known to commit a treasonous act, or even just a secret one? Damn near half the Sensorite characters we’ve seen onscreen have been either the City Administrator or in league with him. Throughout the serial, the way Sensorite society has been described is so discordant with everything the viewer has been shown. This is a travesty of worldbuilding.

The scientist then goes into detail about exactly what is affecting John. “We discovered long ago that in our brains, there were many different compartments or divisions. When fear or alarm is at work, that section becomes open. A veil is lifted…That is what happened to the man John. But the veil will not lower itself. Thus, he is constantly afraid. Even when he’s at peace, when he’s asleep for example, the body says one thing, the brain the other. That’s his condition: utter confusion.” This information should either have been given to the audience two episodes ago or not at all. To be told this now, right before John is to be healed, seems like a waste of my time.

Back in the disintegrator room, the City Administrator threatens the Second Elder’s family group until the Second Elder agrees to contact the Senior Warrior using the mind transference device. The Senior Warrior will meet the City Administrator, again disguised as the Second Elder, and deliver him the firing key of the disintegrator. This scene is meant to be dramatic, but I’m really starting to loathe the Sensorites. At first, their stupid appearance was off-putting, yet I was still able to suspend my disbelief enough to buy into the plot of the serial. But at this point, there have been enough careless bits of dialogue and worldbuilding for me to totally check out of their internal power struggles. I don’t care what happens to any Sensorite in particular, as long as the Doctor can save the lower caste from the poison and every non-Sensorite makes it off the planet alive.

Out in the courtyard, we finally get our second glimpse of the painted backdrops, as our main characters stroll past the scenic arches. It’s been almost 45 minutes since we actually got to see what the exterior of the city looks like. If you’re a filmmaker and you want your audience to remember anything at all about your settings, do not do this.

The Doctor, Ian, and Susan happen to glimpse the exchange of the firing key from the Senior Warrior to the City Administrator. Seeing the Second Elder’s sash, the Doctor rushes after the City Administrator, seeking a word with him, but he is unable to catch him. “Most extraordinary,” he says. “He ran away from me!”

In the disintegrator room, the real Second Elder manages to get a hold of the firing key, and he breaks it. The City Administrator’s lackey delivers the slowest, most unathletic blow to the shoulder, which somehow kills the Second Elder. This scene is ridiculous—probably the worst fight scene the series has had to offer thus far. Though I didn’t really care whether or not the Second Elder lived, at least his death signifies that the plot should start to generate more forward momentum. This serial is really starting to bore me.

In the reception room, the First Elder is perplexed by the Second Elder’s recent actions. He discusses them with the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan. First the Second Elder failed to deliver the antidote to Susan, then he ran away from the Doctor when he tried to speak with him. Despite this, the First Elder balks when Ian suggests that he may have done something wrong. “I cannot [accept that]. I selected him for office, but it is not pride which makes me defend my choice. I know that Sensorite. I trust him.”

A Sensorite enters to give the Doctor a cloak to replace the jacket that was torn in the aqueduct. Remember in The Keys of Marinus when I said how weak a plot is when it hinges on contrivances? Here comes another one.

The City Administrator comes in, saying that he has an urgent report that must be brought to the First Elder’s attention. The lackey of the administrator enters, and he says that he has just witnessed the Second Elder being killed. He says that the Doctor killed him in a struggle for the disintegrator firing key, striking him down with an object that the Doctor took out of his coat. Conveniently, the Doctor no longer has access to this coat, which proves the lie. The First Elder orders the Sensorite to be removed to a cell, and the City Administrator says that he will personally interview him. This is a perfect example of contrivance. The Doctor is given the perfect prop literally seconds before he is accused of murder. All the writers had to do was introduce this coat to the Doctor a few minutes earlier, and it wouldn’t feel nearly so convenient. As it is, this twist fell just about as flatly as a twist can.

The City Administrator is able to convince the First Elder that the Second Elder was staunchly against the Earth people. Therefore, the Second Elder must have been trying to use the disintegrator key to kill the humans. That the First Elder chooses to accept this without question is very strange, especially given the odd scene that just played out in front of him.

Next, the First Elder says that the Second Elder must be replaced without delay. Thinking to curry favor with the City Administrator, the Doctor suggests him as a candidate. The First Elder agrees, and the City Administrator is officially granted the sash he so traitorously stole from the deceased Sensorite. It’s actually pretty poetic, and it’s a shame I don’t give enough of a damn about any of them to appreciate it.

In the laboratory, John is finally completely lucid, and all of the electrodes have been taken off of his head. Carol is overjoyed; she starts crying. “I’m alright,” she says. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you smile for so long.”

“But we can’t have you crying, can we,” John says, putting an arm around her shoulder. “I’m alright now. I’m alright.” I find myself really moved by this reunion. Despite the mess they’ve made of the Sensorites, I think the writers have created a beautiful love story with Carol and John. The performance of Ilona Rodgers, the actress who played Carol, is very compelling. It’s a shame how much she has been sidelined over the last two episodes. I would have loved to see her more involved with the main gang.

Unfortunately, John does not appear to recall the identity of the evil Sensorite, apart from the fact that there was something odd about his clothes. Meanwhile, the Doctor enters the scene and asks to review the collection of items that were left behind by the humans whose spaceship exploded ten years ago. Remember that fact. Ten years. When the story takes a hard left turn in Part 6, this length of time is what makes it ridiculous. Among these items is a detailed map of the aqueducts. It seems these humans were also interested in the layout of the tunnels.

Suddenly, Susan has a thought, asking John if the oddity about the Sensorite was his collar. John says yes, and they realize that the Sensorite who is out to get them is the City Administrator—the very Sensorite whom the Doctor enthusiastically recommended to be raised to Second Elder. Again, very poetic.

In the disintegrator room, the new Second Elder—whom, for simplicity’s sake, I will keep reffering to as the City Administrator—is with his lackey, whom he has freed from prison. The lackey takes two of those ping pong paddle-shaped devices that we saw in Part 1, rendering them inoperable but leaving them looking perfect from the outside.

Meanwhile, in the reception room, Ian and the Doctor are discussing their situation. They decide that they cannot go against the City Administrator until they have evidence of his deception. To that end, the Doctor says that they can get proof if they go back into the aqueduct. Again, we are forced to rely on information that the Doctor has chosen not to give the others, which doesn’t allow the audience very much to grasp onto. Just then, the First Elder arrives. He promises Ian and the Doctor weapons and light for them in the aqueduct and to arrange passage for Barbara down to the surface of the Sense-Sphere. Next, the Senior Warrior enters, giving them the two dud ping pong paddle devices that the City Administrator’s lackey has disabled.

In the courtyard, the City Administrator intercepts a messenger who is bringing a map of the aqueduct to the Doctor. He says that he will deliver it himself, then passes it off to a lackey for it to be falsified and given to the Doctor. “Now,” he says, “not only shall they go down into the aqueduct with useless armaments, but they will be hopelessly lost as well.”

Back in the reception room, the Doctor is given this map. He asks the First Elder for a favor: to not let Susan know they are heading off into danger. Then he and Ian leave for the aqueduct.

In the laboratory, Susan, Carol, and John grow impatient, wondering what is keeping the Doctor and the others. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are shown entering the tunnels of the aqueduct. Carol says that she will go over to the Palace of the Elders to hurry them up. This is odd, because I have been under the assumption that the reception room was in the Palace of the Elders. [Edit: I went back to check, and yes, it is; this is another continuity error.] But Carol only makes it as far as the courtyard when a hand clasps her mouth from behind and drags her offscreen. Credits roll.

Kind of an odd choice to name an episode “Kidnap” when the actual kidnapping doesn’t occur until the final seconds of the episode. My enjoyment of this serial has fallen off a cliff. Though the pacing does pick up toward the end of this episode, it’s still dreadfully slow overall. And the poor worldbuilding decisions have this serial unraveling at the seams. I said in Part 3 that there would be no drastic dip in the rating of the serial unless there was a trainwreck. Well, here’s the trainwreck. 2.8 out of 10.

Part 6 (A Desperate Venture)

Carol is dragged into the disintegrator room by the City Administrator’s lackey, where she is forced to write a note to John that says she has gone back to the spaceship. That way, her absence will not be missed by John and Susan.

In the reception room, Susan and the others know that the letter is a fake, because Barbara is now with them. If Carol really had gone back to the ship, Barbara would have encountered her somewhere along the way or passed her in transit; she did neither. They know that whoever made Carol write the letter was unaware that Barbara was being transported down to the Sense-Sphere. Barbara suggests that whomever is attacking them is not just doing it because they are from Earth: they are doing it for personal gain.

The First Elder enters the reception room, but he is unable to shed much light on who the perpetrator could be. He trusts all Sensorites implicitly, and it is near impossible to shake this resolve. Again, this is odd given the strange happenings and the death of the Second Elder. As the First Elder, he should be the most concerned—if not for his own safety, then for the good of the people he represents. He does impart one bit of knowledge, though. Susan says that the ink was wet when she received the letter, meaning that the perpetrator must be close by. Other than the Palace of the Elders, the only nearby building houses the disintegrator room.

Before the scene comes to an end, the First Elder informs the others that Ian and the Doctor have gone down into the aqueduct again. The rest are very worried, but he assures them that they have been given armaments, light, and a map to keep them safe.

In the aqueduct, the Doctor and Ian discover that the weapons and map are useless. They are lost and defenseless.

Back in the disintegrator room, the City Administrator’s lackey is alone with Carol. Carol wants to know when she will be released, and the lackey says that once she no longer serves a purpose, she will be killed. Meanwhile, John is sneaking into the disintegrator room. The lackey sees this, and threatens to press a live wire to Carol’s body, which would her instantly. While the lackey is distracted by John, Carol yanks the other end of the wire from the disintegrator, causing a short-circuit and a lot of smoke. John orders the lackey to throw the wire down, after which the Senior Warrior comes in and takes him away. “I have already imprisoned you once,” he says. “This time, you will not escape.”

In the reception room, the First Elder and the City Administrator are talking about finding the lackey’s accomplice when Susan and Barbara enter. They have just finished questioning the lackey. He hasn’t given up his accomplice, but they have learned that the weapons and map given to the Doctor and Ian were duds. The First Elder says that if there is anything he can do to aid Susan and Barbara in some sort of rescue, he will.

Down in the aqueduct, the Doctor and Ian suddenly come upon what appears to be a human man. Ian and the man grapple briefly, and we don’t get a good look at the man before he flees, running off down the tunnels. Ian has come away from the fight with part of some sort of shoulder patch, with the letters I-N-E-E-R. “Yes,” the Doctor says, “just as I suspected. It must be one of those survivors from the spaceship that exploded.” How did the Doctor make the connection? This is never made clear.

“Why should they come here?” Ian asks.

“To hide and poison the water.”

Okay, pause. What? That ship crashed ten years ago. So you’re telling me that the humans who came to the Sense-Sphere have been hiding in the aqueduct, poisoning the water supply, for ten years? Why haven’t all the Sensorites died already? What have they done for food all this time? I get that poisoning the aqueduct wasn’t a bad tactic for anyone wishing ill on the Sensorites, but ten years is a freaking long time for me to suspend my disbelief. The writers could just has easily made it three or four years. And yes, I know that Maitland and his crew supposedly arrived four years back, but just shift that timeline, too. When the Doctor’s TARDIS arrived, Maitland’s crew had been placed into a perpetually stupefied state. The specific length of time that they had been like that is essentially meaningless. It could have been six days or six years for all the bearing it had on the plot.

We will soon see that the men in the aqueduct have virtually no idea how much their poisoning is even affecting life on the surface. They have no grasp on the amount of fatalities, nothing with which to gauge the effectiveness of their campaign. Am I supposed to believe that these human beings spent roughly one-eighth of their lifespan down in the murk, without any confirmation that what they are doing was even the right thing to do, and they just kept plugging along, day after day, year after year? Plus, what was that creature that attacked the Doctor? If it was just a man pretending, how did they produce those growls and claw marks? If it was a genuine creature, how did the men survive down there for ten years? This is also never explained. In Parts 2 through 5, we were crawling along at a snail’s pace, but now I feel like I need the story to slow down and explain its way out of the box the writers have put it in.

Back in the reception room, Susan and Barbara figure out a way to communicate over long distances. Susan, who is able to tap into the frequencies of the Sense-Sphere, can communicate telepathically with Barbara. In response, Barbara can use the Sensorites’ mind transference device to send her thoughts back to Susan. This way, Barbara and John can go down into the aqueduct and find the Doctor and Ian, while Susan stays in the reception room and guides them with the real map using telepathy. Barbara and John depart, leaving Susan alone with the First Elder.

There is an exchange between them which I think is interesting. Susan wants to know why the Sensorites are so trusting. “Trust can’t be taken for granted,” she says. “It must be earned. I trust you, but only because I know you…Look, you don’t trust the ground you walk on until you know it’s firm, do you? So why do you trust your people so blindly?”

The First Elder says that the Sensorites have a lot to learn from the people of Earth, and a wistful look comes over Susan. “Grandfather and I don’t come from Earth. Oh, it’s ages since we’ve seen our planet. It’s quite like Earth, but at night, the sky is a burnt orange. And the leaves on the trees are bright silver.”

“My mind tells me that you wish to see your home again,” says the First Elder, “and yet, there is a part of you which calls for adventure. A wanderlust.”

“Yes,” says Susan. The wistfulness leaves her. “Well, we’ll all go home, someday. That’s if you’ll let us.”

My heart breaks for Susan in this scene. This is the clearest indication thus far of her desire to return to Gallifrey. It also is the next step in the arc of her character becoming more independent and expressing desires different from those of her grandfather. We still don’t know much about how the Doctor feels about his home planet, but we know that there is a longing in Susan for a return that only grows with each passing serial.

In the aqueduct, following the path of the mysterious man has led Ian the Doctor into an ambush. Two men flank them. They are mangey, with long hair, ragged beards, and torn clothing. Still, they look like they may have been roughing it for three months, not ten years. The Doctor tells them that there is no one else in the aqueduct with them, that the Sensorites above have all died, and that they have a spaceship waiting for them all on the surface. One of the men leads them further into the tunnel to speak with someone he calls the Commander.

Meanwhile, Barbara and John arrive at the tunnels, and Susan begins to guide them deeper into the aqueduct. At one point, they come across the false maps and the disabled weapons, picking them up to provide proof of the City Administrator’s deception. A little further on, they start to find scratches made in the wall by the Doctor, markings that should take them along the path the Doctor and Ian have taken. They begin to follow these markings.

Deeper in the tunnels, we meet the Commander, another ragged man who greets the Doctor and Ian kindly. He keeps a strict military command over the other two men, giving orders for the deployment of munitions to a particular water pipe. It’s clear that these munitions are the poison. I understand that this militaristic mindset may have allowed these men to keep their heads down in the dank for some time, but I still think there should have long since been some sort of mutiny or bid for freedom. Ten years is just a ridiculous length of time.

Ian tells the Commander that their war with the Sensorites is over, and they can all go home. The Commander gets a bit touchy when the Doctor mentions molybdenum, but the Doctor reassures him that any treasure found by the Commander rightfully belongs to him and his men.

Just then, one of the other men comes back into the scene, saying that someone else is moving through the tunnels. This instantly raises the strangers’ suspicion of the Doctor and Ian. Barbara and John arrive in the scene moments later, but Ian is able to convince the Commander that they are just part of the welcoming party. After all, the Commander is victorious, and there will be much celebrating. Ian designates Barbara as their navigator, and they all start to make their way out of the aqueduct as a group. As they emerge from the tunnels, the Commander and his men are apprehended and taken away by a group of Sensorites led by the Senior Warrior.

Next, we return to the reception room for a scene that lasts all of 50 seconds, with Ian, Barbara, and the First Elder. In that time, we learn that Captain Maitland will be taking the Commander and his men back to Earth, that the Second Elder has been banished to the outer wastes for his treachery, and that the lock of the TARDIS has been restored to its rightful place. The humans say their goodbyes and leave. In a more enjoyable serial, this scene would be unacceptably brief and a horrible example of the writers telling instead of showing. But as it is, I’m just glad to be nearing the end of the episode.

Back on the TARDIS, Susan and the Doctor are waiting for Ian and Barbara. Susan says that she has spoken to the Sensorite scientists, and they have told her that she won’t be able to use telepathy away from the Sense-Sphere’s vast network of frequencies. The Doctor says Susan obviously has a talent for it, and, “When we get home to our own place, I think we should try and perfect it.”

“When will we get back, Grandfather?”

“I don’t know, my dear. This old ship of mine seems to be an aimless thing. However, we don’t worry about it, do we? Do you?”

Susan gets that wistful look again. “Sometimes I feel I’d like to belong somewhere, not just be a wanderer. Still, I’m not unhappy.” Susan’s character development is really carrying this episode. If not for that, it would contain almost nothing of value.

Barbara and Ian enter the ship just in time to see Maitland, Carol, and John’s ship leaving on the scanner. “Well, at least they know where they’re going,” Ian says.

“Implying I don’t?” the Doctor snaps.

“I didn’t mean anything—” Ian starts, his tone non-hostile.

“So,” the Doctor grouses, “you think I’m an incompetent old fool, do you?”

“Now Doctor, I never said that,” Ian says, about as genial as he could be given the circumstances.

The Doctor’s response is out of pocket. “Since you are so dissatisfied, my boy, you can get off the ship. At the very next place we stop, I shall take you off myself, and that is quite final.” Credits roll. Back in The Edge of Destruction I said that the Doctor’s sudden burst of cruelty seemed out of character. This is like that but a hundredfold; the Doctor suddenly choosing to kick Ian off the ship is completely unhinged. It seems kind of appropriate to cap off this below-average serial with the worst cliffhanger this series has had to offer so far.

Takeaways

Despite the critical tone I took throughout most of the serial, The Sensorites is not a total waste of time. The first episode is a solid opener, and the romance between Carol and John, as well as Susan’s character development, gives some emotional depth to the later episodes. But that’s about all I can say in the serial’s favor. The Sensorites are atrocious creatures, both conceptually and in execution. Their society makes no sense with the background that the writers have included, and the caste system is not something that would slip past a later Doctor uncriticized. The ten-year timeframe for the human invaders lying in wait is just ridiculous and completely undermines the serial’s conclusion. And the serial really underutilizes Carol once the process of John’s rehabilitation begins.

In terms of being a budget serial, The Sensorites is not a success either. The set design of Maitland’s spaceship is the only design decision that really worked to maximize the limited budget. The idea to turn the small studio into a contiguous space actually makes the first two episodes more spatially satisfying than most episodes to this point. However, the moment the Sensorites were introduced, it all begins to unravel. Their design is just horrendous. Formless nothings. Until the costume department proves otherwise, I don’t think a budget serial should feature any non-humanlike creatures of any kind—creature design on a budget is a risky proposition. The sets on the Sense-Sphere are all bland and unappealing, except for the courtyard, where the director fails to maximize the potential of the set design by completely ignoring the meticulously crafted matte paintings for the majority of the serial’s runtime.

However, there are a handful of decent character-driven moments to break up an otherwise underwhelming plot. Like I’ve already mentioned, there is a decent romance with Carol and John, and the progression of Susan’s character was stellar. I really enjoy the way she stands up to the Doctor and asserts her independence, fostering the ideological division between the pair that was hinted at in Marco Polo. Susan is no longer simply a proxy of her grandfather, and as we get closer to her departure from the show, it is wonderful to see the writers make a point to show Susan’s growing dissatisfaction for the Doctor’s tutelage. Yet aside from these few glimmers of characterization, this serial is very plot-driven, and the plot is very week. On top of that, the low density of the plot results in a laboriously slow pacing in Parts 2 through 5, with lots of boring Sensorite politics and forgettable plot twists. My biggest takeaway from The Sensorites is that it has no business taking up six episodes of my time.

Looking forward, I’m just happy to not have to look at Sensorites anymore. The next serial, The Reign of Terror, takes place in the past, during the French Revolution. I’m excited to look out for answers to some of the questions I posed after The Aztecs. Mainly, when does the Doctor’s strict noninterventionism start to wear away? Also, I’m happy to be reaching the end of Season 1 with the completion of the next review. I began this project nearly six weeks ago, and I’m glad that I’m exceeding the one-serial-a-week pace I had set as my goal.

The more I thought about how the final episode effected the rating of the serial, I think it should tick slightly up. Susan really carries toward the end there.

Rating: 3.0/10

Chapter Text

1.8 – The Reign of Terror

This is another serial with missing episodes, although most of them are intact. I was able to watch Parts 1, 2, 3, and 6 as they were originally broadcast, though in poor quality. Parts 4 and 5 were Loose Cannon telesnap reconstructions. As I mentioned before my Marco Polo breakdown, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (A Land of Fear)

We left off the last serial with the Doctor acting extremely out-of-character, taking offense at a very benign remark from Ian, who implied that the Doctor may not be very adept at piloting the TARDIS. In response, the Doctor plans on throwing Ian and Barbara off the ship wherever it lands next.

Looking back at the transcript of The Sensorites, I think the writers may have meant the Doctor to be bothered by Susan’s implications that she isn’t completely satisfied with life in the TARDIS. I can see a version of this scene where William Hartnell plays the Doctor as agitated, so he can then be set off by Ian’s flippant remark. Instead, Hartnell plays the exchange with Susan cordially. This incongruence is probably an error in direction, though without seeing the script, it’s possible such acting was called for in the stage directions. When I did a little research, I discovered that the man who directed Parts 5 and 6 of The Sensorites, Frank Cox, directed a grand total of three episodes for the series, the other being Part 2 of The Edge of Destruction. If it was indeed an error in direction, it makes sense why Cox would be poorly equipped to understand the emotional beats the scene was trying to hit.

As for the writing, it is very difficult to find information on how involved Doctor Who’s writers were on set, but I have been able to glean a few clues from behind the scenes content. In an interview with The Keys of Marinus director, John Gorrie, he had this to say when asked to look back on the serial: “I think if we had had a script conference, I could have aired my feelings about this particular story, The Keys of Marinus. I mean it was really impossible, really. Every episode had a particular problem. But I just had to forge ahead. It was my first really big show, and I didn’t want to flunk it.” This suggests to me that there was little—if any—scriptwriter presence on set, which is anachronistic to good production, in my opinion. Without writers watching rehearsals to see if their material is landing and to communicate with actors, producers, directors, etc., success in a long term production like Doctor Who is much more difficult.

I want to use this to touch on an element of my criticism that hasn’t come up so explicitly until now. You might have noticed that I haven’t been naming specific directors, producers, or writers when discussing elements of the series. Except for what can be explicitly seen during the runtime of a Doctor Who episode, it can be really difficult to assign praise or blame to specific individuals working behind the scenes, even people filling roles as prominent as director or writer. This is why I feel totally comfortable saying “William Hartnell plays the Doctor as X”, but when it comes to naming Frank Cox, it almost feels like I’m taking pot shots at the director. I don’t know where the error truly lies; all I can do is call attention to it. So I will always opt for “the writing here is good/bad” instead of “X Writer did a good/bad job.”

Furthermore, my goal is to critique the series as a whole, not the output of any one director or writer. The executives at the BBC have hired these people to work on Doctor Who, so if a serial bombs, it reflects badly on Doctor Who as a whole. Even with the modern series, where there is a much higher level of behind the scenes documentation, I will still shy away from calling attention to individuals who worked behind the camera. I won’t be reffering to “Moffat episodes” or “the Chibnall era” as such, because I think that can be really counterproductive. I’d rather focus on the onscreen elements and how they align with my personal preferences. I’ll let the successes and failures speak for themselves, and if any readers want to know more about who propagated these outcomes, I highly encourage you to do your own research.

The Reign of Terror opens on a forest, with two men moving through the trees wearing black cloaks. We don’t see much of them, but we can make out that one has fair hair and the other dark.

Elsewhere in the forest, the TARDIS materializes. We hear the low hum of the ship, but we don’t get that classic TARDIS wheeze that has become so synonymous with the blue police box. This has happened a few times before now, and I can only assume that the showrunners had not yet decided that the TARDIS should always make that noise.

Inside the ship, the Doctor says, “There we are. Home.” He is still irascible, insisting that it is time for the humans to leave. Ian and Barbara say their goodbyes to Susan, who runs tearfully offscreen. After this, the Doctor approaches the two, saying, “Hmm, still here?”

Ian is doubtful that they have arrived in the proper place; after all, the Doctor tried to get them back to London in 1963 once before, and they ended up in the Himalayas with Marco Polo. The Doctor shows him and Barbara views of cultivated fields on the scanner. Changing tact, Ian tries flattery. “[Doctor,] of course you’re in control. You’re always in control. And I’m sure you could revisit us at any time…But you have your important researches to complete. You may not find the time. There’s a chance that we won’t meet again. Don’t you think it would be better if we parted under more friendly circumstances, say, over a drink?”

The Doctor relents, calling Susan back into the console room. When she learns they are all going out together, Susan is overjoyed, and they all exit the TARDIS.

Outside, there are immediate signs that they have not landed where or when the Doctor said they have. It is dusk, yet there are no lights to be seen; this could mean they are far from London, or that they have landed in the wrong time. Regardless, the Doctor isn’t willing to entertain either as a possibility, belligerently arrogant with his ability to control the TARDIS.

They hear a snapping branch, and Ian goes offscreen to investigate. He returns with a waifish boy of around ten who tells them that they are in France, about 12 km from Paris. The Doctor doesn’t let this put a dent in his ego. “A hundred miles or so either way is to be expected,” he says. “After all, it’s only a fraction of the distance we’ve covered. It’s quite accurate in fact.”

The boy runs off, and the scene changes to show him entering a dilapidated farmhouse, being let inside by someone unseen.

After a bit of wandering, the Doctor and his companions come across the same farmhouse. Barbara is insistent that they have landed somewhere in the past. “Yes,” says Ian, “Well, we were a hundred miles out. Perhaps we’re a hundred years out.” The Doctor dismisses this, saying they should explore the farmhouse to find out for certain. He strides off with Susan at his heels.

Ian and Barbara hang back for a moment, and Barbara asks Ian if he is disappointed they haven’t landed back in their own time. “Funny enough, no,” Ian answers. “I don’t know. Depends where we are. I still could be.” This is said with a smile that suggests that he is relieved to remain with the Doctor, and Barbara shares this relief. They join the other two at the farmhouse.

The interior of the farmhouse looks deserted when they peek through a window, and Ian thinks that it has been years since anyone lived there. The Doctor finds an unlocked door and enters a dusty room, lighting two candlesticks to illuminate the gloom. The Doctor takes one upstairs to explore, while the others poke around downstairs. Ian wonders what two untarnished candlesticks are doing in an otherwise dingy room.

The three discover a chest loaded with lots of 18th century clothing and bundles with all sorts of useful tools: maps, food, daggers, etc. Ian supposes the farmhouse is a safehouse of some kind, a haven for people attempting escape from something. Barbara discovers a stack of official documents signed by Robespierre. “Robespierre?” says Ian. “The Doctor’s put us right down in the French Revolution.”

“Yes,” says Barbara. “The Reign of Terror.”

Upstairs, the Doctor is looking around when he is struck from behind. He falls to the ground.

Meanwhile, the others have changed into the period-appropriate clothes they have found, so they won’t be so conspicuous. Suddenly, two men appear, the same men we saw moving through the forest in the first scene. Their names are Rouvray and d’Argenson; they hold Ian, Susan, and Barbara at gunpoint, demanding to know who they are. Barbara says they are just travelers passing through.

D'Argenson is agitated, bordering on hysteria, pushing Rouvray to kill them so they can move on. “Patience, d’Argenson,” Rouvray says. “Even in these troubled times, our visitors have the right of an explanation. Even if our enemies do not accord such privileges.” He then asks if the three are alone, and Barbara says yes. D’Argenson calls them liars; they are responsible for striking down the Doctor upstairs, so the question was a trap.

D’Argenson is panicking now, saying they must leave. “The soldiers will have followed!” he implores. Rouvray maintains a cooler head, trying to get information from Ian and the others, asking them what side they are on. Barbara says that they aren’t on a side, that they aren’t even French, to which Rouvray says, “A word of warning. If you intend to stay in France, you will have to choose.”

Susan asks about the Doctor, but before either of the men can answer, Ian hears the sound of people approaching from outside. They rush to the windows to see soldiers coming up the lane. D’Argenson really starts to lose his head at this point. “They’ll take us to Paris, to the guillotine,” he says. “Rouvray, I can’t let that happen. My whole family were executed, even my younger sister. They came to the house while I was out, and they dragged them away. Rouvray, we must go while we have the chance!”

This is a really good way to establish the tone of the situation the Doctor and his companions have stumbled into. For those (like myself) who need a quick brush-up on European history, the Reign of Terror is the period after the establishment of the First Republic and subsequent execution of King Louis XVI in 1793. The First Republic was very weak, threatened internally by economic woes and political power struggles, as well as externally by nations like Britain and Austria who saw the revolution as a threat to the stability of their aristocracies. The result was a period of great turmoil across France, especially in Paris, where counterrevolution was rampant and dozens of citizens were put to death daily on often-trumped-up charges of treason. Leading politicians of the National Convention suspected each other of hatching plots, and there was perhaps none more paranoid than Maximilien Robespierre. During his time in office as a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre’s conspiratorial thinking led to the deaths of 144 members of the National Convention, including 67 who were either executed, committed suicide, or died in captivity.

It is into this tumult that the Doctor and his companions have entered. The fear expressed in d’Argenson’s dialogue makes it clear that no one is safe, not even the women or children, though the coolness of Rouvray does imply that keeping one’s head and staying true to one’s values provides the best chance of making it through the chaos. These will be the main themes of The Reign of Terror:

Theme #1: The cannibalizing nature of widespread suspicion
Theme #2: The radicalizing nature of civil war and the perils of trying to remain impartial
Theme #3: The prospect of remaining true to oneself and the dire sacrifices this can necessitate

Back to the story, the soldiers outside are a ragtag bunch: peasants of the revolutionary army who are unused to taking orders in a command structure. The sergeant wants to wait out those inside the farmhouse, but there is outright hostility when he orders a soldier to watch the rear entrance. He has to convince the soldier on the grounds that it might be fun to hunt down a fleeing royalist. Only then does the soldier deign to go around back.

Inside, Rouvray notes that the soldiers have not stormed the farmhouse, saying, “The intention is to break our nerve.” D’Argenson, whose nerve is already frazzled, opens the backdoor and runs outside. Rouvray follows him out and tries to cow the peasant-soldiers into obeying him, but he is unsuccessful. Rouvray and D’Argenson are both shot dead, and soldiers enter the farmhouse to search the building.

Meanwhile, Ian is upstairs looking for the Doctor. Unbeknownst to him, the Doctor lies unconscious behind a locked door. Before Ian can get it open, he hears a scream from the ground level and rushes downstairs to find Barbara and Susan surrounded by soldiers. They are all taken outside, where they are told that they will be taken to Paris and guillotined as traitors to the Republic. The soldiers escort them offscreen. Before leaving, the sergeant throws a burning torch into the farmhouse’s hayloft. Soon, the whole structure is ablaze.

Inside, the Doctor wakes up, slowly getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his head. The sound of flames can be heard, and smoke begins to fill the room. He tries the door; finding it locked, he pulls and beats at it, screaming for help.

Being led through the forest, Susan, Ian, and Barbara see the burning farmhouse, but they are powerless to rescue the Doctor. Nearby in the bushes, the waifish boy from earlier watches the whole scene unfold.

Inside the farmhouse, the Doctor succumbs to the smoke and passes out. Credits roll.

Part 2 (Guests of Madame Guillotine)

The episode opens with a shot of Paris as seen from overhead, cutting to another shot of a guillotine with the blade raised. The sounds of an onlooking crowd can be heard; this is most likely the Place de la Révolution, called the Place de la Concorde today: the site of Parisian executions during the French Revolution. The blade of the guillotine comes crashing down, and a cheer goes up from the crowd. This is another fantastic way to reinforce the tone of the serial and remind the audience of the stakes.

Next, we see a group of soldiers escorting Ian, Barbara, and Susan through the barred opening of a building; a sign on the wall designates this building as Conciergerie Prison. Inside, the three are brought before a judge, who denies them even the right to speak in their defense. “Prisoners are not required to speak,” he says, seated behind a long desk with his white powdered wig. “I have the charges here. You were found in the house with Rouvray and d’Argenson and arrested by a platoon of soldiers. I am satisfied to your guilt as being in the company of wanted traitors. The sentence: immediate execution…You will be guillotined as soon as it can be arranged. Take them to the cells!”

Ian is separated from the women—much to Susan’s dismay—and thrown into a cell. Susan and Barbara are taken down a different corridor of cells, but before they are placed inside one, the jailer takes Barbara aside. He smiles at her, making lewd suggestions about how the company inside the jail leaves much to be desired and that he gets very lonely sometimes. As he tries to touch Barbara on the shoulder, she slaps him across the face. Affronted, the jailer throws her and Susan in a particularly disgusting cell and leaves.

Inside the cell is nothing but a narrow bunk against one wall and a few fistfuls of straw to cover the floor. The sound of water dripping can be heard, and Susan comments on the horrible smell. Barbara says it reminds her of the Cave of Skulls back from An Unearthly Child, and Susan smiles for a moment before falling somber. “But there was one very important difference,” Susan says. “Grandfather and Ian were with us then.” Barbara consoles her, assuring Susan that the Doctor must have made it out of the burning house alive.

Speak of the devil, the scene cuts to the Doctor, lying on the ground outside the farmhouse. The waifish boy who was hiding in the bushes helps the Doctor to a sitting position. He has freed the Doctor from the burning building. To me, this stretches credulity; the boy looks ten, and you’re telling me he not only risked his own life but had the strength to haul a grown man down a flight of stairs and outside? I know the Doctor had to live somehow, but that seems ridiculous.

The boy tells the Doctor that the soldiers and their prisoners were bound for the Conciergerie Prison in Paris, where the prisoners will be kept until their execution. He offers the Doctor a place of refuge at his mother’s farmhouse, but the Doctor refuses. He very earnestly tells the boy how grateful he is for the rescue, then leaves.

We see some shots of the Doctor strolling through a rolling field and down a forest path. This is the first instance of the series filming on location instead of in studio, and we will see a few of these inserts over the course of this episode. It’s quaint, but it’s also odd that some of the most visually appealing shots of the serial are these meaningless little interludes. If anything, these make me excited to see some future serials filmed entirely out of the studio.

Back at the prison, Susan is hopeless about their chances. “We’ll never get out of this dreadful place,” she tells Barbara.

“I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” Barbara says. “You’re usually so optimistic.”

“I want to know about Grandfather.” This is only natural. Susan has been traveling with the Doctor for a long time, and being taken away from a burning building with him trapped inside is probably the most imperiled either of them have ever been. This characterization of a girl who is uncertain whether or not she should be mourning is alright, but later in the episode, we will see the writing of Susan’s character take a major downturn.

Feeling around the stone walls, Barbara discovers a damp patch and thinks that it may signify a sewer flowing behind it. She takes initiative, suggesting that they use the boards of the bedframe to try and lever out some of the damp stones, hoping to uncover an escape route. Despite Susan’s moping, she seems a bit more optimistic about their chances, and she goes over to the cell door to keep watch while Barbara works.

Meanwhile, Ian shares a cell with a man named Webster who has been severely wounded by a gunshot. Webster lies in the lone bed, barely able to lift his head from the pillow; it’s clear he will not last long. Seeing a fellow Englishman and fearing his end is drawing near, Webster imparts some important information to Ian. “One day soon, France will stop this madness and turn her full attention across the channel. We must be ready for that day. There's a man in France, an Englishman, working to that end. He will tell us when that day is near…I was sent to bring him home to England. The day nears that his information is important. Find him if you can. Try to escape. Try. Promise to find James Stirling, and [tell him to go back] home. Promise! Promise!”

Ian agrees. Webster is rapidly losing strength, and Ian asks the dying man where he can find James Stirling. “Jules Renan,” says Websters. “The sign of Le Chien Gris.” Webster dies. Ian stares at the dead man for a long moment, then pulls the woolen blanked over Webster’s head like a shroud.

Out in the countryside, the Doctor comes across a group of people toiling away with picks, working on the road. A man oversees their work, keeping up a running stream of “Put your backs into it!” and “You can work faster than that!” Sitting down by the roadside, the Doctor asks the overseer if he is still headed toward Paris, to which the overseer says yes. It is made clear that the laborers are a group of tax dodgers who have been pressed into service. As the Doctor speaks, his remarks are filled with increasing amounts of scorn for the overseer’s rough treatment, which the man fails to pick up on.

Finally, the Doctor seems to have had enough of the man’s bombast. “If you were to expend your energy helping with the road instead of bawling and shouting at them every few seconds, you might be able to get somewhere. Good day to you, sir!” The Doctor brandishes his walking stick and makes to leave, but the overseer stops him, asking to see his papers. When the Doctor is unable to properly identify himself, he is given an axe and pressed into service with the rest of the tax dodgers, forced to work at the barrel of the overseer’s gun.

In this interaction, I feel like we see flashes of who the Doctor will become. He sees an injustice, and it bothers him to the point where he must speak out, consequences be damned. It’s not the sort of exchange that would have been written into the script early on in the season. Or if it was, it might have been more like The Aztecs, where the Doctor was committed to nonintervention at every turn.

Back to Barbara and Susan’s cell, where they have been toiling away at the wall, slowly removing small bits of stone. Their hands are both blistered and torn, and they must take a break. They throw their blankets on the floor to hide the progress they have made. Not long after, the jailer enters with their food, when he notices the blankets on the ground. Angered, he says they won’t be receiving any replacements, but just before he can pick them up, a man calls from offscreen. The jailer identifies this man as Lemaitre, and scurries away like a dog called to heel, shouting, “Coming, Citizen!”

At Ian’s cell, a man enters, closing the door behind himself. He is dressed regally, with a luxuriant black cloak and a silk shirt with lace spilling out about the collar. His black hair is neatly coiffed, and he carries himself with a confident air of command. “How long has he been dead?” he asks. Ian doesn’t answer. He hasn’t even looked at the man since he entered. Incensed, the man spins Ian around to face him and uses his forearm to pin Ian against the wall. “I asked how long he’s been dead,” the man repeats.

To his credit, Ian holds the man’s gaze, glaring daggers as he says calmly, “Several hours,” giving a long pause before adding a mocking “Citizen.” This man must be Lemaitre.

“Did he say anything?” Lemaitre demands.

“No,” Ian lies. “No, he didn’t.”

Outside the cell, Lemaitre asks the jailer if he heard any words while Webster was still alive. The jailer says that he doesn’t know what was said but that he definitely heard Ian and Webster speak for a brief time. Lemaitre asks for the execution list and Ian’s name. Taking a pen, he crosses Ian’s name off the list and orders Webster’s body removed from the cell. As the scene comes to a close, it is clear Lemaitre is pondering something.

In Susan and Barbara’s cell, Susan lifts up the blankets to discover rats have made their way inside the cell. She screams, refusing to do any more work on the wall. “We won’t do any more digging,” Barbara says. “We’ll just stay where we are.” I hate the way Susan—and, to a lesser extent, Barbara—is characterized here. For plot reasons, Susan and Barbara cannot escape on their own. That’s fine on its face, but instead of just having them try and fail at something, they have to be cowed by icky rats like little schoolgirls. Let me remind you, they are slated to be put to death. We already know Susan and Barbara have the capacity to be very brave. There is no way in hell they would stop fighting for their literal lives because of a few creepy crawlies. Plus, it once again undermines the growing independence of Susan by making her appear useless without the Doctor as a guide.

Back in the countryside, the overseer counts the coins in his purse while the Doctor and the tax dodgers continue to toil away with picks and shovels. Drawing the others close, the Doctor tells them he has a plan for their escape, as long as they all play along. A short time later, the Doctor exclaims loudly, pointing at the sky, and all the workers stop what they are doing. Angered, the overseer demands to know what they are doing, and the Doctor says that they are waiting for the eclipse. The overseer squints into the sun for a moment, during which the Doctor filches a few coins from the man’s purse. Then the overseer returns to the roadside and shouts for the workers to get back to digging.

Next, the Doctor plants a few coins in the soil, then bends low to the ground as if he has just found one of them. When he announces his discovery, the overseer rushes over, grabbing a pick from one of the workers. The man does some digging, finds another coin, and demands that everyone else remain back so he can dig up the treasure for himself. Then, while the overseer is working at the ground with his pick, the Doctor knocks him over the head with a shovel. The workers all rush off, and the Doctor takes the time to gather his coat and walking stick before leaving with a quaint, “Good day to you sir. Pleasant dreams” for the unconscious overseer.

Back at the prison, it is now evening. Susan and Barbara are extricated from their cell and told to stand in line with a few other prisoners. When they ask where Ian is, they are told that his name has been crossed off the list. “You’re not so fortunate,” the jailer sneers. “This batch for the guillotine! Take them away!” Credits roll.

Part 3 (A Change of Identity)

On a cobbled street, we see the Doctor finally arriving in Paris. He takes a look around, then strides off.

Elsewhere in Paris, two armed men are loitering in an alleyway, Jean and Jules. Both are smartly dressed. Jean is slender, with short hair and a top hat, while Jules has a stockier build, with long dark hair and a tricorn hat. Jean is anxious, lamenting how quiet the street has become. “That’s why we’re here, Jean,” Jules answers. “A crowded street and a successful rescue will never mix.” They are waiting for the prisoners who are being led to the guillotine, preparing to ambush the soldiers and set them free. Something has held up the escort, however—they are later than usual.

Inside the prison, it’s chow time, and the jailer slides a bowl inside Ian’s cell. He shuts the door, but as he is locking it, Lemaitre shouts for him from down the corridor, demanding his immediate attention. He rushes off, leaving the key in the keyhole. In an office, Lemaitre demands to see the execution figures, saying that Robespierre will be asking for them.

Meanwhile, as Ian goes to retrieve his bowl of slop, he notices the keyring hanging from the other side of his cell door. We get a long, drawn-out shot of Ian’s arm coming through the barred opening of the cell and straining to reach the keys, arm and fingers bending awkwardly. I really felt the suspense as he almost dropped the keyring, aided by some really great music to build the tension. Finally pulling the keyring through the door, he removes the key to his cell before returning the keys to where they were hanging, almost dropping them once more for good measure. Ian pockets the key and retreats to the back of his cell to eat his food.

Having satisfied Lemaitre, the jailer returns to the corridor, a look of concern coloring his face as he realizes he doesn’t have his keys. He rushes back to Ian’s cell and finds them just where he left them. Taking the keys, he leaves.

On a Paris street, the wagon carrying Susan and Barbara toward their execution comes to a sudden stop. The horse pulling the wagon has thrown a horseshoe. Seeing a chance to escape, Barbara says they must make a run for it when the soldiers move to unhitch the horse. “I don’t think I can, Barbara,” Susan says, looking faint. “I don’t feel very well.” For the love of God, Susan, you are about to be executed. Show some initiative.

Meanwhile, Jean and Jules are watching the wagon from a street corner. Jules notes the trouble with the horse, counting only three soldiers once one starts to lead the horse away. Taking their guns in hand, they ready themselves for action.

On the wagon, Barbara sees that the time is right. She urges Susan to move, but Susan doesn’t even try. “Oh, I can’t!…Oh, my head’s splitting, and my back’s aching!” I hate this iteration of Susan. Every time it seems like the writers move her along her character arc, she regresses. It’s always two steps forward, one step back. She shows progress in Marco Polo and The Keys of Marinus, then is made to look incredibly childish in The Aztecs. She demonstrates independence from the Doctor in The Sensorites, then looks absolutely incapable of basic reasoning in The Reign of Terror. It’s infuriating.

Anyway, instead of operating with any real independence, the two damsels in distress are saved by Jules and Jean, who shoot the three guards and whisk the women away down an alley. This would be so much more satisfying if it felt like the women had any agency at all.

Elsewhere, the Doctor comes across a tailor’s shop. The tailor is very interested in the execution of traitors, considering it his duty to support Robespierre’s cause—the Doctor uses the man to confirm that such prisoners are taken to the Conciergerie Prison. Then, the Doctor peruses the tailor’s wares and sees a sash hanging on the wall. The tailor says that it signifies the position of Regional Officer of the Provinces. “Yes,” the Doctor says, “I’m quite aware of that…In fact, it’s a post that I myself personally occupy.” The tailor looks doubtful, but he apologizes to the Doctor for his ignorance.

Next, the Doctor bargains for an outfit of fine clothes, offering his own attire for a trade. The tailor is doubtful of this too—he has never seen clothes like these before, and he is uncertain if he could even sell them. The tailor counters, asking the Doctor to throw his ring into the bargain. The Doctor agrees, as long as the tailor can provide him with a pen and paper. He begins to change his clothes.

Back to Susan and Barbara, who have been taken by Jules and Jean into a house. It is Jules’s residence, and they live there with Jules’s sister, Danielle. Jules says that once Susan and Barbara have had time to eat and rest, they will be smuggled out of France to somewhere safe. The women refuse, mentioning the Doctor and Ian.

Speaking of Ian, the scene cuts back to the prison, where Ian is in his cell. He calls out once for the jailer, who doesn’t respond. Seeing that the coast is clear, Ian uses the key he snatched earlier to let himself out of the cell. He creeps through the corridors, eventually coming upon the jailer who has been knocked out with a blow to the forehead. Confused by this, he nonetheless can’t let this opportunity go to waste, and he leaves the prison. Once Ian is out of frame, Lemaitre emerges from where he had concealed himself. “Did Webster give you a message for James Stirling or not?” he asks himself. “We shall see. We shall see.”

Meanwhile, Barbara and Susan have had a chance to wash up and eat a meal. Jules unfurls a map of Paris and its surroundings on the dining table, and Susan is able to pinpoint the house where they last saw the Doctor. “That’s where we saw the soldiers,” Barbara says.

Jules’s expression turns grave. “Did you meet two men there?” he asks. Barbara says that they did, naming d’Argenson and Rouvray.

“Someone’s informing on us,” Jean says, noting that this isn’t the first time soldiers have discovered escapees at their safehouse. It is soon made apparent that Jules and Jean have freed many prisoners who would have otherwise been executed. “Not all Frenchmen can allow innocent people to be led to the guillotine,” Jean says. When Barbara mentions Ian and the Doctor again, Jules promises her that he will do everything in his power to see them all reunited. Consider the third theme I mentioned in the serial’s opener: the risks one must incur to remain true to oneself and one’s values. By the end of the serial, we will see just what sacrifices Jules and Jean must make in order to honor this promise.

Susan’s headache returns, and Danielle escorts her upstairs to rest. There is a knock at the front door. Suddenly on guard, Jean draws his pistol and leaves the room. When he returns, he is accompanied by a tall man with long hair and a striped coat. Everyone relaxes; Jean sheathes his gun. Jules introduces the man as Leon. As soon as their eyes meet, it is clear that Leon and Barbara feel very attracted to one another. They can hardly break eye contact, and Leon takes Barbara’s hand in both of his, kissing it.

Leon tells Jean and Jules that there is a man asking about them at the inn near the prison. A stranger. I missed it on my first viewing, but if you’ll recall, Ian was given the name Jules Renan by Webster when he asked how he was to locate James Stirling. Jules and Jean leave for the inn, while Leon stays behind and pours Barbara a glass of wine.

Back at the prison, the jailer is awake—his head is bandaged and he drinks deeply from his bottle of alcohol. He hears a commotion: the sound of the Doctor’s voice can be heard offscreen, demanding to be admitted into the prison. The jail door is opened, and we see the Doctor enter, wearing the fine clothes, complete with a ridiculous plumed hat. He struts in like a peacock, and his first words to the jailer carry a bluster to match his outfit. He demands to know who is in charge, then hands the jailer a piece of paper with the credentials he forged using the tailor’s pen and paper. “And while we are about it, why wasn’t I met, hmm?” he growls. “Do you realize that I walked through the whole of Paris without a guard? Me?”

The jailer apologizes for the oversight; he is especially obsequious when the Doctor namedrops Robespierre, asking what he can do to serve. The Doctor describes three prisoners brought to the prison, Ian, Barbara, and Susan, demanding to know their whereabouts. Hesitantly, the jailer tells the Doctor about Ian’s escape and Barbara and Susan’s rescue, making it clear that none of it was his fault. “Yes, yes, yes, I believe what you say,” the Doctor says magnanimously. “I’m sure you did the best you could. It’s a pity you’re surrounded by such fools…Well, I’ll take up no more of your time, citizen.”

The Doctor makes to leave, but when he turns around, he sees Lemaitre entering the room. The jailer begins to introduce the Doctor, and Lemaitre says impatiently, “Yes, I heard what he said. Your papers, citizen?” He takes the Doctor’s forged credentials and looks them over for a long moment, handing them back without a word as to whether or not he believes in their authenticity.

The Doctor says he means to leave for his home province, but Lemaitre asks if he can postpone his departure. “I’m taking the execution lists to the first deputy’s palace, and, by coincidence if you like, your province is to be discussed. It would be a great help if you were on hand to answer any difficult questions that crop up.” The Doctor has no choice but to accede. “I promise you will find it most interesting,” Lemaitre continues. “Come. We must not keep Citizen Robespierre waiting.” At the mention of Robespierre’s name, the Doctor frowns.

Meanwhile, back at Jules’s house, Leon asks Barbara where she is from. Barbara is reluctant to answer, but she eventually tells him that she is English, which would make them enemies. “Does it?” Leon says somewhat affectionately. “I prefer to think that it means you have no interest in France or the Revolution.” After a few more words, Barbara leaves to check on Susan.

At the prison, a man speaks with the jailer, making an inquiry about Lemaitre. It is the tailor who gave the Doctor his getup. The jailer says Lemaitre has gone to see Robespierre, but the tailor insists that he sees Lemaitre as soon as possible, telling him that he has urgent news to deliver. He holds up the Doctor’s ring, saying, “I want to give him this…evidence against a traitor.” Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Tyrant of France)

This episode and the next are only available to watch as telesnap reconstructions. As I mentioned during my review of Marco Polo, I prefer the reconstructions made by Loose Cannon, as they are consistently the highest quality reconstructions I have been able to find. However, in order to tell a coherent narrative, the stills they have chosen to use are not always from the scenes they represent in the reconstruction, so the visuals are fairly unreliable from a critic’s standpoint. If I am not 100% certain that an aspect of the reconstruction is presented as it appeared in the original broadcast, I won’t talk about it here.

The episode opens on an ornate office, where a man in regal dress occupies a large desk. Perhaps in his late 40s, he has a stern appearance, with wig of neat white curls and an ornate silk cravat. A man outside the room announces the arrival of Lemaitre, and he enters with the Doctor trailing closely behind. Robespierre greets both men with the sort of no-nonsense, off-putting manner one would expect of a conspiratorial ruler. He says that information out of the Doctor’s supposed province is less than ideal, that the purge of enemies is not progressing nearly as quickly as it ought.

“Oh, you’ve reached that conclusion, hmm?” the Doctor says, a touch wry. “Well, perhaps we have fewer enemies in our region, and it may be that Paris can take an example from us, hmm?”

Robespierre is unamused, and he tells the Doctor that perhaps Paris is taking the threat of traitors more seriously. The Doctor tries to tell him that the mass killings will only embolden his enemies and inspire more to join their numbers. As the conversation continues, Robespierre’s tone becomes increasingly hostile. “I could—and I shall—do great things for France. For too long, the nobility have kept our people to heel. And now, finally, my world is at power, and what happens? My colleagues, my trusted friends, plot for power.”

“Do they?” the Doctor says disdainfully. “Or is it just their wish to keep their heads?”

The tenor of Robespierre’s response borders on unhinged. “Danton planned to restore the monarchy. I had the proof. I knew! I had to dispose of him. And the Girondins. Even now, Convention members are at work, plotting my downfall. But I will triumph, even if I have to execute every last one of them! Death, always death. Do you think I want this carnage? Three hundred and forty two executions in nine days in Paris alone. What a memory I shall leave behind if this thing lasts.” I like this portrayal of Robespierre; I think it accurately depicts a man approaching the end of his sanity, if not already insane. My only gripe is, would he really be so brazen about his willingness to execute members of the National Convention with an underofficer he as only just met? I thought he was supposed to be paranoid beyond belief. Despite this, Robespierre serves to demonstrate what I mentioned as the first theme of the serial: the cannibalizing nature of widespread suspicion. Robespierre trusts no one, and in turn, members of the Convention distrust each other, until the whole situation devolves into a suspicious snake eating its own tail.

Robespierre dismisses Lemaitre and the Doctor and orders them both to return tomorrow, much to the Doctor’s displeasure.

Back at Jules’s house, Barbara is in the sitting room with Susan and Leon. Susan has had trouble sleeping, and she shivers in a cushy chair despite the heavy blanket draped across her. Danielle enters and gives Susan a finger of brandy to help her sleep. She acts very coldly toward Leon, pointedly telling him that he can pour his own wine when he says he could use a cup. Danielle leaves.

Susan says she is feeling alright before falling asleep almost immediately. Barbara is worried, telling Leon that Susan might have contracted almost anything in that jail cell. Leon says that it would be dangerous to call on a physician, telling Barbara that they are liable to pass reports onto the militiamen. But Barbara is insistent, and eventually Leon relents, telling her he will make the arrangements. He makes to leave, but Barbara catches his arm, saying, “Be careful.”

After Leon is gone, Susan opens her eyes, telling Barbara that she had just been dozing. “You like Leon, don’t you,” she says. Barbara doesn’t give a proper answer, and they both go back upstairs.

Sometime later, Jules and Jean enter the room through a window, hauling an unconscious, hooded figure inside. They place the figure on the couch, speculating over who it might be as they remove the hood. It is Ian.

Back in the prison, Lemaitre makes arrangements with the jailer to put the Doctor up in one of the soldiers’ rooms for the night. The Doctor tries to weasel his way out of this, but Lemaitre insists, ordering the jailer to see to it. It seems the Doctor will have no choice but to have another encounter with Robespierre. As the jailer leads the Doctor away, he tells Lemaitre that there is a man in his office waiting to see him.

That man is the tailor, who shows Lemaitre the Doctor’s ring once he enters his office, saying, “Citizen Lemaitre, I think I may have some information for you.”

In a corridor of the prison, the Doctor again tries to talk his way out of the situation, but the jailer pulls out his pistol. “Lemaitre said you are saying,” he says seriously. “I must obey him.” The Doctor gives up, letting the jailer lead him to his accommodations.

Meanwhile, back in Lemaitre’s office, Lemaitre has now heard the tailor’s story. “You did well, citizen,” he says. The tailor preens in Lemaitre’s gratitude, though his preening quickly turns to disappointment when it becomes clear that Lemaitre will be keeping the Doctor’s clothes and ring in case they are needed for evidence. Lemaitre does compensate the man with some coins, however, offering them on one condition: “You will say nothing of this to anyone.” The tailor happily agrees, and Lemaitre lets him out of the prison the back way so that no prying eyes see the man’s departure.

At Jules’s house, Ian is slowly coming around, while Jules and Jean wait for him to regain consciousness. Barbara enters the sitting room, though she doesn’t see Ian right away. Jules asks her how Susan is doing, and Barbara tells him that Leon left to arrange for Susan to see a doctor. Then she sees Ian and calls out to him, delighted. Fully rousted, Ian shares in her delight, asking about Susan and the Doctor. Barbara tells him that Susan is fine, sleeping upstairs, but they don’t even know if the Doctor made it to Paris.

Barbara leaves to give the good news to Susan, while Ian shares his story with Jules and Jean. At first, Jules wants to know how Ian knew Susan and Barbara were with him, and he is surprised to discover that Ian was looking for him for an entirely separate reason: for information on James Stirling. Unfortunately, Jules has no knowledge of the man’s identity. He does speculate a little: “If…Stirling is a spy, to do his job properly, he must be able to move around freely. That would mean an alias, a completely new identity.” They agree to help Ian find James Stirling, though Jean has reservations at first, uncertain about helping a spy of a foreign nation. He only concedes after Jules says, “England is at war with the people ruling France, Jean. So are we.”

After this, Jean leaves to begin the arduous task of tracking down the Doctor. Unaware that the Doctor is already in Paris, Jean will start at the house where Ian, Susan, and Barbara were captured by the soldiers. Meanwhile, Jules and Ian discuss how they will find James Stirling. Jules suggests his friend Leon might know. “He moves in a very wide circle and knows a great many people. Perhaps he is James Stirling.” Just before the scene comes to a close, Barbara returns to the sitting room, saying that Susan’s condition is worsening.

Back at the prison, it is now morning, with sun streaming in through the barred windows. There’s a brief scene where the Doctor wakes, emerges from his room, and complains loudly to Lemaitre about the quality of the mattress. A scene like this is meaningless to the overarching plot, but it serves two functions for the writers: it shows the passage of time, and it offers the audience a bit of comic relief to break up the more serious A Plot of Susan and Barbara trying to locate him.

Like The Aztecs, the pacing of this serial is slow enough to allow for multiple subplots, though unlike The Aztecs, all three of the subplots here are essentially identical. The A Plot features Susan and Barbara, who have to escape from prison, reunite with the others, and find a treatment for Susan’s cold. The B Plot features Ian, who must escape from prison, reunite with the others, and pass on a message to James Stirling. And the C Plot features the Doctor, who has to—you guessed it—escape from prison and reunite with the others. What makes these plots different enough to warrant calling them subdivisions is the amount of time these characters spend separated and the variance in the obstacles they must overcome. Although, despite the physical separation of the protagonists, these subplots are not nearly as distinct as those featured in The Aztecs, a serial where there was much more interaction between characters.

At Jules’s house, Danielle enters the sitting room, where Ian and Jules have just finished breakfast. She shares a message from Leon, telling them that the physician refuses to come to the house—Susan must be taken to his office. Barbara will take her there, as two women traveling together will look less suspicious than if Ian were to go. Ian is unhappy with the arrangement, but he agrees that it gives them the best chance at staying under the radar. “Let’s hope we can trust the physician,” he says.

Sometime later, Barbara and Susan are with the physician in his office. The physician says that Susan has only taken a bad chill, though he makes a few observations which suggest he suspects Susan and Barbara of something. He says that it’s clear Susan hasn’t been taking proper care of herself, noting that her hands are very blistered. Barbara asks if there is anything he can give her, and the physician says it’s a simple case of blood-letting before leaving to gather leeches.

Once the man has gone, Susan says she doesn’t like him, and she doesn’t want to be touched by leeches either. “I know,” Barbara replies, “and I got the impression that he suspected us. Come on; let’s go.” She tries the door handle but finds it locked.

At the prison, we see the physician telling the jailer about the escaped prisoners that are locked inside his office. He leaves with a contingent of soldiers, and when the scene cuts back to his office, we see soldiers leading Barbara and Susan away.

Back at Jules’s house, Ian is impatient—Barbara and Susan have been gone a long time. Jules says that he shouldn’t worry and that he will go fetch them if it will soothe Ian’s anxiety. In the meantime, Jules has arranged for Leon to meet Ian in the crypt of a disused church. He draws a map for Ian so he can find the way.

At the prison, the jailer is examining the two recaptured prisoners when Lemaitre pulls him aside for a word in private. When the jailer returns, he orders Susan to be taken to a cell, keeping Barbara with him. Susan cries out for Barbara as she is led away, and the jailer says that Barbara is wanted for questioning. Next, the jailer leads Barbara into a room where the Doctor is seated at a table. “Citizen Lemaitre thought you might like to question this prisoner,” he says. As soon as the jailer leaves the room, the Doctor and Barbara greet each other warmly. Unbeknownst to them, Lemaitre is listening from the other side of the door.

In the crypt of a church, Ian descends some stairs, moving very carefully. He sees a man who identifies himself as Leon, and Ian tells him that he has come alone. Suddenly, Ian hears a noise and turns to see soldiers emerging from several hiding places. “You walked right into my trap, didn’t you, Ian?” Leon chides. Credits roll.

Part 5 (A Bargain of Necessity)

Before I get into this episode, I want to touch briefly on another device that mystery writers love to use in their stories: the red herring. A red herring is something that is intentionally meant to mislead or distract the audience, often leading toward a false conclusion. I mentioned the term back in The Edge of Destruction, where several times it was suggested that some sort of intelligence may have gotten into the TARDIS, maybe even into one of the protagonists. In the end, this turned out to be a red herring, a false lead meant to make the audience come to an incorrect conclusion.

If you think back to Part 3 of The Reign of Terror, Jean mentioned that someone was betraying their movements, informing on them to the authorities. This led to soldiers raiding their safehouse on more than one occasion, including the raid which resulted in Ian, Susan, and Barbara being taken prisoner. And yes, an attentive viewer may have been mulling this over since it was brought into the story, but by Part 5, I had forgotten about this detail. On my first viewing, I was paying much more attention to the identity of the mysterious James Stirling. I think this was an intentional dynamic set up by the writers, especially considering James Stirling is mentioned several times each episode, while the informant was only brought up once. This allows speculation over the identity of James Stirling to serve as a red herring, a distraction, so that when Leon reveals himself to be the betrayer at the end of Part 4, it comes as more of a surprise.

Continuing on, Leon has the soldiers chain Ian to one of the pillars inside the crypt, telling him that by the time anyone thinks to come looking for him, they will all be long gone. “My association with Jules was bound to come to an end. He already suspected that a traitor—if you want to use those words—was working in the organization. But it’s no matter. We’re ready, now, to close in on him, too.” Ian asks what Leon wants with him, and Leon replies, “Information. You will cooperate, Ian. Think about it. We have plenty of time.” He leaves, giving Ian time to consider. One of the soldiers sneers at him, saying that they have many ways of making him talk.

Meanwhile, Barbara and the Doctor are catching each other up on what has been happening since they were separated. Lemaitre still listens at the door, hearing every word—this is important because it implicates the two in being in league in some way, and because Barbara tells the Doctor that they have been hiding out at a house owned by Jules Renan.

Outside the room, Lemaitre’s listening is interrupted by the jailer, who tells Lemaitre that Robespierre requests his presence immediately. Lemaitre grudgingly forgoes his spying, telling the jailer that he is not to open the door to Susan’s cell under any circumstances while he is gone. “And if that order is disobeyed,” he adds, “I’ll have you guillotined.” Lemaitre leaves the prison.

Back inside the room, the Doctor decides to use his disguise to free Barbara. “Now listen,” he says, “I’m going through that door. Give me a few minutes, then I want you to go through the door and straight out of the prison.” He tells Barbara he will get Susan out and follow later, adding, “Don’t argue. You know my plans always work perfectly.”

Yeah, sure they do.

Outside, the Doctor enters the jailer’s office, telling him that Barbara is a traitor who could give up the names of every traitor in the country. The jailer wants to make her talk, but the Doctor dismisses this, saying that she would rather die than give up her friends. “If there was only some way of using her,” he says thoughtfully. “If only we could get through her to her friends.”

The jailer takes the bait. “Perhaps…if she were to escape, she could be followed. She’d meet these traitors, then we’d arrest them. Lemaitre once did this.” The Doctor congratulates the man on his brilliant idea, then tells him to go open the prison doors to set his plan in motion. A few minutes later, Barbara strolls out.

Back at Jules’s house, a panicked Jules enters the sitting room, calling out for Ian, Barabara, and Susan. No one answers his call, so he turns around and rushes back out.

In the crypt, Leon asks Ian several times for information, implying that it would be better to speak to him than to be left to the whims of his ill-tempered men. Ian tells him that he has no information to give, but Leon insists that Ian must be part of the English spy network and demands that he provide the names of his contacts. “You must have known of their organization. You were in it with Webster; he would never have trusted you otherwise. Now, who sent you from England? How did you get here?”

Ian says that Leon would never believe him, and when Leon demands the truth, Ian gives it. “I flew here with three friends, in a small box. When I left England, it was 1963.” He says this through a smirk, knowing Leon will take it as mockery and getting enjoyment from insulting the man. Lately, Ian has been portrayed as far and away the bravest of the protagonists. From the scene in Marco Polo where he was forced to fight the bandits onward, he has shown a knack for spitting in the face of danger.

Snapping his fingers at a soldier holding a bayonet, Leon gestures at Ian. The soldier moves toward Ian, but before he can gut him, Jules arrives, guns blazing. Of all the footage that has been lost, I think it is the action sequences that I regret the most. All I get is a series of confusing images and the sound of gunshots and grunts. According to the transcript, Jules heroically dispatches the two soldiers and Leon, with a few timely kicks from a still-chained Ian to aid him. Soon, Ian and Jules are the only ones left alive in the crypt. Ian is quickly freed, and Jules tells him that Susan and Barbara have been recaptured. Ian says he feared as much once Leon proved to be a traitor. They hurry off to Jules’s house, where they hope there are no soldiers waiting for them.

Back at the prison, the Doctor pays a visit to Susan’s cell. Susan is overjoyed to see him, but their visit is cut short when the Doctor hears someone coming. He says he will return later and scurries off.

Later, in the jailer’s office, the jailer is surprised to see the Doctor. “Didn’t you collect the soldiers and follow the released prisoner?” he demands. The Doctor acts incredulous, saying that he was under the impression that the jailer was supposed to be the one following Barbara. The jailer is distraught; after all, it was his idea. The Doctor tells him that he will cover for him, suggesting that if they were to perhaps let Susan go as well, they could follow her to the traitors’ hideout and arrest all of them. The jailer is adamant that Lemaitre gave him strict instructions not to open Susan’s cell. “To lose one prisoner is bad enough. To lose two would be the end of me, especially after my orders. Lemaitre will be returning soon. We’ll do as he says. Until then, that door remains closed!”

At Robespierre’s office, Lemaitre has arrived, and Robespierre gives him news of a plot to indict some member of the Convention. Lemaitre says that Robespierre has many friends sitting in the Convention, but Robespierre says that he doesn’t think he can trust any of them. “They will turn against me to save their own necks,” he says, highlighting his ever increasing paranoia. Robespierre understands that no indictment can be successfully brought unless the plotters have the backing of the army. He also has received word that Deputy Paul Barrass, a rebel stalwart, is going to leave Paris for the night, and he suspects Barrass to be meeting a military higher-up. “I want to know who [he is meeting] with, and the decision,” Robespierre says. “Given that, I can still defeat my enemies.” Lemaitre agrees and asks against which member of the Convention the indictment is being brought. “Against me, Lemaitre!” he cries. “Against me! Robespierre!”

Back at Jules’s house, Ian and Jules arrive to find Barbara waiting for them in the sitting room. Barbara tells them what happened at the prison and that it was the Doctor who arranged for her escape. “I just walked out,” she says, as if she can hardly believe it herself.

Talk is happy until Ian and Jules break the news that Leon was a traitor and that Jules killed him. She becomes distraught, and Ian tries to explain to her that his life was in danger. “Jules actually shot him,” he says, “[but] it could just as easily have been me.” Ian is trying to convey that he would have killed Leon if he had been in Jules’s position, adding, “He got what he deserved.”

Barbara’s voice turns icy. “You check your history books, Ian, before you decide what people deserve.” I get that attraction makes people do strange things, but it seems a little farfetched for Barbara to feel more sympathetic for Leon than for a man who has literally put his life on the line for her several times over the last eight serials.

In the prison, the Doctor revisits Susan’s cell and tells her to hide behind the door. He then leaves and waits for the jailer to come into the corridor. The Doctor makes small talk with him before casually strolling over to check on Susan and crying, “Jailer! That young girl! She’s gone!” The jailer scurries over to open the door, and when he does, the Doctor whacks him over the head, telling Susan to come quick. Together, they run, only making it a few steps before bumping into Lemaitre and a group of soldiers coming the other way.

Holding his head as if in pain, the jailer joins them. “He did just as you said he would, Citizen. He tried to get the young girl released, and he let the other prisoner go.”

“I think it’s about time we had a talk,” Lemaitre says to the Doctor. Susan is taken back to her cell, and the Doctor is escorted to Lemaitre’s office. There, the Doctor eventually discovers that the gig is up. He tries to finagle his way out of the situation, but Lemaitre produces the Doctor’s ring and original clothes and demonstrates his wealth of knowledge about the situation, including the exchange he made with the tailor, Susan being his granddaughter, and that they have an association with Jules Renan. “If you want your granddaughter released,” Lemaitre says, “you will have to take me to his hideout.”

At Jules’s house, Ian and Barbara wait in the sitting room while Jules has gone to the street corner to keep a watch for Susan and the Doctor. Ian apologizes to Barbara about Leon, again insisting that it was the only way. “I know,” Barbara says, looking contrite. “I wanted to apologize to Jules. I’m so sick and tired of death, Ian. We never seem to get away from it.” Jules enters at this moment, having overheard Barbara’s last statement. Barbara turns to him and begins her own apology. “Jules, when I spoke to you before, the things I said—”

“You said because of Leon the man,” Jules finishes for her. “Yes, I know. But I did what I had to do because of what he represents. Do you ever wonder why I’m doing these things, hiding in shadows, fighting in corners?…I have no title or position. I belong, well, in the middle. But I hate to see order thrown out of the window like so much dust. There can be no loyalty or honor where anarchy prevails.”

I have two points to make about this exchange. First, I’m glad Barbara apologized so soon. Although I still think it was a bit careless and out-of-character for her to side with Leon in the first place, at least it wasn’t allowed to linger or spiral into a bigger conflict. Second, this is the culmination of the second theme: the radicalizing nature of civil war on those who try to remain neutral in the conflict. Ostensibly, Jules and his compatriots are neither for nor against the revolution. But as it happens in protracted periods of civil unrest, neutral parties are often either forced to pick up arms in some capacity or else forced into fleeing or hiding. Jules’s heart is not aligned with either side, yet he is still forced to put his life on the line for what he believes in.

Ian hears a noise out in the hall, and they all turn toward the door. The Doctor enters the sitting room, followed by Lemaitre. Jules’s face goes stony. “Your friend has betrayed us,” he says gravely. Credits roll.

Part 6 (Prisoners of the Conciergerie)

Upon his arrival at Jules’s house, Lemaitre insists that he comes as a friend, telling Ian that he was responsible for allowing Ian to escape from prison. Lemaitre called the jailer away from Ian’s cell, allowing Ian to snatch the key, and Lemaitre was the one who knocked the jailer unconscious so Ian could slip away. When Ian asks why, Lemaitre answers, “I was certain in my own mind that Webster gave you a message to deliver. You had to have the opportunity to deliver it. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to wait now. I have to collect…I am James Stirling.”

The Doctor says that he has fulfilled his side of the bargain by bringing Stirling to the house of Jules Renan, and he demands Susan’s freedom. Stirling says that Susan’s safety is guaranteed as long as he remains in a position of authority. However, he says her freedom is contingent on the Doctor and his companions helping him with one more task. The Doctor grumbles at this, but he realizes he has no say in the matter.

Stirling asks Ian for the message from Webster, and Ian says that aside from a few odd mutterings, all he heard from Webster was to find Stirling and tell him to return to England. Stirling tells them that before he can leave France, there is one more piece of information he must uncover: the identity of whomever is meeting with Paul Barrass and plotting to overthrow Robespierre. This jogs Ian’s memory—he realizes that Webster had muttered something about Barrass, a meeting, and the sinking ship. I don’t like how contrived this is. In order to provide proper closure to a loose end, the writers need to call enough attention to the loose end itself so that the audience can look for an answer. However, while Webster was muttering in his cell, the episode did nothing to call attention to the fact that the viewer should pay any mind to these mutterings. After seeing the serial twice over the span of a few days, I do not recall these mutterings at all. The serial does not treat these mutterings as important, so it comes off as a contrivance when Ian is able to remember something so unimportant.

Jules says there is an inn called the Sinking Ship about two hours out of Paris, an ideal place for a secret meeting. Stirling says that whomever Barrass is meeting could be the next ruler of France. They make plans for Ian, Barbara, and Jules to arrive at the inn before Barrass and his unknown confidant.

The scene cuts to nighttime at the Sinking Ship, where a fierce storm has blown in. Jules has knocked out the innkeeper and tied him up in the cellar, leaving him, Ian, and Barbara free to run the establishment. Ian and Barbara are dressed as bartenders, while Jules sits at a table in the common room, keeping an eye out for Barrass and his secret guest. It is late, and only one table of patrons remain in the inn: two men who sit in a corner.

Ian uses an awl to drill a spyhole from behind the bar into the private dining room where Barrass will be meeting the stranger, arranging items on a shelf in front of the hole to conceal it. Back in the common room, Barrass soon arrives; he asks where the innkeeper is and seems satisfied when Ian tells him the man is unwell. Ian escorts Barrass to the private dining room, and Barbara follows him in to take his drink order and make sure he is only expecting one guest.

A bit of time passes, and the two remaining patrons leave the inn. The sound of horse hooves can be heard, and a moment later, a man enters the common room, bundled up from head to toe in an attempt to keep himself dry—or perhaps an attempt to not be recognized. Ian and Barbara are unable to identify him, and he sequesters himself in the dining room with Barrass. It’s only when the man pokes his head out of the private room to check for eavesdroppers that Ian manages to see him. Once the man retreats back into the room, Ian calls Barbara over to the bar. “Barbara. Barbara. It’s Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte!”

With Ian and Barbara listening in through the spyhole, Barrass makes Napoleon a proposition. He tells Napoleon that Robespierre will be arrested tomorrow, following the conclusion of the Convention meeting. “He’ll be tried and executed before his friends have time to reorganize,” Barrass assures him. Napoleon is somewhat doubtful, asking what his role is to be in Robespierre’s overthrow. “I believe that to rule a country successfully,” Barrass continues, “one needs a certain support from the people being governed…Your victories, inspiring victories, in the Austrian Wars have made you a public figure. You’re a hero in the people’s eyes.” Napoleon resents politicians, loathe to become the head of a puppet regime. “Oh, come, general,” Barrass assures him. “You would be more than just a figurehead.” Napoleon agrees to rule, provided the coup is actually successful. If it is not, he will deny the meeting ever took place.

The following day, Ian, Barbara, and Jules return to Jules’s house, where they share their information with Stirling. Though Stirling saw Robespierre’s overthrow as a distinct possibility, he had no idea that Barrass’s position was so strong. The Convention meeting may have already ended, meaning Robespierre could already be under arrest. Stirling wants to stop this from happening, which surprises Barbara. “We need a strong government, but not a military dictatorship,” Jules explains, agreeing with Stirling. “And it could happen.” Stirling leaves to see what he can do, and Ian goes with him, agreeing to meet up with the Doctor and the rest outside the prison. Jules leaves to arrange a carriage to meet them all there.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara will go retrieve Susan from the prison. As Ian and Stirling leave Barbara laughs. The Doctor asks what is so amusing, and she says, “Oh, I don’t know.” She sighs. “Yes, I do. It’s this feverish activity to try and stop something that we know is going to happen. Robespierre will be guillotined whatever we do.” The Doctor reminds her of their position on changing history, and Barbara continues, “Yes, I know. You can’t influence or change history. I learned that lesson with the Aztecs.”

“The events will happen, just as they are written,” the Doctor concurs. “I’m afraid so, and we can’t stem the tide. But at least we can stop [from] being carried away with the flood. Now, Susan and the prison.”

This provides a bit of clarity on what the Doctor considers to be meddling in the course of history. One can travel to a historically significant time and even interact with historically significant people. However, one cannot try to change the outcome of known events or act in any capacity beyond self-preservation. This poses a few issues. First, what about all the minute details, the seemingly unimportant decisions, which snowball into the big historical events? How can someone be expected to know what can be altered and what must remain the same? And second, what would happen if the need for self-preservation comes into conflict with the desire to keep history intact?

Inside Robespierre’s office, Robespierre is frantically searching through his desk. He finds a pistol and locks the door. At this moment, Ian and Stirling arrive, but they are only steps ahead of a mob of gun-wielding counterrevolutionaries. Seeing the peril, Ian pulls Stirling out of the mob’s way, and the mob breaks the door down. Robespierre tries to say that the mob has been inflamed by a bunch of traitors in the Convention, and someone fires a warning shot, the bullet grazing Robespierre’s face. The mob pulls the politician from his office, saying they will take him to the prison.

Outside the prison, Barbara and the Doctor stand against a building, surveying the scene. Jules’s carriage has not yet arrived, but the Doctor says they cannot afford to waste any more time waiting for it. They just have to hope it is there when the Doctor emerges with Susan. Barbara agrees to wait outside, and the Doctor enters the prison.

Inside, the jailer and two soldiers are toasting to the downfall of Robespierre. The jailer is quite surprised to see the Doctor—after all, he thought the Doctor was a traitor cleverly captured by Lemaitre/Stirling. The Doctor tells the jailer that Lemaitre was shot trying to run away and that Lemaitre was in league with Robespierre. As for himself, the Doctor asserts that he was part of the secret plot working toward Robespierre’s downfall, and now that Robespierre has been captured, the Doctor is hunting for the disgraced politician’s supporters. “You thought you’d get away with it,” the Doctor says to the jailer. “Being Lemaitre’s accomplice. Take him!” The soldiers each take one of the jailer’s arms.

The jailer begs the Doctor for leniency, saying that he was only following orders. After all, how was he supposed to know Lemaitre was a traitor? Showing some mercy, the Doctor agrees to let the jailer stay in his position in a probationary capacity. With that little bit of fireworks settled, the Doctor says the prison must be cleared out in order to make room for Robespierre and all of his supporters. The jailer gives the Doctor the key to the cells.

Outside, Barbara watches as the mob reaches the prison with Robespierre and takes him into the prison. Ian and Stirling arrive soon after. Stirling wants to go in after Robespierre, but Ian convinces him that if he enters the prison, he will be killed on sight. They must leave the rescue of Susan up to the Doctor. We hear the sound of a horse, and Ian says that Jules has finally arrived with the carriage.

In the prison, the Doctor lets Susan out of her cell, and they embrace. “Ah, there, Susan. We’re all going back to the ship. It’s all over for you.” They hear a commotion and turn to see Robespierre being shoved brusquely into the corridor. The guards mock Robespierre, then take him away to a cell.

Back outside, Jules and Stirling prepare to leave Paris. “The fall of Robespierre has changed everything for me,” Jules says sadly. “First, I must find Jean. Then, I shall wait somewhere in the country and see how this situation in Paris develops.” It’s sad, seeing him like this, and it again brings into perspective what I see as the third theme of the serial: how remaining true to oneself can require a massive sacrifice. Jules and Jean fought for a Paris where citizens could speak openly without being executed as a traitor on a whim, but in the end, they are forced to leave a city which no longer has room for their ideals. They could have easily fallen into one faction or another, but they chose the much harder path. Whether or not there is any solace in their path is up to speculation, but to me, I think it would be a very bitter pill to swallow.

Stirling plans to go north to Calais, where he can catch a boat back to England. He says to Barbara that they should all come with him, and Barbara says they must travel their own way. Stirling cocks his head at Barbara and says, “Barbara, who are you really? Where do you all come from?” At this moment, the Doctor and Susan exit the prison, and everyone but Jules and Stirling pile into the carriage. They hang back for a moment, and Stirling says, “Funny, I get the impression they don’t know where they’re heading for. Come to that, do any of us?” They all leave in the carriage.

Next, we see footage of a speeding carriage overlayed on a map of Paris and its surroundings. When the scene cuts back to our protagonists, they are once again inside the TARDIS. Ian and Barbara speculate on what would have happened had they tries to warn Napoleon of some of the pitfalls he would encounter during his reign. Ian supposes they could have written him a letter, and Susan says, “It wouldn’t have made any difference, Ian. He’d have forgotten it, or lost it, or thought it was written by a maniac.”

“I suppose if we’d tried to kill him with a gun, the bullet would have missed him,” Barbara says.

“Well, it’s hardly fair to speculate, is it?” the Doctor cuts in, ending that line of reasoning. “No, I’m afraid you belittle things. Our lives are important, at least to us. But as we see, so we learn.”

“And what are we going to see and learn next, Doctor?” Ian asks.

“Well, unlike the old adage, my boy, our destiny is in the stars. So let’s go and search for it.” Credits roll. This is the end of Season 1.

Takeaways

I really enjoyed this serial. From the first episode to the last, I consider it to be the most consistent serial of the season in terms of how well it executed on its premise. It’s not my favorite, however, as I don’t think the story was quite as compelling as Marco Polo or The Aztecs. Like The Aztecs, this serial took a step back in portraying Susan as a competent, independent character, which was especially disappointing coming off of The Sensorites, where Susan’s characterization was one of the few things that serial managed to execute properly.

I like how The Reign of Terror cleared up a little about how the Doctor and his companions can interact with history, though it does bring up some additional questions. For instance, how are the Doctor and the rest meant to act if the established path of history clashes with their own self-preservation? And how is the Doctor supposed to know when what seem like insignificant actions might actually play into the grander scheme of things? In later seasons, I get the sense that these rules matter only when the writers want them to matter, and if they want to bend the rules to hit some plot point, they bend the rules.

Aside from Susan’s poor characterization in Parts 2 and 3, there isn’t anything about the serial that I really don’t like. The pacing of the serial was very consistent, and every beat of the plot felt like a natural escalation from what came before. I want to again call attention to what I see as the three main themes of the serial:

Theme #1: The cannibalizing nature of widespread suspicion
Theme #2: The radicalizing nature of civil war and the perils of trying to remain impartial
Theme #3: The prospect of remaining true to oneself and the dire sacrifices this can necessitate

This is the first example of a serial that makes an attempt to impart upon the audience a strong moral judgement about a complex situation. Yes, we’ve had some more obvious bits of moralizing, like don’t go around murdering the innocent, and don’t hate others just because they are different from yourself. Yet The Reign of Terror is different. It passes judgement on those who perpetuated the suspicion and slaughter, while at the same time demonstrating how trying to remain neutral presents another host of problems. In the end, nobody really wins in this situation. The Doctor and his companions manage to escape revolutionary France, but we don’t really get the sense that any of the characters they are leaving behind have happy lives ahead of them.

Personally, I don’t need every Doctor Who serial to present a moral to the story, and I don’t think one being present is definitionally a vice or a virtue. Like so much else in the series, it depends how the moral is presented. With The Reign of Terror, I think the moral was very cleverly written into the narrative—it wasn’t foregrounded to the point where it came across as preachy, yet the overarching themes were always there, just beneath the surface. It added an extra dimension of depth to the storyline, and when the serial finally arrived at its conclusion and Jules and Stirling were pondering life beyond Paris, it contributed to the sense of bleakness and uncertainty that I sympathized with as a viewer.

Looking forward, I do see a trend developing, where the writers of the series are more adept at handling serials in the past than serials in the future. Next season, I would like to see the series maintain its consistency with historical fiction while trying some different approaches at producing quality sci-fi. Season 2 has nine total serials, eight of which rely heavily on sci-fi elements. Just from a cursory glance at the series’ titles, I remember there being a lot to like in many of them, and I hope they hold up to closer scrutiny. I want to spend a few days writing a Season 1 overview, then it’s onward to the next one.

Allons-y!

Rating: 8.1/10

Chapter Text

Overview

In the introduction to this document, I added a last-minute section with the heading What is Doctor Who?, where I try to give a brief synopsis of who the Doctor is and how the show typically operates. But after watching the flagship season, it’s clear that the series doesn’t line up with what I gave as a description. Certain elements of it are correct—the Doctor has his phone box and he does save people from time to time—but he lacks a lot of the charisma, mystique, and morality that will come to define his character in later seasons. This will soon start to change. The second season of Doctor Who marks the beginning of a transition period for the series, as the showrunners start to establish a clear direction and focus for the Doctor and his companions.

I’ll start with the companions, because logistically speaking, the precedent set by Season 2 has perhaps played the most important role in preserving the show’s longevity: namely, the revolving door of protagonists. This season will see the departure of Susan, Ian, and Barbara, replacing them with a girl named Vicki and a man named Steven. We get to see the showrunners’ first attempts to fill the shoes of an incredibly well-liked and cohesive cast of characters—and the result is very hit-or-miss. The writers will struggle to distinguish Vicki as a distinct entity from Susan, often making her feel like a cheap knock-off. Though, from what we see of Steven in this season, I feel that he has the potential to be even better than the original three.

But more importantly, replacing the original companions gives the showrunners a useful mechanism to easily make changes in the trajectory of the series, changes that the audience will not only accept but look forward to. In most series, dropping a beloved character from the cast is an incredible risk, and if done badly, it can result in the alienation of the core audience and the series’ downfall. Not so with Doctor Who. Over the coming seasons, viewers will come to expect companions to leave the show after just a few seasons—and I believe that this unusual viewer tolerance allows for a lot of freedom for the showrunners to make mistakes. If a new companion doesn’t work or is widely disliked by the audience, that’s okay; just write them out of the show and try again.

Then there is the Doctor. As I was watching Season 1, I felt there was something off about the Doctor’s characterization, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Don’t get me wrong. Hartnell does a fine job; it’s more about how his character was written and the role he fills among the main cast. But after watching the first few serials of Season 2, it became very clear what the Season 1 Doctor lacked: there was very little to distinguish the Doctor from the companions that traveled with him. Sure, he new a few things that they didn’t, like how to (sort of) control the TARDIS, but that’s about it. When it comes to the narrative arcs of the Season 1 serials, the Doctor tended to be just as confused, lost, and scared as Susan, Ian, and Barbara. They were all on a very even footing, which even allowed for Ian to take charge and lead on occasion.

From The Reign of Terror onward, this starts to change. The finale of Season 1 depicted the Doctor doing something that will come to define his character over the next few decades—he dons a disguise and bluffs his way out of a difficult situation. We will see Season 2 build on this characterization, especially in The Web Planet, where he spends much of the serial lying to the antagonist, and The Romans, where he pretends to be someone else for the entire serial. Additionally, Season 2 will also start giving the Doctor some foreknowledge about the places the TARDIS chooses to land. This is most evident in The Rescue, where his previous visit to the planet Dido enables him to take charge and outsmart the antagonist. Combined with his charisma, these two traits begin to create the mystique of the Doctor, a character who can swagger into just about any situation and bluff his way past the bad guys. It also allows the companions to become more of an analogue for the viewer, enabling us to experience the universe of Doctor Who through their eyes.

Although Season 2 does bring some very important changes to the series, it also suffers from a marked drop in quality after its first two serials. I always write these overviews after I finish each season, and after the next serial, Planet of Giants, you’ll see me fret about my rating system because I’ve been giving out too many high scores. It turns out I had nothing to worry about; the rest of Season 2 serves to pull down the average in a major way—including an abysmal serial that I give a 0.0 out of 10. I like the intentionality of the showrunners in taking the series in a new direction, but in a lot of ways, the writing takes a step backward. That’s not to say there’s no highlights. Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and The Time Meddler are all standout successes. Any period of change is going to come with unique challenges and growing pains, and I’m excited to see Doctor Who continue to find its footing in the years to come.

Chapter Text

Planet of Giants

Part 1 (Planet of Giants)

Season 2 opens with the TARDIS in transit. The Doctor walks around the console, flipping switches and pressing buttons. “We’re approaching a planet,” he says. Ian asks which one, and the Doctor says he won’t know until they have landed.

Barbara leans against the console, but the console is so hot that it burns her hand. The Doctor is only mildly concerned and asks Susan to go check the fault locator. When Ian asks if they are in any danger, the Doctor says, “Oh, no, no, of course not. It’s just, well, there we were, in the late 18th century, and I tried another frequency to sidestep the ship back into the middle of the 20th century.”

I want to call attention to two things. First, no time has passed since the end of Season 1, which is good to know. It means that the Doctor and his companions haven’t been having any adventures off camera, so we shouldn’t see any sudden changes in the way anyone is characterized. And second, just look at all that gobbledygook the writers made the Doctor say. The series is infamous for its technobabble. I try not read too much into it—at least, not in the first few seasons. But this is the kind of technobabble that comes across not as the writers glossing over something that is complicated, but as the writers making up a bit of dialogue instead of having to think about how time travel might actually work. The former is acceptable, but the latter is a crutch.

At the fault locator, Susan reads off two alphanumeric codes to the Doctor. Suddenly, a warning light flashes, and the klaxon alarm sounds. In the console room, the TARDIS doors start to upon, despite the ship still being in flight. “It’s an emergency!” the Doctor yells. “Close the doors!” Ian, Barbara, and Susan rush over to the doors, and together, they are barely able to press them shut. Once they are closed, the alarm stops.

We see an external shot of the TARDIS materializing. It appears on a patch of dirt or sand, surrounded on three sides by a vertical rock face. As with many previous shots of the TARDIS, it is obviously a miniature only a few inches tall. For reasons which will be made clear later in the episode, this fits the serial unlike any other.

The TARDIS has apparently landed safely, but the Doctor is still agitated. He tells Susan to go check the fault locator. Meanwhile, Barbara and Ian don’t understand why the Doctor is all up-in-arms. “We seem to be alright,” Barbara says.

“Oh, don’t be so childish. They opened. The doors opened before we properly materialized!” Ian and Barbara both try to get the Doctor to explain the situation better, but the Doctor becomes indignant. This is one of those moments where he reacts poorly to what he perceives as ignorance or stupidity. “Oh, don’t go on with these futile questions,” he says dismissively. “Can’t you understand? Can’t you see? We were just about to materialize when the doors opened, and we hadn’t properly adjusted.”

Barbara asks if he means something went out of the ship, and Ian asks if anything came inside. “Oh please, don’t keep talking on the 20th century level. I’m talking about time travel. Neither of you can understand what I’m talking about, I can see that.”

Ian draws level with the Doctor, brow furrowed. “How could we? You never explained it to us.”

Susan enters the console room and says that the fault locator is showing everything functioning normally. Having had no success with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara turn to Susan for an explanation. She just shrugs, saying, “I just know the most dangerous moment is at the point of materialization.”

The Doctor seems to be calming down. “Well, happily no harm’s been done. It’s most puzzling.” Then comes something unexpected from the Doctor, the reason I wanted to give the full context of their argument: “Oh, my dear Barbara, was I rude to you just now? If so, I’m so sorry. I always forget the niceties under pressure. Please forgive me.”

This is the first time that we’ve seen a major row among the main characters since back in the third serial of Season 1, The Edge of Destruction, where it took two full episodes for the Doctor to come around to making an apology. And no, I’m not counting the out-of-character moment at the end of The Sensorites as an argument; that was an abomination. Here, it only takes the Doctor a few moments make an apology. Rather than showing a change in the Doctor’s character, I think this serves to demonstrate the closeness that has developed between the Doctor and his human companions. Up until they really bonded in Marco Polo, there was a noticeable divide between them, with a lack of trust on both sides. Now that they truly care for one another, it’s hard for the protagonists to maintain animosity for any great length of time.

The readings on the console say that it should be safe to go outside, but the Doctor asks Susan to check the scanner just to be sure. She flicks a switch, and the screen of the scanner bursts, as if there was some sort of internal explosion. Left with no alternative but to see for themselves, the Doctor says they must go outside. Susan and Barbara exit first, while Ian hangs back to ask once more: “Doctor, what made the doors open before?”

“The space pressure was far too great whilst we were materializing,” the Doctor answers. “The strange thing is that we all came out of it unscathed.” He chuckles to himself. “It’s most puzzling. It’s a big mystery, my boy. Come along.” The men exit.

Outside the TARDIS, Susan and Barbara are taking a close look at the rock formation. Most of it seems to be ordinary stone, but there is a layer at the bottom which the Doctor suggests might be concrete. “Rather a rough kind, isn’t it?” he says. “It’s manufactured…to hold the stone in place. You know, to fix it beneath.” Susan points out that the stone above should be plenty heavy enough to hold itself in place. Another oddity. The Doctor says they should split up. Ian looks a little sideways at this—splitting up hasn’t worked so well for them in the past—but he sighs and urges the Doctor to stay within shouting distance. Ian and Susan go off on their own.

A short distance from the ship, Barbara discovers a massive snake climbing up the wall. It looks very strange, with ridges on each end and a flat part in the middle. Barbara tells the Doctor they should call the others, but on closer inspection, the Doctor discovers it is dead. They continue on.

Meanwhile, Susan and Ian discover a pile of large eggs, shaped like pills the size of a newborn. While rising from a crouch, Susan comes face-to-face with an enormous ant the size of her head. She recoils; just like the snake, the ant is also dead. Wherever they have landed, all the animal life seems to be both massive and recently killed.

Back with the Doctor and Barbara, the Doctor finds the tail end of the snake-like creature, and he suggests that it is actually a massive earthworm. “There are no earthworms this size on your planet,” the Doctor remarks. He pauses thoughtfully. “You know, except for its size, I could swear that it came from your world.” Barbara notes that the rocky channels they move through are a bit like a maze, and the Doctor comments on that too. “All this maze you’re talking about. You know, I admit it’s a bit haphazard, but it seems to have some kind of pattern about it. And this pattern suggests to me that there’s a brain with a purpose behind it all. Come along.”

Elsewhere, Ian and Susan come across what looks like a large billboard of some kind, with “Night-Scented Stock” in huge lettering. I had to look this up; it’s a type of flower. Then Ian sees the words “Seed Company Ltd., Norwich.” “Susan,” he says, “this means we’re on Earth. Something very odd here. First those ants, now this. I suppose it couldn’t be part of a crazy exhibition. You know, where everything is increased in size?”

Meanwhile, the Doctor discovers what looks like a wooden beam propped up against the rock formation. He accidentally topples it, and once it is on the ground, he notices that the end of it is charred. It’s a matchstick: an eight-foot-long matchstick. “Don’t you see? That huge earthworm, and now this? Can’t you see what’s happened?”

Before Barbara can answer, the seen cuts back to Ian and Susan. The editors have employed a common but effective technique often used to represent two separate groups of people coming to the same conclusion. The episode cuts back and forth between the two groups as they explore, the cuts becoming shorter and shorter until eventually, it will give the impression that a member of one group is responding to a question or thought posed by a member of the other. I really like how this is done.

Behind the advertisement for flower seeds, Ian discovers a matchbox large enough for him to climb inside. He does so, turning to Susan and saying, “It must be an exhibition, Susan. Something like the World’s Fair, things this size.”

“No, Ian,” Susan says, her tone going serious. “You’re wrong, Ian. Completely wrong. I thought just now that something was wrong when I saw that—” she points to the Night-Scented Stock lettering “—but now I’m sure…these things haven’t been made bigger. We’ve been made smaller.”

This is where that quick-cut editing really picks up speed. “Smaller?” Barbara says to the Doctor.

“We have been reduced roughly to the size of an inch,” the Doctor replies.

“An inch?” Ian says to Susan incredulously.

“You, me, all of us, and the ship,” the Doctor says to Barbara.

We are again shown the exterior shot of the TARDIS against the side of the rock formation, but the camera zooms out, showing us that the rock formation is actually a flat stone in a garden path and that the TARDIS has landed in the crack between two stones.

Back with Ian and Susan, Ian is in disbelief. More clearheaded about their situation, Susan says, “The doors of the TARDIS opened. That means the space pressure caused us to reduce.”

Suddenly, the scene goes dark as if night had fallen, and there is a loud crunching noise. Ian screams at Susan to run and tries to follow after her, but he trips and falls inside the matchbox. The scene cuts to a man who bends low to retrieve a few items off the ground: a briefcase, a carton full of seeds, and a matchbox.

Having heard the commotion, Barbara and the Doctor enter the scene to find a distraught Susan who describes how Ian fell inside a matchbox and that the matchbox is now gone. “Well, someone picked it up, I suppose,” Barbara says.

The scene cuts to show Ian inside the matchbox. It’s a small, dark place, with a few massive matches at his feet. Ian is jostled around the inside of the box as the unknown man carries it across the yard.

Back in the crevice of the garden path, the Doctor climbs a few feet up one of the paving stones to get a better look of their surroundings, using Barbara as a support. He sees a whitewashed farmhouse at the end of the path. “Well, it looks a tremendous distance to me,” he says. A man sits on a bench in front of the house, reading a notebook. The Doctor cannot tell if this man has the matchbox. Barbara is a bit agitated, jumping to pessimistic conclusions and asking the Doctor if there is any hope in their situation. The Doctor says that as long as they can find Ian and get back to the ship, he thinks he can get them all back to normal size.

The scene changes to the man sitting on the bench, the same man who picked up the matchbox—he is in his middle years, with small, beady eyes in a moderately wrinkled face. A cat basks in the sun nearby. The man bends down to put his notebook inside his briefcase, then moves to pick up the matchbox next to it on the ground, but before he can, someone comes into the scene offering the man a lighter. The newcomer is slender, wearing a crisp black suit, with short curly hair and an air of discontent about him. The newcomer’s name is Mr. Forrester; the one on the bench is Mr. Farrow.

Farrow takes the lighter, lights his cigarette, and passes the lighter back to Forrester, standing to address the man. Farrow has been expecting Forrester; the two are involved with some sort of product being developed for the public. “I hope you haven’t taken any action yet,” Forrester says, with a note of warning in his tone.

“Not yet,” Farrow answers, “but I have written my report.”

“You do realize what’s at stake here, Mr. Farrow? The early experiments were noted by the Ministry, welcomed, in fact. I’ve already geared factories, advertising, and all the rest of it to start pushing DN6.”

Over the next minute or so, we learn that DN6 is a new type of pesticide. Forrester has sunk a large portion of his personal wealth into the development of DN6, and if this business venture were to fall through, he would be ruined. Unfortunately for him, Farrow has performed some scientific tests on the compound which have left him concerned enough to recommend it be discontinued immediately. “DN6 is totally destructive,” Farrow argues. “There are many insects which make a vital contribution to agriculture, and these insects must not die. Did you know that?”

Forrester asks if Smithers, another member on the project, has been told of this, and Farrow says not yet. Then Forrester asks what will happen next with the project. “Well, officially, my holiday commenced yesterday,” Farrow explains. “I’ve a small boat down in the harbor, and I’m going to make a tour of the rivers of France. But before I go today, I shall telephone my Ministry and then post my report.” Forrester asks if Farrow could wait until the end of his vacation, just to give Forrester a bit of a grace period. Farrow says he cannot.

“Do you know why I’m a success, Mr. Farrow? Because I’ve never allowed the word ‘can’t’ to exist. There’s always a way. Always.”

“Not this time,” Farrow says dismissively. “This isn’t business; it’s science. The formula is unacceptable, and I can’t—and I do mean can’t, Mr. Forrester—allow DN6 to go into production. Now, I’ll make that phone call.”

Forrester draws a pistol from his coat and points it at Farrow. “Just a moment,” he says coldly.

This is the first instance of a dynamic which will be highlighted many times throughout the series: the interests of the wealthy vs. the interests of the common man. Obviously, the common man would have no interest in a chemical that kills wildlife indiscriminately, regardless of how fresh and clean it can keep a farmer’s veggies. Plus, if Farrow is to be believed, DN6 would actually kill off the bugs that are necessary for these crops to grow at all. This would cause incalculable damage not just to farmland ecosystems but to any ecosystems downstream from farms where DN6 is administered, all the way to the ocean. But Forrester doesn’t trouble himself with such trivialities as the well-being of humanity. He cares only about protecting and growing his wealth. And if it must come at the cost of destroying the environment and killing anyone who stands in his way, then so be it. Typically, I find that the implementation of this dynamic in Doctor Who comes across as a bit reductionist, but overall, this is a good moral to convey to the audience.

I think this is a good time to get into something I haven’t talked about much since the introduction, and that is reader-response theory. Like I said before, reader-response theory posits that every reader has a unique and transactional interaction with every piece of literature they engage with, based upon the reader’s unique personal history and identity. This includes things such as the reader’s upbringing, morals, immutable characteristics, politics, hobbies, music preferences…basically, anything that makes you you influences how much you enjoy and engage with a particular piece of media. And because we each have our own inherently subjective personal history, we will necessarily have a subjective opinion about the media we consume. As much as I like looking at rotten tomatoes scores and IMDb reviews, reader-response theory supposes that there is no completely objective way to critique media.

So rather than bury my personal preferences and feign objectivity, I have tried as much as possible to give a full representation of what I think contributes to a successful episode of Doctor Who. Up until this point, this has largely been calling attention to aspects of the writing, plot holes, characterization, and the techniques employed in set design and filming. To the extent that prior serials have had a moral to the story, it was fairly shallow and easily unpacked—so I usually didn’t bother. For instance, The Daleks told us that killing others indiscriminately just because they don’t look like you is bad. The Aztecs told us that blood sacrifice is bad. The Sensorites told us that assassinating political figures is bad. Even The Reign of Terror, which had a moral that was complex enough for me to call attention to the fact that there even was a moral, presented a societal situation so negative on its face that it would be very difficult to come to the wrong conclusion. Although the serial was steeped in politics, I think it’s safe to say that no matter where you land on the political spectrum, you can look at what was going on during the Reign of Terror and say that it was wrong.

Planet of Giants offers a little more dimension with the point it is trying to make. Not a ton of dimension, to be sure—and what’s there is pretty caricaturish. But there is enough depth there—and the wealth vs. humanity dynamic is enough of a fixture throughout the series—that it is worth breaking down what I prefer from such a message.

Generally speaking, it is my opinion that business interests are opposed to the welfare of the working person. You often hear prominent political pundits, especially conservative voices, decrying the onerous burden that government regulation puts on the private sector. They’ll say regulation stifles innovation, tell you that the government is taking money out of the pockets of everyday workers, and utter blasé phrases like “rising tides lift all boats.” But think about what regulations are for. At their most fundamental level, regulations are the guardrails which prevent the machine of capitalism from crushing the low-level workers who keep that machine functioning. Regulations are the breaks on the car.

I know this might come off to some as hippie, commie, socialist garbage, and to some degree, I understand where that critique comes from. Yes, there is a theoretical point at which too much regulation can result in a level of bureaucracy that unduly crushes economic progress. But I say theoretical, because from where I stand—in the global West broadly, and the United States more specifically—regulation is nowhere near that burdensome. In fact, over the last three decades, there has been a rash of neoliberal governments that have gained power across Europe and the Americas. By definition, neoliberalism is an ideology which supposes that all of the ills that plague society can be solved in one way or another by private interests: corporations. Under neoliberal rule, these corporations have been massively deregulated in the (foolish) hope that, freed from bureaucratic burden, the increasing profits of these corporations will translate into economic improvement for all. In reality, the primary concern of a corporation is its own bottom line; it is very uncommon that that concern aligns with the concerns of the public. Concern for its bottom line translates into increasing wealth: not the wealth of its workers, but the wealth of its shareholders.

So where do corporations cut cost? They enact business practices that harm the workers who make their products and the consumers that buy them: by reducing the amount of money they pay in wages, often by cutting staff to the point where whoever remains is overworked and underpaid; by implementing cheaper and more dangerous working conditions; by producing lower quality, higher priced products for their consumers; by taking advantage of lax monopoly laws and buying up competitors to shut them down; by taking profit and using it to buy back its own stock, thereby increasing the profits of the shareholders even further; by expelling harsh pollutants into the environment and passing the cost of these pollutants onto the community-at-large; by using noncompete and nondisclosure agreements to silence workers and discourage them from looking for work elsewhere… The list goes on and on. These are the abuses against which good regulations are meant to protect.

Planet of Giants offers commentary on this dynamic, and though I’ll try not to spoil it too much just yet, the serial does not paint Forrester in a positive light. We’ve already seen him pull a gun on a government scientist in what is both a physical and metaphorical stand against regulatory oversight, and it is very obvious that he is the bad guy. And like I said, on the whole, I think this is a good moral to communicate to the audience. However, the biggest problem with how big business is portrayed throughout the series is that it usually does not accurately reflect that which it is trying to critique. Corporatocracy is not evil men with guns working very obviously toward their own wealth and against the health and safety of others. It is not a few bad apples running around, causing chaos in an otherwise sound system. The rot goes much deeper than that. It is a large group of wealthy people who have more or less deluded themselves into thinking that accruing wealth and fixing society are one and the same. And by creating enemies in the form of individual wealthy businesspeople and eccentric millionaires, Doctor Who makes an individualistic critique where it should be making a systemic one. This isn’t always the case—and again, I think it is helpful to criticize this dynamic even if the critique is individualistic. I hope this conveys what I think a good critique of big business would look like, and how there are multiple degrees to which such a critique can be successful.

Back to the story, the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan are still walking along the crevices between paving stones, when all of a sudden, a bee falls out of the sky and lands in front of them. The three are hesitant to approach it at first, but once they are sure it is dead, they take a closer look. They notice that the bee has a certain distinctive smell, and they agree that the smell was present with all the other dead things they’ve come across. Barbara asks if whatever is killing all of the bugs can harm them too, to which the Doctor answers, “We must presume that it can. So no eating or drinking until we’ve done our very best to find Ian, hmm?”

Suddenly, they hear a loud noise, like an explosion of some kind. “That’s not thunder, surely,” Susan says, and the Doctor adds, “Sounded more like an ancient canon.”

Near the house, we see that Farrow lies on the ground, dead. Ian uses the opportunity to climb out of the matchbox. I have to say, these giant household item props are superb. Every time the scene cuts to show Barbara next to a giant bee or Ian clambering out of a massive matchbox, it adds such a nice whimsical tone to the proceedings, which pairs perfectly with the seriousness of a man being shot dead. And I bet the props department had a blast coming up with some of these items, too.

Approaching the body, Ian holds up his handkerchief in front of Farrow’s nose to check he isn’t breathing. I found this kind of funny; wouldn’t Farrows breath be like a gale to something as small as Ian? I think the producers just wanted a shot of tiny Ian in front of a massive still of Farrow’s face. As far as I know, this is the first use of a green screen in the series, although that might just be because of how obvious it is here.

Next, we see that Ian has reunited with the others. It would have been nice to actually see this reunion take place, but the scene may have been cut for time. He brings the others to examine Farrow, and the Doctor notes the smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. Nearby, the cat is keeping a close eye on them.

The four begin to speculate on the death they have seen all around them: first the dead insects and now a dead body. Like in The Sensorites, the Doctor turns his back on the situation. “We must leave this simple mystery and get back to the ship,” he says. “As I said, my dear, it’s fortunate for all of us that everything is dead.” Meaning their diminutive stature would have been so much more problematic if everything they’ve seen had been alive to attack them. Perhaps this ambivalence to solving the mystery isn’t as out-of-character for the Doctor as I had previously speculated. He may have just not developed that insatiable desire for knowledge yet.

As the four turn to start the journey back to the TARDIS, Susan cries out for the Doctor. There, looming over them, is the cat from earlier. Credits roll.

Part 2 (Dangerous Journey)

Before I move on, something that I neglected to mention is that, aside from the very first episode of the series, this is the first serial that takes place in the present day. We don’t know the specific year in which Planet of Giants takes place, but it has the feel of a present-day setting. Or at least it’s close enough that a few years in either direction makes no difference. A lot of Classic Who serials are like that: they don’t give a specific year, relying more on the feel of the middle ages, or the near future, or the present day. In the modern series, it’s rare that the Doctor is off the TARDIS for any substantial time without the audience knowing the exact time and place of the setting. Or if either of those things are missing, it’s made very clear that part of the mystery of the episode is finding out that information.

Standing beneath the fearsome housecat, the Doctor urges the others not to move, perhaps thinking that the cat would be more likely to chase fleeing prey than take interest in them as they are. After a tense moment, the cat moves on, and they all relax. “It gets more horrifying every moment,” Barbara says ruefully.

Susan wonders if the people they’ve seen might be able to help them. Everybody is against this. Ian says that trying to communicate with them would be like listening to a record played at the wrong speed: they would sound like a squeak, and the regular-sized humans would sound like a low growl. Barbara says that even if they managed to communicate, they’d be taken away to be studied for science. And lastly, the Doctor reminds them that one of the people is a murderer. “We can’t expect sympathy and understanding from an insane or criminal mind.”

Suddenly, it goes dark again, just like what had happened when Ian and Susan were alone with the matchbox. They all try to run away; Susan and the Doctor make it out of harm’s way, but Barbara trips, injuring herself somehow. Ian has to support her, and they manage to take shelter inside Farrow’s briefcase.

The scene changes to show Forrester and a man in a white lab coat standing next to Farrow’s body and the briefcase. The man is Smithers, a scientist working on the DN6 project—Forrester’s partner. Forrester is explaining that Farrow was the one with the gun. “He pulled it out of his pocket and told me he was stealing the formula,” he says. “I struggled with him. The gun must have been turned into his body. It went off.”

Smithers turns Farrow’s body over, examining the fatal wound with a sigh. “I wouldn’t try telling that story to the police, if I were you,” he says, rising to his feet. “Oh, don’t be a fool. He’s been shot through the heart from some feet away. Even I can see that, and I’m no expert. No powder burns around the bullet hole.” Forrester notes that Smithers is rather detached about the situation, and Smithers continues, “What did you expect, hysterics? I’ve seen more death than you could imagine. People dying of starvation all over the world. What do you think I started on research for?…Destroying the last year’s work: that’s what [the implications of this are]. And if that seems callous, well alright, it is. Farrow was pushed onto me, and he was a nuisance and a fool. Always checking every minor detail.”

Smithers then scorns Farrow some more, decrying all the work, all the sixteen-hour days he put into this experiment. Forrester tries to sympathize with the scientist, but Smithers snaps, “You don’t know anything! All you care about how much money you can make. Why did you have to kill him? Couldn’t you have given him money, bought him off?”

Forrester assures Smithers that this turn of events doesn’t have to mean the experiment is over. “Farrow was going on a holiday,” he explains. “He has a boat. He was going to cross to France by himself in it. It’s anchored ten miles away…If the police were to find an overturned boat and a body out at sea somewhere…Don’t worry. You can leave it all to me.”

At this point, Forrester’s financial motivations for this subterfuge have been made abundantly clear. Now we get a bit of a clarifier for Smithers’s compliance: “The experiment must go through!” Smithers says. “It’s too important! Nothing else matters! Not if we can save people from dying of starvation. That’s what I care about, Forrester.” And on some level, I guess this makes sense. It just seems like Smithers being an accessory to murder for purely selfless reasons is a lot less realistic than Forrester’s selfish ones.

“Alright,” Forrester says, “we’ll move the body. As far as you’re concerned, Farrow left here to go to his boat. I’ll put his briefcase in the lab first.” He picks the briefcase off the ground, inadvertently taking Ian and Barbara along for the ride. He carries it inside the house, where he puts it on a table.

Now inside the laboratory, Ian and Barbara emerge from the briefcase, more than a bit shaken. Barbara is not limping as much as she was outside, but she says she wacked her knee pretty hard on a piece of metal inside the briefcase. With a wry smile, she tells Ian that the piece of metal was a paperclip. Though Barbara’s ankle isn’t as hurt as she had thought, she says she wouldn’t mind soaking it in water for a bit. She and Ian go off in search of some.

Out in the yard, Forrester and Smithers haul Farrow’s body off to a storeroom.

A little ways away, Susan and the Doctor shelter in a gutter channel at the base of a pipe coming from the house. Susan thinks the man that picked up the briefcase went into the house, and the Doctor suggests they use the pipe as a way inside. “If you go in there, you’ll see it’s all corroded, so there’s plenty of hand- and footholds. That chemical smell means it’s germ-free.” Susan says it might be too high for the Doctor to climb, but the Doctor insists that they have to try. “You must think of the other two…There’s only the two of us to help them.” I just want to point out that if the pipe has a vertical climb of 5 feet, this would be the equivalent of a regular-sized Doctor climbing a 340-foot rock face. Throughout the first season, he demonstrated a strength and resilience belied by his frail appearance, but this seems way beyond what is reasonable. Regardless, they begin to climb the pipe.

Back inside, Ian and Barbara discover that they have been placed on a lab table. Ian has found the gas tap for a Bunsen burner, but no water; they try a different direction, Barbara still limping slightly. A little later, they come upon a rack of test tubes, enormous from their perspective. Then Barbara discovers a pile of wheat seeds. Ian turns his back to the seeds as Barbara picks one up, shifting it between her hands. “It’s all covered in some sticky stuff, like toffee.” She puts it back on the pile; Ian does not see this transpire.

They take a seat on a pack of litmus papers, and Ian thinks over what they have seen. “I think it must explain those dead insects and things. They must be doing some experiments. Of course, it makes it all the more dangerous for us…Whatever killed those insects could easily kill us.”

Barbara’s face looks stricken. “The Doctor said something like that. I’d forgotten.”

Ian tells Barbara not to touch anything. “I mean, look at the way these seeds are coated. They’re obviously samples. Yes, I think they must be inventing a new insecticide, and they’ve sprayed these seeds with it.” Barbara borrows a handkerchief from Ian and scrubs at her hands.

With each new line of dialogue, Barbara becomes increasingly panicked. She says they must get find the others and get back to the ship, trying to come up with a way to get down from the table. “String would be too thick for us. What we really need is a reel of cotton.” With a hopeless sigh, she seems to have reached a breaking point, on the verge of tears. “It’s all so ridiculous, Ian.”

Ian takes Barbara by the shoulders and holds her close for a moment, trying to comfort her. “Barbara, we must concentrate on getting back. Just forget how absurd things are. Concentrate on getting back. Do you understand?” Barbara forces a smile and nods at him.

I love the dynamic this scene is setting up. Barbara may have been poisoned by insecticide, but for whatever reason, she doesn’t want to tell Ian. Perhaps its denial, or a desire to keep Ian from worrying, or maybe a touch of shame. Regardless, this is a very human reaction. In order to keep Ian in the dark, Barbara must then convince Ian that his comforting words have cheered her up. So she forces a smile, almost like a mother who is going through something difficult who puts on a brave face for her children. She might not be able to make it through on her own, but she will try to make it through for Ian.

Ian suggests they try to use paperclips from the briefcase to construct some sort of ladder. The prospect of an actual plan seems to cheer Barbara up a bit. “We might find something in the briefcase which would tell us more about that stuff. That insecticide or whatever it is.”

“Well, maybe,” Ian says, “but the other things are much more important.” Not to Barbara. As Ian moves offscreen toward the briefcase, we see Barbara frowning, rubbing at her hands.

At the briefcase, Ian manages to push the lock open after a few failed attempts. The clamp of the briefcase swings open. Meanwhile, Barbara is on the table, next to the briefcase. A fly lands on top of a cork right next to her. Seeing it, she goes still for a moment, then she passes out, falling in a dead faint. The fly flies off, perhaps at the sound of people entering the laboratory. Ian hears the commotion too; he carries Barbara offscreen.

Smithers enters the laboratory, closely followed by Forrester. Smithers resents that Forrester is breathing down his neck and that Forrester has roped him into being an accessory. “You knew perfectly well how I felt about DN6, how much I’d put into it, how much it meant to me. That’s why you took me out and showed me Farrow’s body, wasn’t it? You’d do anything to get what you want.”

Forrester remains emotionless throughout this scene. In fact, I can’t remember him expressing much emotion at all to this point. It’s unnerving, and authentically sociopathic. To Smithers’s last statement, he counters with, “Wouldn’t you? Aren’t you?” The camera pans over to a sink set in the lab table.

Meanwhile, Susan and the Doctor have finally made it to the other side of the pipe: the drain in the bottom of that sink. The Doctor is lying next to the drain, unable to go a step further without resting. I still say the climb was probably a feat beyond his physical capabilities, but at least the writers have him utterly exhausted by the end of it. Also, the way this scene is framed is extremely clever. The producers did not have enough studio space to craft the bottom and sides of a sink. Instead, the set consists of about a hundred square feet of sink basin, compete with a giant drain and stopper. The cameraman is pressed against the ceiling of the studio some twenty feet up, with the camera angled sharply down, nearly directly overhead of the two actors. With that angle and the establishing shot of the sink from the previous scene, the sides of the sink are heavily implied to the point where they don’t need to be explicitly shown. It’s a great way of saving money and time without sacrificing the integrity of the serial.

Back near the briefcase, Barbara is slowly coming around. She asks Ian about the fly, and Ian tells her it’s dead now. “It flew off…[and] landed on those seeds. It died instantly.” Barbara’s face hardens, and she tells Ian she wants to see it for herself; they walk over to the pile of seeds. “You can see the insecticide glistening on its legs,” Ian says. “Pretty lethal stuff. That fly must have died the moment it landed.”

Barbara cries out for Ian to stop talking, unable to bear the thought. Ian goes over to comfort her, and it seems that she is about to tell him about picking up the seed, when suddenly, they hear Susan’s voice calling out for them. Ian asks what Barbara was going to say to him, but Barbara says, “Oh, that’s not important now. Listen, if Susan’s found a way in, that means we can all get out.” Her spirits have brightened considerably. It’s like Barbara has conflated returning to the TARDIS with her own safety. In actuality, the TARDIS and the Doctor probably constitute her best shot at finding some sort of cure for the insecticide, even if she doesn’t have any clue what that might be. Still, her choice to keep the poisoning to herself is very reckless and very human.

Ian and Susan arrive at the edge of the sink, where they find the Doctor and Susan smiling up at them. Susan shouts for them to climb down the chain of drain plug and join them. Ian asks Barbara if her ankle is in good enough shape. “Yes,” she says, “I’ll make it somehow. It’ll be worth it to see them again.” Ian and Barbara begin their descent.

Outside, Smithers and Forrester have scrubbed Farrow’s blood off of the flagstones in the yard. They head for the lab to wash up.

The Doctor and his companions hear the low rumble of human speech and make themselves scarce. Ian and Barbara climb back up the chain and hide behind the gas tap, while the Doctor and Susan climb back into the drain.

Meanwhile, Forrester and Smithers have entered the lab, where Smithers notices the dead fly on the seeds coated with DN6. He is amazed by the efficacy of the insecticide, and he wonders how Farrow thought he could get away with lying about the effects of the compound. I thought this was odd—I didn’t recall anything about Forrester saying Farrow was going to lie about DN6. Checking back, he didn’t. All Forrester told Smithers was that Farrow wanted to steal the formula. It’s such a weird oversight.

Anyway, Forrester lets it slip that Farrow had written a report. Smithers takes some interest in this, and Forrester says, “It’s in his briefcase. It’ll have to go to his head of department, but with some slight alterations.”

Smithers hesitates before turning toward the laboratory sink, saying, “I don’t want to know about that.” He puts the plug in the drain, then turns on the tap, filling the basin with water. Washing his hands in the basin, he taps his fingers on the sink and pulls the plug out of the drain. As Barbara and Ian look on in horror, water starts flowing into the pipe. Credits roll.

I don’t think there has ever been an episode of any show where a man washing his hands in a sink and opening the drain works as a legitimate cliffhanger, and I find that hilarious.

Part 3 (Crisis)

“Quickly, Susan!” the Doctor urges. “Into the overflow pipe.” They step into the overflow pipe just in time. Water rushes past them, then ceases.

Barbara and Ian hear the sound of Forrester and Smithers leaving the room, and they rush back to the sink, worried that the Doctor and Susan have drowned. They climb down into the basin using the chain of the drain plug. Much to their relief, they find the Doctor and Susan and help them clamber out of the drain onto solid ground. “You can’t get rid of us as easy as that,” the Doctor says with a pleased smile.

Meanwhile, in another room of the house, Forrester picks up a telephone to call Farrow’s department. Smithers is worried that Forrester will give them away, sure that Farrow’s coworkers will know that it isn’t Farrow’s voice. Forrester assures him that he knows what he is doing, and he wraps the transmitter in a few layers of cloth to muffle his voice. He dials the operator, who puts him through to Farrow’s Ministry. For those like me who were unaware, back in the day, the operator used to stay on the line during the phone call, hearing the entire conversation. Forrester is able to fool Farrow’s boss, who passes off the discrepancy as being a bad phone line. However, the operator is more skeptical. “Doesn’t sound like Mr. Farrow at all,” she says to a policeman standing next to her in the switchboard room.

In the lab, the Doctor and his companions have climbed out of the sink, and they discover a notebook left behind by one of the men that wasn’t there before. Susan looks at the writing and realizes it’s a scientific formula. Barbara makes a passing remark about finding a cure for the insecticide, and Ian dismisses this. “A cure?” he asks. “What’s the good of that?” At this point, Barbara’s silence is really beginning to threaten the prospect of her surviving this serial.

Susan adds, “Ian’s right, Barbara. You only need a cure if someone’s infected. What we’ve got to do is stop it being produced.” Unfortunately, the writing is so big that they can’t see it properly. The Doctor pulls out a notebook of his own and begins to copy the diagram at a size they can understand.

A short time later, the Doctor’s miniature formula is complete, and the Doctor has made a shocking discovery. “The inventor has made the insecticide everlasting,” he says.

When Barbara asks about human beings, the Doctor says that in sufficient enough quantities, the insecticide will even kill humans. “Yes,” Barbara says, “if they drink and eat infected food and water.” There is a note of denial in her tone. It is clear, now, that denial was what was motivating her silence; as long as she can cling to the idea that the insecticide cannot pass through the skin, she figures it doesn’t matter if she touched it.

The Doctor puts an end to that idea: “Yes, or even coming into contact with it.”

“Well, then why do we go on sitting here?” Barbara snaps, taking a step away from the others. Susan notices her odd behavior and asks if she is alright. Barbara plays it off, saying she feels a bit giddy. “I think I might be hungry,” she says.

The Doctor says that they cannot eat anything, even if they find food—anything could be contaminated. He also says he may have seen a solution to stopping the production of the insecticide: a telephone.

At the telephone, they find a jumble of wires which they can use to climb up on top of the base, but finding a way to get the phone off the hook is a problem. They are just too small to lift it. Luckily, Barbara finds a few cork test tube stoppers, and Susan suggests they can lift the handset off the hook and shove the cork under the receiver.

After lifting the cork, Barbara doesn’t look too good. Ian asks if she is alright, and she says, “I’m fine. I told you; I haven’t eaten for ages. I think that’s what it must be. Don’t make a fuss.” At this point, I don’t think it makes any sense for Barbara to keep her poisoning a secret. Denial is one thing, but after the Doctor told her it can be absorbed through the skin, maintaining her silence is stupid in a way that doesn’t mesh with her character.

Once the corks have been lifted up on top of the telephone’s base, they all climb up to put their plan into motion. The Doctor has also noticed Barbara’s sudden weakness, and he wonders if they can make due without her. Barbara insists on helping, and though she is visibly unsteady, she aids Ian and the Doctor in heaving the headset a half-inch off the hook so Susan can slide the cork underneath the transmitter. Repeating the process with the receiver, they have successfully placed a phone call.

At the operator’s switchboard, the operator—who we learn is named Hilda—tells the policeman in the room, “The old farmhouse again.” She plugs the wire into the correct socket. “Hello? What number do you want?”

The scene cuts back to the telephone, where the Doctor, Ian, and Susan are shouting in unison into the transmitter: “Can! You! Hear! Us!” Barbara, listening at the receiver, only hears a deep growl. The three at the transmitter continue, “Put! Us! Through! To! Police!” Barbara hears nothing from the other end of the line. Suddenly, her strength fails, and she collapses to her hands and knees.

Ian, Susan, and the Doctor find her on the ground, clutching the handkerchief she borrowed from Ian earlier—the handkerchief coated in the insecticide from the seeds. Ian goes to take it, but Barbara snatches it away from him, acting crazed. “You mustn’t touch it! No one must touch…” Her voice trails off as she passes out.

Carefully lifting the handkerchief with his pen, the Doctor notes the distinctive aroma of the insecticide, then sees traces of the compound on Barbara’s hands. Ian tells him that she had asked for the handkerchief by that pile of poisoned wheat seeds.

Dazed, Barbara opens her eyes and tries to sit up. “The insecticide,” she says. “Is that why I feel like this?” The Doctor says yes, and Susan takes care of Barbara while the Doctor and Ian go off to the side to talk. Ian asks if there is anything they can do for her. “It’s urgent that we get her back to her normal size,” the Doctor says. “At the moment, her protective cells are too small to cope with the molecules of poison in her bloodstream. But if we can [restore her to her proper size], that dosage of insecticide will be seventy times less dangerous. Practically nothing at all.” They must return to the TARDIS.

Barbara is against this—at least, in the short term. Though she only recently recovered from fainting, she seems to have regained a good measure of her strength. She insists that they must find a way to stop Forrester and Smithers from sending the insecticide into full-scale production. The Doctor and Susan agree with her, much to Ian’s dismay. But it’s decided; they will keep trying.

Elsewhere in the house, Forrester grabs a phone but finds it inoperable. Suspecting there is another phone off the hook somewhere, he asks Smithers where he can find one. Smithers says there is one in the lab next to the sink. Smithers leaves, saying he’ll go and check on it. “I want to have a look at Farrow’s notes,” he adds. Forrester is suddenly suspicious of the man. The last thing he wants is for Smithers to discover the real reason for his dispute with Farrow. He checks to make sure there is a bullet in his pistol and follows after Smithers.

Back with the others, the Doctor says they should start a fire. If they manage to cause a blaze big enough, the authorities should find Farrow’s dead body. Ian points out the gas tap of the Bunsen burner, but before they can do anything else, they hear the sound of Forrester and Smithers returning and hide behind a water tank.

Standing next to the lab table, Forrester discovers the corks under the handset and immediately suspects some machination by Smithers. He replaces the phone and turns to Smithers, demanding, “Why did you put these under the phone to stop me from using it?” Smithers doesn’t answer, preoccupied by some DN6 that he has gotten on his fingers. His eyes widen; it seems he has come to some realization, but before he can explain it to Forrester, the phone rings.

Hilda, the operator, listens on the other end of the line, with the policeman also pressing his ear to the headset. She gets Forrester to say that he isn’t Farrow, then tells him that she has a call for Farrow. Forrester says he will get go him—he wraps the cloth around the phone again, then speaks into the transmitter as if he is Farrow. “You see?” Hilda says to the policeman. “It’s the same man.” Hilda ends the call. The policeman tells her that perhaps he should pay the farmhouse a visit.

Out in the yard, Smithers works at the stalk of a plant with a spade or knife of some kind. Seeing something he doesn’t like, a grave look comes across his face, as if whatever realization he had had in the lab has been confirmed.

In the lab, Forrester has left to find Smithers. Having emerged from their hiding place, the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan heave on the tap of the Bunsen burner, moving it to the point just before it expels the gas. Meanwhile, Ian is wrestling with a match twice as long as he is tall. Susan joins him, and they prepare to run with it toward the side of the matchbox like a battering ram. Positioned in front of the Bunsen burner is a spray can, which the Doctor says should result in a sizeable explosion. “Highly flammable” is written on the side.

I really like this sequence. There’s just something really endearing about the miniaturized protagonists struggling to affect change in a giant world. Plus, the quick cuts from the Bunsen burner to the matchbox back to the Bunsen burner really add to the sense that the episode is picking up speed. This compliments the imminent arrival of the policeman and the threat Forrester poses to Smithers with his pistol. Everything feels like it’s tumbling toward a conclusion in a very satisfying way.

In the yard, Smithers is still kneeling in a patch of soil, digging at the roots of the plant. Suddenly, his face is overcome with worry. “It’s killed everything. Everything!” Behind him, Forrester watches—he calls out to Smithers, and the man turns.

Back in the lab, it takes Ian and Susan a few tries, but they manage to get the match lit. There’s a great piece of dialogue where, after the Doctor criticizes their form, Ian says, “Doctor, have you ever tried to lift one of these things?” They take the lit match over to the Bunsen burner and throw the tap the rest of the way on, creating a jet of flame aimed at the spray can.

Meanwhile, Forrester has told Smithers the truth of what happened with Farrow. “And then he told me he couldn’t authorize DN6,” he says. “I had too much money sunk into it. I had to kill him. Once I’d started, I had to see it through. All the way.” The camera pans down, revealing that Forrester has a gun pointed at Smithers.

In the lab, the Doctor and his companions take shelter behind the tap of the sink.

With a gun pressed to Smithers’s back, Forrester forces the scientist into the lab. Smithers tries to reason with him, saying that DN6 is more deadly than radiation, but Forrester is relentless, telling him to get Farrow’s briefcase. That’s when they notice the fire. As Forrester turns toward the flame, the can explodes, and he recoils, blinded. Smithers uses the opportunity to take Forrester’s gun. At that moment, the policeman arrives and takes the pistol from Smithers’s hands. Both the men are taken for questioning. Just before the end of the scene, we see Smithers looking quizzically at the lab table, eyeing the exploded can, burnt match, and lit tap.

“It worked!” the Doctor says gleefully. “Come on, all of you. Back to the ship.” He uses his coat to pick up one of the tainted seeds, and they all make for the sink.

Next, we see the main characters back in the TARDIS. Barbara is passed out in a chair; the arduous return journey took what remained of her strength. Ian takes the seed from the Doctor—roughly the size of his torso—and places it on a table. The Doctor throws some levers and the TARDIS dematerializes. Right in front of their eyes, they watch as the seed shrinks back down to its normal size, confirming that they are getting larger. Now, this works really well as a visual gag, but I have to nitpick a little. When the TARDIS shrunk, everything inside of it remained the same size relative to the TARDIS. When it became big again, why was the seed an exception? I can’t knock it too much, though; it was a satisfying visual.

Right on cue, Barbara wakes up. It seems the Doctor was right. Restoring their size has reduced the amount of insecticide in Barbara’s bloodstream to the point where it is negligible. Barbara asks what happened at the laboratory, saying her memory is a little fuzzy. “I’m happy to say our plan worked,” says the Doctor. “We didn’t have to fire the laboratory, but we did attract attention.” With everything back to normal, Barbara rejoices, relieved to have escaped with her life.

As the rest go off to clean themselves up, the Doctor monitors the console, flipping some switches. The TARDIS begins to materialize, and the camera pans to the broken scanner. Credits roll.

Takeaways

This was an incredibly solid serial, and so much of its success is a direct result of the way it was put together. The main plot of Planet of Giants had nothing to do with the Doctor and his companions, at least, not at first. It was the DN6 project and Forrester’s conspiracy to keep it going. Though the Doctor and his companions played a pivotal role in the resolution of the story, they were secondary to the plot until halfway through the final episode. In a way, the writers foregrounded the B Plot and backgrounded the A Plot, and it felt very fresh.

The serial was also very interesting in how it operated at two distinct levels: the macro and the micro. This dynamic meant that the antagonist, Forrester, never discovered the protagonists working to thwart his plans. Likewise, the protagonists never knew Forrester’s ultimate motivations. Throughout the serial, it was very difficult for any interaction to occur across the barrier between the macro and the micro, as we saw on multiple occasions. This created some unique problems for the writers: they had to create a scenario that was feasible for miniaturized humans, and they had to bring in additional characters in Farrow and Smithers to help hit some plot beats in the absence of the protagonists. The approach taken to solve these problems was, in my opinion, nothing short of masterful.

I mentioned in Part 1 how Planet of Giants gives us our first look at a wealthy vs humanity dynamic that we will see many times throughout the series. Doctor Who will almost always use this dynamic as an opportunity to critique how the interests of the wealthy can conflict with the interests of the common man, and I described what I would like to see out of such a critique. To keep it brief, although I would prefer a more systemic critique to the individualistic framing of this serial, I generally see the critique overall as a net positive. Although Planet of Giants doesn’t quite portray the real-world dangers of Forrester’s ideology, it didn’t take anything away from my enjoyment of the serial.

The biggest problems I have with the serial have nothing to do with the serial itself but with its placement within the series. I don’t think it functions well as a season premier for two reasons. First, it doesn’t accurately reflect the contents of the rest of the show, which is incredibly important for a fledgling series. If the goal is to give new viewers a good idea of what they should expect going forward, Planet of Giants does not achieve it. For the series as a whole, this serial is about as atypical as it gets. Second, the tone of the serial is way too light for how I would typically like to see a season open. I understand that we are in the age of streaming now, and being able to binge has blurred the lines between where one season ends and the next begins. In that sense, this serial provides a welcome bit of levity between the brooding The Reign of Terror and the melancholic The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But in the sense that the structure of seasons still matters at all, it is very important to lead with something that hits a little harder. Though, I will say that it will soon be made abundantly clear why Planet of Giants could not be placed anywhere else in Season 2. And as far as ratings go, the fact that I think this serial is a poor premier does not factor in to how I rate the serial—I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Looking forward, I know the next serial, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, has a very emotional ending, one that I have revisited a few times since my original viewing. Despite that, I don’t really remember much of the rest of the serial, and I’m excited to see if it does the ending justice. If you haven’t seen it, I’m sure you can take a stab at the subject matter based on the title alone. It takes place a few centuries in the future, so it should help answer the question of whether or not future settings are a blind spot for the early writers. I’d love to see them break the prevailing trend.

Rating: 9.6/10

I’m not sure if my standards are too low or if the series is frontloaded with a lot of quality serials, but I’ve been handing out a bunch of ratings above 5. I may have to recalibrate how I rate these things after I finish Season 2 if this keeps up.

Chapter Text

2.2 – The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Part 1 (World’s End)

For the first time in the series, the producers have opted to leave the name of the serial out of the opening credits. The return of Doctor Who’s most distinguished antagonists is meant to catch the audience by surprise.

The serial opens on a rundown riverfront scene beneath a bridge, and a man that staggers into frame. He wears some sort of metal helmet and a thick metal collar or necklace of some sort, and his clothes have seen much better days. Placed prominently on a wall behind the man is a sign that reads: “Emergency Regulations: It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river.” Wherever this is meant to be, it is clear that all is not well.

The man staggers toward the waterfront, ripping the metal collar away from his throat with a grunt. He moves down a flight of concrete stairs as if compelled, falling face first into the river. His motionless body drifts slowly downstream. Then, the scene cuts back to the underside of the bridge and the forbidding sign to display a late title card that says simply, “World’s End.”

This is a great example of what is known as a cold open, the first we’ve seen since the very first episode of An Unearthly Child, the beginning of the series. Also known as a teaser sequence, a cold open is when an episode of television includes a snippet of the story before the title sequence or the opening credits are shown. In the modern series, this generally manifests as a few scenes before the opening credits, whereas in Classic Who, cold opens are generally nothing more than a late title card. It’s a way for the writers to set the tone of the serial before giving the audience any additional information about what they are watching. In Part 1 of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, a cold open is used to show a man in distress either committing suicide or being compelled in some way by the strange metal gear to take his own life. It’s a heavy scene which is used to lend its weight to the words “World’s End.” While not as dramatic as they are in the modern series, the cold opens in Classic Who function as a subtle but effective tool for drawing the viewer into an episode and setting the appropriate mood.

The title card fades just as the TARDIS materializes beneath the bridge, its doors facing away from the emergency poster. Inside, the Doctor, Ian, Susan, and Barbara discuss where they may have landed. Pointing to the scanner, the Doctor says the moving water may indicate a river. The scanner was broken in the last serial, and they should have had no time to repair it—this is a continuity error. When Susan checks the instruments on the console, she tells the others that it is an Earth reading. The Doctor suggests he may have finally landed them in London, and Ian and Barbara are eager to go outside to see if they are back home.

Outside, Ian and Barbara are excited to discover that yes, they have in fact landed in London. The scene cuts to an establishing shot of a warehouse on the riverfront, then back to the four protagonists gazing out across the water. After a season filmed entirely indoors—aside from the few brief shots of the Doctor in the countryside in The Reign of Terror—it is such a pleasure to see something filmed on location. The whole serial features extensive location work, with scenes often partially or entirely filmed outside the studio. I wish the series’ budget allowed for more of this, because it gives the serial a life-sized feel unlike any other to this point.

The location work only lasts for a few lines of dialogue. As the characters turn away from the river, they are suddenly in a recreation of the same location inside the studio. The transition is practically seamless, with the editors maintaining a constant sound of moving water to disguise the switch, though there is an audible acoustic change when the characters speak. Recreating locations in controlled environments was a common practice at the time, especially when the scenes required practical effects.

As they begin to explore the riverbank, the Doctor seems to have misgivings about when they have landed. Ian says, “A year or two either way doesn’t make much difference to us, you know.” Which is an awfully cavalier way to look at things, but maybe it was more common to just disappear for an inordinate amount of time back then, I don’t know. Regardless, we start to see signs of something being not quite right. Ian calls out, but there is no response, not even the sound of distant people or traffic. The waterfront is a dilapidated mess, with trash and decay everywhere. Susan climbs up a wall, but when she peeks over, there is still no sign of life.

Suddenly, something gives beneath Susan’s feet and she tumbles to the ground, injuring her ankle. Then, there is the sound of more things shifting and falling, as there are several quick cuts between the characters scrambling away from the bridge and shaky shots of the underside of the bridge itself. When the chaos settles, part of the bridge above them has collapsed, and there is a large steel beam blocking the door of the TARDIS. It doesn’t look like much—it’s clearly a large lattice of wood that has been painted to resemble steel that doesn’t give the appearance of having any sort of weight to it—but the Doctor calls it a girder, so it’s a girder.

The Doctor and his companions are now trapped in an eerily silent London at an undisclosed point in time. I mentioned in the introduction that the TARDIS being broken or inaccessible is an easy way for the writers to restrict the movement of the protagonists, though I also say it often comes across as unsatisfying and contrived. I knew it happened a lot, but this is the fifth time in ten serials—way more than I remembered. So in addition to companions wandering off and the Doctor’s romances, I will also be keeping track of times where the TARDIS is broken, missing, or inaccessible to the main characters.

To clarify, this does not include instances where the main cast ventures too far away from the TARDIS to make any use of it, such as in The Reign of Terror. I also will not include instances where an antagonist captures or sabotages the TARDIS, such as in the The Keys of Marinus or The Sensorites. So, without further ado, here are all the times the TARDIS has been out-of-commission.

TARDIS Out-of-Commission #1: The Doctor loses the fluid link of the TARDIS in Season 1, Serial 2 – The Daleks. The original act of the Doctor removing the fluid link in an act of subterfuge would not fit with the rest of this list, but accidentally leaving the fluid link in the Dalek city definitely does. It prevents the Doctor and the rest from simply leaving Skaro in Part 4.

TARDIS Out-of-Commission #2: The TARDIS’s fast return switch becomes stuck in Season 1, Serial 3 – The Edge of Destruction. This one is a bit odd because the entire serial takes place within the TARDIS. I think it qualifies for the list, but I could also make an argument for why it wouldn’t.

TARDIS Out-of-Commission #3: A blown circuit drains all power from the TARDIS in Season 1, Serial 4 – Marco Polo. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Although Marco Polo would go on to capture the ship, none of the events of the serial would have happened if not for this one circuit going bad.

TARDIS Out-of-Commission #4: The TARDIS is stuck in an Aztec temple in Season 1, Serial 6 – The Aztecs. This is the first instance of the TARDIS getting stuck somewhere, and of all of the entries on this list, this feels the least contrived. The protagonists being stuck on the exterior of a tomb meant to stymie thieves is much more natural than some bit of machinery conveniently failing or a bridge choosing the most inopportune time to collapse.

And finally, we have TARDIS Out-of-Commission #5: A bridge in London collapses to block the TARDIS door in Season 2, Serial 2 – The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

After investigating the collapse and finding the TARDIS cut off, Ian and the Doctor discuss their options. Ian suggests looking inside the nearby warehouse for a crowbar, but the Doctor says they need a cutting torch. Before they go off to see once and for all if Ian and Barbara have been returned to their own time, Ian says that they need to make sure they can reenter the ship. The Doctor agrees with him saying, “I have a feeling, or call it intuition if you like. I don’t believe we’re anywhere near your time, the 1960s…Ask yourself: here we are, standing by the Thames, and we’ve been here quite a while. How long, quarter of an hour? Twenty minutes?…What have we heard? Precisely nothing. No sound of birdsong, no voices, no sound of shipping, and not even the chimes of old Big Ben. It’s uncanny.”

The two men return to Barbara and Susan, the latter of which cannot put weight on her ankle. The Doctor is snippy about what happened with the bridge, seeming to blame Susan for their predicament. Susan argues that she didn’t mean to pull the bridge down, and I’d like to add that if a 100-pound girl can pull down a bridge by climbing on a wall, that bridge was bound to fall in an hour or two anyway. Ian and the Doctor tell the women that they are going to see what they can find in the warehouse. “We shall be as quick as we can,” the Doctor says, adding to Susan, “And you bathe that ankle. What you need is a jolly good smacked bottom!” The men leave, and Barbara goes to wet her handkerchief in the river.

The music turns very ominous, with droning dissonant synths adding a menace as the scene changes to on-location shots of a run down warehouse. Walls seem to be crumbling, and an unmoored chain hoist dangles in the wind. The Doctor and Ian climb an iron staircase and enter the building. “Hello there!” Ian calls out. Again, I can’t stress enough how wonderful it is to see shots of actual buildings, even if the interior is back inside the studio. It makes the world feel so much bigger.

Meanwhile, Barbara is headed back toward Susan with a wet handkerchief when she notices the poster which reads: “Emergency Regulations: It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river.” When she returns to Susan, she wraps Susan’s ankle with the handkerchief and tells her about the sign, adding, “You know, we’re not in our time in London…I know London, and it isn’t like this. The river’s too quiet, and there’s no sound of traffic.”

“Well, off we go again,” Susan says, a bit too heartily for Barbara’s liking. Barbara grimaces, and Susan quickly adds, “I’m sorry, Barbara. Is it selfish to want us all to stay together?”

“Of course not,” Barbara says kindly.

“Things have to stay as they are, don’t they,” Susan says. “Can’t change.” Keep this line in mind for the rest of the serial.

“I suppose so,” Barbara answers. Barbara thinks the handkerchief may not be wet enough for Susan’s ankle, and she goes to dip it back in the Thames.

Back inside the warehouse, Ian and the Doctor slowly make their way through dust-clogged rooms full of rotting crates and refuse. Unbeknownst to them, a man with short dark hair watches them through a hole in the wall. Through a window, Ian can see Battersea Power Station across the Thames, though two of its smokestacks have collapsed. The building clearly hasn’t been operated in years, and Ian suggests that the city must have gone over to nuclear power. In a desk, the Doctor finds a daily calendar and says, “At least we know the century, dear boy. Look.” A close shot of the calendar shows that the year is 2164—exactly two centuries past Ian and Barbara’s time.

Throughout this sequence, the unsettling synths continue to build tension. I haven’t talked about the music much, because at this point in the series, the producers rely almost completely on stock sounds and music. However, there have been a few moments—this one included—where the music they chose really serves to heighten the mood of the scene.

Also, something I find really endearing about Classic Who is how incredibly dated most of its portrayal of the future is. I get that we can only ever proselytize the future based on the trajectory of the present day, but seeing characters encounter daily flip calendars in the 22nd century and watching them wrap a sprained ankle with a wet cloth as if that constitutes good medicine is so funny to me. It’s sort of like some of the lackluster creature design that the classic series is famous for, in the sense that unless it’s as bad as something like the Sensorites, it’s hard to be mad at it.

At the waterfront, Barbara is soaking her handkerchief again when she notices the body of the man from earlier float to the surface—the one with the odd metal helmet. She recoils, turning and calling for Susan as the sound of distant gunfire rings out across the landscape. But Susan isn’t there; instead, she comes face-to-face with another man, this one without a metal helmet. He is shorter than Barbara, a different man than the one spying on the Doctor and Ian in the warehouse, with ratty clothes and a face smeared with dirt and grime. “Do you want to get killed?” he demands, not as if he is threatening her, but as if she is in danger just by being there by the river. Barbara asks what he has done with Susan, and the man answers, “You mean the girl? Tyler’s got her. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. Quick, follow me!” The man leads her away.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are snooping through the warehouse when they knock over a large cardboard box. It bursts open, and another man with a metal helmet falls out, dead. The Doctor remarks at the metal helmet, supposing that it is some sort of third ear meant to pick up radio transmissions. Ian pulls a tool out of the man’s belt, discovering that it is a whip and wondering what it could be for. “Well,” says the Doctor, “whatever it is, I wouldn’t like to meet one of these fellows.”

They hear a creaking sound, possibly a distant door or floorboard, and go still, turning toward the noise. When they hear nothing else, they turn back to the body, and the Doctor discovers a knife sticking out of the man’s back. “He was murdered,” he says gravely. Suddenly, the creaking happens again, and, thinking he may have a bead on it, Ian hurries out of the room toward the noise, the Doctor on his heels. He moves through a few cluttered rooms, picking his way through the rubble of a partially collapsed ceiling. Then he kicks open a door, discovering that it opens on empty space only after he takes a step out onto nothing. He falls but manages to catch himself on an iron beam; the Doctor hauls him back into the building. Thinking whoever had made the noise would be long gone by now, they leave the warehouse. After they are gone, the same man who had been spying on them earlier peaks out from behind a small drum.

The scene briefly changes to show a man—presumably Tyler—carrying Susan somewhere, but they are only on screen for about a second. Right after this, we see Barbara following the other man across a balcony of some kind, while Tyler passes by on the ground below with Susan. It’s filmed on location at a distance, and it doesn’t read very clearly—I had to pause the episode a few times just to make out that the human-shaped blob running on the ground was Tyler and Susan. I didn’t catch that on my first watch-through. Even knowing that now, Tyler is moving in the opposite direction as Barbara and the man, and it is not clear at all that they are meant to be headed for the same destination.

Despite starting off on shaky footing, the sequence then shows some pretty stellar shots of the man leading a hesitant Barbara across a run-down, deserted London, pausing at intervals to peek around corners or giving hand signs to Barbara telling her to wait. Barbara appears uncertain, torn between her distrust of this stranger and worry over losing him as he gallivants though buildings. Everything is overgrown and unkempt; clearly something has happened to make 2160s London an unfit place to live. There is a shot of Tyler carrying Susan down some stairs into an abandoned subway station. Toward the end of the sequence, Barbara actually does lose her guide. She tries to open a gate, and a hand grips her wrist. Though we cannot see whose hand it is, Barbara seems relieved.

Back by the warehouse, there is a loud whirring noise, and Ian and the Doctor look up at the sky. A flying saucer passes above the power station.

Meanwhile, Barbara has caught up to Tyler and Susan, and they walk through an abandoned station in the London Underground. The hand probably belonged to Tyler, as the man who was her guide is nowhere to be found. Again, this is another detail which did not read well at all: in my first watch-through, I didn’t catch that Barbara’s original guide had disappeared. Susan asks Tyler about the Doctor and Ian, and Tyler says, “We’ll do the best we can,” though he doesn’t seem too concerned about their prospects. Susan tries to argue, but Tyler says there is no time for talk, insisting they continue on.

Back at the TARDIS, Ian is frustrated with Susan and Barbara, thinking that they have wandered off. The Doctor reminds him of the gunfire, and Ian admits they could be hiding somewhere. They sit down to wait for them.

In the Underground, Tyler puts Susan down and presses on a metal panel. A duct of some kind shifts, revealing a small hole: a hidden entrance. A man exits the hole addressing Tyler, the same man from the warehouse with Ian and the Doctor. His name is David, though this isn’t revealed until about a minute into the scene. This is a particularly annoying pet peeve of mine. Writers, if you want the audience to know who your characters are, give them a name in the first two or three lines of dialogue. I don’t care how clunky it is; get it done. It’s better than the alternative, which is a viewer scratching their head and wondering, Who is that guy again?

David notices that Tyler is not alone, and his guard instantly goes up. Tyler explains that he found them by the river. “Open targets,” he scoffs. Barbara interjects that they didn’t know they shouldn’t be there, and Tyler relents, saying, “I suppose you didn’t, but you know now.” Now that we can see David a little more clearly, he appears to be a young man, perhaps not much older than Susan. He is taller than Tyler, and his mannerisms are a good deal less cynical than his counterpart’s.

David asks if they can cook, to which Barbara answers yes. “Good,” he says, “we need some cooks.” It seems Barbara and Susan have been taken to an underground shelter or compound of some kind. David tells Tyler that he “had a run-in with one of the Robomen,” probably referring to the men with the metal helmets. “He was waiting for me,” he says urgently. “That means we’ll have to change the storehouse.” Tyler tells him that Susan and Barbara were asking about friends of theirs down by the storehouse and asks David if he has just come from there. David says he has, and he tells the women that he did see two men but mistook them for enemies.

Before he can say another word, a man in a wheelchair enters named Dortmun. He looks to be about 30, with a stern bearing and build which suggests he has only recently come to need his wheelchair. His legs are heavily bandaged. From the moment he enters the scene, he begins barking out questions, and the other men defer to him—it is obvious Dortmun is the man in charge.

Tyler tells Dortmun, “They’ve landed a saucer at the heliport.” Who they might be is left intentionally vague.

Dortmun takes the news in stride, saying, “Ah, this time, we’ll be ready for them.” Tyler tries to tell Dortmun that he shouldn’t be outside the shelter in his condition, and Dortmun is belligerent in his reply. “I’m as active as anybody else,” he snaps. I get the sense that Dortmun resents the wheelchair and does whatever he can to prove he can handle anything in spite of his confinement. Dortmun then turns his attention on the two women, glad for two more pairs of hands.

David tells Dortmun that Barbara can cook, then turns to Susan and asks her what she can do. “I eat,” she spits, probably frustrated at being herded away and kept in the dark about what is going on. Once he learns about Ian and the Doctor, Dortmun sends David out to fetch them, excited by the prospect of growing their numbers even more. Dortmun tells David to return as quickly as he can, saying he plans on going over the attack plans as soon as he gets back. “What attack plans?” Susan tries to ask, but no one answers her. Tyler scoops her up again, and everyone but Dortmun retreats into the shelter. Dortmun presses the panel which closes the hidden entrance, remaining outside, on watch.

Back at the TARDIS, Ian has discovered the ominous poster and calls the Doctor over to see it. The Doctor mocks it, saying, “A stupid place to put a poster. Right under a bridge where nobody can read or see it.”

“I don’t know,” Ian counters. “If you have a body to get rid of, I should think it’s a very good place to come to.” The Doctor suggests that that would be very close to murder. Ian muses, half to himself, “Bring out your dead.” Then he says, “Plague?”

David has arrived at the warehouse, and at first he is happy to see the Doctor and Ian on the riverbank below. But as he watches from a safe vantage point, several Robomen patrol the docks nearby. They move robotically, at about half the speed of a normal person’s gait, directly toward the two men.

Oblivious to this, Ian and the Doctor ponder the situation, with Ian pointing out that the flying saucer from earlier must have landed somewhere in the direction of Sloane Square, across the river. The Doctor is more worried about the implications of a plague, fretting over whether or not Susan or Barbara could have drank or touched the river water and if it is contaminated. Realizing that the situation is more dire than they had originally thought, the Doctor suggests they split up to go looking for the two women rather than wait for them.

At that moment, they turn to find two Robomen standing nearby, watching them. They try to run away, but another Roboman appears to flank them. All of their escape routes are cut off. “What do you want?” Ian demands.

“Stop,” they utter in unison, a deadpan monotone. Their faces are just as expressionless, though they all slowly raise their whips to give their words the menace absent from their tones. Ian and the Doctor try to escape to the river, thinking they can swim away, but as they turn toward the water, they see a Dalek slowly emerging from the depths, heading straight for them. Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Daleks)

At the sight of the Dalek, Ian and the Doctor are stunned. The Doctor tries to play coy with the Daleks, hinting at resistance and saying that the humans will not accept the Daleks on their planet. It is unclear what his goal is, but he appears to be riling the Dalek up for some reason. The Dalek pays little mind to the Doctor’s comments, and in the same distorted monotone from Season 1, it says, “We have already conquered the Earth.” With that, it orders the Robomen to take Ian and the Doctor away.

One thing I want to call attention to at this point is that it’s hard for me to take the Robomen seriously as a threat. They walk slowly, talk slowly, raise their whips slowly…all of which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. An enemy can evoke fear without being prototypically strong and fast physical specimens. But in order for the audience to fear an enemy, the showrunners need to make it clear through the enemy’s actions that they warrant that fear. That’s why there is often a fairly meaningless death early on in an action or adventure movie—to demonstrate the risks to both the surviving characters and the audience. With Robomen, it seems like the writers did as much as they could to have them move and sound like Daleks, but they didn’t give much thought to making them act like real enemies. Sure, they gave the Robomen whips, but the rest of their demeanor makes it hard to believe that they can do real damage to the protagonists. Until the Robomen actually use their weapons, the audience will always be more inclined to judge based on what they can see, and what we see is a bunch of lumbering halfwits.

Back in the Underground hideaway—which I will call rebel headquarters from now on—Barbara, Susan, and a room full of rebels listen to a radio broadcast of a pronouncement from Dalek central control: “Survivors of London: the Daleks are the masters of Earth. Surrender now, and you will live. Those wishing to surrender must stand in the middle of the street and obey orders received.”

Dortmun laughs off this directive, as do the fifteen-or-so other rebels milling about the room. At the conclusion of the broadcast, a few of the rebels leave, presumably to go do various tasks. Dortmun tells Jenny to go and get Susan and Barbara oriented with the base while he pulls Tyler into his private room to discuss something. Jenny goes over to Susan and takes her foot, manipulating it in a circle to test her ankle. Susan cries out, but nothing is broken. Then Jenny points them in the direction of the chow line and tells them to sign their names down for work detail.

In Dortmun’s room, he and Tyler argue over what the rebels’ next move should be. Dortmun wants to attack, but Tyler says they could only assemble twenty men at most. Dortmun assures Tyler that that would be plenty, showing off his new invention: a bomb that can penetrate Dalek armor. Tyler asks if it has been tested yet, and Dortmun scoffs at this, saying, “Tested? Don’t be a fool. It doesn’t need testing. It’s all there in my formula. It’s perfect. I tell you; this bomb will destroy the Daleks. I know it will work.” I don’t think it’s possible for the writers to telegraph to the audience any harder that this bomb ain’t working.

David returns to rebel headquarters and reports directly to Dortmun, telling him that he saw Ian and the Doctor at the warehouse but couldn’t to anything to prevent them from being taken away. “From the direction they went, I think the Daleks have taken them to the saucer they landed at the heliport in Chelsea.” He goes to tell Susan and Barbara the bad news.

Next, the scene cuts to that very place, revealing abound ten Daleks on the heliport outside the closed door of the Dalek flying saucer. As the Doctor and Ian are herded onto the scene by Robomen, a ramp descends and the door to the saucer opens. “Doctor, I don’t understand this at all,” Ian says. “We saw the Daleks destroyed on Skaro. We were there.”

The Doctor responds, “My dear boy, what we saw in Skaro was a million years ahead of us in the future. What we’re seeing now is about the middle history of the Daleks.” Just at face value, this seems inconsistent with the history of the Daleks that is established later in the series. The predecessors to the Daleks, the Kaleds, fought the Thals on Skaro for dominion of the planet. The Kaleds won, but only because their lead scientist, Davros, used genetically altered Kaleds that he called Daleks. Under the command of Davros, the Daleks turned against the Kaleds, beginning their genocidal jaunt across the cosmos. At some point, the Daleks learned to utilize time travel, eventually giving them the ability to wage war against one of the universe’s most powerful civilizations: the Time Lords of Gallifrey.

To me, the Daleks we see in Season 1 are an anomaly in the series. It’s not really clear at what point in their species’ timeline The Daleks is supposed to occur. Back in that serial, we were told that it was a few centuries after a war between the Daleks and the Thals. There was no mention of the Kaleds. After all, how could there be? They hadn’t been conceptualized yet. So, rather than try to wedge The Daleks into a framework where everything would make sense chronologically, I think it is better to disregard how exactly the serial is supposed to fit into the show’s canon and wait to see if it is explained better later on in the series. I could look for an explanation online, but I’d rather see how the series tries to adjust to these inconsistencies. And rather than thinking of The Dalek Invasion of Earth as being some vague middle point on the Dalek timeline, I think it is better to think of it as one of a long line of wars waged throughout time and space by a civilization that can travel in four dimensions.

The writers do try to square a few circles in this scene. The Doctor and Ian both notice a dish on the backs of all the Daleks, which the Doctor suggests may allow them to move on nonmetallic surfaces. Remember, on Skaro, the Daleks were limited to the metal floors of the city because their power was delivered to them through the floor like dodgems. “This is an invasion force,” the Doctor says. “Therefore, they have to adapt themselves to the planet.”

From the opposite side of the heliport, more Robomen arrive escorting two more prisoners. They are also men, one tall and gangly and the other stout with curly hair. The tall one leans close to the shorter one and says, “They’re not getting me. I’m going to try something. You with me?” The second prisoner refuses, and the tall one says, “They’re not getting me back in that filthy mine.” He makes a break for it but doesn’t get very far; there’s nowhere for him to run. Daleks corner him, and he screams “Help me!” A black Dalek, apparently the leader of the group, orders the man to be killed, and he is shot with a Dalek laser, giving the audience a good show of the color-inverting blast. This is exactly the lethality that should have been demonstrated by the Robomen, even including the token death I expounded on earlier. The writers have done a much better job reminding the audience of the Daleks’ villainy than they did establishing that of the Robomen.

After the tall prisoner falls to the ground, the Black Dalek turns to the others and says, “Any further resistance will be dealt with in the same way.” The Robomen prod the Doctor, Ian, and the remaining prisoner onto the saucer.

Back at rebel headquarters, Susan is helping David clean his rifle, holding the gun steady. Apparently, David has already told Susan about the capture of Ian and the Doctor, though I had to watch the scene a few times to understand that. The series likes to cut to a scene where characters are in the middle of a conversation, which can be great for maintaining the momentum of an episode but horribly confusing if it leaves out too much context. This is already the third time this serial where I am learning something that didn’t come across in my first watch-through, which is concerning. The writers are being very flippant with their exposition.

Anyway, David is trying to convince Susan that they shouldn’t tell Barbara about Ian and the Doctor being taken prisoner by the Daleks. He says that if the rebel attack on the saucer is successful, they’ll find Ian and the Doctor anyway, but if it fails, they’ll have just disappeared. Susan agrees to keep it a secret from Barbara, and I don’t really follow the logic of why she does this. It’s very out-of-character for her, and David’s reasoning is so flimsy. Maybe she wants to spare Barbara the worry, but if the writers wanted that, they should have spelled it out more explicitly.

They are joined by Barbara and a rebel woman named Jenny. Jenny is a blunt, hardnosed woman in her early 20s with blonde hair. Her mannerisms are cold, but she gives off the sense that this is a protective façade. Jenny passes David one of the Robomen’s helmets, and Barbara asks what it is. David and Jenny explain that because the Dalek presence on Earth is small compared to the humans, they had to operate on some of their human prisoners to turn them into a sort of living robot. David says, “The transfer, as the Daleks call the operation, controls the brain, well at least for a time.” The helmets are nothing more than devices for remote control. But these Robomen have a shelf life. As David goes on to explain, “I’ve seen the Robos when they break down. They go insane. They smash their heads against walls. They throw themselves off buildings or into the river.” Barbara remembers the body of the Roboman she saw floating downstream.

When Susan asks if the Daleks are still doing the transfer operations, Jenny says, “Oh, yes. They keep up their numbers of Robomen. They got my brother last year. That’s another reason why they land saucers at the heliport. That’s where they take the prisoners and operate on them. Once they’ve got you on board a saucer, there isn’t a hope.” The camera pushes in close on Susan’s concerned face, as she knows that’s exactly where the Doctor and Ian have been taken.

Back on the Dalek saucer, the Doctor, Ian, and the unnamed prisoner are taken to a cell and locked inside. In the control room, the Black Dalek watches them through a camera. One of the other Daleks mentions that the Doctor appears to have greater intelligence than normal in human beings, and the Black Dalek orders a test to be administered.

Inside the cell, Ian and the Doctor discuss the possibility of escape—Ian saw something that he says might be a loading bay door. The third prisoner, named Jack Craddock, says that planning anything is hopeless. “You don’t know the Daleks. Once they’ve got you inside a saucer, you’re finished.” Ian asks Craddock how the Dalek invasion of Earth happened, and Craddock says, “Well, meteorites came first. The Earth was bombarded with them about ten years ago. A cosmic storm, the scientists called it. The meteorites stopped, everything settled down, and then people began to die of this new kind of plague.” He goes on to say that almost all of the planet’s population died and that scientists were able to eventually develop a drug to defeat the illness.

Cut to rebel headquarters, where Susan asks. “What happened next?” She and Barbara are hearing the same tale as Ian in the Doctor, similar to a technique used in Planet of Giants. Not only is this a great way to make the telling of a narrative more interesting, but it also shows the audience that multiple groups of people have learned some piece of information without having to see that information divulged twice.

David continues Craddock’s tale: “Well, the plague had split the world into tiny little communities, too far apart to combine and fight and too small individually to stand a chance against invasion…About six months after the meteorite fall, that’s when the saucers landed. Cities were razed to the ground. Others were simply occupied. Anyone who resisted was destroyed. Some people were captured and were turned into Robomen, the slaves of the Daleks. They caught other human beings, and many of them were shipped to the vast mining areas. No one escapes. The Robomen see to that.”

In the saucer, Craddock takes over the story: “They were our own people, made to work against us, and the Daleks knew that, knew how they’d humiliated and degraded us. They are the masters of Earth.” Ian asks what the Daleks want on Earth, and Craddock says, “Something under the ground. They’ve turned the whole of Bedfordshire into a gigantic mining area.”

Meanwhile, the rebels back at headquarters are listening to another Dalek proclamation over the radio. The Black Dalek commands all humans in London to surrender themselves to Dalek enslavement if they want to live. If they continue to rebel, the Daleks will destroy London completely.

Dortmun scoffs at this, holding up his newly-developed, totally-gonna-work bomb, saying, “We’ll come out of our hiding place with this! This bomb will shatter the casing of the Daleks. We don’t need to run or hide anymore. We’ll make them run.” The rebels are convinced that if they can score one victory against the Daleks—if they can prove that the Daleks are not completely impervious to attack—the whole of Europe will rise up to support them. They discuss a little more about how they will attack the Dalek heliport, and Barbara suggests they could get as close as they wanted if they wore the Robomen helmets as a disguise. “Yes, it’ll work,” says Dortmun. “We’ll attack the saucer in one hour from now.”

Back on the saucer, the three prisoners have found a series of strange objects in their cell. There is a glass box, inside of which is some sort of metal bar in a narrow chamber, too far into the box for human fingers to reach. Sticking out of the top of the box are a series of what look like glass Allen wrenches. Elsewhere in the cell, they find another metal bar and a magnifying glass.

Long story short, the Doctor does some math in his head, references “three-dimensional graph geometry,” and the metal bar comes whizzing out of the glass box because of something to do with light refraction and magnetism. It’s a lot of nonsense, and it also takes almost three minutes for the scene to develop, making it both stupid and boring. Doctor Who has a bad habit of making in-universe technology and science sound more like magic, and my brain just checks out completely. I can’t buy in to something I can’t understand, especially when the explanation of the thing makes it clear that I was never supposed to understand it in the first place.

Anyway, the Doctor and Ian use the two bits of metal to create a magnetized handle they can use to open the cell door. As soon as they exit the cell, two Daleks roll onscreen and shriek at the escaped prisoners, talking over one another in a way that is absolutely unintelligible. I ran it back half a dozen times and couldn’t make out more than that it started with the word you. Reading the transcript, this is meant to be: “You have passed the escape test we set you.” Yet another detail that didn’t come across to me as a viewer. What does come across is when Robomen haul the prisoners back to the cell, and a Dalek says to the one holding the Doctor, “He will be robotized.”

I feel like I am being a bit nitpicky, and I want to make it clear that at this juncture in the serial, I still consider it to be fairly average. To this point in the series, my biggest gripes with serials have been when they fail conceptually. Take The Keys of Marinus, for example. The worldbuilding and premise of the story were irredeemably flawed, and while I don’t think the execution was all that great either, I think it would be almost impossible to execute on the story’s core concepts in a way that would be satisfying to the audience. It’s like trying to build a beautiful house on an unstable foundation: no matter how pretty you try to make it, it’s going to crumble.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth has the opposite problem. Conceptually, the story is solid; the flaws are in the execution. And these flaws, though fairly pervasive, are relatively minor. In Part 1, I mentioned how the scene with Barbara following the rebel across London and Tyler carrying an injured Susan doesn’t communicate well that they are all headed for the same location, and that it isn’t obvious that Barbara loses her guide. Yes, these poor choices undermine what is an otherwise compelling sequence, but my feeling of confusion as a viewer didn’t last much longer than the end of the scene. The story moves on, and nothing is built on the back of this flaw. To keep the analogy of the house going, this is like a drafty window instead of the structural collapse of The Keys of Marinus. A bit annoying, but the house is still in a livable state. However, too many of these flaws in execution can still bring down a house in the aggregate, and it is crucial for the success of this serial that it minimize these moments of irritation.

The scene cuts to the exterior of the Dalek ship on the heliport. Night has fallen, and with the exception of a few spotlights, the heliport is shrouded in darkness. Barbara, Susan, and David poke their heads above the sill of a broken window on the heliport’s perimeter, surveying the scene. “As soon as Tyler’s attack group arrives, we start throwing these,” David says, gesturing with one of Dortmun’s absolutely-foolproof bombs.

Back in the saucer, two Robomen sedate the Doctor and lay him on an operating table beneath some menacing looking machinery.

Meanwhile, Tyler and his group of rebels enter the heliport, disguised as three Robomen escorting a group of prisoners. The Daleks are suspicious of them, as they had not ordered the Robomen patrol. Suddenly, David screams, “Now!” and he, Barbara, and Susan throw their bombs. There is the sound of explosions, but nothing is communicated visibly. Some pretty feeble puffs of smoke appear, and it is not evident how much damage the bombs are supposed to have done. There is no rubble or char marks, and the Daleks are not affected in any way.

Forgetting their suspicions, the Daleks order the disguised rebels to move inside the saucer. Then the scene cuts back to show Barbara, Susan, and David ducking below the windowsill. The shot lingers on this empty window frame for way too long, almost a full ten seconds, while we hear the sound of the Daleks firing their guns. On a second watch-through, it is obvious that this is an attempt to disguise the lack of actual action happening at the heliport, because when it cuts back to the saucer exterior, there is much more smoke and a rebel lies writhing in pain on the ground. Another rebel runs across the helipad and is gunned down by a Dalek. It is not clear whether these downed rebels are part of the group that was ushered into the saucer or if there were more lying in wait like Barbara and the rest.

Inside the saucer, Tyler orders the rebels to spread out and try to free the prisoners before they discharge their bombs. These rebels were all outside on the helipad to witness these bombs not working against the Daleks, so it is ridiculous for Tyler to even consider them now. Furthermore, Tyler issues these orders in a room that is connected to another room where the Doctor lies on the table next to a Roboman and a Dalek. There is a half-wall that prevents the Dalek from seeing the rebels directly, but there is no way the Dalek wouldn’t hear Tyler’s commands. Also, as the camera pans behind the Dalek and the Roboman, we see the rebels frantically working to open doors in the background.

There seems to have been a concerted effort to communicate the layout of the Dalek ship by allowing cameras to move through archways and around corners from one part of the ship to another. Ordinarily, this would be a holistic approach to filmmaking that adds to the viewer’s understanding of where things are happening. In The Sensorites, one of the few things I praised about the serial was how the layout of Maitland’s ship was a brilliant way of taking advantage of the small studio space by making all of the sets contiguous. The Dalek saucer is similarly constructed, only it is very obvious that this intent was never communicated to the writers. The scene is written as if the writers meant these events to happen in entirely separate rooms. It would make so much more sense for this sequence of events to occur if there were simply doors separating these two parts of the ship. Instead, the design of the saucer ceases to elevate the viewer’s understanding and becomes a serious liability. And I think this also speaks to the lack of writers on set, something I speculated over at the beginning of The Reign of Terror. I don’t think there is was single writer within a country mile of the studio, and it’s a damn shame.

Anyway, the Dalek—which should see the rebels but doesn’t for some reason—orders the Roboman to commence the operation on the Doctor. The menacing machinery slowly lowers toward the Doctor’s face. Credits roll.

There’s a point I’ve brought up a few times about how underwhelming Doctor Who’s action sequences are. Mostly, I’ve chalked it up to a brutal filming schedule that necessitated fight choreography easy enough to be rehearsed over a few hours and filmed in just one take. This has resulted in very boring, unathletic fights, like Ian and Ixta in The Aztecs, as well as instances where there should have been some sort of fight but the writers opted not to for the sake of simplicity, like when the Second Elder was killed by a pathetic blow to the shoulder in The Sensorites. The one exception to this trend, the fight between Za and Kal in An Unearthly Child, I suspected was a result of the serial being reshot and the actors having much more time to rehearse.

The deplorable action sequence at the end of this episode has me reconsidering this theory. I think this is just one of the showrunners’ blind spots, just like how working with sci-fi heavy serials has been a blind spot to this point in the series. There was no combat in this sequence, no fight choreography. Seemingly nothing that can be blamed on the way these episodes were filmed. From writing to directing to editing, this was a complete trainwreck. From now on, I will be operating under the assumption that any action set piece the series has to offer will be disappointing, and the larger the risk taken by the showrunners, the more profound the disappointment will be. Unless and until proven otherwise, I will view this outlook as part of series canon.

Part 3 (Day of Reckoning)

Inside the saucer, a small amount of time has passed. The Doctor still lies on the table and is being worked over by the machine, so it can’t have been very long. A Roboman oversees the transfer, and a rebel disguised as a Roboman enters the room. This is the same rebel who Barbara first encountered next to the TARDIS, the one she lost on the way to rebel headquarters. His name is Baker, a fact that escaped me until I saw his name in the transcript. I had to check back to see if he was ever named, and it turns out he was, only once, in Part 2. I brought this up in Part 1: if your character has a name, give it when the audience sees them for the first time. Otherwise, it is very unlikely to be remembered.

As soon as the real Roboman has his back turned, Baker rips his helmet off and tries to fight the Roboman. Baker is knocked to the ground and has to be bailed out by Tyler who comes to his rescue. The two turn off the machine and pull the Doctor off of the table.

Meanwhile, the other rebels in the saucer are making a real mess of things for the Daleks, wrecking controls, freeing prisoners from cells, and throwing their bombs. With their numbers significantly increased by the newly freed prisoners, they make a break for the door.

One of these rebels was apparently Jenny, who, once outside, rushes over to David, Barbara, and Ian. The first time I watched this episode, I was confused about how she came to be in the scene. Even the second time, it looks as if she appears out of nowhere. To go along with establishing a character’s name, if you do have a named character in the scene, you have to call attention to the fact that they are actually there. Otherwise, the audience will be confused when they suddenly peel away from the rest of the rebels, for instance, and start acting on their own.

David leaves the women behind, saying he’s gonna try to get Tyler out of the saucer. Jenny inadvertently spills the beans to Barbara about Ian and the Doctor being on the Dalek ship. Barbara freaks out and wants to go help David, while Susan tries to hold her back. Barbara shakes her off, and all three of them run off toward the saucer. For most of this interaction, the actors are talking on top of one another, stepping on each other’s lines all over the place. I couldn’t make out what was going on in my first watch-through, and this was compounded by the fact that one of the other things that didn’t come across to me very clearly was the fact that Barbara didn’t know about Ian and the Doctor’s capture. Even knowing that context, the acting was flubbed to the point where it looks like some goofy spat. Clearly, the showrunners’ insistence on doing things in one take wherever possible really hinders this moment.

Back at the entrance to the saucer, a whole contingent of rebels spills out of the opening and down the ramp, scattering away from the heliport. These rebels include the Doctor, who has to be supported by Tyler. Chaos ensues. Several of the rebels are shot trying to escape. Two rebels try to tip a Dalek over and are also shot. Ian tries to exit the ship but finds his path blocked by oncoming Daleks. He locks eyes with Barbara and shouts at her to get back. Barbara throws a bomb at the Daleks and retreats, while Ian is forced to go back into the saucer.

Tyler is seen escaping into a manhole, and the Doctor is no longer with him. Something that I learned from behind the scenes content is that on their exit from the saucer, the actor who played Tyler fell down the ramp, pulling William Hartnell down with him. Hartnell injured his leg badly enough to miss a full week of shooting, and aside from a few scenes in this episode where we see him limping or sitting, he was written out of most of this episode and all of the next one. For the most part, this rewrite went fairly seamlessly, and I don’t notice his absence. I will say that not seeing the Doctor leave this scene came across as a bit odd, although it does allow the other protagonists’ concern over his safety feel more genuine.

Inside the saucer, the Black Dalek is notably agitated, speaking faster than normal, its eyestalk moving erratically. It’s cool to see how the Dalek operators are able to show some breadth of emotion despite not being able to emote at all. “Find every survivor,” it shrieks. “Destroy every one. Destroy them! Destroy every one of them! Destroy!” From his hiding place in a panel beneath the floor, Ian waits and listens.

Aside from the one interaction where Barbara learns of Ian and the Doctor’s imprisonment, the events in this action sequence are much more palatable than those at the end of Part 2. On its own, I might even call it good. But it being a continuation of what began in Part 2 makes it really hard for me to take it seriously. At the very least, this sequence brings up the average a little.

In the next scene, we find Barbara unconscious on a table back in rebel headquarters. I don’t know how she got back or why she was knocked out, but for once, this lack of understanding feels intentional. It adds to the sense of chaos. Dortmun is there, as well as Tyler and Jenny. The Doctor, Susan, and David are missing. The mood is dour, with two crying women fleeing through the secret entrance in the rear of the room. “Your bombs were useless, Dortmun,” Tyler says. He’s not even angry; it’s as if all the fight as left him. When Dortmun asks how many men were killed, he says, “I don’t know. I think all of them.”

When Barbara asks about the Doctor, Tyler describes an “oldish man” that he helped out of the saucer, telling her that they got separated in the confusion. Then he says dejectedly that they will have to get out of London. “They’ll look everywhere now. They’ll search every inch. They’ll destroy every inch. We’ve made an attack on one of their machines.” He does show some measure of his old spirit, though it has been turned into scorn against Dortmun.

For a supposed scientist, Dortmun is belligerently stupid when he says, “I must stay here and work on the bomb. It only needs work, Tyler.” I’m getting really tired of Dortmun and his bomb. Aside from the fact that it was obvious it was never going to work, it just seems so anachronistic. It’s the year 2164, and the best the human rebels have to offer is this fool with his bombs? The whole idea of the rebels is rubbing me the wrong way after the failure that was the action sequence at the end of Part 2. Other than portraying them as a foil to the evil Daleks, the writers haven’t done much to make me care for these characters, and the end of the last episode was so poorly handled that it ruined them for me.

Jenny agrees with Tyler, but Barbara is worried that Susan will try to return to headquarters, as it is the only place she knows. Tyler leaves, saying that he will look for more survivors and head north. Dortmun tells Barbara of another place, a museum where rebels will gather now that headquarters is too dangerous, though it will mean traversing London in broad daylight with dozens of Daleks throughout the city. Barbara says she and Jenny will go with him. Jenny initially refuses, saying, “We’d have a much better chance on our own,” before eventually agreeing to help Dortmun. This is a good moment. Ann Davies, the actress who played Jenny, makes it seem as if Jenny is trying to act tough and that deep down, she cares for Dortmun. They begin to make preparations for their departure.

On the Dalek saucer, the Black Dalek gives the order for London to be destroyed by firebombs. Then the saucer takes off, headed for the mine workings in central England. In the room with the transfer machine, Ian emerges from beneath the floor and looks around. At that moment, a Roboman enters the room, hauling a man in with him. Seeing Ian, the Roboman throws the man to the ground and turns toward him, saying in that slow, robotic monotone, “You are to be robotized.”

Ian manages to throw the Roboman to the ground, damaging his helmet, and the other man gets to his feet and helps Ian throw the Roboman into the transfer machine. Something in the machine shorts out, and the Roboman falls to the floor, either unconscious or dead.

The man’s name is Larry, though we don’t find this out until the next scene he is in. Larry snuck onto the saucer and was stowing away in a storeroom when the Roboman found him—he is trying to get to the Bedfordshire mining area to find and rescue his brother. Together, Ian and Larry dump the Roboman’s body down a garbage disposal shoot, and they conceal themselves back in Ian’s original hiding spot.

Elsewhere in London, we see what appears to be either a neglected alleyway or a grimy interior hallway—there is a thick layer of dirt on the floor and creepers in some of the corners. Into this scene rushes Susan and David. They look scared and exhausted, as if they are running from something or someone. David gestures toward a bush, and he and Susan duck behind it. A moment later, a Dalek wheels into frame, its eyestalk looking up and down the thoroughfare. Seeing nothing, it turns, seeking its quarry elsewhere.

Once the threat is gone, Susan and David begin to discuss their options. David suggests they look for more survivors, and before Susan can respond, they hear the sound of footsteps and a distant Dalek screaming, “Stop!” With David wrapping his arms around Susan, the two are forced to listen to the dying declaration of a man who is murdered by his Dalek overlord.

Quiet falls once again, and David releases Susan. What follows is an interaction that I think should be included in full:

“If only we could go to the ship and get away from here,” Susan says sadly.

“Well, I couldn’t go anyway,” David answers.

“David, perhaps you could. I could ask Grandfather. I’m sure he’d let you come. We could go to a place that had never even heard of Daleks.” She turns toward David hopefully, but David looks doubtful.

“And what happens if there’s something unpleasant in the new place?”

“We’ll move on somewhere,” Susan says.

David takes a moment to think, then sighs and says, “No, Susan. That’s not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Look, things aren’t made better by running away.”

“Well, it’s suicide to say here,” Susan says, turning away from David.

“This is my planet!” David responds angrily. “I just can’t run off and see what it’s like on Venus!”

“I never felt there was any time or place that I belonged to. I’ve never had any real identity.”

David leans closer to her, reassuringly. “One day you will. There will come a time when you’re forced to stop travelling, and you’ll arrive somewhere.” Susan looks at him, a bit surprised, as if this is something she has never let herself consider before.

This is a beautiful interaction: raw, emotional, and meaningful to Susan’s characterization. It is a natural next step along her character arc, demonstrating her increasing sense of independence from her grandfather. In my opinion, despite a hiccup every now and then, the growth of Susan’s character has been the most consistent and well-developed throughline that the writers have given us so far. While Ian and Barbara appear to have gained a certain amount of comfortability with life on the TARDIS and have since plateaued, Susan has given us the vast majority of the hard-hitting character moments since Marco Polo, almost a full season ago. I see this as a good benchmark for the writing in the series going forward, because while there have been a lot of flaws borne out of careless writing, there is clearly a high level of competence when the writers give an important plot point the intentionality it deserves.

Continuing on, Susan and David hear the sound of someone coming, and they duck back behind the bush for a third time. To their surprise, one of the other rebels, Baker, emerges, helping the Doctor along with him. The Doctor is very out of it—Baker reminds us that the Daleks had sedated him—and Baker helps him sit down. David and Susan tell Baker that they will remain in London; Baker wishes them well, saying he plans to make for the Cornish coast. Baker leaves, but he is hardly a stone’s toss away from the others when he runs headfirst into two Daleks. They fire their guns, and Baker slumps against a wall, dead.

The scene changes back to on-location shots of Barbara, Jenny, and Dortmun. The two women push Dortmun along in his wheelchair, following an abandoned stretch of promenade next to the Thames. To the chaotic sound of drums, the three are anxious, forced to slow down to let Dortmun use a cane and a railing to get himself up a flight of stone steps. Suddenly, Daleks appear on the Westminster Bridge above them, and the three quickly duck behind the railing and out of the Daleks’ line of sight. Once the Daleks have gone, the three continue on their way.

The next few minutes are a mixture of the women sprinting behind Dortmun and his wheelchair along various roads and walkways and them ducking out of harms way when they spot any Daleks. Sometimes we see the view as if through a Dalek eyestalk, a circle panning across the cityscape. It’s really cool to see Daleks and the protagonists play this cat-and-mouse game through the center of London, moving through locales like Trafalgar Square and the Albert Memorial, with many of the monuments marked with strange Dalek writing. This type of movement would have to be approximated in studio, using tricks to make it appear as if the characters are moving a great distance. It’s funny how refreshing something as simple as running in a straight line can feel after so much studio work.

The three finally arrive at what is presumably the museum, although the set is very odd. It is a large room containing a food cart, a headless mannequin, an old-fashioned bicycle, and a wooden table and chairs. It looks like what would happen if someone tried to make a museum but they had never seen one before and have only had it described to them. Strange.

Anyway, Dortmun tells Barbara about the troubles he has been having developing his bomb. “The problem, you see, was the metal that the Daleks use in their outer casing. We don’t know very much about it. We call it dalekenium.” This is functionally identical to the way Susan described the TARDIS’s name as something she made up back in An Unearthly Child—in order for the series canon to make sense, dalekenium cannot be a word invented by humans on Earth in 2164. This is another one of those inconsistencies that has to be dismissed outright.

Jenny finds evidence that other rebels had already been inside the museum, pointing to a hidden message that says they have moved to the south. “We haven’t got a chance in London, the way things are building up,” she says, expressing a desire to leave. Barbara pushes her on this, asking her what the point would be of running away. “I’m not running,” Jenny insists. “I’m surviving.” This comes off as a bit of a challenge, as if daring Barbara to call her cowardly. I think that deep down, Jenny really is scared; I like the way that Jenny’s character is constructed and how she externalizes all of her internal insecurities. Jenny goes outside to keep watch.

Barbara and Dortmun discuss where the Doctor may have gone, and Barbara says that if the Doctor has learned of the mines in central England, that is the first place he’ll go. Then Dortmun turns to Barbara and tells him that he would like her to deliver his notes to the Doctor, another man of science who can make use of them. Barbara tells him to stop acting silly. “Why can’t you give it to him yourself?” she says. He seems to be hinting at a departure, but Barbara does not take the hint. Then he tells Barbara to go get Jenny so they all can leave.

As soon as Barbara has gone, Dortmun leaves his notes on the table, gathers his cane, and wheels himself out of one of the exits. Barbara and Jenny return to find him gone, much to their dismay. “Daleks are all over the place,” Jenny says frantically. “We’re besieged.” They find his notes on the table.

Suddenly, they hear Dortmun outside, screaming, “Daleks!” The scene cuts to show him on a London street, a few feet away from a contingent of Daleks. He levers himself unsteadily out of his wheelchair, taking a bomb out of a case on his lap and hurling it at the Daleks just as they begin to open fire. Dortmun dies, and the bomb is as ineffectual as before. I get that this is supposed to be an emotional moment, but the serial has not put in the legwork necessary for me to care about Dortmun. Instead of being sad that he has gone, I find myself relieved that he won’t be there to hold Barbara and Jenny back anymore. He was a source of anxiety without any real emotional benefit.

Back inside, Jenny and Barbara hide behind the food cart as a Dalek sweeps through the museum. It stops at the mannequin, demanding to know who it is, eventually declaring it to be a “subcultural.” Then it leaves.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Susan, and haven’t left the alley/hallway. The Doctor tries to stand, but the sedative still keeps him incapacitated, though he does say he is feeling better. David is taking a peek around, while Susan tries to convince the Doctor that their best move is to go north. The Doctor disagrees, set on finding some way back inside the TARDIS. Susan tries to argue that as a local, David knows best, and the Doctor says, “Do you question my authority, child?”

Before the argument can get too contentious, David returns, saying that the place is infested with Daleks. He asks the Doctor, “What would you suggest, sir?…You’re the senior member of the party, sir, and I would be grateful for your help.” Much to Susan’s surprise, the Doctor suggests they go north. A look of incredulity comes across Susan’s face, and with a bit of snark, she tells the Doctor that it is a good idea.

In Bedfordshire, the Dalek saucer has finally arrived at the mine. Still inside their hiding place, Larry reminds Ian that his brother, Phil, is in the mine, and he says, “If we can find out what the Daleks are up to,” he says, “we might be able to beat them.” He says that Phil thinks the Daleks are after something to do with the magnetic core of the Earth.

At the entrance to the saucer, the ramp lowers, and many Daleks and Robomen disembark. Ian and Larry exit their hiding place, and they slip out of the disposal chute.

Back with Susan, David, and the Doctor, the three are waiting for the Dalek presence to lessen before they try to leave. Unbeknownst to them, two Robomen enter the opposite end of the corridor, carrying a large case with a clock on the front. They place it on the ground fairly close to where the three are hiding and leave the scene. The case starts ticking, and the camera zooms in on the clock as it begins to count down. This is one of the firebombs that will destroy London. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The End of Tomorrow)

Susan, David, and the Doctor notice the ticking noise and discover the firebomb. The Doctor keels over in a dead faint—David suggests it may be a lingering effect of the Dalek’s drugs. A bit clunky, but it’s clear this is the mechanism used to write the Doctor out of the episode. I think that no matter what, it was always going to be a little clunky.

Susan and David rush over to the firebomb, looking for a way to disarm it. First David tries to pry the front of it open with his knife, but it doesn’t budge—the knife slips and nicks his hand. Susan becomes anxious, suggesting they run for it, but David has another idea. He opens one of Dortmun’s bombs and pours the acid from within on top of the casing, hoping to burn his way inside. It works; the acid melts through, and David uses a metal rod to separate the timer from the bomb. Having been successfully disarmed, the timer runs out harmlessly.

Susan and David breathe a sigh of relief, though in Susan’s case, the feeling doesn’t last long. David suggests they leave the Doctor where he is while David and Susan look for a way out of London. Susan is adamantly against this idea, but David makes a good case, arguing, “We’ll come back for him. Look, the Daleks think this area’s in flames, so he’ll be safe for an hour…It’s the only way.”

In a garage within the museum, Barbara and Jenny have found an old tanker truck. They are lucky to find it operational, with enough fuel to get them out of London. “The trouble’s going to be when we try to start it,” says Jenny. “The noise’ll bring every Dalek for miles.” There’s some really interesting chemistry between these characters, with Barbara’s optimism consistently at odds with Jenny’s pessimism. Though they both understand what has to be done, they have completely different methods of coping with their situation, which puts an extra layer of tension in the scene that I find really compelling.

Jenny asks Barbara if she knows the route to Bedfordshire. Barbara says that she used to, almost letting slip that she knew the way a few centuries ago. Instead, she settles on, “I used to live [there]…We’re not very sure how much damage the Daleks have done.”

“You wait till you see what they’ve done to Bedfordshire,” Jenny answers.

This is a great way to lead into the next scene, which is the mining area that was once Bedfordshire. A Dalek passes by a machine labeled “Earth Mover,” which Ian and Larry hide behind. Once the Dalek is gone, the men emerge to see teams of humans in ragged clothing, all hauling on ropes connected to a giant minecart moving along railroad tracks. Robomen overseers stand atop the minecart, yelling, “Forward!” while Daleks look on. A cable system transporting buckets moves high above a massive open-cast quarry, and the sound of jackhammers can be heard almost constantly.

A man, tall and balding, sees Ian and Larry. He goes over to them and, with a thick country accent, says, “Who are you two? Aren’t you on work detail? Escaped, have you? I suppose you know the Robomen are on the other side of this machine?”

At this moment, one of the Robomen comes around the Earth Mover and sees them all gathered. It asks the balding man what these two men are doing standing there. Thinking quickly, the balding man points to a few pickaxes scattered around the grass and says, “I took them off work detail to help me pick up these tools.” He tries to tell the Roboman that he will take them back to where they came from, but the Roboman orders them all to move where he can see them. It seems he intends to see them back to their working party himself.

The Roboman hits the balding man in the back of the head for acting without consulting the Robomen first, and Ian and Larry help him to his feet. The Roboman tries to order them to move, but the three men retreat into the Earth Mover, with Ian saying, “Get new orders.”

Inside the machine, there is enough room for a small group of men to stand comfortably. The three men are only alone for a few seconds when the Roboman barges in through the door. Ian takes a rock and bashes the Roboman over the head, knocking him unconscious.

The balding man says they need to disperse quickly, as the Daleks always seem to know when a Roboman is attacked. He tells them that the best course of action is for them to mingle with the working parties until things calm down. Ian asks what the balding man intends, and he replies that he has come to meet Ashton, a man who is known for smuggling food into the camp. Ian asks if Ashton would be able to smuggle him and Larry out of the camp so they can get back to London. “London?” the balding man says as if Ian is crazy. “I suppose you know they destroyed it?” Ian’s expression turns dark.

Unlike Jenny’s line about Bedfordshire, this is a terrible way to transition back to London, because as we return to Jenny and Barbara with the truck, I think to myself, Oh yeah, wasn’t London supposed to be destroyed? How are Barbara and Jenny okay? Once again, good conceptually, but lacking a bit in execution.

As they prepare to leave, Jenny asks Barbara, in an exasperated tone, “Why did he do it?” referring to Dortmun basically taking his own life by rolling out in front of the Daleks. “He just threw his life away. It was so senseless.”

“It depends on how you look at it,” Barbara says.

“You’ve got this romantic idea about resistance. There is nothing heroic about dying. There’s no point in throwing lives away just to prove a principle.”

Irritated, Barbara steps into the cab of the tanker. “If Dortmun hadn’t thrown his life away, we would all be dead. He knew exactly what he was doing. He sacrificed himself so that you and I would have a chance. Come on, we’re ready to go.”

The shot changes to show the exterior of the garage. The framing of this is very macabre, with Dortmun’s body in the foreground, lying facedown on the pavement, and Barbara and Jenny operating the tanker some hundred feet behind him, driving out of frame and leaving him and his memory behind. It’s a fantastic cinematographic choice which really puts an exclamation point on the tone of Barbara and Jenny’s conversation.

Meanwhile, Susan and David are exploring the London sewers, trying to find a safe way out of the city. Susan finds a spent bullet casing, and because the Robomen are unlikely to use the sewers, she suggests that it must mean friends have come this way. “Not necessarily,” David warns. “Not all human beings are automatically allies. There are people who will kill for a few scraps of food.” David checks his gun and finds he has four bullets left. “It’s no use against the Daleks, but it will stop anyone else.”

Suddenly, Susan screams and points offscreen. The camera angle changes to show an unknown stranger’s arm pointing a gun right at Susan and David.

Elsewhere and London, Barbara and Jenny drive the tanker through the city with Barbara behind the wheel. They round a bend, where they find four Daleks blocking the way, forming a living barricade. Barbara puts the pedal to the metal, plowing through the Daleks and smashing them to pieces. “I rather enjoyed that,” Barbara says, smiling at the catharsis of it. Her expression sobers as she continues, “We won’t be able to stay in this much longer, though. They’ll be after us with a vengeance, now.”

She is right. At the Dalek control center, a Dalek radios for a saucer to pursue the tanker and destroy it. Barbara and Jenny hear whining of the approaching saucer, and, knowing they only have seconds, Barbara slams on the breaks and they jump out of the cab. The saucer fires a laser like a jet of fire, and the tanker explodes in a rare early-series use of motion graphics.

The pacing in this episode is the best I have encountered in the whole series. Although each subplot requires its own arc of exposition, rising action, climax, etc., these elements have been brilliantly staggered so that one climactic moment leads right into the building of tension somewhere else. We started off with Susan and David in the C Plot, disarming the firebomb. This led into Jenny and Barbara in the B Plot in the middle of a rising action, preparing for their escape. Next we had a bit of exposition in the A Plot with Ian and Larry, but then it was right back to the B Plot, with the climax of Jenny and Barbara leaping out of the tanker just before it explodes. And remember, the Doctor was written out of this episode entirely because of his injury on set, and it despite this, doesn’t feel like anything is missing. This is a masterclass in narrative design.

Back in the sewers, it turns out the hand holding the gun belongs to the rebel, Tyler. Susan and David are happy to see a friendly face, though Tyler responds in an oddly detached manner, speaking brusquely. David tells him that they left the Doctor by the old plague cemetery, and he asks Tyler if he has run into any trouble, mentioning the shell casing. Tyler says that the bullet wasn’t meant for any human, but for the alligators that have escape from the zoo and flourished down there in the dank. Tyler agrees to take them back to the Doctor, and he goes out of frame to scout their path.

“Why is he so abrupt?” Susan asks.

“Tyler?” David says, looking after the man. “He’s afraid to make friends. He’s known too much killing.”

“Well, I hope I’m never like that. Pretending not to care.”

David dismisses this notion. “Bah. One day, this will be all over. It’ll mean a new start.”

“A new start? Rebuilding a planet from the very beginning.” Susan smiles. “It’s a wonderful idea.”

“You could always help.”

“Yes.” An odd look comes over Susan’s face, as if she is half humoring David and half considering.

North of London, Barbara and Jenny are making their way slowly on foot. “Barbara,” Jenny begins, coming to a stop, “suppose we don’t find your friends at the mine?”

Ever optimistic, Barbara doesn’t entertain the bad energy. “I’ll think about that when we get there,” she says resolutely. She lets out a long exhale, turning to Jenny. “Look, you don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to. I can get there on my own.”

Jenny appears to consider this, then says slowly, “We might as well stay together.”

Barbara smiles. “Alright, come on then.” I really, really, really enjoy the chemistry between Jacquiline Hill and Ann Davies. There is an extra level of emotion conveyed in all of their interactions that the other characters can’t quite match, and knowing the serial is drawing near its end, it’s a shame this isn’t something that continues long term. I think Jenny would have made a wonderful companion.

Back at the mine, some time has passed, and Ian and Larry have returned to the Earth Mover to meet with Ashton. Around the corner of the machine, we see something vaguely humanoid in shape, all hunched over with a membranous exterior and what appear to be feelers sticking out of its back. The audience doesn’t get a good look at it before it disappears out of view behind the machine. Ian and Larry hear the pulsating, shrieking noises this creature emits, but they shrug it off and enter the machine.

Inside the Earth Mover, the are greeted by the barrel of a gun, pointed at them by a handsome man who must be Ashton. Ashton tells them to leave, and Larry tries to tell him that Wells told them Ashton would be coming to the machine. Apparently, Wells is the name of the balding man from before. Again, writers, I beg you, please, if you’re gonna name a character, tell it to the audience in their first scene. I’ve been referring to him as “balding man” for an inordinate amount of time.

Ashton asks if Ian has anything valuable to pay for him and Larry to be smuggled out of the mine, and Ian says he does not. “Then I hope you manage to avoid the Slyther as you leave,” Ashton replies cooly, gesturing toward the door of the Earth Eater.

At this moment, Wells enters to vouch for Ian and Larry. It is soon made clear that Wells and Ashton don’t like each other, yet they rely on their mutually beneficial relationship. Wells passes over some jewelry, and Ashton hands him a large sack of food. Larry asks what that thing was outside, and Wells explains that it’s a Slyther, a creature that the Black Dalek keeps as some sort of pet. “Mainly, it roams the mine area at night in search of food.”

Larry asks what kind of food, to which Ashton says, “People.” Outside, the Slyther wails again.

Meanwhile, Susan and David are moving through the sewers. They seem to have lost Tyler, which is odd, as I thought he was meant to be their guide. They call out for him, but he is nowhere to be seen. Taking the only obvious path, they arrive at a ladder which goes down to a platform next to a pool of water and up to a manhole. Thinking Tyler may have gone down, Susan begins climbing down the ladder.

Suddenly, the top of the ladder becomes unmoored from the sewer wall, and it tilts backward, leaving Susan’s feet dangling over the filthy water. Below, live alligators swim in the pool, which is a nice touch. Susan screams, and the manhole above her opens. Tyler is standing there. He fires a shot at the alligator, scaring it off, then he uses a foot to stabilize the ladder. With David’s help, Susan makes her way to the surface.

Back at the mine, Ashton, Wells, Ian, and Larry all share a meal. “You know, Wells,” Ashton says, “you’re a fool. For all this stuff, I’d have gladly taken you outside.” Wells declines, saying that he will make it out on his own time.

As they eat, they suddenly hear the Slyther’s wail and turn to see it coming through the door. Up close, it really looks quite ridiculous, with the shape of a man layered in fabric, looking something like a bulky ghost and covered with scaly patterns. A rigid arm ending in a claw reaches out for Ashton. The man fires a few shots at the creature, but it seems to have no effect. Of the four men in the Earth Mover, Ashton is the only one who doesn’t make it out alive.

Outside, Ian and Larry move away from the machine, but they come upon a sheer drop into the mine. They turn and find all escape routes blocked—the Slyther slowly approaches, shrieking. Credits roll.

Part 5 (The Walking Ally)

The scene cuts to an angle we didn’t have access to in the last episode, revealing one of the cable car buckets at rest a few feet beyond the edge of the drop-off. The Slyther is slowly backing the two men toward the edge. Left with no other options, the men jump into the cart. The Slyther tries to follow, and it manages to latch onto the edge of the minecart. Ian finds a rock inside the minecart and beats at the Slyther’s claws until it lets go, plummeting to its death.

There are two aspects of this scene that are not great. First, it has the worst set design, blocking, and cinematography choices of the whole serial, and it’s not even close. After expansive on-location shots throughout the serial, this scene makes it painfully obvious that these actors are back in studio. And although most of the serial was filmed in studio, it didn’t take anything away from my experience when the settings were rooms and alleyways. Here, we have a supposed clifftop and a few shrubs, and it is very clear that if the camera were to pan a foot to the left or right, we would see the edge of the set. And yes, it has been like this since episode one of the series, but being wedged between settings that better utilize the space and disguise the studio well, this setting feels wrong in a way those other settings do not.

And second, this is an example of a poorly conceived cliffhanger. Think of all the tension that is meant to be built as the Slyther pushes Ian and Larry closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. Then the camera cuts to reveal that actually no, there is a conveniently placed cable car bucket right behind them, and they were never in any real danger. It lets all the air out of the balloon in a way that is extremely unsatisfying. For a cliffhanger to be successful, the writers shouldn’t have to treat it any differently than any other moment of high tension in a narrative. If an event only works as a cliffhanger because the editors cut it in a way that hides relevant information from the audience, then it doesn’t work as a moment of tension or a cliffhanger. Compare that to Part 3, which ended when the Robomen placed a firebomb and David and Susan had to disarm it. The threat felt very real—it was situation in which the protagonists had to use their cunning to think their way out of it. It works as cliffhanger simply because it also works as a moment of tension. To this point, the episode-ending cliffhangers have all been hit-or-miss, and this is one of the worst.

Back at Dalek central command, a Dalek says that a waste bucket must be lowered into shaft nine. A Dalek operating the controls hits a lever, and the cable car containing Ian and Larry begins to descend into the mine.

In the London sewers, the Doctor has returned to the set, along with David, Susan, and Tyler. I know I said his absence wasn’t really missed in the last episode, but it’s nice to see him back all the same. The four of them are being chased through the sewers by two Robomen, and they decide to use a chokepoint at the bottom of a ladder as a place to lay an ambush. What follows is another eminently goofy fight scene that looks more like slow-motion wrestling. The Doctor manages to subdue a Roboman by beating it over the back of the head with his walking stick, and Tyler shoots the second as it tries to escape back up the ladder.

Before they continue on, the Doctor turns to Tyler and says sternly, “No, Tyler, no. I never take life. Only when my own is immediately threatened.” I would argue that that was exactly the case in this scene, but beyond that, I think this is the first time the Doctor’s aversion to killing—even in instances when his life is in danger—is demonstrated in the series.

North of London, Jenny and Barbara are caught in a storm and try to take shelter in what they think is a deserted hut. Inside are two women, an old crone and a woman of Barbara’s age who might be the older one’s daughter. They are dressed in rags, like most of the local humans we have encountered thus far. They say they make clothes for the slave workers in the mine—that’s the only reason the Daleks and Robomen let them live in an otherwise deserted stretch of England.

Ever pessimistic, Jenny is suspicious of these women and wants to leave, but Barbara’s kindness wins out. Barbara offers the women some food, and they accept it in exchange for a place to stay for the night out of the storm. As Barbara and Jenny take uncomfortable glances around the hut, the crone pulls her younger friend aside and whispers something urgent. Then the younger woman makes to leave with an armful of clothes she says she must deliver. Again, Jenny is suspicious. “Go out in this weather?” she says doubtfully. The two women assure her and Barbara that they do this sort of thing all the time, and that they don’t need to worry about anything beyond helping the old crone prepare their dinner.

At the mine, Ian and Larry’s cart has arrived at the bottom of the mineshaft. They have to jump a dozen feet to the ground, and Larry injures his knee in the process. Ian has to help Larry hobble toward some cover.

Back in the hut, Barbara, Jenny, and the old crone are eating dinner when the door opens. The young woman enters fearfully, holding a burlap sack. She runs to stand next to the crone as a Dalek appears in the doorway. As it happens, Jenny’s instincts were spot on in this case. “You will follow me, both of you,” the Dalek says to Barbara and Jenny. “Do not try to escape, or you will be exterminated. Move.” Barbara and Jenny shoot the traitors a baleful glare as they leave. When the door is shut, the young woman giggles over the sack of food she has received for selling the two out to the Daleks.

In the mineshaft, Ian and Larry are hiding behind a stack of whicker baskets used by the slave workers. Suddenly, a working party starts to filter into the scene; one of them is Wells, who warns the two men that this whole section will soon be cleared out. Ian and Larry grab baskets, but Larry can barely move, unable to walk on his own, most of his weight being supported by Ian.

A Robomen enters the scene and tells them to halt. Seeing him, Larry is relieved at first. “Phil! It’s my brother. Ian, it’s my brother!” Then relief turns to anguish as he seems to realize his brother has been irrevocably changed by the Dalek transfer operation. “Phil? Phil, it’s Larry. Your brother, Larry. Think, Phil! Remember me!…Angela. Your wife, Angela! I’ll take you to her.”

Phil is unmoved; he has no memory of Larry or Angela or anything else about his past life. “You must both be punished,” he says. Larry shoves himself upright and tells Ian to run. Then he throws himself on his brother, his fingers gripped tightly around Phil’s throat. Phil manages to shoot Larry with his weapon, and they both fall to the ground, dead. To my knowledge, this is the first time in the whole serial that we’ve actually seen a Roboman kill someone, and the Roboman didn’t even survive the encounter. They are weak, ineffectual antagonists, and I haven’t felt at any point that the main characters have been in any real danger from them.

Next, we see Susan alone next to a campfire. It seems that she, the Doctor, David, and Tyler have successfully navigated the sewers out of London. David enters the scene behind her holding a fish. Sneaking up to Susan, he dangles the fish in front of her face. Susan screams, pushing him over onto his back, giving him a taste of his own medicine as she forces the fish into his own face.

David pushes himself up slightly, onto his elbows, with Susan sitting on his lap, taking her hands in his as the mood shifts. “Your grandfather stood up to the journey fantastically well,” David says.

“He’s a pretty fantastic sort of man,” Susan says. They look into each other’s eyes and lean close, sharing a kiss.

At that moment, the Doctor and Tyler arrive, and Susan and David spring apart, fumbling over an excuse as to what they were doing. Luckily for them, the Doctor gives them an out: “I can see something’s cooking.” Susan and David relax, and they all start to share the rabbit Susan has been cooking. Over their meal, the Doctor begins to talk through what he thinks is going on. It turns out, they have managed to travel all the way to the mine—the Doctor and Tyler have been off doing some scouting of the situation. It seems a bit ludicrous for these characters to have been in the London for their last scene and at the mine for this one, but I’m willing to overlook this as something made necessary by William Hartnell’s injury and the rewrites.

The Doctor supposes that the Daleks are not simply after invading the Earth and subjugating humanity. After all, the Daleks have made no real attempt at establishing a rule of law, only pressing humans into slavery and killing off all opposition—it doesn’t seem as if the Daleks actually care whether the humans live or die. And if humanity is just a tool to them, they must be after something that the Earth contains, or else they wouldn’t have bothered to invade. The mine is the key. David asks if the Daleks would dare tamper with the forces of creation, to which the Doctor answers, “Yes, they dare. And we have got to dare to stop them.”

Back in the mine, Ian is hiding in an unused section of the mine, keeping watch over the movements of the work parties, when he sees Barbara and Jenny among a group of slave workers. Pulling Wells aside, he tells him to let Barbara know that he is here.

Before Wells can do anything, Barbara remembers the notes from Dortmun that she has stashed on her person and tries a bluff. She pulls Jenny toward one of the Daleks. “I have some important information,” she says to it. “Rebels are planning a revolution against the Daleks.” She holds up Dortmun’s notes. “I have proof of what I say.” The Dalek asks her to divulge her information, but Barbara insists on speaking to someone in command. “It’s very complex and detailed. You would have to act immediately on what I told you. I must speak to someone in authority.”

Barbara’s ploy to speak with the manager is successful, as the Dalek responds, “The Black Dalek will see you, but if you are lying, you will be killed. Follow me.”

Seeing all of this transpire, Ian realizes that Barbara and Jenny are beyond his reach. Wells directs him to a gallery where the Daleks watch over the mine workings and tells Ian to lose himself there.

Back in the Dalek command center, the Black Dalek asks for a report. Another Dalek says that the drills have come to within four miles of the Earth’s outer core. The only thing left to accomplish is “to put into position the penetration explosive. The charge is in the fissure capsule now. When positioned, the charge will strike the fissure in the Earth’s crust.”

“The fissure will expand. The molten core will be released,” says the Black Dalek.

The other Dalek continues, “We will then control the flow until all the gravitational and magnetic forces in the Earth’s core are eliminated.”

“Excellent,” the Black Dalek says, pleased. “I will now announce to the Dalek Earth force: completion of Project Degravitate in two hours’ time.”

Meanwhile, in the Dalek gallery, Ian has found the space crawling with Daleks. He finds a hiding place in what looks like half of a hollowed out cylinder, contorting is body to fit inside and stay out of sight. Over the gallery speakers, he hears the Black Dalek speak. “This is the Supreme Controller. Our mission to Earth is nearly completed. We were sent here to remove the core of this planet.”—Ian’s eyes widen—“Once the core is removed, we can replace it with a power system that will enable us to pilot the planet anywhere in the universe. All that remains is to put into position the penetration explosive…Arm the device…Set capsule in motion.”

Suddenly, the second half of the hollow cylinder is linked with the half containing Ian, sealing him inside. His hiding place is actually the Daleks’ explosive. It begins to move along a conveyor belt toward the edge of a subterranean ravine, where a metal track can direct it toward the fissure at the bottom of the mine. “As soon as the capsule is in position over the fissure, release it,” says the Black Dalek. Inside the capsule, Ian frantically looks for an escape. Credits roll.

Part 6 (Flashpoint)

The capsule reaches the metal track and begins to fall. Still inside, Ian is scrambling around among the wires and internal mechanisms. He yanks on a few wires, and the capsule comes to a stop in the middle of the track.

Temporarily stymied, a group of Robomen hauling on a rope begin to drag the capsule slowly back toward the gallery. Ian continues his sabotage of the explosive, and a panel opens at his feet, offering a way out. He tries to use a rope dangling from the bottom of the capsule to climb free, but the Daleks discover his presence. A Dalek uses his gun to cut the rope, and Ian slides all the way down the metal track to the point where the capsule is supposed to be thrown into empty space over the fissure. He crashes hard into a wall, but he seems to be relatively unscathed.

Meanwhile, as they are being escorted toward central command by a Dalek, Barbara and Jenny formulate a plan. Barbara tells Jenny to get to the controls and do as much damage as she can while Barbara keeps them distracted. Inside the main control room, the Black Dalek is whipping up several other Daleks into a genocidal fervor, saying things like “the extermination of all human beings” and “the final solution:” an intentional evocation of Nazi terminology and imagery.

Barbara and Jenny watch as one of the Daleks tests the communications relay to the Robomen. “Did you see that, Jenny?” Barbara says. “That’s the way they control the Robomen…We could give it new orders. Tell them to turn on the Daleks.”

The Black Dalek demands information from Barbara, and she gives him a load of wonderful nonsense. “This revolt is timed to start almost immediately. As in the case of the Indian mutiny…the plan will run parallel with the Boston Tea Party…Now, I warn you, General Lee and the fifth cavalry are already forming up to attack from the north side of the crater. The second wave, Hannibal’s forces, will of course come in from the Southern Alps. The third wave—”

At this moment, the Black Dalek cuts Barbara off, frantically calling out orders for the Daleks to mobilize their defenses. In the ensuing confusion, Barbara makes a break for the Robomen communications relay, but she is unable to issue a command before a Dalek pulls her away. She and Jenny are taken prisoner, placed in magnetic collars which keep them standing upright and stuck to the wall.

Up on the cliff at the edge of the mine, the Doctor, Susan, David, and Tyler begin to come up with a plan of attack. The Doctor tells Susan and Tyler to go sever a cable part of the way around the crater, and they leave to do so.

Down in the mine, Ian is still a bit shaken up by his rapid descent. He peers through a circular door and finds some large sticks, as well as two Robomen on patrol.

In central control, the Black Dalek announces that the capsule will be relaunched as soon as it is repaired. Once the capsule has been launched, the Daleks will all board their saucers and retreat to a safe distance.

Outside, the Doctor and Tyler have found the entrance to central control. Disabling the alarm, the Doctor leads Tyler inside.

Back with Ian, he waits for the Robomen to leave. Then he takes the large sticks and uses them to create a jam in the track of the capsule.

The repairs to the capsule have been completed. The Black Dalek orders the capsule to be launched, but the explosive does indeed get stuck at Ian’s makeshift barricade. Unaware of this hiccup, the Daleks leave central control to board their saucers, thinking the capsule is well on its way to striking the fissure. These short scenes remind me a lot of the final episode of The Aztecs, where there were a lot of quick cuts leading up to the serial’s climax.

Barbara and Jenny have been left behind by the Daleks, who think the explosion will take care of them. Lucky for them, the Daleks are only gone for a moment or so when the Doctor and Tyler rush into the room. Barbara and Jenny relay to them what they have learned about the Daleks trying to turn the Earth into some sort of spaceship. “They’re trying to pilot the Earth right out of its orbit,” Jenny says. “The bomb’s due to go off in half an hour’s time.”

Frantic, the Doctor tries to think of a way to both prevent the explosion and keep the Daleks from escaping. Then he remembers Susan and David, who he sent to disrupt that cable. He presses a few buttons on a bank of scanners, and they can see the two sneaking up on the Daleks’ cable. Unfortunately, the Doctor’s manipulation of the control panel alerts the Daleks to the unwanted presence of humans in central control, and a Dalek returns to eliminate the threat. Luckily, just at this moment, Susan and David succeed in severing the cable, and the Dalek malfunctions, heat and steam pouring from its exoskeleton.

Remembering the Roboman communications relay, Barbara takes the Doctor over to it, where they issue one final order to the Dalek’s robotized overseers: “Turn on the Daleks! Turn on the Daleks! Kill the Daleks!”

Next we see a series of frantic cuts, with humans running out of the mines, humans and Robomen lifting Daleks into the air and splitting open their casings, etc. At this point, the pacing goes from fast to rushed. Instead of being treated as the climax of the serial, it’s almost like the escape is just another few pieces of exposition to get through before the focus turns back to the main characters.

As they leave central control, the protagonists run into Ian, who was happy to use the chaos as a means of getting out of the mine. Once the Doctor learns about how Ian jammed up the explosive capsule, he determines that the Dalek mission will be a failure. The magnetic core of the Earth has been saved. “But still,” he warns, “it will be a gigantic explosion.” They all retreat to the cliffside just in time to watch the mine explode in a massive fireball.

The Doctor points out that all of the saucers were caught in the upward thrust of the explosion. “Do you think any Daleks escaped?” Jenny asks. Which is a really good question. After all, the Daleks were the supposed masters of Earth; it would be really stupid for every Dalek on the planet to be inside the splash zone of the explosion. But the Doctor assures her that the Daleks must have all perished, no matter how convenient that may seem. “It’s over,” Jenny says with a sigh, as the screen slowly fades to black.

Now, that is normally where the story of a serial likes to end, maybe with another minute or two of resolution to tie everything together. But in this case, we still have almost eight minutes of narrative left. What follows is definitely why the climax felt so rushed, although I will admit, with how this serial ends, I’d rather have a rushed climax than a rushed resolution.

The scene fades in to the TARDIS. The metal girder has been removed, and aside from a bit of smut around the edges, the ship has escaped the worst of the firebombing. Tyler is discussing the prospect of rebuilding the Earth with the Doctor, and he is very apprehensive about the hard road ahead of him. The Doctor reassures him, saying, “I’m sure you’re going to make a great success of it.” At that moment, they are interrupted by the sound of Big Ben tolling. This is a callback to Part 1, when Big Ben’s absence was presented as a sign that something was very wrong. With those chimes, it is as if one small piece of the world is right again. The Earth is healing.

Off to the side, Susan looks unhappy. The Doctor finds her lost in thought, and she begins to say, “It would be nice if we…” She trails off, and when the Doctor asks what is wrong, she changes the subject. The soul of her shoe has worn straight through, and she peels it off, handing it to the Doctor. He wants to repair it, but she says she has plenty of others. “I’d better clean out my cupboard,” she says. “It’s in a dreadful muddle.”

“Yes, you little monkey,” the Doctor says, embracing her with his free arm. “You know, since you’ve been away from that school, you seem to have got yourself thoroughly disorganized, haven’t you?” He is strangely out of countenance, fumbling his words. “Yes,” he continues, “you need taking in hand. Well, I—er—I think I must check up on the ship, if you don’t mind.” He leaves Susan standing there.

As the Doctor enters the ship, he watches Susan walking over to say goodbye to David, deep in thought. David is with Barbara and Ian, the latter of which asks David what his plans are. David says he plans to work the land. “More than anything, I want to see things grow again. I want to be a part of it.” Ian and Barbara say their goodbyes and follow the Doctor into the TARDIS. Tyler comes by and says his goodbyes as well.

Now alone with David, Susan becomes very melancholy and moves a few paces away from the man. David follows after her, softly calling her name.

“Yes, David?” she says, unable to face him.

“Please stay. Please stay here with me.”

There is a long pause. “I can’t stay, David. I don’t belong to this time.”

“But I love you, Susan.” David puts his hands on her shoulders. “And I want you to marry me.”

Susan places a hand over one of his. When she speaks, her voice is choked up. “You see, David, Grandfather’s old now. He needs me.” David turns away, and Susan turns after him. “Oh, don’t make me choose between you and him, please!”

David turns back to face her. “But you told me! You said that you’d never known the security of living in one place and one time.” He goes to a knee, taking both of her hands together in his and continuing in a gentler tone. “Look, you said it was something that you always longed for. Well, I’m giving you that, Susan. I’m giving you a place. A time. An identity.”

Susan looks at him for a long moment, then spins away, saying, “No, David!” She starts to cry, leaning against a wall. David walks up behind her, and Susan looks down at her feet. “I’ve lost my shoe,” she says feebly. Then suddenly, she turns and embraces David, crying against his chest, “Oh, David, I do love you! I do, I do, I do!”

The scene cuts to the inside of the TARDIS, where the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara have been watching this all transpire on the scanner. He flicks a switch, and the doors close.

Hearing them bang shut, Susan turns toward the TARDIS, startled. “Grandfather!” she cries out.

The Doctor’s voice can be heard outside the TARDIS. “Listen, Susan, please. I’ve double-locked the doors. You can’t get in. Now, move back, child, where I can see you.” She takes a few steps back toward David, back into the center of the scanner’s field of view. “During all the years I’ve been taking care of you, you in return have been taking care of me.”

“Oh, Grandfather, I belong with you!” Susan says, taking her necklace in hand, a necklace bearing a TARDIS key.

“Not any longer, Susan. You’re still my grandchild and always will be. But now, you’re a woman, too. I want you to belong somewhere, to have roots of your own. With David, you’ll be able to find those roots and live normally like any woman should do. Believe me, my dear, your future lies with David and not with a silly old buffer like me. One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear.” The Doctor presses a switch on the TARDIS console, and it dematerializes.

Outside, a dirge begins to play as Susan stares at a place a thousand miles away, stepping onto the place where the TARDIS once stood. After a moment, David takes a step toward her, reaching out a hand. “Susan?” he says quietly. “Susan?” She reaches toward him blindly, taking his hand, still staring off into the distance. “He knew,” David says. “He knew you could never leave him.”

After a moment, something falls from Susan’s other hand. Slowly, she and David walk offscreen to begin their new life together. The camera pans over and zooms in on the ground to show the necklace with the TARDIS key resting there in the dirt, under a decrepit bridge on the bank of the Thames. Credits roll.

Takeaways

My heart.

I’ve seen Susan’s departure at least half a dozen times now, and never has it hit me harder than it did in this moment. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been so invested in the series as I have been during this retrospective. I certainly feel like I understand Susan on a much deeper level than when I watched the series for the first time, say, with a Nintendo Switch in my lap or a muted baseball game on a second screen. Watching Susan leave was like a punch to the gut.

In the grand arc of Doctor Who, the most pivotal episodes are the ones in which we experience the introduction or departure of either a Doctor or a companion. Therefore, with a serial like this, I think it is important to place an extra level of scrutiny on how I judge its success—it has to be rated not just on how it works as a standalone story, but on how successfully it cashes in on more than a seasons’ worth of emotional attachment to a character and whether or not it gives them a proper sendoff.

For the first criteria, I think this serial did a serviceable job of delivering on its premise. There were some definite low points, like the action sequence at the end of Part 2 and the awful cliffhanger in Part 4. The climax in Part 6 was incredibly rushed, and I had absolutely no respect for the Robomen. There were some definite high points as well; Part 4 had absolutely brilliant pacing and narrative development, and I would put that episode toward the top of the list of my favorite individual episodes in the series to this point. All that being said, if it were just up to the premise and execution, I’d say The Dalek Invasion of Earth was about average.

However, it is impossible to understate the importance of Susan’s departure. There is a reason why, at the beginning of this serial, I didn’t recall much of it aside from the ending. Because the ending is everything. This is the first companion departure in the series, the first departure of any major protagonist. Up until this moment, the series gives very little shrift to the idea that any of these characters even can leave. And suddenly, Susan is gone. As for how this was accomplished, I think this is one of the best Classic Who companion departures that the series has to offer. Like I said earlier in this review, Susan’s character arc is the most pronounced and most developed of the show’s major characters. Between her, Ian, and Barbara, I believe Susan had the most potential to elicit an emotional response from the audience.

An important thing to note here is that I don’t think Susan ever reached the end of her arc of character development, at least not on screen—and that is not a bad thing. In NuWho, there are many points where a companion reaches a point in their run where they just start to stagnate. After Amy and Rory’s wedding, these characters feel complete in a way that lessens the impact that these characters can have on later episodes. Same thing with Clara: she reaches a level of comfortability with her life with the Doctor at which her character starts to feel tired. A lot of this is, I feel, due to a bit of audience capture. The fans are vocal about a companion that they like, and the writers keep them on for a little longer than they should because of it. With Susan, one of the reasons I find her departure to be so compelling is because she is unfinished. A lot of the sadness I feel is because I won’t get to see the woman she grows up to be. And I think that’s a beautiful way to let her go.

Looking forwards, Susan’s departure has added a lot of uncertainty to the show. I’m interested to see how the writers will distribute the character-heavy moments among the rest of the protagonists now that she is no longer there. Will Barbara and Ian’s characters be taken in a new direction? I’m also interested to see how Susan’s absence affects the Doctor. It becomes apparent much later on in the show that the Doctor is sometimes very closed off and reluctant to take on new companions because of just how often he has had to experience them going away. I don’t expect this sort of callus to be there right away, but I would like to see the Doctor come to terms with his granddaughter being gone.

Rating: 7.1/10

Chapter Text

2.3 – The Rescue

Part 1 ( The Powerful Enemy)

After leaving Susan on Earth in 2164 with her newly betrothed David, the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara arrive at a new locale. The TARDIS materializes in someplace dark and rocky, possibly inside a cave.

The scene immediately cuts to a damaged spaceship. It looks to have been a long, sleek cylinder, with the number 201 on the exterior. It seems to have crashed, with a crack clear through the middle. Sticking up from the wreckage, a radar dish spins, hinting at survivors. As the camera pans over the dish, we hear a faint beeping noise.

Cut to the interior of the ship, where we see a white dot blinking on the radar screen—this array is the source of the beeping. The camera slowly pans across the room on the spaceship, passing over some bits of machinery, some cabinets, and a sink basin, coming to a stop on an open doorway. Outside, the climate seems tropical, with lots of sand, some boulders, and what appears to be a palm tree.

A girl appears in the doorway, excited, drawn by the beeping of the radar. She looks to be in her late teens, short and slender, with light brown hair falling just below the shoulders and a plain black dress falling to her mid-thigh. Her name is Vicki, played by Maureen O’Brian. Vicki runs over to the radio to hail someone, then, seeming to think better of it, calls out “Bennett!” and runs through a door to another part of the ship. She reaches a second door and bangs on it, calling out, “Benett, the rescue ship’s landed! It’s arrived!”

Bennett tells her to come in, and the scene changes to show the interior of Bennett’s room. Bennett is a burly-looking man with straight black hair and a medium-length, curly beard. He lies on his bed, grumpy in spite of the girl’s excitement. “It can’t be the ship,” he says a bit harshly. Vicki tries to tell him that the radar says otherwise, and Bennett asks her if she has talked to the rescue ship over the radio. She says no, and Bennett insists that it must be a fault in the radar. “The rescue ship’s not due for another three days. It can’t even find Dido (pronounced DIE-doh) unless we guide it down.”

Vicki continues to tell him that it must be the rescue ship. Bennett changes tact, asking Vicki if she heard it land. Vicki says no, rejecting Bennett’s notion that a ship couldn’t possibly land silently. She has put her entire faith in the efficacy of the blinking white dot, it seems. The audience knows that this blip is actually the TARDIS, but Vicki and Bennett have no way of knowing. “Look, Vicki,” Bennet begins, “I know how badly you want to get off this planet. We both want to get away, but it’s no good building up our hopes. Go and radio the rescue ship. You’ll find your mistake.”

The camera pushes in close on Vicki’s face, and her expression slowly shifts from hope to dejection—though she does manage to force a smile as she turns away from Bennett. As she starts to leave, Bennett says, “And Vicki, watch out for Koquillion.” At the mention of the name, Vicki’s eyes widen, her mood moving right past fear to stark terror. So far, I like how Maureen O’Brian plays Vicki; she is very expressive.

“I haven’t seen him today,” Vicki says, her voice quavering slightly. Whoever this Koquillion is, he must be bad news.

“He’ll be around somewhere,” Bennett continues. “And remember, he knows nothing about the rescue ship…So be careful. If he finds out, he’ll kill both of us.”

Back at the radar array, Vicki picks up the radio and contacts the rescue ship. A measure of hope has returned to her voice, and she asks the man on the other end of the transmission if they have landed. The man, sounding annoyed, tells her that they are still 69 hours away from Dido and cuts the transmission. Confused, Vicki gazes at the blinking dot on the radar. “69 hours away? Who’s landed on the mountain?”

Cut to the interior of the TARDIS, where we see the Doctor napping in a chair in the console room. Barbara brings Ian over to the console, seeming a bit concerned. The ship has stopped the trembling that occurs mid-transit, and she suspects the TARDIS has landed. Ian agrees, glancing toward the sleeping Doctor. “But the Doctor’s never slept through a landing before,” he says. They go over to wake him up.

They shake him awake, Barbara telling him that the trembling has stopped. The Doctor takes her hands, saying, “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you’re feeling better.”

Looking mildly put out by this comment, Barbara points at the console and says, “No, not me! The ship.” Great bit; it made me chuckle.

The Doctor confirms that the ship has landed and turns the power off. He confirms that the climate outside is suitable for human life and, stifling a yawn, he turns on the scanner. It’s too dark to make out anything outside the TARDIS. “I do think we ought to step outside and have a look. I will too. Susan! Er—”

The Doctor stops speaking, taking a step back. Susan is gone. His mouth moves a little, but no words come out. I don’t mean this to sound overdramatic—it’s not that he’s too distraught to speak, more like he’s uncertain what to say next. Barbara tosses him a lifeline; she leans close and asks, “Doctor, why don’t you show me how to open the doors?”

Pulled away from his thoughts of Susan, the Doctor sounds somewhat back to normal as he tells Barbara which switch to press. When Barbara successfully opens the doors, he even throws in a chuckle as he chides her a bit, saying, “You won’t, of course, try to do that during transit, will you?”

Outside, they discover that the TARDIS has landed inside a cave. This is the best I’ve seen the series make use of the blinking light on top of the police box, as it repeatedly casts light onto the characters and then plunges them into the near total darkness of the cave. Barbara notices a distinctive smell that is nothing like anything she’s ever smelled on Earth, and the Doctor notices it too, saying that he may have been here before. He tells Barbara and Ian to have a look around, warning them not to go too far. When Ian asks him what he is going to do, the Doctor says, “Oh, I think I’m going to have a nap.” That, more than anything else, tells the audience and the other characters that the Doctor is indeed out of sorts. The Doctor not eager to explore?

Pulling Ian a little ways away from the TARDIS, Barbara tells him that they can’t expect the Doctor to forget about Barbara like the snap of a finger. They spend a moment thinking about Susan, wondering what she is up to. “If I know anything about David,” Barbara says, “she’s learning to milk cows.” They head off toward a tunnel that they think leads outside.

As soon as they are gone, the camera pans to show a gruesome looking creature slinking around the TARDIS. It has large bug-like eyes and long antennae rising from the top of its head. Its neck and shoulders are ringed by rows of sharp spikes, its skin reflects the light as if it is metallic, and its hands have three clawed fingers. It stands next to the TARDIS in sleek black robes, holding some sort of tool in the crook of an elbow, looking really menacing in the flickering light of the ship. I know the sample size is small, but in my opinion, this is the best creature design in the series so far, even better than the Daleks. It’s actually terrifying in a way that I rarely feel from the classic creatures.

On the side of the mountain, Ian and Barbara emerge from a tunnel onto a rocky outcropping overlooking a valley. They see the spaceship, broken in two. “You see on the side?” Ian says excitedly. “A flag! It’s from home!” I had to go back and look at the establishing shot of the ship to see a very tiny Union Jack on one of the panels of the ship. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I never would have noticed it. They also notice some destroyed buildings near the ship, and Ian posits that they may have been destroyed at the same time as the ship crashed.

The two start to talk about investigating the wreckage. Barbara seems against it, but Ian wants to make sure that any surviving crew members are alright. Barbara turns and suddenly screams—the creature from the cave is standing with them on the outcropping. It speaks oddly, its voice thin and muffled: “You are strangers here…You landed in that box?”

Ian grips Susan protectively, eyeing the creature warily. Barbara opts for a milder approach, trying to make conversation with the creature, answering its questions. They demonstrate something like the dynamic between Barbara and Jenny from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, where Jenny’s pessimism kept her guard up in the hut of the old crone while Barbara treated the strangers with a kinder temperament. It’s not as stark as it was in the last serial, but I thought it was interesting how a similar dynamic popped up here. It has me questioning whether this has happened elsewhere in the series with Ian and Barbara and I just missed it.

Ian accidently lets it slip that another member of their crew is still inside the TARDIS, and the creature says it would like to meet him. “Go and fetch him,” it rasps. “I will take you all to the city.” Ian turns and reenters the cave to go get the Doctor.

Barbara makes to follow him, but the fearsome creature moves to block her way. “Why are you frightened?” it asks. “I am your friend. You can trust me.” It slowly backs her further and further from the mountainside, until with a shove, the creature sends Barbara over the edge of the cliff. She falls, screaming.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor analyzes a rock he took from the cave. “Well, undoubtedly we've landed on the planet Dido. How remarkable. Well, I must say, it'll be rather nice to meet these friendly people again after all these years. Fancy landing back here again. I wonder if I were to tell Ian that it was deliberate, whether he'd believe me or not.” He laughs heartily to himself. “Oh no, of course, I was asleep. Oh, pity, pity, pity.” I like this peek behind the curtain into the Doctor’s psyche. We haven’t often gotten him alone, and it’s funny to know that his self-aggrandizement is at least somewhat deliberate.

Back on the rocky outcropping, the creature holds up the strange device that it had been holding in the crook of its elbow, which looks a bit like a wrench. It makes a loud electronic ping, then the entrance to the cave explodes, the roof collapsing in a pile of boulders and a cloud of dust.

Inside the cave, Ian is knocked to the ground by this explosion—although this looks extremely fake. Ian looks more like he has keeled over drunk than anything to do with the explosion. Hearing the commotion, the Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS. He calls out for Ian, but he can’t see anything through the cloud of dust. He coughs and retreats back into the ship.

At the bottom of the cliff, Barbara is knocked out, her hand wrapped around a broken piece of branch. The shadow of another person falls over her.

Meanwhile, the Doctor once again exits the TARDIS, this time carrying a large flashlight. He finds Ian lying on the ground and helps him to his feet. “Barbara,” Ian sputters. “I thought she was with me. I heard her scream…I went back and—an explosion.” Ian tries to tell the Doctor that the cave-in was no accident, beginning to describe the creature he and Barbara saw.

The Doctor recognizes the description, even completing it for Ian. “This is the planet Dido,” he tells him. “I’ve been here before. I know them very well…They’re a friendly people.” Ian disputes this claim, even going as far as saying he might prefer the Daleks. He describes the strange tool the creature held, and the Doctor recognizes its description too. With Ian slowly regaining his capacity to walk, the two begin to seek another way out of the cave. “But why?” the Doctor asks himself, referring to the people of Dido’s shift toward violence. “What would have happened to change them? I wonder.”

Back in the crashed spaceship, Vicki is carefully arranging a blanket in the corner of the room with the radar array. I’ll call this room of the spaceship the main room from now on, as it appears to function as a general gathering place. She hears someone coming, then quickly moves to sit at a small table. The creature from the mountainside opens the door of the ship and steps inside. This creature is Koquillion, the name that evoked so much fear in Vicki just at the mere mention of the name. I’ll give Koquillion he/him pronouns, as that’s what Vicki and Bennett used.

Koquillion demands to know what Vicki was doing outside. He saw her dragging a sack, and wants to know what she was hauling. “Oh, just some stones,” Vicki says quickly, picking up a stone from the table. “I collect them. They’re very beautiful.”

Koquillion knocks the stone out of her hand and says he is going to talk to Bennett. “Remember,” he says, “you both owe your lives to me.” Vicki asks about the explosion she heard coming from the mountain, and Koquillion says that a space machine arrived there. Vicki looks excited, but Koquillion goes on to describe the newcomers: “A warlike people. They wanted to pillage the ship! I could not save them from my people, as I do Bennett and yourself. They’re walled up in a cave. If they’re not dead already, they will die of hunger and thirst.”

In a fit of bravery, Vicky’s tone turns icy. “I bet you never gave them a chance,” she accuses. “You could have—” She cuts off as Koquillion raises his destructive tool threateningly, cowering behind her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Koquillion moves to the door that leads to Bennett’s room. “Remember, I am the only one who can save you from my people. You should be grateful. I am your only protection!” The door closes behind Koquillion, and Vicki rushes over and presses her ear against it. The shot changes to show Koquillion trying to open Bennett’s door. Bennett’s initial response is, “You can’t come in,” though he relents when Koquillion announces himself. He enters Bennett’s room, and that door closes behind him as well.

As soon as the door to Bennett’s room has closed, Vicki goes to the blanket she had been fiddling with and removes it to reveal Barbara hiding underneath. Vicki is afraid, both for Barbara if Koquillion were to find her and for herself if Koquillion were to discover that she had helped Barbara. Barbara tries to calm her down, and they introduce themselves to each other. Then Barbara asks about Koquillion. “He just keeps us here, Bennett and me. There’s a rescue ship on the way. He doesn’t know about that. But he’ll find out. I know he will.”

Then Barbara asks why Koquillion is keeping them there. “They, [the people of Dido], killed all the crew,” Vicki answers. “When we landed, we made contact here. Everyone on board was invited to a grand sort of meeting. I couldn’t go; I was ill, a fever or something. I stayed here that night. I remember waying up. A thunderstorm, I thought, but it was an explosion. Bennett dragged himself back. I was ill for days; I didn’t know about it till later. I came around, and found Bennett. He can’t walk. We just wait, and then Koquillion…” She trails off.

Barbara embraces Vicki, asking why Koquillion doesn’t kill Vicki and Bennett, especially after the people of Dido killed the rest of the crew. “We don’t know,” Vicki says. “My father was taking me—My father—” This is the first time in this retelling that Vicki is unable to continue. She breaks into tears, taking a moment to cry before wiping her eyes and turning back to Barbara. “I’ve just remembered,” she says. “He told me. Didn’t you hear him? They’ve killed all your crew, too.”

Meanwhile, Ian and the Doctor move through the cave, stopping to rest a moment. The Doctor is still insistent that violence is totally alien to the people of Dido. “My dear boy, when I was here before, the total population amounted to a handful of people. Merely a hundred…Peace, friendship, happiness. This means everything to the people here.” They continue on.

Back at the ship, Vicki treats the cuts and bruises from Barbara’s fall. Barbara asks Vicki some additional questions about the people of Dido, and Vicki says that they haven’t met anyone other than Koquillion. Barbara seems to find this strange, but the conversation moves on, and Vicki shows her the flare she is supposed to shoot to help guide the rescue ship to their location. “It’ll be ending for you soon, then,” Barbara says.

“There’s aways Koquillion,” Vicki answers sadly. “He could stop us. He could keep me here forever.” Vicki notices the look of pity that has come across Barbara’s face. “What are you looking like that for?” she demands, suddenly angry. “You’re sorry for me, aren’t you? I’m perfectly alright, you know. I don’t care if nobody ever comes. I’m fine. I’m perfectly alright.” It’s been a while since I mentioned this, but this is one of those instances where the series is way too explicit about something that should be a lot more subtle. I don’t need Vicki yelling about why she doesn’t like to be pitied. Just reacting with anger at a few words of consolation would have been more than enough.

They hear a noise and fear that Koquillion is returning from Bennett’s room. Vicki throws the blanket back over Barbara, but the noise turns out to be Bennett himself, who says Koquillion has left. He tells Vicki he that the creature told him about the murder of the people up on the mountain.

“No, he hasn’t [killed them], Bennett. Not all of them anyway.” With a smile, she pulls the blanket off of Barbara. Bennett doesn’t look pleased by this complication.

In the cave, Ian leads the Doctor along a narrow ledge. Below them is a drop that is certain to leave them severely injured were they to fall. They hear a noise, and Ian points the flashlight at the bottom of the drop, revealing a massive creature slithering on all fours, looking something like an alligator only larger, with glowing eyes and membranous frills around its head. It resembles Koquillion somewhat, almost like it is some sort of quadrupedal, feral cousin to the creature. Certainly something to be avoided.

Continuing along the ledge, Ian finds a series of rings that look like they are meant to aid one’s passage through the cave. He assists the Doctor in grabbing first one, then another, then a third, inching across the narrow footing. But as Ian pulls on the third ring, it comes out of the wall, and he stumbles forward onto a slightly wider surface. Sword blades slide out of the wall from a massive carving of what looks like Koquillion’s face, a wall of swords in front of and behind Ian that prevents him from leaving that section of the ledge. It seems as if the third ring was a trap. A helpless Ian inches away from the wall, as more blades emerge, keen on either impaling him or pushing him off the ledge and into the maws of the waiting beast below. Credits roll.

Part 2 (Desperate Measures)

Wrapping his coat around one of the blades, Ian grabs the Doctor’s hand and swings himself out over the edge and around the wall of swords. Looking at it as a whole, this trap looks really goofy. It’s kind of like the traps in the forest temple in The Keys of Marinus. In that serial, even if the traps functioned as intended, it didn’t appear as if they posed a lethal threat to either Ian or Barbara. They were flimsily constructed, and it looked very clearly like someone behind the scenes was frantically trying to wrangle them with pullies and wires. Here, the trap looks a little better, and the motion of the swords is at least smooth. But the swords slowly pushing out toward Ian’s legs are spaced widely enough that if stood in the right place, they wouldn’t touch him. The wall of swords on either side also present ample space to slip between two of them. Ian might get sliced up a bit, but it doesn’t look like it would be lethal. And lastly, the perspective down to the creature below is really inconsistent. At times, the drop looks more than twenty feet, but as Ian swings back around to the Doctor, it looks to be no more than seven or eight feet. Certainly short enough that if he had to, Ian could have chanced a jump down and tried to outrun the creature.

Put simply, this scene just looks very cheap. The Rescue is another budget serial, with relatively simple sets, designed to recoup some of the deficit accrued with the expensive The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It strikes a lot of the same chords as The Edge of Destruction, a two-part budget serial from Season 1 that directly followed two serials which ran well overbudget. However, this scene with Ian and the Doctor is the first time in the serial in which the low budget feels like a limiting factor in the storytelling. Everything to this point has had a small enough scope to suit the low-cost production constraints, yet the construction of this booby trap appears to have gone beyond the serial’s means. In The Sensorites, I contended that in a budget serial, the Showrunners should avoid scrimping with creature design. This serial demonstrates that they shouldn’t cheap out on practical effects either.

Back in the main room of the spaceship, Barbara and Vicki are kneeling over Bennett, who is slowly regaining consciousness. If you don’t remember him passing out, that’s because he didn’t. The serial never showed it—it’s like there is a scene missing. Somewhere along the line, someone in writing or production or editing made a very strange choice to leave out this information, especially because this episode is more than thirty seconds shorter than Part 1—ample time to show Bennett fainting.

Anyway, Barbara suggests it may have been the strain of trying to walk, and Bennett slowly comes to, reiterating that Koquillion told him the fate of Barbara’s friends. Barbara doubts Koquillion’s word, noting that the creature had been wrong about her own survival. “You know, the next time he visits us, we might be able to surprise him,” she says. “He doesn’t know I’m here, does he, so we could set a trap and overpower him!”

Bennett won’t entertain this idea, mocking it as childish. He assures the two women that the rescue ship is coming, arguing, “We have to sit still…Maybe we’ll have a chance of escaping, get back to Earth…We get rid of Koquillion, we gain nothing. If the plan fails, he kills us.” The women are disheartened, though they see the logic in his words. They help Bennett back to his room, where he brusquely shuts his door in Barbara’s face. Vicki goes out to gather some water.

Back in the cave, the Doctor manages to fit the trap-ring back into place, and the swords retreat back into the wall.

Meanwhile, Vicki is outside, gathering cans full of water, unknowingly being watched by one of the four-legged creatures from the cave.

Inside the cave, Ian and the Doctor finally find their way out. The Doctor notices a stone door near the exit, but he decides against going through it, saying, “No, come on, let’s go the obvious way…Just so long as nobody starts creeping up behind us.”

In the spaceship, Barbara looks out of a window and sees the creature watching Vicki. Scared for Vicki’s life, Barbara takes the flare out of the cupboard and shoots the creature, much to the dismay of Vicki, who screams, “No! No, don’t! No!” The creature dies, screaming in agony.

Still on the mountain, the Doctor and Ian hear this noise and head toward it.

Vicki and Barbara go back inside the spaceship; Vicki is furious. “You killed Sandy! Why? What made you?…How could you do it? Sandy only wanted food.” Barbara says the creature was going to attack her, but Vicki tells her, “Sandy only ever ate plants. I trained him to come here for food…I shouted! You wouldn’t listen!” Vicki slumps into a chair, crying.

At this moment, the Doctor and Ian appear in the doorway of the spaceship. They enter, happily reuniting with Barbara.

On the mountainside, Koquillion exits the door the Doctor had discovered and notices Ian and the Doctor’s footprints leading out of the cave. He starts to follow the trail.

The scene cuts back to the spaceship, where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki are all sitting around a table. Vicki is still crying, though she seems more composed than earlier. The Doctor addresses Vicki: “That’s better, that’s better. Now, blow your nose and wipe your face. That’s it…It’s going to be alright.” His tone is pitched higher than normal, his voice soft and soothing, a gentler timbre than I’ve ever heard from the Doctor. The nearest I can think of is when he apologized to Barbara at the end of The Edge of Destruction, and I don’t think it’s very close. I think this is a deliberate effort to make the Doctor seem more compassionate toward someone of Susan’s age and stature, though it comes off as a bit fake, or at the very least overcompensating. He never adopted this tone with his own granddaughter.

Vicki is still agitated, and Barbara tries to follow the Doctor’s example, speaking gently. “Look, Vicki, I know you’ve been here a long time, but you’re underestimating what Koquillion can do.”

Perhaps this strikes a nerve, or perhaps she dislikes that Barbara is the one saying this to her so soon after killing an animal she fed and liked. Either way, she responds angrily, “Yes. You’re right. I’ve been here a long time. I know what it’s like here. You’ve only just come, and you’re trying to ruin things. It was alright before. It was. The rescue ship’s coming, and nobody asked you to come here. Nobody!” At the end of this soliloquy, her anger turns to more tears, and she spins away from the table with the Doctor and his companions.

The Doctor gestures for Barbara and Ian to leave him alone with Vicki, and they do, exiting the spaceship. “Vicky, my dear. Sit down,” he says once they have gone. Again, his voice is exceedingly gentle. “You don’t mean that, do you? Well, do you?” Vicki sits down at the table and shakes her head, giving a rueful smile. “Good, good. Now, I’ve listened to all you’ve said, and I’ve thoroughly understood. We’re here to help you. This is all we’re going to try to do. You know, we’re not going to ruin things for you.”

When it comes to discussions over whether someone is acting out-of-character, any conversation is always going to be totally subjective. The kindest person in the world is capable of cruelty and violence under the right circumstances, and it is up to the viewer to determine whether the circumstance presented would reasonably elicit such a response. There is a thing that I have conceptualized with my own writing that I like to call “Acting inside/outside the 90%.” Basically, every character has an amalgamation of character traits and archetypes that they express most often—they make the character who they are. And I think 90% of circumstances within a narrative—or thereabouts—should evoke a response within the bounds of their normal characterization. In rare cases, such as instances of extreme emotion or stress, I think it can be very useful to portray a character acting outside the bounds of their normal characterization.

However, in order to make this work, a writer needs to do two things: 1) they need to make it very clear to the audience why a character is breaking with their personal history, and 2) they need the characters within the narrative to acknowledge and reckon with their own break in characterization. For example, in The Waters of Mars, an episode toward the end of the 10th Doctor’s run, the Doctor tries to break the Laws of Time by changing the outcome of a fixed point. Though the Doctor has a malleable relationship with established order throughout the series, the Laws of Time are the one area in which he never strays an inch from the dictums of the Time Lords.

So what were the circumstances which led him to acting outside the 90%? First, this episode falls shortly after the run of a companion named Donna Noble, whose departure from the narrative came as a result of a tragic incident requiring all memory of the Doctor to be wiped from Donna’s mind. The Doctor holds himself responsible for the incident, and The Waters of Mars is the last of three straight serials in which he does not travel with a companion. In The Next Doctor, the first of the three serials, he is asked why there is no companion by his side like usual. The 10th Doctor’s expression becomes grim, and he says, “They leave. Because they should. Or they find someone else. And some of them, some of them forget me. I suppose, in the end, they break my heart.” This is one of a few times in the series during which the Doctor is reluctant to find his next companion, something I touched on briefly at the end of my last review. However, we rarely see him actually traveling alone like he does with this run of three stories, and it gives us a peek behind the curtain at what the Doctor looks like on his own: erratic, lonely, and filled with self-doubt. This abnormal circumstance is a great setup for his abnormal characterization.

Second, the Doctor is not used to being in a situation where he cannot affect the outcome. Throughout The Waters of Mars, we see him looking on in pity at a group of people condemned to death by the Laws of Time. He is relegated to the background, sulky and withdrawn, as all around him, people fight for their lives. This compounds his feelings of loneliness and self-doubt already heightened by the simple fact that the Doctor is without a companion. This feeling of loss and incompetence boils inside him until it eventually comes to a head just before the episode’s climax. A character named Adelaide reiterates to the Doctor that, being tethered to a fixed point in time, they are all supposed to die. Jaw set in almost a snarl, the Doctor says, “Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time, there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It’s taken me all these years to realize that the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!…We’re not just fighting the flood, we’re fighting time itself. And I’m going to win!”

In the end, the Doctor’s actions are futile, and a character he thought he had saved takes their own life. The Laws of Time have defeated the almighty Doctor. The Doctor falls to his knees, a look of horror coming over his face at what he has just done. “I’ve gone too far,” he says faintly. And this is what I mean by a character realizing that their actions have departed from the realm of their own characterization. At this point, the character can then either change to accept this type of action into their characterization, or reject it and return to how they normally act, or something in between. Regardless of the direction they choose, the character has demonstrated growth in some capacity, be it positive or negative. Taken as a whole, this method of conceptualizes a character’s actions as being either inside or outside the 90% is not only what I think makes a compelling narrative for the audience, but it also gets the most out of the character in the process.

I write all of this to say that the 1st Doctor’s saccharine tone toward a Vicki is a poor way of showing the Doctor acting outside the 90%. First, the writers don’t make much of an effort to connect this sweetness to the recent departure of Susan. I think this is probably what they were going for, but aside from the moment in Part 1 where the Doctor accidentally called out Susan’s name, there hasn’t been any mention of her for the audience to ruminate on. For all we know, this could be just how the Doctor acts toward young strangers—after all, we haven’t really seen the Doctor speak to a child outside of the urchin boy from The Reign of Terror, and circumstances there didn’t allow for a protracted conversation. Compare this to how The Waters of Mars spent almost 180 minutes of runtime doing the legwork, depicting the Doctor on his own, before showing him act in such an unDoctorly fashion. And I’m not saying that this interaction needed three episodes of setup, but a casual mention to Ian or Barbara of how “She reminds me of Susan” or him glancing at some of Susan’s belongings in the TARDIS would have gone a very long way toward letting the audience make that connection. In a break from the norm, I would actually like the writers to be more explicit in instances like this.

And finally, there is also no acknowledgement by the series that the Doctor is even acting out of character. For something as small as this, it doesn’t need to be like The Waters of Mars, with the Doctor falling to his knees in anguish over something he has done. I could picture Ian going up to the Doctor after the fact, giving him a light ribbing with something like, “You were very good with Vicki. Not going soft on us, I hope?” And the Doctor could snap back into his normal characterization with something belligerent, like, “Don’t be ridiculous. I did nothing of the sort.” Just something that keeps the momentum of the episode going, while at the same time acknowledging the distinction between how the Doctor normally acts and how he acts with Vicki in this moment.

Continuing on, through his kind words, the Doctor convinces Vicki to take him to speak with Bennett. Vicki leads him to Bennett’s quarters, and goes back to the main room. When the Doctor knocks on Bennett’s door, it opens a few inches, and we hear Bennett say, “You can’t come in.” The Doctor pushes on the door, but it won’t budge any further. Then the Doctor grabs a piece of metal to use as a battering ram and starts bashing on the door. This is a very odd thing for him to do; why wouldn’t the Doctor attempt to talk to the man a little more before breaking and entering?

Back in the main room, we can hear the Doctor’s banging as Vicki goes back over to the table. The door opens, and Ian and Barbara return. Outside, we can see that night has fallen. Vicki tells them that the Doctor has gone to speak with Bennett. The feel of the room is awkward at first, but then Vicki and Barbara make sheepish apologies to each other. The mood lightens considerably, and Vicki smiles. “I’m afraid I’ve got rather used to being on my own,” she says.

“We know how you feel Vicki. We felt the same way ourselves, at first.” Vicki is confused by this, and Ian asks her she left Earth. Vicki says 2493. “You see, Vicki,” Ian continues, “our spaceship, well, isn’t like this one. It travels through time.”

“We left in 1963,” Barbara adds.

Vicki is stunned. “1963! But that means you’re about 550 years old!”

Barbara frowns. “Why yes, I suppose I am.” Ian guffaws at this; Barbara shoots him a baleful look. “Yes, it’s a way of looking at it, but I’ll try not to look at it too often.” She cracks a smile.

Meanwhile, the Doctor succeeds in ramming his way into Bennett’s room. Bennett is curiously absent. In a cabinet, the Doctor find a bank of tape recordings, one of which is of Bennett saying “You can’t come in” in exactly the same way as the Doctor heard after knocking. Then the Doctor presses a button, and we hear audio of the conversation happening between the other three in the main room. The Doctor chuckles to himself. “Intercom systems? Tape recordings? Now, I wonder what else.” He finds a lever and pulls on it, opening a trapdoor in the middle of the floor. He chuckles again, saying, “Yes, I see. An easy way to get out of a locked room.”

After some time, Ian gets impatient with the Doctor and Bennett. The three go to Bennett’s room to check on them, but they find the room empty. The camera pans across the floor, and we can see the trapdoor is closed.

Back in the mountains, the Doctor arrives at the door he and Ian had passed earlier, the door from which Koquillion came. He pushes it open, entering a large chamber. The scale of this room is massive for the series, especially after so many serials with small, cluttered sets. It is a shrine or a ceremonial chamber of some kind, with six pillars flanking a set of stone steps down to a long walkway. Smoky haze fills the room, with light filtering down from the ceiling. The production team did a fantastic job allowing room for such a large set in the small studio. That alone gives it such a unique atmospheric feel, such an impressive sense of depth.

The Doctor slowly crosses the length of the room, where he finds a decorated altar-like table, an open-fronted cabinet with various decorative urns and canisters, and a chest full of clothes.

Back at the spaceship, the other three have no clue how the Doctor and Bennett could have left. They don’t suspect Koquillion; they say they would have heard him if he came. Seeing no alternative, they decide to go back to the TARDIS, the most likely place for the Doctor to go.

In the shrine, the Doctor is sitting at the table when he hears Koquillion enter. Without turning, he calls out, “Come in. Come in, won’t you? I’ve been waiting to talk to you.” We get a fantastic wide shot of Koquillion walking between the pillars toward the Doctor, half shrouded in smoke. I wouldn’t quite call it scary, but this is the most unsettled I think I have been to this point. The Doctor has this aura about him that doesn’t let me believe he can be seriously hurt, and for that, I don’t think this shot is as impactful as it could be. Still, it’s a great moment.

Koquillion stops behind the Doctor, who says, “This used to be the People’s Hall of Judgment.” He turns to face the creature. “Fitting, in the present circumstances, don’t you think? Mister Bennett, may I remind you that masks and robes such as you are wearing are only used on absolutely ceremonial occasions, hmm?”

Koquillion removes his head, which has actually been a mask all along. Beneath is indeed Bennett. I love this twist. Except for never seeing Bennett and Koquillion at the same time, there was not much to lead the audience to suspect that they are in fact the same man—all I thought on my first watch-through was that Bennett was up to something. But when the reveal happens, there are a few things that suddenly come into focus: the tape recorder, the trapdoor, the fact that we never saw Koquillion leave the spaceship in Part 1 when he went into Bennett’s room…All that’s left to parse out it why, which the Doctor puts to Bennett when he asks, “This elaborate plan must have been conceived for some reason. What, hmm?”

“To save my life,” Bennett says coldly. He starts to close toward the Doctor, who, seeming to realize he is woefully outclassed by Bennett in terms of strength, starts to back away from the man. “I killed a crewmember on the spaceship to Astra. I was arrested. The ship crashed. My crime hadn’t been radioed to Earth. I knew if I could get rid of the other crewmembers—”

The Doctor cuts in, “Get rid of the other crewmembers and blame their deaths on the Dido people, hmm?” As he talks, he scans around for something to use as a weapon, and his eyes fall on the device Bennett had used to cause the cave-in.

“When we crash landed,” Bennett continues, “the inhabitants invited us all to a grand meeting. It was simple. I just arranged an explosion, using the ship’s armaments. The whole thing went up. All the inhabitants, the crew, the whole race.” Bennett seems gleeful about this. Once again, I am struck by how much better Doctor Who antagonists would be if they were just a little more sympathetic. It reminds me of Tlotoxl in The Aztecs, in that not every bad guy needs to take pleasure in the murder of others. “The girl didn’t know I’d been arrested. When we get back to Earth, she’d support my story. I dressed up as Koquillion to show her how terrible the people here were.”

“If that happened, your guilt would have been hidden forever,” the Doctor says, slowly picking up the destructive tool.

“If it happened? Nothing’s changed. There’s only three more people for Koquillion to kill, that’s all.” Bennett whirls around toward the Doctor just as he raises the tool toward Bennett. Bennett grabs it, and they both struggle over it before it is thrown to the ground, broken. Bennett backs the Doctor toward the chest of clothes, easily overpowering him, his hands gabbing him around the neck and pressing down.

Suddenly, two men appear in white. As if seeing a ghost, Bennett recoils, saying, “No! I thought I’d killed all of you!” He flees these men, who say nothing as they follow Bennett toward the exit. Presumably, these men are endemic to Dido. In his fear, Bennett backs all the way out of the room, right off the edge of the mountain, screaming as he plummets to his death. The Dido men turn and look at the Doctor, who slowly loses consciousness.

Right on the heels of that great twist, the writers gave us a real stinker of a climax. What we have here is a plot device known as a deus ex machina, which translates to “god from the machine” or “the god machine.” Essentially, a deus ex machina is when a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by something that is unexpected or unlikely, as if the hand of God has come down to deliver the good guys from harm. The Doctor was in the process of being choked out, with no hope of survival, when all of a sudden, two men come to his rescue, men who to that point had not existed in the narrative at all. In terms of resolutions, I think that the deus ex machina is one of the most hollow, unearned ways of concluding a narrative, especially when it is like what we see here in The Rescue. The surviving Dido men were an element of the story that was kept intentionally hidden from the audience, so when they suddenly have a massive impact on the progression of that story, it falls so incredibly flat.

Besides, think of just how unlikely this event was. In order for this to happen, the presence of the surviving Dido people has to be small enough to escape the notice of the rest of the characters, yet close enough to impact the story. Where were these two men hiding? Are there more Dido people? Why hadn’t they revealed themselves before? Remember, we don’t know exactly how long the spaceship had been crashed on the planet, but Vicki often emphasized that it was “a long time.” You’re telling me that the Dido people waited “a long time” to reveal themselves, just to come in the nick of time to save the Doctor from dying at the hands of Bennett? I don’t buy it. It’s so contrived that it ruins the serial for me.

When the Doctor comes around, he finds himself back in the TARDIS, with Ian and Barbara standing over him. He tells them about Bennett’s deception before stumbling outside to where Vicki is waiting for them. After he leaves, Barbara says to Ian, “What about Vicki? I wish we could take her with us. Well, we can’t leave her here, can we?”

The scene cuts to the cave outside the TARDIS, where the Doctor has just finished telling Vicki what really happened after the crash. “Then Bennett murdered my father,” Vicki says, eyes distant. “Then I’ve got nobody.”

The Doctor says, “My dear, why don’t you come with us, hmm?” echoing Barbara’s sentiment.

“In that old box?” Vicki says doubtfully.

“We can travel anywhere and everywhere in ‘that old box’ as you call it,” the Doctor answers. He says she can travel with them and that she’d be among friends. He goes into the TARDIS for a moment, letting her think it over.

After a few seconds, the Doctor calls Vicki inside. As she steps inside, her jaw drops open. “But it’s huge!” she says. “And, well, the outside is just, well…” She trails off.

“Vicki?” Barbara says. “Are you going to come with us?”

Vicki smiles, turning to the Doctor. “Yes. If you’ll have me.” The Doctor chuckles, closing the door to the TARDIS.

Back in the spaceship, we see the two Dido men. A transmission comes over the radio: it’s the rescue ship, asking for guidance down to the crash site. The Dido men smash the radio.

In the cave, the TARDIS dematerializes. Inside the ship, the Doctor and Ian stand next to the console, where the Doctor has just finished telling him about the surviving Dido people. “They have their planet back to themselves again. And somehow, I don’t think they will allow that rescue ship to land.”

“That isn’t why you brought Vicki along with us, is it Doctor?” asks Ian.

“No, Chesterton, no. It wasn’t the reason.” I think this is a lukewarm attempt to evoke Susan’s memory, but it really should have been more explicit. What is his reason then? To replace her? Does he really want that? “We shall be materializing quite soon. Perhaps we shall be able to get a rest this time.”

The scene cuts to show the TARDIS materializing on the side of a mountain, but the perch is unstable. The ship tilts ponderously over the edge of a cliff—inside, the Doctor and his companions are pitched around like leaves in a gale. The TARDIS tumbles off the cliff as the screen fades to black. Credits roll. Boy, there’s been a lot of literal cliffhangers lately, hasn’t there?

Takeaways

Just like how the last serial needed to be judged on how it functioned as a standalone story and how it portrayed Susan’s departure, the first episode in a new protagonist’s run must also be judged on two levels: how it works as a story and how it works in introducing a new character. On both levels, The Rescue is pretty average.

As a story, there are some great moments, like the reveal of Bennett having been Koquillion all along and the framing of the Doctor inside the forbidding People’s Hall of Judgment. But there were some sour moments as well. The writers did a poor job in communicating to the audience why the Doctor was acting extremely kind to Vicki in a way that was out-of-character. And the deux ex machina of the Dido men coming to the Doctor’s rescue completely smashed my suspension of disbelief. If the ending weren’t so dismal, I might have rated this serial in the high 6s. As it is, the ending played a substantial role in bringing down the rest of the serial.

And as a vehicle for bringing Vicki into the series as a companion, my feelings are also mixed. The reasons for her joining the TARDIS crew are good, despite the fact that they are not communicated very well to the audience. Beyond the fact that she is in need of a literal rescue from Dido, Vicki needs a father and the Doctor needs someone to fill the hole that Susan has left behind. In addition, Maureen O’Brian plays a very expressive character. In some ways, I find her acting to be more compelling than Carole Ann Ford’s, who often played Susan as either joyful or fearful, not often given much opportunity to demonstrate a wide breadth of emotion. With Vicki, we’ve already seen excitement at seeing the blip on the radar, fear of Koquillion, sadness over the loss of her father, and anger over Barbara’s accidental killing of her animal friend. That expressiveness may provide an extra dimension to Vicki that Susan lacked.

Looking forward, however, I do have some concerns. I don’t really know Vicki much: her motivations, her likes and dislikes, etc. Right now, she is Schrodinger’s companion: she could fill just about any role in the group. And I fear that she will fall back into the same role that was given to Susan at the beginning of the series, that of the sometimes-foolish child in need of a father figure to give her guidance. In order for me to consider Vicki a success, the writers will need to demonstrate how she is a character completely distinct from Susan, beyond the superficial differences in how she emotes and where she comes from. Yes, she can do some of the same things Susan did, but she must be portrayed as a different person doing them. A failure would be Vicki essentially replacing Susan. I do not remember the progression of Vicki’s character, but if that progression mirrors Susan’s slow arc from child to independent young woman, it could make her character seem boring and set a bad precedent for the replacement of companions that the series would have to rectify. I’m excited—and a bit apprehensive—to see how this new companion evolves.

Rating: 4.9/10

Chapter Text

2.4 – The Romans

Part 1 (The Slave Traders)

After witnessing the TARDIS falling off a cliff at the end of The Rescue, we are greeted with a shot of the ship laying on its side at the bottom of a canyon. Covered in dust, with creepers growing across its exterior, it looks to have been there for some time.

The scene cuts to a closeup of Ian from the chest up. He lays on his back with his head tilted to the side and his eyes closed, seemingly unconscious. Suddenly, he moves, his hand drawing a bunch of grapes close to his mouth, and he eats one. The camera pulls out to reveal that he wasn’t unconscious, just dozing. He’s not even in the TARDIS; he rests on a narrow divan in a lavish room with fluted columns, marble statues, and even a small fountain. He wears a long white tunic.

The Doctor is also in this room, similarly attired, watering some plants in a corner of the room. He ribs Ian about finally being awake, to which Ian says, “I thought the whole idea of us coming here was that we should all have a nice rest.” I love the subversion of a cliffhanger leading into something seemingly unrelated, with an unexpected time skip to push the narrative well past however the cliffhanger resolved. Too often, the show can become an endless string of the protagonists getting into trouble at the end of an episode, just to have it be neatly resolved in the first minute or two of the next one. Skipping the resolution every now and then is a great way to make the show less predictable. And by occurring at the beginning of a new serial, this also allows the writers to break the trend of the Doctor and his companions having to discover where they have landed and establish themselves. Changing the viewer’s perspective from learning about the setting along with the characters to trying to figure out what the characters already know is a subtle yet effective way to keep make the narrative feel fresh.

Ian asks the Doctor if Barbara and Vicki have gone down to the village. The Doctor doesn’t answer, musing instead about pipes. “You see, the Romans, unfortunately, didn’t know how to transport water satisfactorily. That’s why they built their aqueducts.” This is how the writers chose to tell the audience roughly where and when the TARDIS has landed: ancient Rome. It puts the lavish room and the characters’ outfits into perspective.

Meanwhile, Barbara and Vicki are indeed on their way to a village. They walk along a paved road, Barbara wilting a bit in the summer heat. Vicki is full of energy, zipping along the roadside, picking flowers, urging Barbara to move faster. I am reminded heavily of when Susan picked flowers after landing on Skaro in The Daleks, very early on in her character arc. So far, Vicki is demonstrating that same childish exuberance. I really hope Vicki isn’t destined to be a carbon copy of Susan.

The two women exchange some dialogue that give the audience some more information about the setting and timeframe. Vicki complains that although the Doctor promised her adventures, they have done little actual adventuring. “We’ve been here nearly a month, and all everyone wants to do is sit around and rest.” Barbara points out that she is learning what it meant to live in Roman times, but Vicki counters with, “Oh yes, in one little village miles away from Rome.” As far as exposition dumps go, The Romans has been unobtrusive, with exposition cleverly worked into the dialogue.

As the two walk offscreen, the scene cuts to show a man hiding behind some bushes, sharpening a large dagger as he watches the road.

Next, we see the village market, with lots of people gathered around stalls of merchants selling various goods. In one corner, an old man plays music on a lyre for a small audience. A marble statue stands on a plinth at the center of the market. The producers have done a great job of giving this set a very lived-in feel. There are more extras in this scene than in any other that I can remember, contributing to the sense that the audience is seeing a small slice of an actual village. So far, this serial reinforces my thesis that the showrunners are much more comfortable depicting historical fiction than they are at creating sci-fi settings.

A little ways off from all the hubbub, two men talk quietly. They wear heavy cloaks and have a mean look about them. They are slave traders, discussing their prospects of finding more people to steal. This village will be their last opportunity to kidnap slaves on their way to Rome, and they eye Barbara and Vicki as they enter the market. “Very suitable,” one of them says.

Oblivious to the unwanted attention, Barbara and Vicki approach the stall of a merchant selling bolts of fabric. Vicki wants Barbara to make a dress for her, asking what styles were popular when she left London. “London?” Barbara says, feigning confusion. “Never heard of it.” She smiles at Vicki, before giving her the historically accurate name: Londinium. After Vicki displays too much eagerness at the prospect of buying the cloth, Barbara pulls her away, chastising her and saying, “You should have learned by now that the price is much fairer when you’re not so eager to buy.”

After the women leave, the slave traders approach the merchant, offering her coinage in exchange for information. The merchant is very willing to sell, telling the men, “They moved into a villa just north of the town about a month ago. The owner, Flavius Guiscard, is away campaigning in Gaul. We reckon they’re friends of his looking after the house.” She goes on to say that there are two men there with them, one of them old, and that they are from a town called Londinium.

The men pull away from the stall, one man explaining the town is in a place called Britannia. “They are Britons,” the other says. “Perfect.” A quick aside: these men have names. They are mentioned briefly, and are not important. Throughout the narrative, they fill exactly the same role, virtually interchangeable. I’ll just keep referring to them as the slave traders.

As the scene draws to a close, it follows the old musician as he finishes playing his lyre and bows for the crowd. He moves offscreen, and we next see him walking along the road we saw earlier, with the armed man still lurking in the bushes. As the musician draws even with the man, the man attacks, pulling him down into the bushes. He raises his dagger, delivers a killing blow, and flees the scene.

Back in the villa, the Doctor and his companions have just finished a delicious meal. As they lounge around the table, Ian asks the Doctor, “What about the TARDIS?…Don’t you think we ought to go and have a look at it?” The Doctor frowns at him, thinking Ian wants to move on, which Ian denies.

“All the same, Doctor,” Barbara puts in, “I know what Ian means. It’s been three or four weeks since we left the TARDIS.” Ian adds that it’s not even the right way up.

This comment irritates the Doctor. “How many times do I have to tell you that the TARDIS is quite safe where it is?” he grouses. “It can take off from any angle. I’ve never known such a pair of worriers. Really. Good heavens, I can’t wait to get away for a couple of days from you. You keep on and on and on and on and on. Gracious me, really.” He goes offscreen.

The other three are confused by this, and Ian asks Vicki if she knows what he meant. “No, he hasn’t said anything to me,” she answers. “Can’t say I blame him, though…Well, it’s alright living here, but it’s boring. No wonder he gets irritable.”

The Doctor reenters the scene, saying he intends to go visit Rome for a while. Vicki, having just relayed her boredom to the others, jumps at the opportunity, begging the Doctor to take her with him, to which he agrees. Ian and Barbara think it would be safer if they all went, and this irritates the Doctor further. “What is this, now? I know what you’re insinuating. Yes, that I’m not capable of taking care of myself, eh?” He scoffs. “Safer indeed! Afraid to let me out of your sight, are you? Want to be my nursemaids?…I will not stand for it. You want to go to Rome? Go. Go yourselves.” With that, he takes Vicki off so they can start packing, leaving Barbara and Ian standing there, looking taken aback.

I was a bit taken aback, too. The Doctor is often brusque, but rarely has he been this uncharitable, especially to his friends. It reminds me of how he acted toward them in An Unearthly Child, back when he regarded them as strangers. In order for the rest of the serial to happen as written, the narrative depends on the quartet splitting into two groups: the Doctor and Vicki, and Ian and Barbara. There are so many ways to do this cleanly, but the writers have chosen to do it in a way that feels very out-of-place, especially coming on the heels of the Doctor acting so kindly to Vicki in The Rescue.

And the way that the Doctor pulls Vicki after him, kind to her even on the heels of his disdain, makes it seem like the show wants to set him up as favoring Vicki, just like he favored Susan in the beginning. This is a fine dynamic and something I would probably find interesting. After all, wouldn’t it be fascinating to watch the Doctor try to grapple with his feelings over Susan’s departure by trying to literally replace her with Vicki? But in order for this to be effective, the showrunners need to demonstrate an entire serial’s worth of character interactions to make the distinction between how the Doctor interacts with Barbara and Ian and how he interacts with Susan. The Romans is preparing to split up the protagonists, which, so early on in a companions run, runs the risk of muddling the audience’s expectations. It won’t be clear what the writers’ intentions are until we get to see the four all together for an extended period of time.

Barbara and Ian share a moment to commiserate over the mistreatment. Then Barbara pulls Ian aside, showing him a comb she purchased at the market and insisting on brushing his hair to make him look more Roman. Ian looks doubtfully at the comb—and a little more at the woman wielding it—but eventually relents. Barbara brushes his hair forward, taking his neat coif and working it into a more tousled look. Afterward, he looks at his reflection in the fountain and complements Barbara on her work. He starts to strut around the room, declaiming, “Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”

Barbara rolls her eyes and says, “Oh boy, that was a mistake.”

This is a great interaction, almost romantic. I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that a part of me wanted to see these characters develop a more intimate relationship. Like I said at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, with Susan’s departure, there would have to be something to fill the void left by the most character-heavy protagonist leaving the group. I didn’t mention it as a possibility because 1) I knew that void would be filled by a new character, and 2) I know that Barbara and Ian do not end up together—at least, not onscreen; they do end up married in a graphic novel, but that’s beyond the scope of this retrospective. Instead, scenes like this are as close as the show comes to an actual romance between Ian and Barbara, and I don’t think they were even meant to be written with romance in mind. Barbara and Ian’s interactions strike a much different chord when there is no imminent threat of danger or clear imperative. When they are shown more at their ease, the great chemistry between William Wright and Jacquiline Hill shines through, just as it did in their very first scene together in An Unearthly Child. Scenes like this make me wish the showrunners had allowed more space in Season 1 for these characters to grow like they did for Susan. Who knows where they could have ended up?

Somewhere in a forest, the slave traders are camped with their slaves. The slaves are a ragged bunch, men and women who have clearly gone through hard times, forlorn and dressed in dirty rags, chained to the slave traders’ wagons. One of the traders mentions they are a poor-looking bunch, to which the other says, “Ah well, if we’re to get the four from the villa, we’d better get moving.”

Some time later, the Doctor and Vicki have left the Villa on their journey to Rome. Ian and Barbara are lounging when Ian hears a thud. He thinks there is someone outside. Getting up to investigate, he turns to see one of the slave traders advancing from a corner of the room with a sword drawn. The second trader approaches from behind, hemming him and Barbara in the center of the room. They try to talk their way out of the situation, but the slave traders are unwilling to listen. The traders close in on Ian, grappling with him. Barbara tries to hit one of them over the head with a vase, but she accidentally hits Ian, knocking him unconscious. The slave traders haul them both out of the villa.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and Vicki are walking along the same stretch of road from before when they come across a dead body in the bushes by the roadside. Vicki recognizes the man as the old musician from the village market. The Doctor finds the circumstances of the man’s murder to be very odd. It couldn’t have been simple robbers; “They’ve left his belongings,” the Doctor says, stooping to pick up the old musician’s lyre.

Suddenly, they see a Roman Centurion rooting around in the bushes a little further down the road. His sword is drawn. The Doctor announces himself so as not to startle the Centurion, asking if he is looking for something. The Centurion seems suspicious of the Doctor, asking if the lyre belongs to him. When the Doctor asks him why it matters, the Centurion answers, “It’s you I’m looking for…You must be Maximus Pettulian from Corinth, whose skill as a musician is talked of even in Rome…We expected you in Assessium yesterday. When you failed to arrive, I sent my men out to search for you.” The Centurion goes on to say that Maximus Pettulian is expected to entertain the court of the Roman Emperor, Caesar Nero: the famed madman who was rumored to have started the Great Fire of Rome in order to rebuild the city in his image.

The Centurion offers the services of himself and his men as an escort, and the Doctor agrees, though this makes Vicki very nervous. The Doctor and Vicki briefly speak alone, where Vicki makes her anxieties known, saying the Doctor would be putting himself in a dangerous position. The Doctor actually agrees with her, though he is very cavalier about this—after all, we’ve seen the Doctor successfully pull off an impersonation a few times by now, most notably in The Reign of Terror when he took on the guise of a French officer. The Doctor suspects the Centurion of having had some role in the death of the musician, and he thinks the best way he can find out more is by going along with him for the time being. “And we shall never get a better chance of meeting Nero,” he adds with a smirk. Vicki gives a wry smile, and they join the Centurion on the road.

Inside one of the slave traders’ wagons, the traders negotiate with a man who has come to buy three male slaves. The newcomer cackles as they engage in an emphatic haggle, a laugh that is heard by Ian and Barbara outside, tied up with the rest of the slaves. They try to break their binds, but the metal refuses to give. Ian whispers to Barbara about escaping. Barbara is uncharacteristically pessimistic about their prospects; as a history teacher, she adds some morbid context: “Have you any idea how the Romans treated their slaves? Or how many of them escaped?” She also wonders how long the Doctor and Vicki will wait for them at the Villa when they return from their jaunt to Rome.

The man buying the slaves agrees on terms with the traders, and all three of them leave the wagon for the man to take his pick of the men. One of the three he chooses is Ian. He is unshackled and herded away with the others, Barbara crying out helplessly after him.

Next, we see the Centurion in some sort of sitting room with another man. The Centurion grips the man by the collar and shakes him—it is the man who killed the old musician on the road. “You fool!” the Centurion shouts. “I went to where the body should have been, and there he was, alive. Nero pays well when better musicians than he are put out of the way, and you failed, you fool!” The Centurion has no way of knowing that the assassin actually succeeded, and the assassin, a mute, has no way of telling him. Love the irony there. “But you’re lucky this time. I brought him back here, so you have another chance to earn your fee. Take it. Maximus Pettulian is in the room above. Fail me again, and you’ll lose more than your tongue.” The assassin sputters and nods his assent.

Upstairs, we can hear the Doctor plucking at the old musician’s lute offscreen, in his room for the night, talking about how dreadfully he plays the instrument. The assassin creeps outside the room’s curtained entrance, raising his dagger as he prepares to enter. Credits roll.

Who is Maximus Pettulian, and why does Caesar Nero want him dead?

Part 2 (All Roads Lead to Rome)

The assassin sneaks inside the room as the Doctor studies his lute, still speaking aloud. “The answer is, of course, not to be caught playing it.” He is alone, which I found surprising after hearing him talking through the curtains at the end of the last episode. I know the show often has characters speaking to themselves for the sake of the viewers—and the Doctor does this more than most—but the manner and volume of his speech made me believe Vicki was in the room with him.

Just as the assassin is about to strike with his sword, the Doctor whirls around and catches it in a neat perry with the lyre. “Oh, so you want a fight, do you?” he yells. What follows is a pretty amusing scene with the Doctor managing to fend off the assailant with relative ease. It’s a bit jarring, seeing William Hartnell—the oldest actor to have played the Doctor—flouncing around the room, knocking the killer back on to the bed and splashing him in the face with a jug full of water. It’s the first instance we’ve seen of him actually engaging in combat of any kind—aside from the raid in Marco Polo, where due to the nature of it being a reconstruction, it is unclear if the Doctor actually partook in the hand-to-hand fighting. The show doesn’t play this fight as serious, with a whimsical clarinet to set the mood and appropriately timed horn flourishes at all the pratfalls.

Though jarring, it doesn’t really feel out-of-character, but more so in line with the air of confidence around the Doctor while he is disguised as someone else. And in this depiction, we begin to see the development of the Doctor as the know-it-all traveler who brings his companions along to show them the universe. Three of the last four serials have depicted the Doctor returning to a place he has already visited: The Reign of Terror, The Rescue, and now The Romans. In each of these stories, the Doctor’s prior knowledge of the setting has provided crucial context to the narrative. It seems like the writers have begun to realize that the Doctor works best as a vehicle to drive the narrative forward, rather than having endless situations where the Doctor and his companions are functionally the same in how they interact with the environments they visit. This shift allows the audience to live vicariously through the companions, while at the same time giving the Doctor an alluring mystique that grows with each new location they come to that he has already visited. I don’t remember much about next few companions after Ian and Barbara, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the writers give them a much more subservient role to firmly establish this new Doctor-companion dynamic.

In a dimly lit building with many barred cells, Barbara and a woman in poor shape are thrown into one of them. They are in Rome. It has taken 34 days to get there, which I instantly take issue with. It’s one thing to show a brief scene or two of Barbara and the slave train miserably trudging along the road; it’s another entirely to just have a time skip and say that it happened and it was bad. We’re starting to see the serial unravel a bit in terms of its scope, a trend which will continue in the next scene. The writers are trying to cram a lot into a 4-part serial, and it is detrimental to the flow of the narrative. Before the scene ends, the writers make a point of showing Barbara treat the other woman in the cell with kindness, consoling her and making her comfortable.

Next, we have an establishing shot of a boat out at sea, immediately cutting to show rows of slaves pushing and pulling on the oars belowdecks, a galleymaster at the back of the cabin scowling at them and calling out the tempo. After a few seconds of this, with the camera panning over the pitiful state of the slaves to show their brutal mistreatment, the galleymaster calls a rest. To the slave on the bench next to him, Ian says, “Five days, Delos. Five whole days.” Coming from a scene with Barbara where 34 days were mentioned, this is a very disorienting statement. The show almost always treats the progression of its scenes in strict chronological order—at least, the relative chronological order of its time traveling protagonists. So it’s safe to assume that this scene happens after Barbara’s in Rome, which begs the question, what happened to Ian on the other 29 days? The show doesn’t tell us, and I get the feeling that the writers didn’t have the time to explain. The Romans really could have used an extra episode’s worth of runtime to demonstrate this large chunk of time to the viewers, rather than just say it happened.

Ian and the slave, a man named Delos (pronounced DAY-lohs), can see land outside of a porthole and decide to make a break for it. Delos pretends to keel over dead, and when the galleymaster comes over to see what is the matter, Ian lunges toward him. The galleymaster bats the attack away with the ease of a man used to such tricks. “You’ll have to do better than that!” he sneers, before retreating to his post and starting the slaves at the oars again.

Back with Barbara, she and the women are given food in their cell. Barbara insists the woman have her fill, despite there being very little food to share. As the women eat, a bald man watches them; he is short, wearing the finery of a man of status. When Barbara notices him watching them, she spins away toward the back of the cell. The man tells Barbara he wishes to help her, but when he says that his help would require him to purchase her and that she would not have freedom of movement, she refuses to listen to him.

A slave trader enters the cell block and greets the bald man, naming him as Tavius. Tavius asks the trader how much he wants for Barbara, and the trader replies that there are no private sales, telling Tavius that Barbara will be in the next auction. Then the trader throws Barbara a set of new clothes. Barbara asks about new clothes for the other woman, and the trader says, “She won’t be wanting any new clothes…She wouldn’t fetch any price at all at the auction. She’s to be taken to the circus and thrown in the arena.”

Meanwhile, out at sea, a vicious storm has blown in. In the galley, the galleymaster drives the slaves harder than ever through the swells and the lightning. Delos has reached the point of exhaustion, and Ian urges him to at least keep his hands on the oar or else the galleymaster will kill him. Suddenly, a particularly large wave knocks the galleymaster off balance, and he falls between two rows of slaves. They jump on him immediately, beating every exposed part of him with hands and feet, while all around them, the galley begins to crumble. Waves crash in the portholes, and timbers fall. Ian shouts at Delos that this could be an opportunity to escape. The scene fades to black as the camera pans over the devastation.

In a crowded market square in Rome, the Doctor and Vicki enter through an arch, having finally arrived. They plan to explore the city until nightfall, when they must present themselves at Nero’s palace. The commotion of a crowd is heard from the other side of the square, and the Doctor turns to see several people being corralled onto a small stage. Knowing this to be a slave auction, the Doctor hurries Vicki away from the scene to protect her from seeing the inequity, and the two leave just before Barbara is ushered onto the stage.

Unaware how close she is to her friends, Barbara looks out over the jeering crowd, eyes not really seeing anything, face hardened at the indignity of it all. A slave trader begins the bidding, and the price slowly climbs to 2,500. A man pulls at the skirts of her dress, and the crowd laughs as a shamefaced Barbara jumps back from the edge of the stage. This is a fantastic tone set by the showrunners; I could feel my blood-pressure rising as I watched the atrocity unfold. Suddenly, a voice from the back of the crowd calls out, “Ten thousand.” The crowd goes silent, and we see Flavius, the bald man from earlier, move toward the slave trader at the front of the stage to retrieve his purchase.

Next, we see a beach. Ian, lying face down, suddenly bolts upright as a shadow passes over him. It is Delos, who says Ian was knocked out by some falling timber when the ship went down. Delos managed to get the key from the galleymaster and let the slaves out before dragging Ian’s unconscious body to shore. All that is left to do is free their wrists from the manacles, which Delos does by slamming them repeatedly with a rock until they break. When Delos says they are near Rome, Ian insists on going there, despite Delos telling him that this is madness. “You don’t have to come,” Ian says, “but I have a friend who was taken there. I have to find her.”

Elsewhere, Tavius has brought Barbara to a room in a palace. It looks like some kind of servant’s quarters, or perhaps some room in Tavius’s chambers. There, Tavius explains why he decided to buy Barbara. “I saw you with that poor woman slave, and it was then that I realized by the way that you were looking after her, that I should have to help you…Unfortunately, I’m not able to give you your freedom. You’ll still be a slave, but at least here, in Nero’s house, as a servant of Poppea, life will be more pleasant than it could have been.” She is in the palace of Caesar Nero, the same destination as the Doctor and Vicki. Tavius is the man in charge of staffing the palace.

Barbara telegraphs her decision to go against the will of Tavius when she says, “I’m grateful for what you’ve done, but I must tell you that I have no intention of staying here.” Tavius says that he can’t stop her if that’s what she really wants, but he warns her that the punishment for a recaptured slave is death.

Something that annoys me about the protagonists is that the writers seem to want to give them a sense of honor by having them tell the truth when it would be most difficult. For the sake of her safety, Barbara should not have told the man who bought her that she will try to escape. In Marco Polo, Ian did something very similar when Marco Polo asked him to give him his word that he would not try to escape again, and Ian stayed silent. Ordinarily, if one of the ways the writers wanted to distinguish the protagonists as good was by portraying them as truthtellers even to their own detriment, that would be fine. A little reductive for my taste, but it is an artistic choice of which I could see some merit. However, it comes across as inconsistent when the Doctor and his companions lie about small things whenever it is convenient, either to keep the secrets of their time traveling, maintain a disguise, or to protect a friend. So when Barbara chooses to tell the truth to Tavius, it doesn’t just come across as a regrettable decision; it comes across as regrettable and uncharacteristic.

A messenger interrupts Barbara and Tavius, announcing the arrival of Maximus Pettulian and a small girl—which the audience knows to be the Doctor and Vicki. “Pettulian?” says Tavius. “Very well, ask him to come in.” The messenger turns to leave. “No, wait,” Tavius says, “On second thoughts, perhaps it would be better if I came out to see him.” The messenger bows his head and leaves. Like a few scenes ago at the slave auction, this is another near miss for Barbara reuniting with her friends—this is a running gag in this story.

In a reception hall, the Doctor reinforces this gag when he says to Vicki, “I shouldn’t think there’s a soul in this place that knows me, my dear, so there’s no cause for you to worry.” All around them are marble pillars, decorative vases, and statuettes on plinths.

Tavius enters the room and catches the Doctor’s attention with a psst! He introduces himself, saying, “There was trouble, but I settled it…He’s in the apodyterium.” The Doctor has no idea what Tavius is talking about—obviously, Tavius and the real Maximus Pettulian were involved in some sort of intrigue. The Doctor plays it off as best as he can, and he is saved when a herald suddenly announces the arrival of Caesar Nero. Vicki is overjoyed at the prospect of meeting the emperor.

Nero enters, a portly man with a gaudy crown of gold laurels and a chicken thigh in one hand. He comes a few paces into the room and stops with a loud belch. This is the infamous Caesar Nero, the ruler of ancient Rome who started the Great fire and who was said to be mentally unstable and a passable player of the lyre. That’s all the history you really need to know about him going into this portrayal; we get exactly that. A coterie of sycophants trails behind Nero, members of the court and other dignitaries leeching off the teat of power.

As Nero enters, Vicki’s excitement turns to disgust at seeing the man. What follows is a quaint scene where Nero asks the Doctor to play his lyre, and the Doctor manages to flatter Nero into playing instead. The writers do well to portray Nero as being drunk with power and incredibly capricious: he gets angry when people speak without permission; he snaps his fingers to demand a stool be moved five feet to the left so he can stand on it; he passes a half-gnawed chicken thigh into the hands of one of his sycophants—things of that nature. Derek Francis does a wonderful job playing Nero as a bumbling fool who, but for the trappings of power, would not have amounted to much of anything.

After Nero has finished playing, he again asks the Doctor to play. The Doctor declines, saying, “That, your excellency, would be an impossibility. After such exquisite playing, I cannot presume. It would be out of the question.”

Nero accepts the Doctor’s words and asks him if he has eaten, passing the Doctor his half-eaten chicken thigh before he answers. “We will talk and play together later, Maximus, when you have eaten and practiced.”

Out in the streets of Rome, it is now dark, and Ian and Delos are sheltering in a dark corner. Delos mentions that they don’t exactly look like respectable citizens in their ragged state, and Ian says they need to find someplace to clean up. He emphasizes that Delos doesn’t have to come with him, to which Delos says, “I know, but, well, luck’s been with us so far. Who’s to say it won’t hold?” Ian claps him on the shoulder, and they both turn around to see soldiers approaching, swords raised. Their luck didn’t hold.

Back in the palace, the Doctor and Vicki have found the apodyterium mentioned by Tavius. I had to google this; an apodyterium is the changing room of a public bathhouse. It was better on my first watch-through when I didn’t know what it was supposed to be, because the set looks like any of a number of curtained, sparsely adorned sets that we’ve seen to this point in the serial. There isn’t anything to distinguish it as what it’s meant to be.

The Doctor pulls back a curtain to reveal the body of a man. “Oh, Doctor, that’s the Centurion who found us and brought us to the house,” Vicki exclaims.

Meanwhile, Ian and Delos have been taken to the same row of cells that once held Barbara. One of the slave traders from before locks them inside. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” he says about their dour attitudes. “You’re lucky the soldiers brought you to me…You know as well as I do, escaped slaves are put to death automatically. This way, at least you’ll have a chance of fighting for your freedom…By putting on a good show in the arena, and hoping Nero’s in a benevolent mood.”

The trader leaves, and Delos tells Ian that they will probably be will be trained as gladiators. “Yes,” says Ian, “but to fight what?” In nearby cages, they hear lions roar. Credits roll.

Part 3 (Conspiracy)

This episode sets the tone by having Nero walking down a hallway, his sycophants following after him as usual. He plucks at his lyre, while his servant, a man called Tigilinus (pronounced tih-jih-LIGH-niss), writes down what Nero composes. Nero pauses, looks over what Tigilinus has written, and promptly slams the lyre over the servant’s head, breaking the strings.

This typifies an issue I have noticed now and then in the early series, where over the course of certain serials, the showrunners decide to make it really obvious that the show is for children, especially in how it approaches comedy. While the show eventually pivots more toward camp than outright comedy, the first decade of Doctor Who has a serial or two each season where the writers lean hard into slapstick bits and situational comedy, like this scene with the lyre and how the Doctor and Barbara keep missing each other. Slapstick was a staple of comedy of the era, especially comedy that denoted itself as family friendly, but as a viewer watching 60 years later, it just didn’t age well. There’s a reason we no longer see slapstick gags much anymore outside of media for very young children. It comes across as lazy writing trying to get easy laughs, and the payoff isn’t great enough for how it cheapens the rest of the narrative.

Next, we see Vicki walking down another hallway, alone. The Doctor enters the scene and greets her, wishing her a good morning—nighttime has ended. Before they can discuss much, the Doctor hears another psst! and turns to see Tavius waving him over. Tavius tells him that he managed to get rid of the body of the Centurion but that the Doctor should delay implementing his plans. The Doctor tries to fish for information, asking Tavius circumspectly about the details of the plan. Tavius smiles as if at a joke, then says he is leaving everything in the hands of the Doctor. He leaves the scene.

Once Tavius is gone, the Doctor turns to Vicki and says, “There’s some sort of conspiracy going on, my child, and I’ve decided for my own sake I must get to the bottom of it.” Vicki is rather nonchalant about this, saying she wants to go explore. “Very well,” the Doctor says, “but don’t leave the palace. It’s big enough to get lost in anyway. And remember, we’re only here as observers. We must not interfere with the course of progress or try to accelerate man’s achievements or progress.” Again, the Doctor reiterates his noninterventionist posture.

“Oh, I’ll do what you say, Doctor, but it does seem a bit of a waste,” Vicki says. She and the Doctor go their separate ways, and the Doctor talks to himself about having a word with Nero.

Next, we see Nero’s private living quarters, where Nero is talking with his wife, the Empress Poppaea. In the last episode, Tavius mentioned that he had purchased Barbara specifically to be a servant of Poppaea, but without a face to put to the name, I figured that this was just a generic title given to Nero’s servants, or that perhaps Poppaea was the deity of hospitality or something. The writers really seem to have issues with how they make characters’ names known to the audience. If you’re a writer and you want to refer to a character that you haven’t introduced yet, you have to make the reference clear enough so that the audience knows what to expect later. Just adding the title “empress” to Tavius’s earlier dialogue would have clarified things. And the reference has to be memorable enough so that when the character is eventually introduced, the audience remembers the previous mention. I only noticed it here because I had already added Poppaea to the dictionary when I typed it at the beginning of this paragraph.

Poppaea is selecting her jewelry for the day, as Nero walks around the room thinking out loud about how to get the Doctor to play his lyre. “We must give him some sort of incentive,” he says, though Poppaea brushes this off, saying he should just command him to play. They discuss this for a while—the conversation is very bland except for the fact that Tigilinus, Nero’s servant, follows the emperor around the room as Nero paces, attempting to place his crown on his head. This is another interaction meant to reinforce how delicate others must step to remain in Nero’s good graces: one cannot speak out of turn or interrupt Nero, even those aiding him. And it’s more situational comedy, which is much more tolerable to me than slapstick.

Poppaea suggests that Nero hold a banquet in the Doctor’s honor. “Wonderful idea. A banquet in his honor,” Nero says. He turns to his wife with a slight frown. “But I’d already thought of it, as a matter of fact.” No one is allowed to look more intelligent than Nero, not even his own wife—which makes for an intriguing juxtaposition to his overwhelming stupidity. I’ve had some qualms with this serial so far, but Nero’s portrayal—both the writing and Derek Francis’s acting—is definitely a highlight.

There is a knock on the door, and Tavius enters, saying that he has an audience with the empress. Barbara enters shortly after him, whom Tavius introduces as Poppaea’s new attendant. Nero is instantly smitten. We’re talking goggle-eyed, mouth gaping, walking in a circle around Barbara, fingers waggling like a cop with a fresh box of doughnuts. Seeing his reaction, Poppaea clears her throat and reminds her dutiful husband that he should go tell Maximus Pettulian about the banquet. Noticeably subdued, Nero leaves his chambers. Tavius also leaves.

When the men are gone, Poppaea adopts a somewhat threatening posture toward Barbara. “My husband, Caesar Nero, seemed quite taken with you.” Barbara pretends to be oblivious to this, but Poppaea doesn’t believe her. She leans closer to Barbara and says, “I like being empress, and I intend to remain so.” Then Poppaea commands Barbara to clean up the remains of her breakfast, and she leaves the room.

Barbara gathers a goblet and some other implements onto a serving tray and carries it out into the hall. There, she hears someone call out “Yoo-hoo!” Looking all around, she finds Nero peeking out at her from behind a column. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, literally licking his chops. “I’m coming after you!” Like a child playing tag, he chases after Barbara, who puts her tray down on top of an empty plinth and runs offscreen. As soon as Barbara is gone, Vicki enters the scene, yet another near miss.

Spinning around expecting to see Barbara, Nero instead comes face-to-face with Vicki. Nero backs away from the girl, as if trying to act natural, and he trips and falls over the plinth with the serving tray. Vicki laughs, covering her mouth and backing out of the hallway so as to avoid insulting the all-powerful Emperor Nero. She moves through some curtains, head still peeking into the hall, when she hears a woman’s voice from behind her say, “What do you want child?” The camera angle shifts, and we see a severe middle-aged woman in a workshop of some kind, looking questionably at Vicki’s intrusion.

The scene cuts back to Barbara, who is once again being chased by Nero through the halls. She runs offscreen, but before Nero can follow her, he is temporarily stymied by the Doctor, who stops him for a word. Near miss #4. Nero tells the Doctor that he wants a word with him as well, probably to tell him about the banquet, but he says it will have to wait and continues after Barbara.

A little ways off, it is Barbara that accidentally runs into Nero. She shrieks, turns in another direction, and dashes off again, Nero hot on her tail. From a distance, the Doctor just glimpses Nero chasing after a woman and gives a guffaw at the absurdity of the emperor. Near miss #5.

Back in the workshop, Vicki speaks to the severe woman, who is named Locusta. Vicki learns that she is the official poisoner to the court of Caesar Nero, which astounds her. She watches as Locusta prepares a poison, asking who the intended victim is meant to be. “I’ve no idea,” Locusta answers. “Nobody’s ordered it yet. But they will. They will.” Vicki asks if people seek revenge against her, and Locusta laughs it off, saying, “Oh no, no. I mean, it’s nothing to do with me personally, is it?…No. It’s an accepted thing, isn’t it? Almost a tradition, in fact, that the family of Caesar want to murder each other.” She holds up a bubbling brew in a long-necked flask, and the camera zooms in on the poison. “I wonder who’ll have the honor of being given this?”

Elsewhere, Barbara has returned to Nero and Poppaea’s private chambers to straighten the bedsheets, perhaps thinking that it is the last place Nero would expect her to be. Unfortunately for her, Nero saw her enter the room, and he sneaks in behind her, grabbing her shoulders with a “Got you!” He chases her around the bed, laughing like the idiot he is, trying to catch her.

Outside in the hall, the Doctor hears the commotion, still wanting to speak with Nero. Just as Barbara has managed to flee offscreen to another part of the quarters, the Doctor enters—near miss #6. This is starting to feel really played out. A few near misses is one thing, but this is getting ridiculous, with diminishing returns in terms of the enjoyment I think the audience is getting out of it.

Nero shouts at the Doctor to go away and returns to his chase. On his way out, the Doctor passes Poppaea and tells her that he has come to speak with Nero but that the emperor appears to be busy. He leaves.

Seeing the situation for what it is, Poppaea enters her chambers in a huff, just as Nero finally manages to grab Barbara and pull her onto the bed. Just as an aside, it’s crazy how this sort of unwanted sexual advance was played for comedy. At this point, we’ve been watching almost six minutes of Barbara fleeing the emperor’s attentions, screaming in fright, and it’s all been to get laughs from the audience. The consequence for Barbara being captured is implied to be rape. And yeah, this is the sixties, back when the boys-will-be-boys mentality was much more entrenched in society than it is now. But it just feels gross to watch. If I could change this sequence, I would probably make it clear that bumbling Nero is only after a kiss, making the scene more euphemistic. After all, the writers have already established Nero as an irredeemable fool, and the idea of Nero running after Barbara with puckered lips would be much more suitable for the bombastic comedy the writers were clearly going for.

Nero sees his wife standing over him and basically plays dead, going still as Barbara tumbles off the side of the bed opposite the door. Seeming to think he can talk his way out of it, Nero slowly turns to Barbara and says, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were there. Did you want something?” Barbara says no, and Nero gestures for her to scram. She scampers out of the room.

Then Nero turns back to his wife and puts the back of a hand to his forehead. “I’ve got the most terrible headache, darling,” he says with a groan. “I simply had to lie down.” Poppaea clearly is not buying this, but Nero presses on. “Extraordinary thing. That strange young woman has been chasing me around all morning.”

Meanwhile, back at the cells, Delos and Ian have just been served a meal. Nearby, two men practice with swords. In conversation, Delos mentions Ian’s name, and in the cell next to them, a woman perks up. This is the woman who shared the cell with Barbara in the beginning of Part 2, the one whom Barbara was kind to. “Ian?” she says. “Is your name Ian?…You were planning to meet a woman here? Her name were Barbara.” Ian begs the woman for more information, but all she knows is that Barbara was sold at the auction.

Back at the palace, the Doctor and Nero are sleeping in the heat of the sauna. These scenes with Nero are starting to get needlessly repetitive—just know that Nero spends some of the scene telling the Doctor he will perform at the banquet and the rest of it engaging in another narcissistic abuse of power. I still enjoy this portrayal of Nero, but the writers are starting to hit the same notes over and over again.

In Locusta’s workshop, Vicki hides under a table while we hear two women talk. “You understand what you must do, Locusta?” a voice says. The camera pans up to reveal that this is Poppaea.

“Yes, madame,” Locusta answers. “Get the attendant to serve these drinks to Caesar Nero when he’s with your new slave.” Poppaea is ordering the poisoning of Barbara, though Vicki has no way of knowing this.

“Correct,” Poppaea says. “And she is to have the special one. Come with me; I’ll point her out to you. That’ll put paid to any ambitions she has to be empress.” She takes Locusta by the arm, and they leave the room—on their way out, Locusta glances at Vicki to make it clear to the audience that the poisoner knew she was there. Once the women have left, Vicki emerges and moves to stand by two goblets on a tray, one of them poisoned. As the scene comes to an end, she appears to be conflicted.

In the banquet hall, Barbara is among a group of servants who are preparing for the feast. Looking on, Poppaea points Barbara out to Locusta, who then goes over and whispers something in the ear of Tigilinus.

Back out in the hall, Poppaea looks very smug about the arrangement she made. She sees the Doctor and Nero talking, and she tells Nero that he should see to the banquet hall. “I think the arrangements are suitable,” she says, “but you have much more artistic appreciation for that sort of thing.” Nero heads for the banquet hall, and the Doctor goes and tells Vicki about his upcoming performance.

In the hall, Nero sees Barbara and makes a beeline for her. “Oh, there you are,” he says, cornering her against a table. “Now, close your eyes, and Nero will give you a big surprise.” Barbara is hesitant to do this, but when Nero orders it, she closes her eyes. He slips a golden bangle onto her wrist and demands a kiss as payment.

At that moment, Tigilinus interrupts with refreshments, holding out a tray with two goblets—the audience knows Barbara’s is poisoned. Using the distraction to avoid the kiss, Barbara takes her goblet and drinks deeply.

Back with the Doctor and Vicki, the Doctor asks Vicki how her day has gone. This seems to jog her memory, and she says, very nonchalantly, “Oh, something else I forgot to tell you. I think I’ve poisoned Nero.” Alarmed, the Doctor looks around for eavesdroppers and clamps a hand over Vicki’s mouth. He asks her to clarify what happened, and she says, “Well, I swapped the drinks around.” Barbara is safe. Once again extolling her not to interfere with history, the Doctor whisks Vicki off to the banquet hall.

With Vicki’s posture in this scene, the audience gets a good depiction of how the writers are trying to establish her as a character that is distinct from Susan. She is happy-go-lucky about almost everything, up to and including the possible poisoning of the Emperor of Rome. Susan certainly would have had a stronger reaction to doing such a thing, whether that be worry or conviction or whatever else. In fact, throughout this serial, we’ve seen Vicki flit through the narrative as if pulled along on a string, easily accepting whatever comes and rarely showing anything other than happiness.

I consider this to be a weak portrayal for two reasons. First, it is a complete reversal from how she was depicted in The Rescue. There, we saw her exhibit everything from fear to rage to excitement to depression—at the time, I thought Maureen O’Brian gave Vicki a depth of character that boded well for establishing her as something different from Susan. I still think that The Rescue gives us a good idea of the potential Vicki has as a character, a theoretical ceiling for her depiction. So why did the writers flatten her character so thoroughly in this serial? It’s good to make her personality markedly different from Susan’s, but I’d argue that the better version of Vicki already had that. Frankly, I’d rather have a clone of Susan than someone who drifts through a story showing a borderline psychopathic level of ease with the twists and turns of the narrative.

And second, although her personality may be different from Susan’s, Vicki’s actions are still identical to what Susan would have done in her place. Vicki still spends the serial loping along in the Doctor’s shadow. Even at the end of Susan’s bend toward independence, she was still apt to follow the Doctor’s lead nine times out of ten. Vicki is much the same, subservient to him in a way that goes beyond Ian and Barbara’s often-reluctant acceptance of his authority. And I am certain that Susan would have also switched the goblets. Her motivations would have been different, and her reaction would have been different. But she would have done it, and that’s the key. At the end of the last serial, I mentioned that it would still be okay to show Vicki doing some of the things Susan might have done, and I want to amend that a bit. I still think Vicki can do some of these things, but in establishing a new character, it is vital to show her doing things that Susan never would have done. Show Vicki disobeying the Doctor’s orders and sneaking out of the palace. Have her break Susan’s rules. After that, it’s okay to have Vicki follow in Susan’s footsteps, provided every once and a while she breaks the mold again. But until she actually does break it, it’s hard for me not to see her as Susan 2.0.

In the banquet hall, Barbara and Nero see Poppaea watching from a corner. Barbara uses this as an impetus to excuse herself, and she leaves the hall. As soon as she is gone, the Doctor and Vicki rush in, the Doctor saying, “Caesar Nero! Don’t drink!” Near miss #7. “I have every reason to believe that drink is poisoned! Thank heavens I got to you in time.”

Nero looks nervously at the drink he is holding and thanks the Doctor for saving his life. Then the Doctor excuses himself on the grounds that he must practice for the night’s recital, and he and Vicki leave. Nero squints at the poisoned goblet for a moment, then calls Tigilinus over and orders him to drink. Tigilinus takes one sip and keels over, dead. Nero simply shrugs, saying, “He was right.”

The next scene is Ian and Delos sharing their anxieties together in the cell, just to remind the audience that their story is still ongoing. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, I praised Part 4 for seamlessly juggling several disparate subplots and having a nearly flawless pacing. Each story was treated with the same amount of urgency, they all received a relatively similar amount of airtime, and the writers successfully staggered the points of climax in each subplot to make a very compelling narrative as a whole.

This is the opposite of that. Let’s call Barbara’s story the A Plot, the Doctor and Vicki’s the B Plot, and Ian and Delos’s the C Plot. We’ve spent a bulk of Parts 2 and 3 seeing the A Plot develop, seeing Barbara’s journey from the slave train to Nero’s palace to fending off his advances. In that time, the serial has spent considerably less time on the B Plot and almost no time on the C plot. The tone of the B Plot is very flippant, whereas the A and C Plots are very serious. And the peaks and valleys of the A Plot take full precedence in how these episodes are structured.

And here’s the most important point: none of these things are necessarily dealbreakers. Subplots can be structured, weighted, and themed in this manner and still produce a quality story. It just becomes much harder. You have to have to be able to allocate the necessary resources—both in terms of money and runtime—to allow these stories to flourish. Financially, this serial gets the job done. Some of the sets look a bit cheap, most notably the palace hallway that was featured so often in the front half of this episode, but the cheapness is no more or less egregious than most Doctor Who episodes.

It’s the runtime that really holds these subplots back, especially regarding the C Plot. In Part 2, I mentioned that a serial of this scope could have used at least another episode to fully flesh out the narrative, specifically by actually showing the protagonists’ journey to Rome. The same concept applies here. Imagine if some of that extra runtime could have been dedicated to showing Ian and Delos hiding from soldiers on the streets of Rome, or training for their upcoming fights in the arena. Just two minutes of additional scenes could have gone a long way to making the C Plot actually feel as important as its serious tone tries to make it. Instead, we end up with three subplots whose overarching scope doesn’t quite mesh with the way these stories are paced. I’ll touch on scope and pacing a little more succinctly in the takeaways—many of the flaws I see in the serial stem from that.

Back in the palace, we see a short scene of Barbara moving her finger across a map, possibly planning her escape. She doesn’t look happy about her prospects.

Elsewhere, Poppaea lambasts Locusta in her workshop. Locusta has failed, and for that, Poppaea orders the guards to take her and have her thrown in the arena.

Later in the banquet hall, the feast has begun, and the Doctor will soon give his recital. Before he plays, there are a few plot developments to get out of the way. At one point, Tavius walks over to the Doctor and, in a voice pitched low, says, “Everything’s set for tomorrow. Be ready.” When Vicki asks the Doctor what Tavius meant, the Doctor says he has no idea.

At the head of the hall, Poppaea notices Nero looking around and smugly says, “She isn’t here, dearest…The new girl. I’m keeping her very busy.” The emperor quickly deflects from this. Perhaps to avoid any incriminating conversation, he stands and announces that the time has come for Maximus Pettulian to perform.

The Doctor stands and smiles, every ounce the confident musician he pretends to be. He graciously announces the new composition he has prepared for the occasion before raising his lute, placing his fingers on the strings, and pretending to play for almost a minute of real time. And when I say pretending, I mean it—he makes playing motions, but absolutely no sound is heard. The members of court, unwilling to admit that they hear nothing, all react as if hearing the most wondrous of melodies. Even Nero leans to the nearest man and says, “He’s alright, but he’s not that good.”

In the end, the Doctor finishes his make-believe and receives thunderous applause, much to the delight of Vicki. “It’s the old fairy story,” he tells her. “The Emperor’s New Clothes. Yes, I gave it as an idea to Hans Anderson.” They both revel in their good fortune and continue on enjoying the feast.

Outside the banquet hall, Nero storms off in a huff, ruing the Doctor’s success. “How dare he make a fool of me! He must know that I am the greatest talent in the world. No one gets applause like that except me.” He pauses, smiling, as a thought occurs to him. “I'll teach him a lesson. It's a wonderful idea. Hardly surprising, I have a creative mind. I'll put it into operation at once.”

Nero enters his chambers, where he finds Barbara at work. He commands her to accompany him, telling her that they are off to the gladiatorial school, where he wishes to arrange a fight for their amusement.

At the gladiatorial school, we see Ian and Delos being armed for combat. I suppose this is where the men have been held all along, although the show should have attempted to communicate this to the audience before now. An armored man tells the two slaves that Nero has ordered a fight, and that they are to face each other to the death.

The man leaves, and Ian and Delos prepare themselves. Delos says he intends to fight. “You’re my friend, remember that. But as he says, at least this way one of us has a chance…I promise you one thing: if I win, I’ll make it quick for you.” They shake hands like brothers-in-arms.

Out in some sort of practice chamber, Nero and Barbara are seated on a raised dais, awaiting the fight. Before the competitors arrive, Nero calls one of his underlings over and tells him that he intends to have Maximus Pettulian appear in the arena, only not as a performer. He tells the man to “set the lions on him in the middle of his wretched performance…He humiliated me, that’s what he did…They all applauded as though it was me!”

Ian and Delos enter the fighting area, and Nero’s mood goes from butthurt to excited as if at the snap of a finger. Barbara notices Ian right away; she calls out to him and they make eye contact. Then Ian and Delos are handed swords and ordered to fight. The two trade fairly athletic blows, downright spirited compared to the fights the series has given me over the last season and a half. Ian manages to get the upper hand and knock the sword out of Delos’s grip, but he does not kill him. “Why didn’t he kill him?” Nero demands. “The fool, why didn’t he kill him?”

Delos picks up his sword, and they go at it again. This time it is Delos who gets the upper hand, and Ian falls to his knees, Delos’s sword poised against the back of his neck. “Cut off his head,” Nero orders giddily, holding out a thumb pointed down. Delos slowly raises his sword, Barbara screams, and the scene fades to black. Credits roll.

Part 4 (Inferno)

As Delos stands over Ian with his sword raised, poised to strike, he decides against killing his friend. Glancing around, he makes a sudden beeline for Nero, who jumps back to avoid a blow. Nero hollers for the guards, and pandemonium breaks loose. We then get a more typical, less-than-stellar fight sequence from the show. Several small fights break out, with groups of guards lunging after Delos and Ian. The men quickly separate from one another, both of them spending some of the fight up on the dais, as Nero pulls Barbara away from the fighting. The fighting itself is lethargic and dull, but beyond that, the blocking of the scene really stretches the limits of the show’s limited sound design options. Blocking is the technical term for how actors are placed on a set, and in this scene, the blocking is such that the actors are pulled all around the set, using the entire space.

Now, on its face, maximizing the space is usually a good design choice, but we are still in an era of the show where the sound designer is limited to a single boom mic to capture audio in most scenes. And in almost every scene the series has given us, one mic is workable. However, in a scene like this where the actors are very spread out, the boom mic hovering somewhere in the middle has no way of favoring the dialogue of the characters on the periphery. In this scene, we have Barbara calling out to Ian from the far left side of the dais, and Ian responding, “I’ll come back for you somehow!” from the far right. But in order to be heard over the clamor of the fighting, the audio engineers have had to boost these lines in a way that makes them sound slightly distorted and out-of-place, and it’s still almost unintelligible. I’m not sure I would have been able to make it out without turning on the subtitles. And again, the blocking on its own is not bad, and neither is using only one boom to capture audio, but together, they each work to the other’s detriment.

Ian and Delos manage to flee the scene. Nero, having heard the exchange between Ian and Barbara, turns his ire on Barbara, treating her like a traitor. “I’ll teach you to turn against me!” he snarls, throwing her into the arms of two of the guards. “[They’ll come back] for her,” he tells his men, “and when they do, you’ll recognize them. Take my guards and bring them to me.” Then he asks one of the Centurions for his sword. Nero raises it, moving close to Barbara. He jabs, she screams, and we see the body of the guard next to her fall to the ground. “He didn’t fight hard enough,” Nero says with a twinge of amusement.

To this point, the Nero we’ve seen has been a bumbling idiot, occasionally brutal to his staff and sycophants, wielding his power to maximize his personal pleasure and not much else. However, this scene presents a tonal shift, giving us more of the mad king archetype, showing us the ruler capable of burning down his capital city simply because the aesthetic displeases him. Ideally, from this point on, the writers will minimize instances where Nero is simply a self-centered fool and prioritize showing him as the threat to civilization he really is. This type of tonal shift is very effective in raising the stakes of a narrative without having to introduce new characters or concepts. Nero is still a flat, one-dimensional character. The writers didn’t need to give him more depth to increase the perceived menace of his character. All they needed to do was take what we already know—that Nero is a constant threat to his palace staff—and demonstrate to the audience how this applies to the broader Roman society. It’s a clever recontextualization of what is a very simplistic character, and it shows that a great deal of thought went into how Nero should be portrayed.

In the palace, Poppaea has summoned Tavius to her chambers, where she orders him to dismiss Barbara. Tavius leaves, and in the corridors, he comes upon Barbara herself, who was looking to for him. She takes Tavius into a private room, where she tells her that she is desperate. She says she must escape tonight—that a friend is coming to collect her, but Nero has set a trap for him. Tavius says, “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something, I promise you…I have my own reason for helping you. Poppaea instructed me to dismiss you. I shall say I did.”

Barbara breathes a sigh of relief, thanking Tavius. She tells him that Nero is planning an appearance for Maximus Pettulian in the arena. Then she looks out a window and sees guards forming up on the streets outside the palace. “Tavius, they’re posting the guard. It must be to trap Ian.”

Out in the city, Ian and Delos discuss their plans under an arch, much like the scene when they first arrived in Rome. Delos wants to get under cover until nightfall, but Ian suggests a more daring approach. “I’ve got a friend who specializes in trouble. He dives in and usually finds a way. I think I’ll take a leaf out of his book for once. Come on.” He leads Delos away.

In Nero’s room, the Doctor and Vicki are ambling about, the Doctor peering through his spectacles at the map depicting Nero’s plans for a new Rome. He talks about the maps with Vicki, saying, “You know what this is, child?…Caesar Nero made it. The rebuilding of Rome. Let me see, where are we now? 64 AD, July. Yes, of course. He sets fire to Rome…I expect his plan will be ready at any time now.”

His musings are interrupted as Tavius catches his attention from the curtained doorway. He forewarns the Doctor about Nero’s plans to feed him to the lions as he performs in the arena, adding, “So if you still intend to carry on with your plan, today is your last chance to kill Nero.” The Doctor does a doubletake at this, and Tavius goes on to clarify in a rather clunky exposition dump. “Maximus, when you first sent word from Corinth of your intention to murder the Caesar Nero, I informed your allies in the court…Then, when the assassins left here to waylay you on your journey, naturally, I thought that was the end.” The Doctor puts in that he did, in fact, arrive, and Tavius goes on. “Yes, Maximus, you arrived here.”

The Doctor says, “And the Centurion who was killed by my allies was the man that knew all about my plans, and Nero didn’t?”

“Yes, yes, we all know that,” Tavius says, “but my main concern now, Maximus, is that you should act on what I say.”

The Doctor promises that he shall leave tonight, and Tavius departs. Chuckling, the Doctor turns to Vicki. “Well, that settles that little bit of intrigue. I’m a would-be murderer, am I? Well, we must be going, child. I want to leave here as soon as it is dark.”

Before they can leave the scene, Nero enters, smiling at the Doctor as if they are the best of friends. He says he has a surprise for the Doctor, asking him to guess what it is. The Doctor says, “Well, now, let me think. You want me to play in the arena?” Nero’s face falls, and the Doctor crosses his hands behind his back smugly, one of them holding his spectacles above Nero’s carefully-stenciled maps. What follows is a minute or so of the Doctor heavily hinting that he knows exactly what Nero is planning, using phrases like “a roaring success,” “sink their teeth into,” and “I might even make it my farewell performance.” Nero, pouting, knows that the Doctor knows, but he can’t admit it without admitting that he ordered the Doctor to be put to death.

But all of that isn’t the focus of the scene beyond the first twenty seconds or so. The camera pans in on the spectacles in the Doctor’s hand, where they catch the light and refract it onto a spot in the middle of Nero’s maps. A char mark quickly forms, and before long, the parchment bursts into flame like dry tinder.

Nero notices the flames and erupts into a fit of rage. “My plans! My drawings for New Rome! You fool! You idiot!” He grabs a burning sheet and shakes it at the Doctor like a lit torch. “A lifetime’s work! I’ll have you both killed over and over again! Guards! Guards!” Guards enter the scene and restrain the Doctor and Vicki. “Fool! Idiot! Traitor! Pig! I’ll stick you both in the arena, on an island with water all around, and in the water, there will be alligators, and the water level will be raised, and the alligators will get you! Fool! Traitor!” Nero looks at the burning parchment, and an idea comes to him; a stupid smile slowly overcomes his rage. “Brilliant! You are a genius! A genius! I will make you rich! Rich! So the Senate wouldn’t pass my plans, eh? Wouldn’t let me build my New Rome? But if the old one is burnt, if it goes up in flames, they will have no choice! Rome will be rebuilt to my design! Brilliant! Brilliant!” Nero dashes out of the room, all else forgotten.

The Doctor gets the guards to release him and Vicki, saying, “You heard what Nero said. Brilliant, brilliant.” The guards leave them, and Vicki tells him that she didn’t think that was going to work. “Wasn’t going to work?” the Doctor says, feigning offense. “I never had any doubt in my mind, my dear.”

Out in the corridors, Poppaea stops Nero and asks him why the palace is surrounded by guards. Nero offhandedly tells her they are to murder Ian and Barbara once Ian tries to fetch her, then he excitedly tells his wife about his plans to burn Rome to the ground. Nero leaves to set things in motion, and Poppaea stands there with a satisfied smile on her face, concerned only with the imminent death of Barbara and not at all about the potential deaths of thousands of citizens in the blaze.

The next scene shows that night has fallen. In the palace, Nero is impatient, saying that the guards should have brought him torchbearers by now.

Outside, guards are ushering a string of townsmen into the palace, and Ian and Delos manage to sneak into the line and blend in with the crowd.

These men—Ian and Delos included—are herded into the palace reception hall, where they are greeted by Nero. He flings coins into the crowd, and the men scamper around, gathering them into their pockets. Then Nero delivers this soliloquy: “That was just a sample. There will be more for you, if you carry out the task that I have for you. I want you men to start fires in the hutments next to the circus. The fire will spread quickly. By tonight, all Rome will be ablaze. Kill anyone who tries to stop you. You are acting on orders from Caesar Nero, Emperor of Rome!”

While Nero speaks, Tavius pulls Ian aside and leads him out of the room. Then the shot cuts to a close-up of Nero, who finishes his speech, a look of delight on the madman’s face. “Then, the rebuilding will commence. A new city will arise from the flames. Neropolis? Nerocaesum? Or just plain Nero!”

Outside, the man who has been tasked with making sure Ian doesn’t reach Barbara—who I am just now realizing is one the slave traders; why has he been given such authority?—the trader thinks Ian and Delos may have gotten inside with the crowd.

Inside the palace, Tavius leads Ian to Barbara, who is overcome with relief at the sight of him. The two embrace, then Tavius gives Barbara a cloak and hustles them toward an exit.

Outside the palace, the trader is on guard for Ian—he hears a noise and sends a Centurion off into some bushes to investigate, but it is only the Doctor and Vicki leaving the palace grounds and making for the city limits.

In the reception room, Nero sends his horde of men, out into the streets with lit torches, Delos being one of them. In the confusion, Ian and Barbara successfully slip away, meeting Delos on their way out of the palace. Delos and Ian share words of gratitude before Delos goes his own way, and Barbara and Ian start the long journey back to the villa, some 34 days North. The Doctor and his companions have all managed to slip out of Rome in the nick of time.

On a hill overlooking the city, the Doctor and Vicki pause to watch the city go up in flames. Vicki marvels at seeing history play out in front of her, saying, “Isn’t it strange to think that people will read about that in books for thousands and thousands of years, and here am I sitting here and actually watching it. It’s a pity they got it all wrong.” The Doctor asks what she means by this, and she says, “Well, they didn’t mention you.” The Doctor asks why they should, and Vicki tells him, “Well, it was you who gave Nero the idea, wasn’t it?”

The Doctor scoffs at this, and Vicki says, “Honestly, Doctor, and after all that long talk you gave me about not meddling with history, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He continues to insist that it had nothing to do with him, and Vicki reminds him that he was the one who burnt Nero’s maps.

“Well, [if it wasn’t me], he would have been told by someone else. You can’t possibly accuse me of that.”

Vicki shrugs this off. “Alright. You have it your way; I’ll have it mine.”

Vicki moves off a little, and the Doctor says, half to himself, “Now look here, young lady, let’s settle this. Insinuating that all this is my fault.” He stops, a strange look coming over him. “Hmm? My fault.” He chuckles to himself, and it’s as if, for the first time, the Doctor really contemplates his role in the history he visits. This is a very important moment in the Doctor’s characterization, and the entire premise on how he interacts with the past hinges on him realizing that yes, he can affect history, and yes, strict noninterventionism may not always be possible, or even preferable. I’ll keep an eye on how this changes the Doctor’s outlook going forward.

One last shot of Rome shows Nero laughing and playing his lyre while the city burns.

We next see the interior of the villa from Part 1. Ian and Barbara enter slowly, looking around, careful in case the villa’s actual owners have returned from abroad. They see no one, and Ian finds the broken vase on the floor. “Ah, now that’s what they hit me on the head with,” Ian says, holding up a fragment. Barbara looks at it nervously—after all, she was the one who accidently hit Ian with the vase in the skirmish—but she is happy to let him believe it was a slave trader who did it. Seeing the mess, Ian and Barbara relax. It isn’t likely the owner of villa would have returned and left the shattered pottery on the floor, and the same goes for Doctor and Vicki.

Ian and Barbara have a playful back-and-forth, though more playful on Ian’s end than Barbara’s—Barbara gets worked up enough to accidentally spill the beans about smashing Ian over the head with the vase. “You hit me on the head with that?” Ian says incredulously. “So I’ve got you to blame fore being thrown into jail, eh? Made to row in a galley? Fight like a Roman!” Ian chases her around the room, threatening to dunk her head into the fountain and seeming half-serious about doing it, too. In the end, they laugh it off in favor of preparing the evening meal, grateful to have survived their ordeal and made it back safely.

Later that night, the Doctor and Vicki arrive to find Ian and Barbara lounging about after their meal. The Doctor takes one look at them splayed out on duvets and says, “Oh, what zest, what youthful exuberance! Try not to look at them, child. Their outburst of energy could make you go dizzy.” Vicki begins a breathless overview of what she and the Doctor experienced in Rome. Barbara tries to interject about their own travels; the Doctor doesn’t let her get a word in edgeways, cutting her off with “My dear Barbara, the young lady doesn’t want to listen to people who have been idling away their days.” Barbara and Ian are put off by this, but the Doctor loudly declares they will return to the TARDIS immediately and ushers Vicki offscreen.

Ian and Barbara look at each other wryly. “Oh well,” Barbara says. “Even if we had told them, I don’t think they’d have believed us.” The Doctor calls from off-camera for them to follow, and they too leave, Ian grabbing a wine jug to take as a souvenir.

The next shot is of the TARDIS, still aslant at the bottom of the cliff. It dematerializes.

Inside, a little time has passed, and Vicki is finishing a long retelling of what she and the Doctor got up to in Rome. Then her thoughts turn to the future. “Where will we go next?” she asks. “Has the Doctor told you yet?”

“Oh, no, he never does that,” says Barbara.

“You mean it’s a surprise?”

Ian shoots a look at the Doctor by the console and says, “Yes. To everybody.”

“But the Doctor can work the ship, can’t he?” Vicki asks.

“Er, yes,” Barbara says unconvincingly.

“Sort of,” Ian adds.

Vicki smiles as if they are joking with her. “Go on, he must know what he’s doing. He’s been at those controls for hours. I don’t believe you. Come on, Barbara.” She and Barbara go off to change out of their Roman garb.

Ian goes over to the console and asks the Doctor if anything is wrong. “Oh, Chesterton,” the Doctor begins, “yes. You know, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow, we’ve materialized for a split second of time and been imprisoned in some kind of force. I simply can’t break its hold. Somewhere, somehow, we’re being slowly dragged down.”

“Dragged down?” Ian says. “To what?” Credits roll.

Takeaways

The Romans had a lot of potential, and I really want to like it more than I do. The time period in which the serial is set plays right into the showrunner’s penchant for portraying compelling historical fiction. And after mulling over the serial for a while, I think I can safely say that Nero is my favorite antagonist to this point in the series. The way the writers made the subtle shift from him being a localized threat to a societal one was brilliantly done, and Derek Francis did a wonderful job realizing the showrunners’ vision. Unfortunately, there are two aspects of the serial which majorly hold it back: its scope/pacing and how Vicki’s character was inhibited by the narrative.

Starting with the latter, I am having a lot of trouble seeing Vicki as much more than a stand-in for Susan. Her character hits nearly identical story beats, and although she does it with a smile and nonchalance that is very unlike Susan, it is concerning that we haven’t yet seen her doing anything that Susan wouldn’t or couldn’t have done. Until we see her do something drastically different, Vicki runs the risk of feeling predictable and boring.

Additionally, the writers should have had her first full serial as a companion be something where the entire gang stays together. As a writer, in order to let the audience become familiar with a plot element—like a setting or a new character—you have to establish a baseline, a “normal.” We haven’t seen how Vicki handles the level of stress of a more typical serial, nor have we seen how she meshes with the group as a whole. We haven’t seen her normal yet. This is something I’ll touch on much later when I get to the 6th Doctor, whose introductory serial depicts him as cruel, manipulative, and gaslighting. Now, this was mostly due to his regeneration cycle, and the series makes an effort to establish a normal for the 6th Doctor after the fact, but I will argue until I am blue in the face that the reason why so many fans view him as the worst Doctor is because the showrunners inadvertently established him as an unreliable narrator. They bludgeoned his characterization from the jump, and Colin Baker was never able to recover. In the Romans, Vicki gets a similar—albeit much less serious—mistreatment.

And then there’s the scope and pacing. This is a little harder to pin down, because these are aspects of a narrative that can vary widely. A show can have a small scope and a slow pace, or a large scope and a blistering pace, or any combination, variation, etc.—and their success has to be measured by whether or not the other showrunning decisions compliment or detract from the scope and pacing. It’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

In order to show where The Romans fails, I want to compare it to successes in a few of the serials we have seen thus far. First is The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I talked about this more in depth in Part 3, so I’ll keep it brief here. Basically, the subplots in that serial each received a near-equal amount of attention, and the peaks and valleys of the subplots were staggered in such a way that, to the audience, the narrative maintained a constant, driving momentum and the fast pacing never felt strained or forced. In The Romans, we instead have an uneven distribution of airtime among the subplots, with large gaps of time in which the B and C Plots are sidelined in favor of the much more fleshed-out A Plot. This resulted in a strange feel where, although the overall pacing was quite fast, the B and C Plots felt lethargic at times because they barely moved. The different plots were not utilized in a way that continually pushed the narrative, and overall, the way these subplots were structured did not suit the serial’s fast pacing.

Then we have Marco Polo, and the point I want to make here has more to do with scope. That serial had a massive scope, with the protagonists journeying hundreds of miles across inland China, and there were many time skips. However, none of them felt nearly as jarring as when Barbara suddenly acknowledges that 34 days had passed during their journey to Rome. Instead, these skips were told from the perspective of Marco Polo’s journal, with the man himself narrating what happened along the way. Not only was this a wonderful narrative tool, but the 7-episode runtime allowed for the onscreen story to develop over time, and in such a way that it felt like nothing was lost during these time skips. What was shown was more than satisfactory. Put simply, the showrunners allotted the necessary minutes to tell a story with such a large scope. The Romans, on the other hand, did not. The 34-day leap came across not as a way to eliminate downtime in the narrative, but as a crutch to skip over vital parts of the story that the showrunners simply did not have the time to show. The serial didn’t have quite as large a scope as Marco Polo, but it was definitely too big for what a 4-episode serial could realistically portray. In this way, the comparatively short runtime of The Romans was a limiting factor and did not suit the serial’s large scope.

Lastly, we have The Aztecs, and this is more about how scope and pacing intermingle. Throughout the creation of a narrative, a writer must be cognizant of how these aspects play off of one another. In The Aztecs, a very small scope allowed for a very slow pacing, and a very slow pacing allowed for a very small scope. It’s the chicken or the egg problem, which is why I often like to talk about these facets together. The Doctor and his companions had one goal in the serial: find information about how to enter the tomb of Yetaxa and leave in the TARDIS. That’s the whole of it, and they had four entire episodes in which to accomplish this. Such conditions almost necessitate slow, meandering plotlines, which is why we got the Doctor accidentally getting married and Ian training to lead the Aztec armies. Compare this to what The Romans set out to accomplish, also in four episodes. The Doctor and Vicki had to go to Rome, discover how Maximus Pettulian was involved in an intrigue at court, and escape without the Doctor being thrown into the lion’s den. Meanwhile, Barbara and Ian get captured as slaves, and Barbara must escape the attentions of Nero, manufacture her own escape, and reunite with Ian. And if that weren’t enough, Ian must escape a sinking ship, escape a second confinement in Rome, and break into the imperial palace to rescue Barbara. All of this must be layered in such a way that the characters in different subplots have near misses with one another, almost—but not quite—seeing each other no less than seven times. It’s exhausting to think about, and a 4-part serial was clearly not up to the task.

All that said, I think the easiest narrative solution to the scope and pacing issues would have been to add another episode, though I understand that financial and network constraints may have made this impossible. Aside from that, the writers could have begun the protagonists’ journeys much closer to Rome, perhaps even in the city itself, cutting down on the necessary travel and complexity of the characters’ movements. Whatever the rewrite would have looked like, as long as the runtime was increased or the scope was decreased, I think it would have been difficult for the final project to feel less cohesive than what we got.

Looking forward, I worry a little about Vicki’s characterization. It started off with a strong foundation in The Rescue but has since faltered. There’s still time for a course correction, but the writers will need to make a clear effort to separate her from Susan before I feel more at ease. Coming up next is The Web Planet, a serial widely panned for having some of the most ridiculous creature design in the entire series. I won’t lie; I’m looking forward to yelling at it, though this comes at the price of having to sit through a 6-part serial that I remember hating. I’ll have to see if there are any redeeming qualities on a closer watch. Lastly, I want to look out for the Doctor’s new outlook on his staunch noninterventionism. Does he immediately start bending more toward the modern portrayal of helping those in need whenever he can, or does he try to revert back to his Season 1 stance for a while? It will be a bit before we see the Doctor in a historical setting again, possibly not for four more serials, if I remember correctly. So in the meantime, at least I will get a lot of data on sci-fi heavy serials and whether or not the showrunners can break the pattern of the less competent storytelling in these that we have seen so far.

Rating: 4.0/10

Chapter Text

2.5 – The Web Planet

I think my own personal hell would be being strapped to a chair and forced to watch this serial over and over again for all eternity.

Part 1 (The Web Planet)

I’m gonna be up front with this one. There is nothing redeemable about this serial. Do not watch it. Nothing particularly important happens. No cogent character moments, and the few mildly interesting sequences do not matter in the long run. It will save you a lot of personal anguish if you just pretend it doesn’t exist.

After the harrowing adventures in Rome, the Doctor and his companions are in transit when the Doctor realizes that something is restraining the TARDIS’s movement. At the console, he tells Ian that they have been imprisoned by some kind of force. There’s a high-pitched whine that I think is meant to represent this force, which at the end of the previous episode, I mistook for an error with the audio. It’s not a great noise. There are going to be a lot of not great noises in this serial.

The scene fades into a desolate looking landscape. The ground is flat and barren, stark white rock against the pitch black sky. Several angular, squarish rock formations are sporadically placed around the landscape. The dark sky is filled with stars, as well as three moons. The camera zooms quickly onto one of these moons to provide a backdrop for the late title card. Then it pans down to focus on a silky web in the foreground of the scene, like a spider’s web. Finally, it settles on one of these square rock formations, and we see the TARDIS materialize.

The Doctor and the others see the landscape through the scanner, and the Doctor says the air outside is very thin. Still baffled by what could be holding the TARDIS in this place, the Doctor assures the others that he can counteract the force with more power and begins to work at the console. As he does this, the camera pushes in close on Vicki, who winces as if at a loud noise that no one else can hear.

One interesting thing to note in this scene: this isn’t the TARDIS interior as we normally see it. Usually, the TARDIS doors are positioned at the far left of the set, with the doors to the sleeping chamber offscreen to the right. Here, we see the opposite half of the console room, with the doors to the sleeping chamber on the left, the exterior doors on the right, and in between, a storage nook of some kind where Ian sits in a chair and lounges against a chest of drawers. It’s hard to make out what’s in the nook with the wide shot we are shown here, but it will be shown in a bit more detail later on.

Outside, we see the source of Vicki’s distress. Out from behind these rocky crags come a few of the stupidest creatures this show will ever offer the viewers. They are giant black ants with obviously-human legs, who make the most artificial sounding shrieking noise you can imagine. That’s it. Nothing more to them than that. I thought it would be difficult to unseat the Sensorites as the worst creatures in the series, but boy did the producers deliver with these abominations.

Back inside, the Doctor laughs off Vicki’s reaction as just “an extra-sonic sound. You know, the thing that young people and young animals hear.” It’s very odd that he isn’t more concerned about the progenitor of this sound, especially given that there is a mysterious force trapping the TARDIS. Anyway, the noise doesn’t last long, and the Doctor thinks he has managed enough power buildup for the ship to take off again.

Outside the ship, a new threat appears. What looks like a giant woodlouse crawls its way into the scene to join the giant ants. It looks about as awful as the ants, with long feelers that are just bits of foam hanging down from its carapace. These feelers are immobile, clearly meant as a curtain to hide the human on hands and knees concealed underneath. The camera quickly zooms in on this stupid creature as if it is supposed to be perceived as a threat and anything other than homemade arts-and-crafts gone wrong.

The Doctor tries to dematerialize the TARDIS, but it is unable to make it go more than partly transparent. It quickly becomes solid again, as the ants all around it shriek. We see a very poorly-conceived practical effect involving someone slowly pulling some sort of out-of-focus netting across the face of the camera to show that the TARDIS is trapped. I think this is meant to represent a web, but 1) it looks awful, and 2) it isn’t actually there at all. We will soon see the characters exit the TARDIS, and there is no web to physically keep the TARDIS in place.

Suddenly, everyone in the TARDIS can hear the shrieking of the giant ants. Why? I don’t know. Their proximity hasn’t changed. The ship wobbles. The view on the scanner goes haywire as the Doctor and his companions are lurched around the console room. When the movement stops, they are still on the barren planet. The Doctor declares that all the power has been drained from the TARDIS. Then Barbara notices Vicki laying on the floor and helps her offscreen into the sleeping chamber.

The Doctor and Ian agree that they must go out and explore to discover what is holding the TARDIS. Barbara returns to the console room for a sedative for Vicki, and the Doctor points her to the first aid kit in the small nook I mentioned earlier. Close up, we see a first aid kit on top of the chest of drawers—Barbara complains about the jumbled mess inside the kit. Behind her, tucked into a corner, is a strange device. Standing about chest high, it is about as wide as a person, with a six-sided head the size of a medicine ball on a round base. This device comes up later in the serial. I suppose it’s existence here is meant to be noted for later, but the showrunners do a poor job calling attention to it. Unless you know what it is, it comes across as just another piece of clutter in the nook.

The Doctor lets her know that he and Ian will be leaving the TARDIS for a bit, and Barbara leaves the console room with the sedative. Then the Doctor brings out two loose-fitting white jackets. They look a little like lab coats, except that they have two large metal cups, one on each lapel. The Doctor calls it an ADJ, short for Atmospheric Density Jacket—the cups are called a respiratory compensator. The air outside is thin, and this jacket somehow thickens the air for the wearer. It’s unclear how this is supposed to work. The cups aren’t attached to any other pieces of machinery, and there is no mask or anything to direct the thicker air to the wearer’s mouth. It’s one of the many strange science-y gimmicks of the classic series that you just have to accept, a relic of old science-fiction.

Ian wonders how they will leave the ship without any power to open the doors. The Doctor shows Ian a ring on his finger, saying, “This is not merely a decorative object.” He goes over to the nook and waves the ring in front of some sort of mechanical eye. Then the doors open, and he and Ian go outside.

In the sleeping chamber, Vicki is hesitant when Barbara brings her a small bottle of medicine. “It looks a bit medieval,” she says. When Barbara asks he what she means, she says, “Well, you wouldn’t like it if I wanted to stick leeches all over you, would you? And I mean, it boils down to the same thing. They might have taken them in your time, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Now, wait just a minute,” Barbara cuts in. “You can’t blame my generation on everything, and those pills belong to the Doctor.”

“He must have picked them up on his travels then, because I’ve never seen Aspirin before,” Vicki answers tartly, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar word.

Then Barbara says sarcastically that Vicki must have studied medicine at school, and Vicki replies earnestly that yes in fact, she has. Barbara says that her school focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, and Vicki says, “Oh, it was a nursery school.” Barbara takes offense at this, and it comes out that by the age of ten, Vicki was already learning medicine, physics and chemistry. Disbelievingly, Barbara asks how long Vicki studied. Vicki shoots Barbara a long-suffering look and groans, “Almost an hour a week. We had these machines, you see.”

I think this is genuinely the only sequence that I enjoyed from this serial. It’s playful, and it gives us some insight into what life might be like in Vicki’s time, albeit in a superficial, The Jetsons sort of way. Yet even this enjoyment is spoiled a bit by what follows. Vicki notices the gold bangle on Barbara’s wrist, the one given to her in Rome. When she asks where Barbara got it, Barbara replies casually, “From Nero, as a matter of fact.” Vicki does a doubletake at this, and Barbara says, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you before, but Ian and I went to Rome also…I’ll tell you all about it when you wake up.”

I don’t like this for a few reasons. If you set aside everything that happened to the Doctor and Susan before An Unearthly Child, everybody on the TARDIS knows everything about everyone else. They all go on an adventure, and even if they get separated, everyone gets caught up on the goings-on by the end of the serial, and they go on their merry way to the next place. On it’s face, this isn’t really an issue—the diversity of settings and antagonists has been broad enough that this dynamic on its own doesn’t feel boring. However, The Romans presented us with an intriguing subversion of this dynamic: what if the companions kept secrets? We see this all the time in NuWho. Amy runs away with the Doctor on the eve of her wedding without telling him, Rose and Martha have their romantic attractions to the Doctor, and there are less frequent companion characters like Captain Jack Harkness and River Song, whose entire characterization depends on the Doctor knowing very little about them. It makes for compelling television when either the viewer knows something about a companion that the Doctor doesn’t or the viewer is on the Doctor’s side in wondering about a companion’s history.

In this scene, it seems like the writers can at least acknowledge the potential of a companion keeping things to themselves. After all, it was done deliberately in the previous serial and is used for an attempt at comedy in this one. But it also seems like they can’t conceive of a companion keeping secrets for any significant length of time—and I argue that this really damages the payoff of such a dynamic. At this point in the narrative, Barbara has kept her secret for a handful of hours, that’s it. Imagine if she brought it up two serials from now, how differently it would play out. Maybe the Doctor could get angry that they withheld the information. “But that was weeks ago!” Vicki could say. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Then, the secret becomes more obviously deliberate, instead of just an “I haven’t had a chance to tell you before.” It becomes interesting. Instead, we have a weak payoff without much emotional depth, and the status quo can continue relatively uninterrupted.

Outside, the Doctor and Ian are a few steps from the TARDIS. The Doctor is exuberant, animatedly examining a rock and talking to Ian about the wonders of the universe. Ian has a more sober attitude as he looks around uneasily. The Doctor asks him for something sharp, and Ian moves to take a pen out of his pocket. Only, once it is in his hand, it vanishes, flying offscreen. The Doctor laughs at this, calling it “quite the conjuring trick,” though Ian tells him it was no trick. “Vanished!…My gold pen!” Ian yells, triggering a series of rebounding echoes off the distant rock formations. Once the echoes have quieted down, he then tells the Doctor about his uneasiness, saying, “I have a feeling we’re being watched. Haven’t you?”

The Doctor dismisses this notion. “No. No, no, no, no, I can’t see any spooks or anything…I must say that if I lived here and I heard you roaring your head off, I’d probably come down and take a look at you.”

“Then take my pen?” Ian counters.

The Doctor ponders this for a moment. “Yes, what if the power that’s got hold of the TARDIS has taken your pen?” He laughs. “Of course! Ha ha! Now then, there’s something for us to solve. Come along.” The Doctor scuttles offscreen, Ian reluctantly following.

Something I have to mention—because it bugs the crap out of me throughout the serial—is that whenever we see an exterior shot of the planet, the footage has been shot so that the bright colors are distorted. My sister, who has astigmatism, says that this is exactly what it looks like, but as someone who doesn’t have astigmatism, here’s what I see. It’s like when you have a smudge on a camera lens or a pair of glasses, and everything you look at through this smudge has a halo of light around it. It’s sort of like that, but only with everything that is closer to the white end of the grayscale spectrum. Interesting technique; it gives off a very otherworldly feel. I hate the way it’s used here. Every exterior shot for the rest of the serial’s 150-minute runtime will be blurred and hard to look it. Details of set pieces are obscured, almost impossible to pick up as a viewer. Everything looks washed out and unremarkable. And it’s not even clear what this visual effect is meant to represent. Is it some particle in the atmosphere? The thin air? Something to do with the trapping effect on the TARDIS? I have no idea. But the tradeoff is the visual integrity of the majority of the scenes in this serial, so I don’t think the clearest representation in the world would have made this terrible cinematographic choice in any way justifiable. Very rarely do I ever think that someone deserves to be fired for a decision they made in a production, but like, I hope they fired whoever did this.

In the console room, Barbara is arranging the implements in the first aid kit when something curious happens. She looks up and sees the Doctor and Ian outside on the scanner, and suddenly, her left arm moves on its own, as if possessed, raising and reaching toward the doors. Shaken, she takes her forearm in her opposite hand and checks herself over. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she goes to the sleeping chamber and sits on the murphy bed next to the one where Vicki lays asleep.

Vicki stirs, asking Barbara if anything is wrong. At first, Barbara tries to say that she is only unnerved by the strange planet, but it happens again: her arm pulls itself toward the exit. She really has to strain this time to pull it back under her control, the veins in her arm popping out as she flexes. Then she tells Vicki, “I know this sounds silly, but it doesn’t feel as though it belongs to me. A little while ago, it moved without my intending it to.” Vicki giggles, but her expression hardens as she realizes Barbara is being serious. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” Barbara continues. “I’m just letting my imag—” She halts abruptly, leaving the room, looking very anxious.

Back outside, the Doctor and Ian move through a blurry white landscape in their blurry white ADJs—I’ll never get over how bad the visuals are. Ian suddenly stops, pointing. “Doctor, look!” It’s a pyramid, with four steep sides rising up from a bed of what looks like jagged sticks or very pointy rocks. The top is blurred even more than usual, as if someone smeared their thumb across a picture where the ink hadn’t quite dried. As far as establishing shots, this is one of the worst the series has given us. It reminds me of the pyramid on the island in The Keys of Marinus, with its unreadable island miniature. [Edit: Much later, I finally figured out what the blur at the top of the pyramid is meant to be. A pair of butterfly wings. The reason for the wings will soon be made clear, but the visuals come across so poorly that they blend into the astigmatism-blur coming from the rest of the pyramid. Awful, awful cinematography.]

The Doctor and Ian marvel at the pyramid for a little while. The Doctor says that the pyramid was built, so at some point, there must have been sentient creatures to build it. Though, judging by the age and state of the pyramid, it’s been a very long time since the builders used it. “Well, it certainly has nothing to do with holding the ship here, dear boy,” the Doctor says. And I have to ask, why is that certain? Why would evidence of sentience be so readily discarded by the Doctor? I, having watched the serial, know that the pyramid has nothing to do with the mysterious force, but the Doctor has no way of knowing that. The Doctor is insatiably curious, except for when such curiosity would be inconvenient to the plot.

At the base of a nearby rock formation, Ian finds a pool of what he assumes is water. He is about to wash his hands in it when the Doctor grabs his arm to stop him. Taking Ian’s tie, he dips it into the liquid, only to discover that the end melts in a wisp of smoke. It is acid. Ian complains about the loss of the tie. “You’ve ruined it. That was my Coal Hill School tie. You’ve just—”

“Saved your life,” the Doctor cuts in. “You were about to have a wash in there, weren’t you? Or probably drink some of it? We very nearly had the remnants of a Coal Hill schoolteacher in there instead of his wretched old, ragged old tie.” Then the Doctor takes stock of the situation, factoring in Ian’s gold pen and the TARDIS. “Yes, let’s see now. Now, what have we got, hmm? Echoes. Interference. Gold. And now acid. Yes, similar properties to formic acid. Yes, it’s strange, isn’t it?”

As the Doctor starts to leave the scene, Ian tosses the rest of his tie into the acid. Suddenly, there is a plunk as a rock falls into the pool from above. The camera quickly pans up, and we catch a glimpse of a giant ant ducking out of sight—unseen by Ian, who quickly gets the Doctor’s attention. The Doctor thinks Ian is playing around, possibly revenge for the school tie, but as they argue, they suddenly hear the shriek of the giant ants again.

Inside the TARDIS, Vicki is asleep and doesn’t notice the shrieking. Barbara, on the other hand, is in the console room and clamps her hands over her ears to block out the cacophony. She watches as the TARDIS doors swing open, seemingly of their own accord. The console starts spinning around the central tower like a top; Barbara rushes over to stop it. Once there, her arm has a mind of its own again, pulling her toward the open doors. She screams, “No!” resisting at first. But eventually, the fight seems to leave her, and she is drawn out of the TARDIS, her left arm leading the way, tugging her along like a sleepwalker. The doors close behind her.

Outside, the Doctor and Ian start back for the TARDIS, the Doctor theorizing that the shrieking is some form of communication.

In the sleeping chamber, Vicki finally wakes. The shrieking has stopped, and she ventures out into the console room to look for Barbara. She finds Barbara missing and the doors open—which is a continuity error; didn’t the doors just close behind Barbara? She yells Barbara’s name out of the open doors.

Across the landscape, the Doctor and Ian hear Vicki’s calls. They hurry their pace, but Ian walks right into a trap, getting snared in a net of woven weeds that comes up from the ground. It looks rather frail, like the poorly thought-out traps in The Keys of Marinus and The Rescue. Ian yells for the Doctor to get back to the ship, and the Doctor does just that, leaving Ian behind.

Back by the pool of acid, we see Barbara, who is slowly being drawn arm first toward the bubbling liquid.

Inside the TARDIS, everything suddenly lurches. Vicki rushes to the console and starts throwing switches at random, trying to fix whatever is happening. We hear the whooshing sound of the TARDIS and the low hum of the console.

Outside, the Doctor returns to where the TARDIS once stood, but his ship is nowhere to be found. “My ship,” he says weakly. “My TARDIS.” Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Zarbi)

Back to Barbara, just before she reaches the point where she would tumble into the pool of acid, her left arm pulls her around the pool. She continues on, still possessed.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has returned to Ian to find him moaning on the ground, complaining about feeling like he has fallen into a bed of stinging nettles. When the Doctor asks where the net of weeds has gone, Ian says, “Well, it just went. Into the air, into the ground. Oh, what a cursed place this is.” Not very informative, or a very good way of painting an image in the viewer’s head. It comes across as if they forgot about the net when prepping for this episode and had to write it out of the script. The Doctor then tells Ian that the ship has vanished, much to his and Ian’s dismay.

Elsewhere, Barbara is still being pulled along by her arm. Unbeknownst to her, a new creature follows her. It is humanoid insect of some kind, though we only see it from the chest up in this scene. It has big, bulbous eyes like a fly, with white fuzz around the face and shoulders, interspersed with black stripes almost like tribal markings. Two long antennae rise from the ends of a V-shaped ridge above its large eyes. The creature gesticulates its hands in circular motions at about eye level. Right now, I don’t hate the creature, though the hand motions are a very odd choice. I will once they start opening their mouths to speak.

Back with the Doctor and Ian, they are beginning to show signs of shortness of breath. The Doctor says that the ADJs are only supposed to give about an hour’s worth of air, and they are starting to fail. It’s not all doom and gloom, though: the Doctor says there is enough oxygen in the atmosphere to breathe, although it won’t be pleasant. Ian suggests they shed the jackets altogether to acclimate themselves to the thin air, and they do so.

Then, Ian notices ridged patterns in the ground, as if something has been dragged. “The TARDIS,” he says. “It’s been dragged away. Dragged away!” It hasn’t dematerialized; they are not stranded.

Next, we see a TARDIS miniature being dragged across the barren landscape. No creatures are visible, although we can hear the shrieks of the giant ants to imply that they are the culprits. Inside, Vicki stands in the console room, carefully keeping her balance against the lurching of the ship. On the scanner, she can watch the landscape change as her position changes. Suddenly, the head of one of the giant ants appears on the scanner screen, and her eyes go wide.

Meanwhile, Barbara is still being tailed by the strange new creature. We can see its body now; it has a torso and legs with thick black stripes patterned like a bee’s body, and translucent black-lined wings patterned like a butterfly. The creature nudges Barbara slightly off course, guiding her into a cave where two of its brethren are waiting. One of them yanks Nero’s bangle off of Barbara’s arm and throws it into the pool of acid, where it dissolves in a puff of smoke.

As if coming out of a trance, Barbara looks around, shocked to find herself in the company of these strange creatures. “Who are you?” she asks. “What do you want?” She makes a break for the exit.

“Stop her!” one of the creatures—a female—calls out. Two of them block Barbara’s escape. “Stay where you are,” the creature says.

Still following the trail of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ian arrive at a point where the ground is much firmer and the indentations are no longer visible. The Doctor notices what appear to be claw marks in the ground, and Ian accidentally steps through the front of a giant chrysalis, much like what you would find discarded by a butterfly. “Menoptra,” the Doctor says, half to himself. Then to Ian, he says, “This rock formation and now this creature, this object: it suggests the planet Vortis…[in] the Isop galaxy. Yes, many lightyears from Earth. And yet, Vortis hasn’t a moon”—he points to the moons in the black sky—“and here, there are several.” Ian asks if there is any way a planet could attract new moons, and the Doctor says, “Yes, but it would need a galactic explosion, you know. Some kind of new force. Whether this Vortis planet has that or not, I can’t be sure.” They continue on in the direction the TARDIS had been moving.

Elsewhere, we see the TARDIS moving into a translucent tunnel made of some sort of organic matter, with vines moving all along it. Inside, Vicki watches this transpire on the scanner.

Back in the cave, Barbara learns that these mysterious creatures are Menoptra. Vrestin, the female from before, seems to be the leader. Barbara tells the three Menoptra how she came to be on the planet, ending with, “Afte we’d landed, two of our party went to explore. The last thing I remember was being in the ship, the doors opening, and then, well, you came.”

One of the Menoptra, a male, is unmoved, immediately demanding that they kill Barbara. “No,” Vrestin says adamantly. “The Zarbi will treat them as enemies. If we refuse to help them, they will not survive.” The last Menoptra, another male, this one named Hrostar, begins a heated discussion with Vrestin. The two move off into a corner of the cave, debating Barbara’s future, and Barbara takes advantage of the situation to dash out of the cave, knocking Hrostar over on her way out.

Before I go on, I have to talk about the voices of the Menoptra. Male or female, they are pitched high, slow and lilting, with a tendency to trail upward as if asking a question but in unusual places. All the while, their hands gesticulate in circles above their shoulders as if moths circling a flame. It looks and sounds ridiculous. The speech is strange enough to cheapen an otherwise decent creature design and slow enough to make any protracted conversation with the Menoptra come across as boring. And in the absence of any compelling reason for the viewer to want to root for these creatures, I find their negative charisma to be very alienating. It isn’t enough to portray unique design concepts and expect the audience to instantly be on board. Good visuals can only take a creature so far; speech, mannerisms, and motivations are just as important. And in these categories, the Menoptra fail.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are still headed for where they think the TARDIS to be when they are suddenly surrounded by shrieking ants: the Zarbi. The Doctor urges Ian not to resist, and the Zarbi lead the two men offscreen.

Inside the TARDIS, the movement has finally stopped. Vicki glances at the scanner screen; it is black. Suddenly, the doors open. Vicki calls out tentatively for her friends, and when nobody replies, she exits the TARDIS. Outside is a sort of labyrinth, with more of those translucent walls and organic vines. Vicki tentatively ventures into a chamber of some kind, where she is quickly surrounded and taken into custody by shrieking Zarbi.

The Doctor and Ian are taken to the outer edge of this labyrinth, where they marvel at the organic structure and its pulsating, living walls. The Zarbi herd them inside.

Deep within, two Zarbi watch over Vicki while a third investigates the TARDIS. It ventures inside the ship, then retreats, spinning and hooting as if in pain. It’s unclear whether this is some defense mechanism of the ship or if it’s just the Zarbi’s brain trying to comprehend the size of the interior. An alarm sounds just as the Doctor and Ian are pushed into this chamber. Vicki calls out to them, and the Doctor goes into a rage at the sight of the open doors and the Zarbi crowding around his TARDIS.

Outside, Barbara, creeping between rock formations, is found and surrounded by hostile Zarbi.

Back in the cave with the Menoptra, we get a little exposition about who they are and why they are on Vortis. The unnamed male looks on as Vrestin and Hrostar gather around a sort of striated crystal about the size of a human head. I say unnamed, but he is credited as Hrhoonda. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it; the name is never actually spoken in the serial. If you’re not gonna say a named character’s name, why go out of your way to make it so stupid? Anyway, Mr. Honda says, “Vrestin, use that [crystal] and we shall all be destroyed. The Zarbi are all around us. If you break communicator silence, they will know where to find us.”

“If we do not contact our forces, they face destruction,” Vrestin argues. “We must warn them of the power of the Animus.” She fiddles with the orientation of the crystal, which is actually two halves that can be adjusted like television aerials. “Pilot party to Menoptra invasion force.” No response; she adjusts the crystal and tries again. “Pilot party to Menoptra invasion force. This is Vrestin. Urgent report.”

“They are in reach of the enemy locators,” Hrostar says. “They will not break communicator silence.”

Vrestin says they need to try the crystal outside of the cave, but it is too late. Mr. Honda suddenly cries out, “Vrestin! Hrostar! The Zarbi!”

Outside, Barbara is leading the Zarbi right to the cave. There is some instrument around her shoulders and torso, shaped like a large wishbone, its tail end hanging beneath her sternum.

Inside the cave, chaos ensues, as the three Menoptra are overcome by Zarbi and one of the giant woodlice. The Menoptra refer to the woodlouse as a larvae gun, and it is soon made apparent why. We hear a loud noise like some sort of machinery charging up. Then there is a bang and a puff of smoke from the larvae gun’s snout, and Mr. Honda falls to the ground, shot dead.

Hrostar shouts for Vrestin to run; she does, escaping through an offshoot of the cave. The Zarbi prod Hrostar to stand in a corner of the cave with Barbara, who watches the scene with lifeless eyes. Gingerly, Hrostar takes the wishbone from Barbara’s shoulders and throws it to the ground. Again, it is as if Barbara comes out of a trance. Seeing the gold material of the wishbone, she remembers Nero’s gold bangle, and she makes the connection that gold is how she was controlled by the Zarbi.

Barbara asks Hrostar what will happen to them. “We are to be taken to the Crater of Needles,” Hrostar says sadly. “They will put us to work. Once there, you might well wish that you had not been spared.” A larvae gun pushes Hrostar over to where two Zarbi wait for him. The camera pans across Barbara’s face, and we see her wince at whatever she sees the Zarbi do to the Menoptra.

They are actually cutting off Hrostar’s wings. I don’t know if this was left purposefully vague, but it isn’t brought up again until the Part 4. The showrunners should have made a bigger deal about what was happening when it actually happened—on my first watch-through, I had completely forgotten how this scene ended by the time it was resolved two episodes later. It’s fine to play this exchange as ambiguous like this, but then you have to make clear what actually happened much earlier on in the narrative.

Back in the labyrinth, the Doctor, Ian, and Vicki are still surrounded by Zarbi outside the TARDIS. There is a whirring noise, and the Zarbi herd the Doctor beneath a hollow cylinder of transparent plastic. It descends to about the Doctor’s jawline, surrounding his head, and we hear a woman’s voice, quiet but amplified much louder than it would be naturally. It speaks to the Doctor. “Why do you come now?” Credits roll.

Part 3 (Escape to Danger)

At this point in the serial, I just want to touch briefly on how I like to look at the potential of a serial as it develops. A serial needs to have a stable foundation in order to be successful. I touched on this in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, though in a slightly different context. There, I talked about how mistakes are much less offensive when nothing else is contingent on that mistake. Some of the mistakes early in that serial were a bit jarring, things that did not communicate well to the audience, but they were relatively inoffensive because they could be disregarded almost immediately. Nothing else depended on the efficacy of those instances.

Here, I want to focus more on what it means for a serial’s potential when large, foundational parts of its narrative are mismanaged. It may seem a bit counterintuitive, but a bad foundation doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t have an overall positive outlook of a narrative. A serial can have an atrocious setup but have great comedy or character interactions that can overcome it, or an actor can have such a stellar performance that they elevate a narrative beyond what is written on the page. However, I think it is safe to say that—allowing for the occasional exception—a poor foundation puts limits on the theoretical ceiling of a serial’s potential.

I’ll use The Romans, the most recent serial, as an example. In my estimation, there were a few serious foundational issues holding the serial back, namely its pacing/scope and how it approached characterizing Vicki, the new companion. As I progressed through the serial, I used these faults to set my expectations for what a success under these circumstances would look like. After two episodes, I felt that the serial was unlikely to score higher than a 4.5 out of 10, just based on how the narrative was executing on its flawed foundation. In the end, there were a few extra things that I felt held it back—balanced against an excellent antagonist in Nero—and I gave the serial an even 4.0. Now, I’m always open to being pleasantly surprised, and I try to take a step back after I finish a serial to look at it in its totality. But in general, I find this to be a very evenhanded way to set my own expectations.

After two episodes of The Web Planet, this serial has, without a doubt, the weakest foundation of any serial so far, and it’s not close. The antagonists have given us the worst creature design in the series with the Zarbi, and the Menoptra, who are supposed to come off as sympathetic, are almost as poorly conceived as the Sensorites. The cinematography is far and away the worst of the series with its astigmatism-blurring of all the exterior shots. The sound design is irritating with the endless shrieking of the Zarbi. Taken as a whole, if this serial were to suddenly start sprinkling in some compelling character interactions, or stellar performances, or anything else that might serve to balance out all this ick, I don’t think it is likely to bring the serial to anything higher than the mid-1s as far as its rating goes, maybe as high as a low 2. That’s what I would deem a success based on these foundational pieces.

And I want to make it clear, just because I think the serial has the worst potential at this moment, it does not mean that I will necessarily dislike it the most—although how I introduced this serial might hint that that will be my ultimate conclusion. For instance, while I can’t say that I’m enjoying myself, I do find the first two episodes of The Web Planet to be more tolerable than the first two of The Keys of Marinus. Although The Keys of Marinus had a slightly higher ceiling, I think that The Web Planet has managed so far to execute a little better on its premise, even though this trajectory is not maintained until the end of the serial.

Continuing on, we return to the labyrinth, where although Ian and Vicki can see the Doctor converse with the mysterious female voice, they cannot hear the conversation. Something in that plastic tube must keep the words private. Meanwhile, the Doctor is being questioned about why he has come to attack. Despite the Doctor’s honesty, the voice thinks that the Doctor and his companions are Menoptra. “You lie,” it says. “You are the Menoptra. Our detectors show you are massing in space to attack. Speak!”

Finding the Doctor’s answer insufficient, the voice promises a demonstration of the raw power that will be unleashed upon the rest of the Menoptra fleet. A green tendril tipped like a gun detaches itself from the living wall, takes aim at the TARDIS, and fires. Luckily, the ship rebuffs the attack, reflecting the munitions back among the Zarbi who mill about in distress.

Elsewhere, Vrestin, the only Menoptra not dead or in captivity, is chased to the edge of a cliff by Zarbi. She launches herself into the air and flies away.

Back in the labyrinth, the voice becomes much more tactful with the Doctor now that its attack has proven unsuccessful. It asks instead for the secrets contained in the TARDIS, secrets that can be used against the Menoptra invaders. In return, it offers the Doctor and his companions their freedom. The Doctor asks about Barbara, and the voice answers, “She has been taken to the Crater of Needles, beyond my great web.” Then the voice asks, “Will your secrets look into the stars?”

“I don’t know what you mean, but I have an astral map, if that answers your question,” says the Doctor. The voice wants to know if that will allow the Doctor to find the location of the Menoptra, to which the Doctor answers, “I see. So it’s the Menoptra that are invading your planet, hmm?” Now hold on, didn’t the Doctor just use the chrysalis of a Menoptra as a means to identify this planet as Vortis? The Menoptra can’t be both endemic to the planet and invaders, not based on what we already know. It’s the sort of careless worldbuilding that reminds me of the grievous mistakes in The Sensorites.

Anyway, in order to work the astral map, the Doctor says that he will need assistance inside the TARDIS. He takes Ian with him inside the ship, though the Zarbi hold Vicki outside as a hostage.

Outside the labyrinth, Vrestin has tracked some Zarbi to its entrance, discovering their lair.

In the TARDIS, we find out that the astral map is the strange hexagonal device in the nook next to the first aid kit, the thing that Part 1 failed to call sufficient attention to. The Doctor and Ian formulate a plan: the Doctor will try to trick the voice into lowering the defenses around the TARDIS so Ian can escape and find Barbara. He tells Ian what the voice told him about the Crater of Needles beyond some great web, and Ian pledges to do what he can. Then they wheel the astral map into the labyrinth outside.

Once there, the Doctor sets up the astral map while Ian takes Vicki aside to tell her that the Doctor has something up his sleeve. After peering at his instruments, the Doctor shouts angrily, demanding for the Zarbi to “drop this hairdryer, or whatever it is” so he can speak to the voice again. Back under the plastic tube, he says, “Some kind of force of yours has jammed my instruments, and whilst it continues, I cannot use them…I’m afraid we can’t help you find your invaders.” The voice considers for a moment, then agrees to withhold some of its forces near the astral map. Quickly, the Zarbi slump to the ground as if powering down.

Delighted, Ian uses this lapse in security to slip out of the chamber, wandering through the organic halls, searching for a way out. Meanwhile, the Doctor has Vicki help him with the astral map, hoping to find out some information about the Menoptra. Quickly, he finds the proper frequency, and we hear a Menoptra communique from the invasion fleet: “Leader to Spearhead. Lock course on bearing two-six-five. Speed point-oh-one. We jettisoned craft at altitude five above the Crater of Needles. Individual descent to Sayo Plateau, north of the crater.” The Doctor has Vicki record this audio on a small recording device.

Elsewhere in the labyrinth, Ian comes face-to-face with another Zarbi, this one active. He fights it, managing to throw it to the ground. Turning, Ian runs through the nearest opening in the walls, but he finds himself trapped when a panel swings shut behind him and an alarm goes off. What follows is a few confusing shots of Zarbi and larvae guns frantically running through the halls of the labyrinth. At one point, one of the larvae guns turns toward Ian and fires on him from point-blank range, with nothing between him and the larvae gun but one of the thin translucent walls. Somehow, this doesn’t hurt Ian, but it does blow out the panel behind him, allowing him to escape. Add this to the ever-growing pile of underwhelming action sequences.

Emerging from the labyrinth, Ian sprints out of sight, with Vrestin seeing him and following closely behind.

Back in the labyrinth, the plastic tube is lowered, and the voice confronts the Doctor, accusing him of trying to escape. “I am still here,” the Doctor says insolently. The voice says that they will no longer be trusted, and the Doctor responds, “Were we ever?” When the voice threatens to kill them, the Doctor smirks. “Yes, you can, but to what end? The information I have will die with me.” He adds that the information is incomplete and that he needs more time with his equipment. Clearly, the Doctor intends to milk this secret for all it is worth.

The Doctor returns to Vicki at the astral map and tells her that he has withheld the information he has discovered about the Menoptra. Then he asks Vicki to go get something from the TARDIS, a compound of some kind, telling her to bring him a red box. When she returns with a red box, he snaps, “Oh, I said a white box, child! Do you ever think!” Good comedy, there. “This is one of my specimens. Look.” He opens the box to show her a preserved tarantula.

When Vicki goes to return the spider to the ship, she happens to be looking inside the box when she passes a Zarbi. The Zarbi recoils at the sight of the spider, backing against the wall. “Doctor, look! It’s frightened. I’m sure it is.” Vicki has discovered a weapon to use against the Zarbi.

From a clifftop above the labyrinth, Ian and Vrestin keep an eye on the Zarbi activity below. Throughout the following conversation, Vrestin refers to Ian as “Terran.” It was—and still is—a common trope in science fiction for alien civilizations to refer to the Earth as its Latin “Terra,” and therefore its people as Terrans. However, although it was common, you still need to explain to the audience why the name is being used. I understood the dynamic, but whoever made the transcription I have been working from did not, repeatedly recording Vrestin as saying “heron.” Specificity matters, especially if the show was working toward its stated goal of broadening its audience. A quick back-and-forth with Vrestin clarifying the origin of the name is as simple as it is important, and its lack is glaring.

Ian is dismissive of the Menoptra at first. When Vrestin notes that the Crater of Needles is where many of her friends have been taken and had their wings ripped off, Ian says, “What do you expect when you invade a planet?”

“Invade a planet?” Vrestin says, taken aback. “Vortis is ours. We, the Menoptra, are reclaiming it.” Down below, the Zarbi retreat back inside the labyrinth—Vrestin refers to the massive organic structure as the Carsinome. Note the intentional similarity to carcinoma or carcinogen—cancer.

When Ian asks Vrestin for more information, she tells him the sad story of the Menoptra. “The Zarbi are not an intelligent species, but they were essential to the life pattern here. We lived at peace with them, until they were made militant by the dark power…The Animus. At that time, the Carsinome appeared. Grew like a fungus. We had no weapons. We had not had the need. And by the time we sensed the danger, the Zarbi were too strong.” She goes on to say that they fled to one of Vortis’s moons and that they must return before the Carsinome engulfs the entire planet. “Three of us were sent here to prepare the way for the invasion force. Now, I am alone…One [of the others] is dead. The other was taken to the crater.” Ian convinces Vrestin to join him on his quest, saying they must free Barbara and the other Menoptra from the Crater of Needles.

On the way to the crater, Ian and Vrestin are at the base of a cliff when they are suddenly surrounded by Zarbi. They try to climb the cliff to escape, hiding inside a crevice, but the ground beneath the crevice gives way, plunging them beneath the earth. This is done with some pretty awful practical effects, as well as some uncharacteristically poor acting from William Russel, who is rather blasé about the whole thing. Anyway, credits roll.

This is probably the least offensive episode in the serial. Nothing strikes me as particularly good, but there was a lot of important exposition given to the audience. It’s hard for me to tell if I am enjoying the episode a bit more because of how I have to keep pausing it on my second watch-through. By nature, this forces me to focus a little more on the exposition independently from the goofy creature who is delivering it to me. I definitely had a lower tolerance for some of these sequences on my first watch-through, so I might give this episode one more uninterrupted watch to gauge it better. [Edit: I did this, and my final opinion of it is somewhere between the absolute slop I felt on the first watch and the almost-okay television I felt on the second. It’s not great, and I’ll leave it at that.]

Part 4 (Crater of Needles)

As the dust settles, we discover that Ian and Vrestin have fallen deep underground, into a cave with a layer of mist wafting over the ground and cave drawings depicting insects on the walls. Before they can take stock of where they have landed, they are surrounded by jagged pieces of crystal, held by a new batch of creatures. They are positioned mostly offscreen, so they are hard to make out here, but we definitely haven’t seen them before.

Next, we cut to what I think is the worst setting in this serial: the Crater of Needles. Not because of the set design, but because of the cinematography. The crater has a lot of brightness to it, which, combined with Barbara dressed all in white and the white on the Menoptra, makes the scene one large astigmatism-blur. Everything about this place is unreadable, from the organic material covering the floor to the straited rock walls. I just can’t get over how bad the cinematography is. It completely pulls me out of every exterior scene. Full-on incompetence.

Barbara has to take a break from her labor to sit on a rock, out of breath. Hrostar tells her that it is the rarified atmosphere—which reminds me; Barbara never had the same breathing issues as the Doctor and Ian. Why not? And shouldn’t she be used to the thin air by now? She’s been out and about in it for more than two episodes. Then Barbara consoles Hrostar on the loss of his wings—again, mentioned way too long after the actual event happened in Part 2.

Barbara asks Hrostar, “Why do they make us heap this vegetation into the acid streams?” I wish the serial showed us this, rather than told us about it. After all, they are in the place where it happens, surrounded by organic material. Would it be so hard to show one of the Menoptra in the background pitching some vegetation into a pool? Show, don’t tell. I feel like I’m nitpicking here, but that’s only because there is so much wrong with this serial. These are the sort of things that I complain about in other serials; I’m just not used to seeing them crop up three times a scene.

“It’s the raw material for the Carsinome,” Hrostar answers, “where the Zarbi live. Fed into these pools, it is drawn to the center through underground streams…The Carsinome grows and reaches out across Vortis.” Barbara asks what lies at the center, and Hrostar says, “None of us have ever seen it and lived, but we call it the Animus.”

A Zarbi comes into the scene, and Barbara and Hrostar quickly make themselves look busy. When it has gone away, Barbara asks if the Menoptra can understand the Zarbi’s shrieking. “No,” Hrostar says. “They are just cattle. They do not have any speech nor motive of their own. Just controlled sentries. We came here to liberate them. It was disaster. Vrestin, the others, we arrived in advance of the Spearhead. Our weapons proved useless. They were taken by the Zarbi, who were everywhere. The three of us you met in the cave got away with the communicator, but we could not contact our Spearhead.”

Hrostar goes on to say that the Spearhead, the invading fleet, is set to arrive soon. When Barbara asks how they will overcome the Animus, Hrostar answers, “With a new invention of our scientists. It has not been tested, but we have placed our faith in the Isop-tope.” Two things about this Isop-tope. First, with the lilting drawl of the Menoptra, I spent the whole serial on my first watch-through thinking that it was just a broken way of saying “isotope.” And second, this demonstrates the continued naming woes of the writers. We’ve heard the word Isop before, once, in Part 1, when the Doctor told Ian that they were in the Isop galaxy. Once. Only once. Why the hell wouldn’t I assume that the dumb moth people were trying to say isotope?

Back in the labyrinth—the Carsinome—a Zarbi places the gold wishbone-shaped device around Vicki’s shoulders, putting her back under a trance. The plastic tube once again descends around the Doctor’s head and we hear the voice again—the Animus. The Animus demands the Doctor be more forthcoming with his information, threatening to kill Vicki. “If the child dies,” the Doctor answers, “there’ll be no reason left for me to obey. I have located your enemy. My calculations are complete.” The Doctor then tells the Animus that the Menoptra are headed straight for Vortis, though he withholds the information of where exactly they will land. “If I am given peace of mind for a while, I can find that out.” The Animus directs a Zarbi to release Vicki, and she and the Doctor go back to the astral map, trying to look busy. An alarm goes off—the Doctor says this is the Animus acting on the limited information he gave it—and the Zarbi begin to move with haste.

The alarm also sounds in the Crater of Needles. Barbara and the wingless Menoptra are pushed toward some kind of enclosure, and several of the Zarbi leave.

Back underground, we discover that Ian and Vrestin have been found and captured by a group of creatures that look like giant grubs standing upright. They have eyes like the Menoptra, only larger, perhaps from living under the ground. They are all quite short, with feelers coming out of the tops of their heads and soft, segmented bodies sort of like the back of a millipede. When they speak, it is low and guttural, with broken grammar and simplistic language. Combined with the crude cave drawings, these creatures have a very primitive air about them. Shockingly, I actually like them. They aren’t stupid on their face like the Zarbi or have unwieldy mannerisms like the Menoptra. In this scene, we discover that they are called the Optera.

Ian tries to tell the Optera that they were chased to the cliffside and fell down into the caves by accident, that they are not invaders. The Optera are hostile; they force Ian and Vrestin to dip their clasped hands in a thick white liquid which hardens around their hands, immobilizing them. Vrestin asks, “Primitives, what is it you want from us?”

The leader of the Optera, a male named Hetra, answers. “We know that from the roof, comes hate! The liquid death! Creeping destroyer of we Optera.” I find the way he hops around when he speaks, flailing to add emphasis to his words, to be quite endearing. “Yet you stand upright. We will consult the Chasm of Lights, and if you come from above, you will die!”

Back at the Crater of Needles, Barbara, Hrostar, and two unnamed Menoptra—one male and one female—are inside the enclosure. We get a long and frankly useless bit of exposition, trying to get the audience to feel more sympathetic for the Menoptra. It’s a bit late for that, and most of it is unnecessary detail. The only thing relevant to the plot is that the Menoptra are worried that the alarm means that the Animus has been tipped off about the invasion force. Hrostar asks Barbara if the Doctor could be aiding the Animus, and Barbara says no. Then they make plans to head for the landing sight, the Sayo Plateau, so that they can intercept and warn the Spearhead. The unnamed male Menoptra—he actually has a name, though the serial never uses it—says he knows of a way to kill a larvae gun, and they bust out of the enclosure.

In the Carsinome, the Doctor and Vicki coordinate to steal the wishbone-shaped device from the Zarbi. Vicki runs at it with the spider in the white box, while the Doctor uses his walking stick to slide the wishbone away from the Zarbi. “We have got to find something to realign this power,” he says thoughtfully.

In the Crater of Needles, Barbara and the Menoptra set an ambush on a Zarbi and a larvae gun. They flip the Zarbi onto its back, and it turns out the male Menoptra’s brilliant plan for killing the larvae gun was to pick it up and slam it against a wall. It works, but why did the dialogue hint at something beyond simple brute force? Once the enemies have been dispatched, the female Menoptra leads them offscreen toward the plateau.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Vicki are experimenting with the wishbone. The Doctor attaches it to the astral map, hoping to use the power of the TARDIS to neutralize the device. He flips a switch, and there is a bang and a puff of smoke. Immediately, a Zarbi comes over to investigate, shoving the Doctor toward the communication tube. When the Animus speaks, it is very suspicious.

The Doctor tries to pass off the explosion as a simple blown fuse. He holds his recording device up toward the tube, saying that it was the culprit. Then he accidentally plays the recording of the Menoptra from the Spearhead reading out the landing coordinates. What a stupid, stupid, stupid way to move the narrative forward. You’re telling me that the way the writers have chosen to give this information to the Animus was simply the Doctor being stupid enough to hold his recorder up to the tube and press play? And it’s not one of the intentional “accidents” that the Doctor will use throughout the series to manipulate his enemies. It’s just plain dumb. This serial sucks.

“You were in possession of the information all the time?” the Animus demands. “You will be dealt with when the invasion has been repelled.” Vicki and the Doctor are pushed against a wall, and wishbones are placed around each of their shoulders. They are entranced.

On the plateau, Barbara and the Menoptra discover the place surrounded by Zarbi. “Then this Doctor must have betrayed us!” says Hrostar. This line is bad, because none of the characters in this scene have seen the Doctor in this serial. Not even Barbara has seen him since he and Ian left the TARDIS in Part 1. They have no way of knowing that the Doctor has even interacted with the Animus, much less discovered a way to locate the Spearhead and given that information to the Animus. Yes, the audience knows this to be true, but the audience has the privilege of jump cuts and seeing multiple storylines. Barbara and the Menoptra don’t have this privilege, so all of this speculation over the Doctor’s actions makes no sense. This is a failure in basic storytelling.

Back underground, Ian and Vrestin try to make the Optera see that they are descended from the Menoptra who once populated the surface. There is no scene depicting them coming to this realization; they are suddenly dumping this on the audience. Again, storytelling 101: your characters have to demonstrate their knowledge to the audience before you can show them acting on it. Otherwise, it just comes across as confusing or overly convenient or both. Hetra, the leader of the Optera, says the Menoptra are their gods and tells them to prove what they are saying. Vrestin opens he wings, and the Optera all bow reverently.

On the plateau, Barbara and the Menoptra manage to find the landing party. They try to give warning, but suddenly, they are surrounded by Zarbi and larvae guns. The next three minutes give us the worst action sequence to this point in the series, and that is saying a lot. Shots of Zarbi, with the actors beneath struggling to appear athletic in the unwieldy costumes. Then confusing cuts to Menoptra flying around, then back to the lumbering Zarbi. A Menoptra gets shot by a larvae gun, and another gets slowly taken to the ground by a Zarbi—the latter basically plays dead and lets the Zarbi lay on top of it. The Menoptra fire some weaponry, but there isn’t any sound to demonstrate the action. Nothing is cohesive. On top of it all, everything has that astigmatism-blur. Credits roll. It’s not even a proper cliffhanger. Barbara and a Hrostar are running through a scene when it suddenly fades into the credits.

Part 5 (Invasion)

As Barbara, Hrostar, and another Menoptra cower against the side of the cliff face, a section of it moves to reveal a hidden door. They duck inside, and the door closes, sealing the Zarbi and larvae guns outside.

In the Carsinome, it appears as if the Doctor and Vicki are both entranced, standing against one of the living walls, each with their eyes closed, wearing a gold wishbone. Suddenly, Vicki opens her eyes. Checking to make sure the Zarbi are preoccupied, she slips the wishbone off of the Doctor’s shoulders, trying to keep him quiet as he comes around. The Doctor is startled to see Vicki still wearing hers, but she explains that the Doctor’s experiment with the astral map has successfully disabled it. “I wonder,” the Doctor says. “If that is so, I can control that necklace with this power of my ring.” He flashes the ring he used in Part 1 to open the doors. Tricking a Zarbi into coming close, the Doctor manages to get the altered wishbone around the Zarbi’s neck. Immediately, it follows the waggles of the Doctor’s fingers, entranced by the ring. With their new Zarbi thrall, the Doctor and Vicki exit the chamber of the Carsinome, looking for a way out.

In my opinion, this is a very weak plot point. I think it is very important in science-fiction to dictate the rules of the in-universe technology to the audience. Doing so gives the viewer a satisfaction in knowing how the world works and helps to distinguish the genre from fantasy. Failing to do so produces technology that might as well be magic. This is one of the latter cases. All we know about the ring is that it is somehow connected to the TARDIS, as it was able to open the doors when the power was cut. Now, this connection allows the Doctor to somehow control the Zarbi, all because of what? There’s no effort to give the audience even a hint as to why this works, and it wouldn’t have to be a long, drawn-out explanation. Just a casual mention of some made-up particle, a psychic link, something. I often criticize technobabble, but there are times when a little gobbledygook can be really effective.

Elsewhere, Barbara and the other Menoptra find themselves inside what one of them calls a Temple of Light. It is tall, shaped like a pyramid, and I find it extremely odd that the showrunners chose not to definitively establish this as the same structure that the Doctor and Ian found in Part 1. They could have used the same establishing shot. The interior is dim, with age-weathered statues. It’s not much to look at, but at least it’s an interior shot that lacks the astigmatism-blur over everything.

Over the next five minutes, one of the Menoptra explains a bit more about the history of the creatures. I’m long past caring what the planet Vortis once looked like or what the Menoptra hope to regain by defeating the Animus. Barbara asks how the Menoptra thought they could defeat the Animus, and one of the Menoptra reveals a small metallic device, roughly spherical, fitting in the palm of his hand. He calls it a living cell destructor and says it will reverse the growth of the Carsinome and destroy the Animus. Barbara convinces them that their only salvation lies in going on the offensive and taking the fight to the Animus.

Two other things of note in this scene. First, that male Menoptra whose name I said wasn’t mentioned actually is named in this scene. The name is Prapillus, though since it’s a full episode’s worth of runtime after his introduction, he may as well be unnamed. And second, the Menoptra have yet another annoying mannerism. When they get angry, they let out little hisses like cats.

Underground, Hetra tells Ian and Vrestin that the Optera can lead them to the Animus.

Outside the Carsinome, the Doctor, Vicki, and their pet Zarbi can be seen emerging from the living labyrinth. The Doctor says they should follow the tracks of the Zarbi toward wherever the landing site of the Menoptra is. Vicki names the docile Zarbi as Zombo.

I’m really trying to just get through the plot summary at this point. If it seems really abrupt, it’s because I’ve started to cut out all but the bare bones of the necessary plot points. I don’t usually do this—I try to give a little bit of color so that anyone reading can get a sense of the tone and the atmosphere. But The Web Planet is trying my patience, and I just want to get the rest of it out of the way.

Underground, the Optera try to find a route to the Animus. They have to break through jagged stalagmites and stalactites, often running into caverns full of toxic vapor and having to double back. Hetra says that the way forward must be dug through solid rock.

Back in the Temple of Light, Barbara and the Menoptra craft a plan where the majority of the Menoptra will draw off the Zarbi, allowing for a small force to enter the Carsinome and seek out the Animus. As they plan, the Doctor, Vicki, and Zombo arrive, much to the delight of Barbara.

Meanwhile, underground, one of the Optera sacrifices itself so that a chamber is not flooded with acid from the surface. They mourn the Optera briefly and continue on.

In the Temple of Light, we get another heavily detailed exposition dump. The power of the Animus is the force that drew the moons into the sky of Vortis and the force that holds the TARDIS. Destroy the Animus, and the Doctor and his companions should be able to leave. The Doctor agrees with the plan Barbara has helped to create, but with one alteration. Barbara and the Menoptra will be in charge of the mock attack to draw off the Zarbi, while the Doctor and Vicki will venture into the Carsinome alone to make use of the living cell destructor, which we find out is also called the Isop-tope. He wants to be recaptured and in the chamber with the TARDIS when the others begin their diversion.

At the entrance to the Carsinome, Vicki and the Doctor are captured as planned, taken inside by the Zarbi.

Underground, the Optera have led Ian and Vrestin to a tunnel which should take them up to the Animus.

Inside the labyrinth, the Doctor and Vicki are sprayed by an immobilizing web, surrounded by Zarbi. Credits roll.

Part 6 (The Centre)

The Animus accuses the Doctor of escape. “You are of no further use, except for the way you think,” it says. “I need your intelligence. You will be brought to the center, to me.” He and Vicki are ushered offscreen. It is unclear what that web from the last episode is supposed to do. The Doctor and Vicki can still move around, and by the end of this scene, it is already mostly gone.

Next, we see them moving down the corridors of the Carsinome, and the Doctor asks Vicki for the “web destructor” back. This is the third different name the serial has given the device. It’s not hard to understand what web destructor means, but I keep coming back to how bad the writers are with naming. It’s like an accident if they manage to do it properly. Anyway, Vicki doesn’t have the web destructor/living cell destructor/Isop-tope. Stricken with dismay, she tells the Doctor that she left it in the astral map. She hid it there, apparently—I have no idea why. It’s not like the Zarbi knew about it or had searched them at any point in this serial. Really, it needed to be left behind for another character to find later, and the writers have chosen the clunkiest possible way to do this.

Outside the Carsinome, Barbara and the Menoptra start their decoy attack. I thought the shrieking of the Zarbi was bad, but the noises that the Menoptra make in this scene are atrocious. The Zarbi scurry off for reinforcements, and Barbara and the Menoptra enter the Carsinome after them.

Underground, Ian and Vrestin reach a point where the Optera are unwilling to go any further. Hetra, the leader, agrees to go on with Ian and Vrestin, telling the other Optera that he will return for them once the evil has been defeated.

During their continued assault on the Carsinome, Barbara and the others watch as Hrostar is killed by a larvae gun. They continue.

Deep in the Carsinome, the Doctor and Vicki have finally arrived in the center. At the center of a mass of leafy tendrils is a bright sphere of light from which emanates the voice of the Animus. The Doctor and Vicki can’t bear to look at the light, and they find it almost impossible to resist the persuasive powers of the Animus. The Animus demands that they approach, and they both struggle to stay where they are.

Underground, Ian, Vrestin, and Hetra continue to climb.

Elsewhere in the Carsinome, Barbara and the Menoptra make their way toward the Carsinome chamber with the astral map and the TARDIS.

In the chamber of the Animus, the Doctor and Vicki, weakened, collapse into the Animus’s tendrils. The Animus begins to rob them of their knowledge, saying, “What I take from you will enable me to reach beyond this galaxy, into the solar system, to pluck from Earth its myriad techniques and take from man his mastery of space.”

Back to Barbara: she finds the Doctor’s astral map. She helps the Menoptra send a message for the main invasion force to wait in orbit, but there is no response. Then she spies the Isop-tope, figuring the Doctor had been captured. Wasn’t that the plan all along, for them to get captured? One of the Menoptra says, “Then we must take it to the center ourselves.”

Elsewhere, Ian, Vrestin, and Hetra have reached the underside of the Animus chamber. It’s a cramped space, with vines hanging down from a spongey material. Ian tries to cut through.

Barbara and the Menoptra make it to the chamber of the Animus. They rush in; all of them suddenly find it hard to move when their eyes fall on the mind-distorting light. Ian crawls into the room through the floor. He adds nothing to the scene. Barbara falls toward the Animus, holding the Isop-tope out toward it. Smoke erupts from the source of the light, and the organic structure in the center of the room collapses. The Animus is dead.

Over the next seven minutes, the serial resolves. Water returns to the surface of the planet, replacing the acid. The Menoptra meet the Optera, who also return to the surface. The Zarbi are now docile. The Carsinome begins to recede. The Doctor and his companions say their goodbyes and take off in the TARDIS. The Menoptra look on in amazement, pledging to add the travelers to their myths and histories. Credits roll.

Get me the fuck out of here.

Takeaways

It’s hard for me to imagine a bigger all-around failure than what I saw in The Web Planet. From conception to execution, nothing worked. I couldn’t take the Zarbi seriously, the Menoptra were insufferable, there were flaws in the most basic elements of storytelling, and I hope the cinematographer never found work in the industry again. Even the Optera, who were not terrible, felt aimless, like they were just a vehicle to make sure Ian an Vrestin were present for the final scene—they had no bearing on the plot. I take back what I said at the beginning. Go watch this serial. Grab a big bowl of popcorn—and if you’re a writer, maybe something to take notes. Use this trainwreck as a masterclass in what not to do in your writing. Only then can this serial contribute something positive to the medium.

I found the writing of this review to be extremely disheartening, which is part of the reason why it took me a week and a half to get through it. Looking forward, I’m just happy to move onto something that is not this. I was wrong at the end of The Romans when I said we weren’t getting to another historical serial until the end of the season. The next serial, The Crusade, will hopefully give me something much easier to write about. I still want to see more of Vicki and how she interacts with Ian and Barbara. She was pretty much a nonfactor in this serial, again made to follow the Doctor around and rarely having an independent impact on the narrative. The longer the series goes without making an effort to separate Vicki from the Doctor, the more I worry she will just be a replica of Susan.

It is with great pleasure that I give this serial the dubious honor of the lowest rating it is in my power to yield.

Rating: 0.0/10

Chapter Text

2.6 – The Crusade

This serial is missing episodes two and four, which I had to watch as telesnap reconstructions. As with all such serials, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Thesis: Us vs. Them

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, it should come as no surprise that one of—if not the most—common setups for a serial is when the Doctor and his companions land in the middle of some sort of conflict. It usually looks something like this: 1) The protagonists learn a little about the conflict and the history of the struggle. 2) The protagonists align themselves with the weaker or more persecuted party. 3) The protagonists—usually prompted by the Doctor—try to find a way to mediate the conflict. 4) Sometimes peace is possible, in which case that is usually the ultimate conclusion of the serial; if not, the mediation breaks down and the protagonists help the aggrieved party prepare to defend themselves. 5) There’s a climactic battle, and the aggrieved party is victorious. 6) The victors are grateful for the protagonists’ help, and the Doctor and his companions go on their merry way across the universe.

This dynamic is not revolutionary by any means. Ever since people first began telling stories, we have gravitated to tales of the oppressed standing up to their oppressors. I’ve heard some refer to this as the David vs. Goliath trope, or the underdog trope, though to me, trope is not a word I would use to describe it. It’s something deeper than that: a manifestation of the collectivist side of human nature, an appeal to our empathy. When we see and understand a peoples’ suffering, we are driven to want to alleviate that suffering.

The benefits to a writer in couching a narrative within this dynamic should be obvious. We’ve all at one point or another been bullied in school, or have been talked down to by a bad boss, or have seen or been on the receiving end of abuse due to skin color, disability, sexual orientation, or any number of immutable characteristics. When these things are depicted in media, it is very easy for the audience to identify with the people being abused, as long as the dynamic is set up properly. We fundamentally get what it means to be the underdog.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic in this series is any serial that includes the Daleks. As a Nazi metaphor, the Dalek species traveling the universe and killing any being that is different from them constitutes the ultimate oppressor. Although any repeated plot element runs the risk of becoming boring, serials featuring the Daleks remain popular to this day, and I think a lot of their staying power has to do with how menacing they can be as oppressors.

Additionally, the oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic does not have to be literal—it can also be metaphorical. We saw this in Planet of Giants, where the wealthy Mr. Forrester killed Mr. Farrow, a man who was poised to protect the interests of the people against the danger posed by Mr. Forrester’s harmful insecticide. This is an example of what I really appreciate in an oppressor vs. oppressed scenario, when the oppressor’s motivations go beyond evil for the sake of evil, and are instead rooted in real human vices like the accumulation of wealth or political power, acts of jealousy, seeking revenge, etc. Purely evil characters like the Daleks can be great, but in my opinion, the best writing tells a story about pervasive societal ills as much as it does about the characters on the page.

In my opinion, the writers of Doctor Who are better at producing an oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic in serials set in the future, among made-up peoples and places. Freed from the complicated entanglements of actual historical fact, the writers are able to depict a war between the Daleks and the Thals, or have Arbitan defending his machine from the evil Voord, and the audience can only judge these scenarios based on the internal consistency of the facts provided by the writers themselves. There is no alternative source of information, no reason to dispute the events given to us in the narrative. I took issue with almost everything presented in to me in The Web Planet, but there was nothing objectionable about the Menoptra’s claim to the planet Vortis. The execution of the serial was awful, but the Menoptra were the oppressed and the Animus was the oppressor. I had no reason to think otherwise.

Historical serials are another matter, where ahistorical, inaccurate depictions of actual history run the risk of undermining the credibility of the narrative. We saw this a little in Marco Polo, in its whitewashing of the litany of atrocities committed by the Mongolian warlord Kublai Khan. For me, whether or not such a thing cuts into my enjoyment of a serial really depends on how drastic the inaccuracies are and how much the narrative revolves around them. Yes, the real-life warlord was much more brutal and amoral than what was shown on the screen. However, because the serial’s focus was on Marco Polo and the warlord didn’t play a role in the narrative until Part 6 of a 7-part serial, this inaccuracy didn’t do much to diminish the experience. It was tangential enough that it could be overlooked for the sake of the narrative.

The Crusade is different. As you might have guessed, it takes place during the Crusades, specifically the Third Crusade, and prominently features the King of England, Richard I, as one of the supporting characters. Now, I’d like to give people the benefit of the doubt if they don’t know the history of the Crusades. Up until frighteningly recently, much of the global west portrayed these as noble wars aimed at establishing civilized rule in the Middle East. My Catholic school upbringing painted this as a religious effort to return Catholics to the lands of the Bible—especially Jerusalem—a mission to proselytize and “save” the infidels through mass conversions and the teachings of Christ.

This is patently false. It is well-documented that the Catholic Church declared the First Crusade as a means to deflect from accusations of corruption among the papacy that was causing growing religious unrest in Europe, an attempt to galvanize the people of Europe against a different enemy. The subsequent Crusades were propagated by European monarchs with less-than-holy intentions, kings and dignitaries whose aims were political and economic. It can be debated whether or not the men in these armies ever had good intentions, but by the time they reached the Holy Lands, they had become a force which succumbed to the basest of human vices. They were a marauding gang of murderers, rapists, and thieves, terrorizing their way across eastern Europe and Asia Minor.

So when The Crusade tries to paint Richard I and his knights as being noble and valiant representatives of high English society, I frankly find it repulsive. It is a complete distortion of the oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic that actually existed during the Crusades. Instead, with the actual history in mind, it comes off as us vs. them. If the oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic draws upon the best aspects of human nature, us vs. them evokes some of the worst. Us is the in-group: people aligned around a nationality or a religion or a common cause. Us has a motivation that is intrinsically moral, and you shouldn’t question it. Them is the other. Them is scary. Them is something not meant to be understood, but to be utterly defeated. As a writer, you must be extremely careful when you are setting up an oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic, because it is very easy to accidently end up writing an us vs. them. And in my opinion, the only acceptable way to write an us vs. them dynamic is if the entire point of the narrative is to call attention to how messed up that dynamic is.

And I get it, the writers of early Doctor Who were well-connected, industry-bred, white, male, middle aged members of the British media hegemony. If I, as a high school student in the 2010s, was taught what I now know to be revisionist history, I can’t even imagine what world history looked like in the 1920s and 30s at the center of the British Empire. I know I’m making assumptions here that can never be substantiated, but I feel strongly that what we see of the Crusaders in this serial is probably accurate to what the showrunners thought they knew about the Crusades. I don’t think their intentions were in any way malicious. It just sucks as a viewer in 2024 with the benefit of hindsight. I’ll be keeping all of this context in mind as I go through the serial—both the actual history and how the showrunners were likely educated—but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this massive discrepancy really damaged my enjoyment of an already flawed serial.

Part 1 (The Lion)

The serial opens on a forest, where two regally dressed Englishmen are walking through the wood. Their guards are up, and their swords are drawn. They walk offscreen, and the camera pans over to a bush where three other men are concealed, watching their movements. These are not Englishmen; they have dark skin and goatees, each wearing a turban. They are also armed, bearing swords and shields. One of these men makes to attack the two Englishmen from behind, but another, the leader, holds him back. “No, not yet. One of them may be the king. Follow them, and listen to them.”

The men in the bushes slowly stalk after the Englishmen. As soon as they are out of frame, we see the TARDIS materialize among the foliage.

Elsewhere in the wood, we see the camp of King Richard I. The king has just finished some sporting, and we see a falconer placing the hood over the eyes of a hawk. All of the men wear chainmail armor and leather tunics. Richard’s tunic has a white cross painted in the middle, demonstrating the ostensibly religious nature of the Third Crusade. His hair is red, which is something I only know from some of the dialogue that happens later in the episode. Shot in black-and-white, the visuals make it seem a light brown. All the men are jovial, without a care for who might be lurking in the wood.

After a bit of light banter, the two Englishmen from before arrive at the camp. One of these is identified as the knight Sir William Des Preaux (pronounced day PRAY-oh), who is a tall man with neatly coiffed brown hair and a stern look about him. Sir William urges the king to leave the wood, saying, “Sire, I’ve heard sounds in these woods…You are too far from Jaffa, and the Saracens too near.” Saracen was a word that meant Muslim, a popular term during the middle ages. There is nothing inherently derogatory about the word, but the way that characters will sneer it during this serial makes me uncomfortable. Us vs. them.

King Richard dismisses Sir William’s concerns. “We will stay here until, William the Wary, you recover your composure.” He smirks at the man. “And, I hope, your sense of humor.” Unbeknownst to all of them, the Saracens watch them from the bushes.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and his companions are exiting from the TARDIS to have a look around. Ian and Barbara move away from the Doctor and Vicki, and they are still within eyeshot of the TARDIS when Ian comes face to face with one of the Saracens, slowly advancing with his sword drawn. Behind him, another Saracen clasps a hand over Barbara’s mouth, silently abducting her. Oblivious to this, Ian sets up to square off against the Saracen, at a clear disadvantage without a weapon.

Suddenly, we hear the Doctor say, “Good afternoon!” The Saracen is startled, distracted just long enough for Ian to tackle him to the ground. The Doctor knocks the man unconscious.

Before the situation can calm down, the Doctor, Ian, and Vicki can hear the sound of sword fighting in the wood nearby. Then Ian realizes that Barbara is nowhere to be found, and he calls out for her. The scene briefly cuts to elsewhere in the wood, where we see a gagged Barbara being tied hand and foot by the Saracens; she can hear Ian’s calls, but she cannot reply.

Ian hears the sword fight drawing closer, and he tells the others to hide. They duck into the bushes just before several of the Englishmen shuffle into view. King Richard is injured, staggering along, using one of his knights as a crutch. Another knight is shot in the chest with an arrow. Ian and the Doctor haul the man’s body into the safety of the bushes. King Richard and the other knight hurry off into the foliage as a group of Saracens enter the scene.

All of a sudden, Sir William Des Preaux jumps into the clearing and shouts, “Saracens, I am the king! I am Malek Ric!” The Saracens fall for the ruse, taking Sir William into custody. The leader of the Saracens, a man with a nasty scar over his left eye, orders a few of them to stay behind and ferret any additional Englishmen out of the wood. Then he leaves with the rest of the Saracens and their two prisoners: Sir William and Barbara.

Back with the others, Ian suddenly finds himself facing another foe. Ian picks a sword up off the ground, and they fight. It’s actually a decent action sequence, with plenty of quick blows. At one point, Ian falls to the ground and loses his sword, but he manages to dodge a blow and grab a shield from the ground on his way up. Bull rushing the Saracen, he traps the man’s sword between his own body and Ian’s shield, using his free hand to deliver a knockout punch.

On the other side of the clearing, the Doctor faces off against another Saracen with a sword of his own, though his prospects look much more dubious. The scene cuts to show the downed knight on the ground slowly rising up onto his elbows. He breaks off the head of the arrow in his chest, then grabs his sword and hurls it across the clearing at the Saracen engaged with the Doctor—it impales the man, killing him. It’s very unrealistic for something like that to actually work in a swordfight, but hey, I’ll take unrealistic and entertaining over realistic and lethargic any day.

The Doctor, Ian, and Vicki quickly crowd around the knight, who lays back down on the ground, his strength failing. With labored words, he tells the Doctor that the man taken by the Saracens wasn’t really the king, and he gives them an ornate golden belt to take back to King Richard. With a sigh, the knight falls unconscious.

All of this sparks a memory from the Doctor. “This belt. Wait a minute. Of course, yes. I remember. This belongs to his royal master, King Richard.” He tells the others that Malek Ric was the name the Saracens had for King Richard, and he speculates that the king would be happy to help them find Barbara if they return the royal belt to him. Ian says they can’t afford to wait that long, and he leaves to go look for Barbara on his own. As the scene comes to a close and all I see is Vicki and the Doctor, I can’t help but fear that the serial is preparing to have them go off together once again.

An hour later, Ian returns emptyhanded. The knight is still unconscious, and Vicki has been treating him with medicine from the TARDIS. The Doctor says that before they can go after King Richard, they must find appropriate clothes to wear. One of the things I take for granted in the modern series is the Doctor’s massive wardrobe of era-appropriate clothing. I never considered how he acquired all of those clothes. It’s fun once you realize that the wardrobe is all of the outfits he and his companions have gathered over the years just by assimilating into the culture wherever they go. At the end of the scene, the Doctor takes Vicki offscreen, leaving for a nearby town to see what clothes they can find, yet again putting the circumstances in place for me to be underwhelmed by Vicki in this serial.

Elsewhere, Barbara slowly comes awake to discover that she is in a large tent. Her gag has been removed, though she can see the shadows of men outside on guard. In the tent with her is a man—she doesn’t know him, but the audience knows him to be Sir William des Preaux, who disguised himself as King Richard. Sir William asks Barbara how she came to be in the wood, noting that her clothes are very odd. He gives her a more appropriate cloak and a bowl of water for her dry throat.

Barbara sidesteps the question, asking where they are. “At Ramlah,” William answers, “the great sultan’s encampment…I am King Richard, Coeur de Lion, leader of the mighty host, scourge of the infidel.”

“But I thought Richard had red hair,” says Barbara.

William smirks at her and says, “I am Sir William des Preaux, captured and mistaken for my king. Some smiles will turn to long faces soon, I have no doubt.” Barbara gives William her name, and William helps her invent a disguise for herself. “The princess…You shall be Joanna, my sister, and help me in my lies.” Barbara agrees, grateful for William’s friendship in an unfriendly place.

Several Saracens enter, including the leader from before, whom I will call Scarface until the writers deign to give us a name. Scarface says that the orders of the sultan, Yusef Salah ed-Din (anglicized throughout this serial as Saladin), say that the prisoners are to be treated with compassion. He smirks at Sir William and says, “Would you say I have complied with his wishes?”

“The Sultan of Egypt and Syria would no doubt be pleased,” William replies, in what is really clunky exposition. I’d rather hear William explain directly to Barbara who the sultan is and which lands he rules over than hear these things worked very unnaturally into the conversation. William goes on to say, “But this lady, my sister…Joanna, Princess of England and closest to me in affection. My sister has been ill-treated, handled roughly by your men. Is this the compassion Saladin speaks of?”

Scarface scoffs. “Enough of your babbling. The woman is all of one piece…You have no rights, no privileges, nothing except the benevolence of our leader.” He turns to Barbara. “That you are the king’s sister bodes well for me. I can serve both the sultan and Malek el Adil.”

“Saphadin?” William says.

“As you call the sultan’s brother, yes.” Again, a very clunky way to give this information to the audience. “He will be pleased to see the woman he has so long admired.”

The Saracens leave, and Barbara and Sir William share a smile. “Someone is going to have a very red face before long,” Barbara says.

Next we see a market, where traders hawk their wares. A clothes merchant, a stout man in a turban, stands outside his market shop, crying, “Silks! Satins! The finest robes in Jaffa!” The Doctor approaches this man, and after a short conversation, he follows the merchant into the shop. Unseen by the merchant, Vicki follows closely behind in a dark cloak, sitting down just outside the entrance to the shop.

Inside, the merchant is beginning to show the Doctor the clothes he has for sale when an Englishman enters, catching the merchant’s eye. “Forgive me, my lord,” the merchant says to the Doctor, before turning to the newcomer and continuing in hushed tones, “Why can’t you be more careful when you come here? Why can’t you wait until the place is empty?”

It is soon made clear that the Englishman has come from the palace of King Richard with a sackful of stolen clothes. As they haggle a bit over the price, the Doctor says to himself, “Having been stolen once, they can be stolen again. Or perhaps borrowed, shall we say, hmm?” With the two men distracted, the Doctor disappears under a table with an armful of clothes.

The merchant finishes his dealings with the Englishman and leaves, while the Doctor ties a rope around the leg of the table next to the one he hides under. Once he and the merchant are alone, he yanks on the rope, collapsing the table. The clothes merchant rushes around to pick the clothes up off the dirty floor, moaning about damaging his goods. While the man is distracted, the Doctor tosses fistfuls of clothing out of the shop’s entrance to Vicki, who stashes them inside her cloak. Once they have enough, the Doctor stands, pretending as if he has been just outside the shop the whole time. The Doctor bids the merchant adieu, and he leaves the market with Vicki.

I really liked this scene. It shows a bit more of the Doctor’s comfortability whenever he is using his charisma to bluff his way past some obstacle. The writers have managed to distance his characterization from the crotchety old man we saw in Season 1. Scenes like this, combined with some more athleticism elsewhere, like when he briefly fought off the Saracens with a sword, seem like a deliberate migration toward the traits that more typify the later Doctors.

Elsewhere, inside an ornate tent lies the throne room of Saladin. The brother to the sultan, Saphadin, sits on a wooden bench in front of a curtain of sheer silk. Behind this curtain, Saladin sits on his throne. This arrangement allows Saladin to see and hear the goings-on in the throne room, but allows Saphadin to actually hold the audience. If the sultan deems it necessary to intervene, he can.

Scarface enters the throne room, and we learn that his name is El Akir. He confidently tells Saphadin that he has captured Malek Ric and the Princess Joanna, before clapping his hands and ushering his prisoners into the room. Saphadin appears pleased with the fake King Richard, but when he sees Barbara, he flies into a rage. “Do you think I do not know the face and the form of the princess? You take me for a fool!”

At this point, Saladin enters the scene, studying the captives. “This is not King Richard,” he tells El Akir. “A blacker head of red-gold hair I never saw.” Sir William then comes clean about the subterfuge, and Saladin dismisses everyone but Barbara and Saphadin, telling El Akir that although Sir William is a prisoner, he is to treat him as he would a brother.

Once Saladin and Saphadin are alone with Barbara, Saladin lets it be known that he is unsure what to do with her. “You’re not of these lands, yet you seem to be a stranger to Sir William.” He asks Barbara how she came to be in the wood and who she is.

“Well,” Barbara begins, “I could say that I’m from another world, a world ruled by insects. And before that, we were in Rome in the time of Nero. Before that, we were in England, far, far into the future—”

“Now I understand,” Saladin cuts in. “You and your friends, you are players, entertainers.”

“With little value in an exchange of prisoners with the English King, brother,” Saphadin adds.

Saladin stands, looming imperiously over Barbara. “You must serve my purpose, or you have no purpose. Grace my table tonight, in more suitable clothes. If your tales beguile me, you shall stay and entertain.”

Barbara is struck by the similarities to a piece of folklore, and she smiles. “Like Scheherazade,” she says.

“Over whose head hung the sentence of death,” Saladin answers.

Next, we find ourselves in the palace of King Richard, in his throne room. The room is spacious, with grand arches and decorative chandeliers. The mood of the scene is instantly set, as the first thing we see is King Richard hurling one of his servants across the room in a fit of anger. The Doctor, Ian, and Vicki are there, along with the knight that Vicki helped nurse back to health. I feel like a broken record, but this knight has a name; we just haven’t had the privilege of learning it yet.

The knight tells the king about what happened after the king left the wood. “And so these kingly people, whose faces were like hidden in a mist until the moment passed, saved my life and brought me here.”

Richard thanks the Doctor and his companions, his mood still dour. “The brothers de L’Etable are dead. De Marun, dead. Sir William de Preaux, taken. What have I left but one wounded friend and a sore head?”

“One small thing remains yours, sire,” the Doctor cuts in, holding out the golden belt.

Richard takes the belt, but his mood continues to worsen. “Once again, I am in your debt. But I’d give this for de Marun and the others. My friends cut down about my ears, or stolen. My armies roust about and clutter up the streets of Jaffa with the garbage of their vices. And now I learn my brother, John, thirsts after power, drinking great draughts of it, though it’s not his to take. He’s planning to usurp my crown and trade with my enemy, Philip of Fance. Trade! A tragedy of fortunes, and I am too much beset by them. A curse on this! A thousand curses!” He takes silverware from a table and hurls it across the room.

Ian turns to the Doctor and Vicki and says quietly, “We must ask him.” The Doctor tries to tell him that now is not the time, but Ian is adamant. He crosses over to the king and asks for help retrieving Barbara, suggesting a trade to get back her and Sir William.

Richard has none of it. “We do not trade with Saladin today. Not today, nor tomorrow, nor any day henceforth.” The Doctor and Vicki try to join Ian’s argument, but they are unsuccessful. “Understand this,” Richard says darkly. “This woman can rot in one of Saladin’s prisons until her hair turns white before I’ll trade with the man that killed my friends!” Credits roll.

So far, a pretty decent opener. If it weren’t attached to the Crusades, I think it would be a pretty compelling depiction of a grieving yet capricious king. I just find it really hard to divorce this narrative from the harsh historical reality that it—intentionally or not—obfuscates.

Part 2 (The Knight of Jaffa)

This episode is the first of two lost episodes in this serial, with the salvaged audio and keyframes edited together into a telesnap reconstruction. As with all reconstructions, I tend to give the show a lot more leeway in how it communicates things to the audience.

Before I go on, I want to clarify one aspect of how the early Doctor Who serials were conceived. Aside from the rare collaboration, each serial’s script was written by just one of a rotating cast of writers on staff at the BBC drama department. These scripts then went through rounds of revisions, both with network executives and the series’ producers. If they were ultimately met with approval, the episodes would be filmed anywhere from a few weeks later to a few months later. This process looked nothing like what you might picture when you imagine the writers’ room of a modern television production. Though the writers spoke to one another, the writing process wasn’t nearly as collaborative. So, whenever I refer to writers when talking about an individual serial, that’s not entirely accurate. It was almost always one writer.

However, I still contend it is better to say writers plural for a few reasons. First, as a critic, I have chosen to base my criticism solely on what I can see on the screen, usually on choices regarding the writing, acting, direction, and cinematography. Aside from the acting, it can be very tedious almost six decades later to dig down into who exactly propagated some of these onscreen outcomes. And really, I find that discourse to be unproductive. Failure or success of the writing in any particular serial reflects very minimally on the actual writer who created it; it has a much more substantial impact on the show as a whole. The name of that writer has no bearing on the vast majority of Doctor Who fans who don’t ever think about that name beyond the opening credits.

And this isn’t to say anything ill about the thousands of fans who do take issue with the styles of particular Doctor Who writers. I hear you; I have my own opinions about the trajectory of the modern series, and I may or may not air some grievances when I finally get to that part of the retrospective. But by and large, I believe that the output of one writer reflects on the output of all of the writers. It’s like a group project at school: you might be responsible for putting together slides 6 through 11 of the PowerPoint, but your performance affects the grade of the entire collaboration. And as such, I will continue to refer to writers plural throughout the retrospective.

Continuing on, luckily for our protagonists, Sir Injured—the still-unnamed knight—helps to change King Richard’s mind about bartering for the lives of captured Barbara and Sir William. The knight points out that there may be an opportunity to retrieve Sir William and not lose face among the Saracens. Along with the Doctor and Vicki adding their own points, Sir Injured gets Richard to see how shaming it must be for the Saracen army to send a whole troop just to capture a lowly knight. “Why, he’d need an army by itself and more to take your horse,” says Sir Injured, “or every man he has or more to take you prisoner.”

Vicki continues, “Sire, if you send to him and asked if he’d finished playing his game and could you have your knight back, it’ll make him look such a fool.” I’d just like to add that the Saracens didn’t just take Sir William in the attack; they also slew several other of King Richard’s knights. Plus, I think it would make for a very hollow argument even if it didn’t create this strange plot hole.

Richard smiles ruefully and agrees to send a messenger to Saladin. Then the real Princess Joanna enters the scene. Radiant, she has long red hair, and she wears a large-sleeved gown and a circlet befitting her title. The brother she finds is in much improved spirits compared to the dour man who threw a table setting in the last episode. They greet each other warmly. Then the king shouts for the Chamberlain, a tall, elderly man with a large white mustache, and asks him to help Sir Injured to a place he can rest.

Turning to the Doctor and his companions, Joanna sees Vicki and asks the Doctor, “This is a young man?”

“His voice has not yet broken, your Highness,” the Doctor answers. I didn’t notice it at the end of the last episode because Vicki was the most marginal protagonist in that closing scene, but she is dressed in very boyish clothes: a striped shirt and trousers. Why the Doctor thinks he needs to pass Vicki off as a boy is unclear, except maybe as a thinly veiled artifice to create conflict later. The writing in this scene isn’t great.

As they exit the throne room, the Doctor, Ian, and Vicki speak together quietly. “Giving him back his belt didn’t help us very much,” Ian says irritably.

“I certainly didn’t like the way the Chamberlain examined Vicki’s clothes,” the Doctor adds. “And come to think of it, they were originally stolen from here.” This is a detail that got lost in the reconstruction, but at least there is a line of dialogue to explain the Chamberlain’s suspicion.

Still in the throne room, Richard notices the jeweled necklace Joanna wears and asks her where she got it. Joanna tells him that it was sent to her by Saphadin, brother of Saladin. Though she assures him that she has done nothing to attract Saphadin’s attentions, Joanna’s words darken Richard’s mood. “Saladin sends me presents of fruit and snow when I am sick, and now his brother decorates you with jewels,” he says. “Yet with our armies do we both lock in deadly combat, watering the land with a rain of blood, and the noise of thunder is drowned in the shouts of dying men.”

“Your heart calls for England, Richard,” Joanna says. “Is there no kind of peace with Saladin?”

“All wise men look for peace,” Richard says disdainfully. “The terms of peace make wise men look fools.” Like I said in my thesis, the noble, poetic tone that this serial tries to give the Crusades, specifically regarding the acts and motivations of King Richard, really holds the serial back. After a pause, Richard says to himself, “How this jewel radiates the light. So, Saphadin desires my sister…Joanna? Saphadin?”

Back in Saladin’s camp, El Akir accosts a servingwoman, demanding to know where Barbara has been taken. The servingwoman refuses to tell him, pulling away and fleeing the scene.

Having seen this transpire, a merchant approaches El Akir and makes the commander an offer. He will retrieve Barbara for El Akir. In return, El Akir will secure the merchant an audience with the sultan so that they can make a trade agreement.

The scene then cuts to Barbara’s tent, where the same servingwoman from the last scene is brushing Barbara’s hair. Barbara’s clothes are now fine silks, and her neck is adorned by a broad necklace of interwoven gold. The servingwoman, whom Barbara calls Sheyrah, tells Barbara that she has made a grave enemy in El Akir. “He is an evil man,” she says. “Already, he has tried to buy my loyalty with precious stones. You must be cautious. Escape if you can.” Sheyrah leaves to fetch Barbara’s shoes.

As soon as the servingwoman is offscreen, the merchant enters and introduces himself as Luigi Ferrigo, a merchant from Genoa. Luigi tells Barbara that he has a horse for her at the stables and that he was sent by Sir William. They hear Sheyrah coming back to the room, and they quickly leave. Sheyrah returns to an empty room, but she finds a glove on a table, a glove that has accidentally fallen from Luigi’s waistband.

Once Barbara and Luigi arrive at the stables, El Akir grabs Barbara from behind, taking her into his custody, and he tells Luigi that he has earned an audience with Saphadin.

Back at King Richard’s palace, the Doctor and Vicki are standing with Ian, who is now dressed in chainmail armor and a leather tunic. “Oh, I think this whole thing is ridiculous,” Ian laments. “Why have I got to put this on?” The Doctor tells him that the king has ordered it, so it must be done. The three of them leave for the throne room.

Inside the throne room, Richard is dictating to a clerk, who writes on a large piece of parchment. “And not only this kingdom, its towns and fortresses, shall be yours, but also the Frankish kingdom. Our sister, the Princess Joanna, whose beauty is already spoken of wherever men of judgement and discernment are, is a fit match for one who not only enjoys so…eminent a brother as the Sultan Saladin but who also possesses an element of his own. Prince Saphadin, we beg you to prefer this match and thus make us your brother.”

The Doctor, Ian, and Vicki enter the scene, and the king tells them about his intention to arrange a marriage of state between Saphadin and his sister Joanna, though he warns them to keep this between them. Then he turns to Ian, who is to lead the messenger to Saladin. “I have one duty to perform before you leave. Give me the sword, boy.” Ian does so. “You are without rank or title, and while we do not doubt your courage, our emissary shall speak from a proper position of authority…In the name of God, Saint Michael, and Saint George, we dub you Sir Ian, Knight of Jaffa.”

I love this moment. This is literally a boyhood fantasy come true: traveling back in time to be knighted by a proper British monarch. An actual medieval night; not the watered down, aristocratic knighthoods from the in-name-only modern monarchy. My only regret is not being able to see the original footage. The reconstruction does not do it justice.

Elsewhere in the palace, the Chamberlain speaks with the clothes merchant from Part 1, the one from whom the Doctor stole the already-stolen outfits. The two are comparing the Doctor’s description. “The same,” says the merchant, “and if he has the articles you mentioned, then he stole them from me.”

“Then we shall wait here for his return and face him with his infamy,” the Chamberlain declaims.

Meanwhile, in Saladin’s throne room, Luigi is speaking at his audience with Saphadin, seeking a trade allowance. Saphadin hears him out for a time, then Sultan Saladin enters the conversation and asks for Luigi’s advice in another matter. “A prisoner has escaped,” says Saphadin, and Saladin gestures offscreen.

Sheyrah, the servingwoman who dressed Barbara, appears, accompanied by Sir William. Saladin asks Sheyrah to explain what happened. On the verge of tears, Sheyrah says, “I do not know. I went to fetch her shoes, and when I returned, she was gone. That’s all I know…On the table I found a glove.” She shows the glove to the room.

“It has a companion,” says Saladin. He gestures at the matching glove tucked into Luigi’s belt. Sir William grips the man around the throat and demands to know what has been done to Barbara, and Luigi confesses that he took her to El Akir.

Back in the palace, the Doctor and Vicki say goodbye to Ian, who promises to find Barbara and return as quickly as he can. Ian leaves. “I almost wish I’d been knighted, too,” the Doctor says.

“That’ll be the day,” Vicki says wryly. This is a great line, as the Doctor is eventually knighted. Twice, in fact: the 5th Doctor and the 10th Doctor. I find it hard to believe this foreshadowing is intentional; I can’t fathom the showrunners planning for a payoff that doesn’t actually happen for another nineteen years. But intentionally or not, this scene is hilarious.

Then the Doctor and Vicki arrive in the palace dressing room, where the Chamberlain and the clothes merchant are waiting. They both angrily accuse the Doctor of thievery. “You see this riding habit?” the Chamberlain says. “It was taken from this very room. Now it is back here again…stolen from me.”

“And stolen from me,” the clothes merchant adds.

The Doctor, never one to buckle in a crisis, remains calm, even arrogant. “Yes, now there really is a point there, isn’t there? If I stole from you, my lord Chamberlain, how could I steal from him?” The merchant insists that the Doctor did steal from him, and the Doctor rounds on him with, “Then how could I steal from [the Chamberlain], you blockhead?…Whoever it was stole them from [the Chamberlain] must have sold them to you. Now, don’t you agree?”

At this moment, the Englishman from Part 1 who sold the stolen clothes to the merchant enters the scene. “That’s the man,” says the merchant. “I bought them from him.”

The Chamberlain shouts at the man, who flees the scene. Before the Chamberlain can chase after him, the Doctor grabs the elderly man and makes him compensate the merchant. “The merchant bought the clothes in good faith,” he argues, “and paid for them in good money…You mustn’t let an honest man suffer. Pay him!” At the Doctor’s insistence, the Chamberlain gives the merchant a fistful of coins and runs off after the rogue Englishman. The merchant thanks the Doctor profusely, and he too leaves the scene. Chuckling, the Doctor turns to Vicki. “Well, we seem to have got out of that problem alright, hmm?”

This scene is another example of the showrunners making an effort to establish the Doctor as something grander than his earliest characterization. I’ve talked about this a lot this season already, but I think it’s worth pointing out whenever the Doctor succeeds in getting out of tricky situations with nothing but his quick wit and his confidence. Often, this will manifest in him assuming a useful disguise and assimilating into the proper culture and mannerisms to a near perfect degree. Here, the Doctor makes quick work of turning two angry foes against a common enemy so successfully that by the end of the scene, the two men are grateful for his help.

Compare this to how the Doctor was presented for most of Season 1. He often butted heads with his companions, functionally a much weaker leader than he was from The Reign of Terror onward. Though he clearly displayed a grand intelligence, his actions were almost indistinguishable from his companions; other than his possession of and ability to operate the TARDIS, there were very few mechanisms to distinguish the Doctor’s role among the protagonists. Ian and Barbara often chose to defer to the Doctor’s leadership, but this was largely an extension of his aforementioned control of the TARDIS. Except for some very specific sequences where the Doctor was performing acts of science, you never really got the sense that the outcomes would have been much different with Ian or Barbara calling the shots.

Since The Reign of Terror, that dynamic has changed drastically. Now, there is a clear implication that the fate of the protagonists depends largely on the quick thinking and confidence of the Doctor. Ian put it best in Part 4 of The Romans when he said, “I’ve got a friend who specializes in trouble. He dives in and usually finds a way.” What we have seen recently—and what will be a staple in the Doctor’s characterization for the rest of the series—is the showrunners making a conscious effort to execute on that premise.

In the stables of El Akir’s palace, El Akir has arrived with Barbara tied to a horse. He orders two guards to untie her, then leaves the scene. As the guards are untying the ropes, Barbara pushes one into the other and makes her escape.

Meanwhile, Ian has arrived at Saladin’s palace, and the scene cuts to him speaking to Sir William. It would have been nice to actually see Ian’s arrival and watch how the newly-knighted Ian interacted with Saladin or Saphadin. We’re fast approaching the end of the episode and I understand that there are time constraints, but we don’t get to see how the sultan receives King Richard’s proposal until well into the next episode. It cheapens the plot device if the audience doesn’t actually get to see Ian or some messenger at least read the proposal to the sultan. I get that the safety of Barbara is always going to be the biggest concern for the audience, and keeping the closing of this episode focused on her makes sense. However, relegating something so crucial to the plot to something that happens offscreen is emblematic of poor structure and pacing.

Anyway, Sir William tells Ian that Barbara has been kidnapped. “This Genoese merchant,” he says, referring to Luigi. “He explained it away by saying that Barbara had conceived a passion for El Akir. Saladin and his brother accept the story, but I do not!” Again, another thing that should have been shown onscreen. Show, don’t tell. Something rushed would have been better than nothing at all.

William tells Ian that Barbara has been taken to Lydda, the city in the center of El Akir’s territory, where he has many men. “El Akir has an evil reputation. It’s my belief he captured your companion as revenge, and in his eyes, she would make a fine addition to his harem.” Ian pledges to go after her.

Back in Lydda, Barbara flees through the streets, hiding from El Akir’s men. For the next two minutes, all I can see in the reconstruction is a few frames of Barbara and the pursuing guards in some passageway, with tense music and some unintelligible sounds to set the mood. Nonverbal sequences never come across well in these reconstructions, and I’m not even going to speculate on how good or bad the scene is. But it does end with actual footage—the intro to the following episode. A man in a turban places a hand over Barbara’s mouth. She is startled, but she stays silent as, around a corner, El Akir’s men steadily approach their position. Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Wheel of Fortune)

The mysterious man uses his free hand to put a finger to his own lips, urging Barbara to stay quiet. She nods, and the man releases her, guiding her silently around a stone pillar. Then he takes the guards unaware, knocking them unconscious. Turning to Barbara, he introduces himself as Haroun ed-Diin (pronounced HAH-roh-oon), telling her, “We have a common enemy in El Akir. It makes for uncommon friendship. Come with me.” She follows him offscreen.

Meanwhile, in King Richard’s palace, the Doctor looks on as the clothes merchant takes Vicki through a fitting. The merchant speaks in grandiose overtones about how he will provide the most quality pieces, turning “Victor” into a “veritable strutting peacock.” Then he departs, though on his way out, he says, “And then, perhaps, my lord will recommend the name of Ben Daheer to the king?” After this line, we never see the character again. The writers chose the last possible moment to give this character a name, after this character has said 40 lines of dialogue. I can’t understand why the naming conventions in this series are so bad.

As Ben Daheer leaves, Vicki begins to complain about having to pretend to be a boy. Unbeknownst to her, Princess Joanna is just outside the open doorway, and when she hears of Vicki’s subterfuge, she angrily barges in, demanding to know the meaning of this deception. The Doctor quickly makes up a tale about Vicki being his ward, and that he worried for her safety. Vicki corroborates this, adding, “Please don’t be angry with him. He only did what he thought was best for me.”

Ameliorated, Joanna smiles, and though she says she cannot in good conscious maintain their deception, she offers the two her protection. She confides in the Doctor that she is worried about her brother’s plans. Normally, she would be one of the few taken into Richard’s confidence when he formulates his plans for the future, and she fears that he might be planning something that involves her. She asks the Doctor to keep her informed if this is indeed the case.

Then she calls in the Chamberlain and demands that Vicki be fitted in the finest silk dresses. The Chamberlain laughs until it becomes clear to him that Joanna was not playing some sort of joke. Joanna leaves the scene, with the baffled Chamberlain in her wake. When Vicki reveals that she is a girl, the Chamberlain says, “A girl? Dressed as a boy? Is nothing understandable these days?” I love the unintended implications of this line six decades later and how the Chamberlain comes across as a boomer confronted with the concept of trans people. I also like that even though Classic Who is couched within a very heteronormative worldview, playing around with gender as a plot device doesn’t involve stereotypes or insults. I just wish the point of the plot device itself wasn’t simply a shallow ploy to inject a very low-stakes point of contention into the narrative. The execution was alright, but it was a meaningless element in a serial that could have used that valuable runtime elsewhere.

The Chamberlain leaves, and Vicki says, “Thank goodness for that. I didn’t really see myself as a veritable strutting peacock.”

The Doctor smiles and says, “Well, my dear, in one way, I don’t think things have turned out too badly after all, hmm?…You will be much safer under Joanna’s wing.” This seems to strike a nerve with Vicki, who becomes rather distraught. She explains that she thought the Doctor meant she was going to leave her behind with Joanna and that perhaps the Doctor thought she was a problem to have around. “Ah, surely you know me better than that, child? No, my reservation was that I might get entangled in court intrigue, and that’s going to be very, very dangerous.” He then pulls her into a tight hug, his wide grin very close to Vicki’s as he almost presses his cheek against hers in the embrace.

I really like this interaction. First, it is a clear attempt to give depth to Vicki’s character. Aside from The Rescue, her introductory serial, her characterization has been rather flat, with her general disposition being a happy-go-lucky girl who’s just along for the ride. Here, the writers have made a point to highlight some abandonment issues, which makes sense given the circumstances of her being marooned on the planet Dido. It’s not a drastic change, but it is an intentionality to her characterization that might hint at a more intriguing Vicki in the future. And second, we continue to see the Doctor showing more warmth for Vicki than any other character. He definitely has a soft spot for her, and this has the potential to create some interesting situations down the line. As much as I feared this serial would demonstrate Vicki once again trailing after the Doctor doing Susan-ish things, this sequence alone proves my concern to be unwarranted. I’ll be looking to see if these foundational pieces are expanded upon later.

Back in Lydda, Haroun, Barbara’s savior, pulls Barbara into a small house. More of hut, really, with only two rooms: a kitchen and an all-purpose room with beds and a table. Haroun’s daughter, a teenaged girl named Safiya (pronounced sah-FEE-yah), greets them, and Haroun tells her to treat Barbara as if a member of the family. Safiya goes off to prepare some food, and Haroun looks out the window, telling Barbara that she must stay inside until the search is over. Barbara says she doesn’t want to endanger Haroun and Safiya with her presence.

In response, George Little, the actor who plays Haroun, delivers an exceptionally emotional monologue: “I am in constant danger. I have sworn to kill [El Akir]. That vile and evil man. Last year, my house was a fine and happy place. A gentle wife, a son who honored and obeyed me, and two daughters who adorned whatever place they visited. Then El Akir came to Lydda and imposed his will. He desired my eldest daughter, Maimuna (migh-MOO-nah), but I refused him…[He took her.] When Safiya and I were away, he came and burned my house. My wife and son were put to the sword…I live for one thing alone: the death of El Akir.” By the end of the speech, Haroun is nearly in tears. Aside from Ann Davies’s portrayal of Jenny in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Haroun is perhaps the most compelling supporting character to this point in the series, and he’s only been onscreen for half an episode at this point.

Before Haroun leaves, he gives Barbara his knife and presents her with a very morbid task. “If danger threatens, Safiya will hide you. But if the soldiers persist in their search and you think they will find you, take this and use it.” He is asking her to mercy kill his daughter and then herself.

Barbara is aghast at the notion. “No,” she says. “Life is better than this.”

“You do not know El Akir,” Haroun says gravely. He gives her the knife and leaves.

Safiya returns and asks if her father has gone out to ask questions again. When Barbara doesn’t understand, Safiya explains that her father is looking for information. “My mother, my brother, and my sister, Maimuna, disappeared last year. My father searches everywhere for them. We live in hope they will return one day.”

Barbara looks heartbroken by Safiya’s hopefulness, knowing that her mother and brother are dead and that Maimuna has been taken by El Akir to be a member of his harem. Then Safiya notices the knife, which Barbara says her father left behind. “How strange,” Safiya remarks. “He never goes anywhere without it.”

Out in the streets, El Akir and his roaming guards find Haroun on the point of attacking. A guard incapacitates Haroun, and El Akir asks about him. “I seem to know that face,” he says. The guard says the man lives in the northern quarter, the poor part of town. El Akir thinks Haroun and Barbara may be connected and says, “The runaway can find a host of allies in the northern quarter, each individual as desperate as herself. Take what men you need and find her!”

To this point, we have seen a slightly above average serial, with examples of things it does well and others it does poorly. From here until the end, the quality of the serial takes a firm nosedive. In order to help organize my thoughts on the rest of the serial, I want to identify the subplots of the narrative: Barbara has the A Plot, the Doctor and Vicki in King Richard’s court is the B Plot, and Ian’s attempt at a rescue is the C Plot.

Next, we return to the court of King Richard, where a knight referred to as the lord of Leicester argues Richard arranging a marriage between Joanna and Saphadin. If the lord of Leicester seems like a new character, that’s because he is. There hasn’t even been a mention of him to this point in the series. The Doctor takes offense at Leicester’s insistence on war and bloodshed, calling him names like “stupid butcher” and “fool.” Things escalate until Leicester makes to draw his sword. King Richard finally shouts him down, telling him off for drawing steel in front of his king. Richard insists that the marriage is not some ploy and that war will only resume if the peace talks fail.

Meanwhile, Saladin an Saphadin are in Saladin’s throne room, finally talking about King Richard’s offer. Like Leicester, Saphadin pushes for war, and he thinks his brother is a fool for believing in the sincerity of King Richard’s words. Saladin partly agrees with the sentiment, but he tells Saphadin to write a letter agreeing to the king’s terms. “Have England, France, and all the rest come here to cheer a man and woman and a love match? No, this is a last appeal from a weary man. So you write your letter, and I’ll alert the armies. Then on either day, the day of blissful union or the day of awful battle, we will be prepared.”

This is the last scene in which Saladin or Saphadin appear in the serial. This is a baffling mismanagement of the Saracen faction, who—to this point in the serial—have functioned as the antagonists of the B Plot. In no way does it feel like the end of the sultan’s involvement in the story, yet beyond this point, he disappears. And if you’re asking who fills the void of the B Plot’s antagonist, I have an even more disappointing answer for you. It’s the lord of Leicester, of course. A half-assed character injected into the narrative halfway through Part 3 as the new antagonist, simply because (I suspect) there wasn’t enough runtime to give the true antagonist a satisfying conclusion.

I cannot overstate how bad this is as a writing decision. It is as bad for the writing of this serial as the astigmatism-blur was for the cinematography of The Web Planet. The decision to exclude Saladin from the rest of the serial completely undermines the stability of the B Plot. And regardless of whether or not Leicester actually proves to be a compelling antagonist—which, he does not—the decision to go from the general on the opposite side of a massive conflict to a single dissenting opinion in King Richard’s court is such a downgrade that he is impossible to take seriously. Plus, we go from one of the few nuanced antagonists in the series so far in Saladin to yet another flat, one-note antagonist in Leicester. Everything about this decision is extremely unsatisfying.

Continuing on, we return to Haroun’s home, where Barbara and Safiya hear El Akir’s men coming closer. They hide in a small pantry just before two men enter the house. They search the main room and the kitchen, and when one of the men find a cup of still-hot tea, he thinks that there may be someone hiding somewhere.

Realizing that staying in the pantry poses a risk to Safiya’s life, Barbara covers Safiya with a blanket and tells her to stay hidden. She then creeps out of the pantry, sneaks behind the guard, and almost makes it out the door when another guard sees her and restrains her. “When you’re on your knees before my master,” he says, “your defiance will change to screams for pity.”

Next, we finally return to the C Plot and find Ian asleep in a desert, supposedly somewhere along the route to Lydda, the city of El Akir. Nearby, a bandit watches, staking out the scene. Thinking Ian to be defenseless, he takes Ian’s sword, then goes for the satchel at his waist. Suddenly, Ian wakes. He grips the man’s wrist and flips him over onto his back, throttling him. Unfortunately, a second bandit strikes Ian over the head, and Ian falls unconscious.

Back in King Richard’s throne room, the Doctor and Vicki enter to find Joanna, Leicester, and a handful of attendants. Vicki is attired in a proper gown, complete with an elaborate cylindrical hat and a barbette under the chin. Joanna compliments Vicki on the gown, then asks if the Doctor has any news regarding Richard’s plans for her. The Doctor lies and says he doesn’t, and it is clear that Joanna doesn’t believe him. She stalks over to Leicester, and the two have a quiet conversation in the background that we cannot hear.

A moment later, Richard enters the throne room, and Joanna flies into a rage—clearly, Leicester has told her of the marriage proposal. She openly defies Richard, even when he issues a command for her to marry with all the authority of the king behind it. “No. There is a higher authority than yours to which I answer…In Rome. His Holiness the Pope will not allow this marriage of mine to that infidel!” It’s quite the tirade, which made me realize that despite the amount of tension and conflict in the series, rarely have we seen this kind of vocalized derision. Off the top of my head, the only other instances I can remember are Richard’s tantrum at the end of Part 1 and Robespierre’s feverish monologue from The Reign of Terror. As I writer, I prefer going to that well a little more often, but I must admit, given the rarity of such outbursts within the series, when they do happen, they are very effective.

In the end, Richard raises his hand to strike his sister, then, deciding against it, lowers it in a huff. Joanna stalks out of the throne room with her head held high. Richard turns his ire on the Doctor. “Who gave away my plan?” he demands. The Doctor tries to defend himself—after all, he didn’t say a word—but Richard won’t hear any of it. “You are not welcome in our sight.”

Meanwhile, Barbara is dragged kicking and screaming into El Akir’s audience chamber and thrown to the ground, made to kneel in front of the scarred man. “The only pleasure left for you is death,” he sneers. “And death is very far away.” Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Warlords)

This is the second of two lost episodes in this serial.

El Akir is not happy with Barbara’s conduct. “Such a prize as you is worth rewarding these men for your recapture, would you not agree? I have spent time and trouble on you. Now you cost me gold as well.” He holds out a handful of coins and shakes them under Barbara’s nose. “You are not here to like or dislike me. Such liberties are over for you. Look at these coins. Mere pieces of metal…These coins are going to change your laughter into tears, your joy to misery.”

Seeing an opportunity, Barbara slaps the coins out of El Akir’s hands, which causes his guards to scramble to pick them up. She flees the chamber. El Akir shouts to get his guards back in line, and he sends them after her.

The scene cuts to a large communal space wherein lives the women in El Akir’s harem. They are aghast when two guards barge inside, as El Akir is the only man allowed inside the space. El Akir says the guards will be punished for the intrusion, and the guards leave. Then he tells the women that a female prisoner has escaped, offering a ruby ring in return for any news on her whereabouts. He leaves.

Once El Akir is gone, Barbara comes out from where the women had hidden her. “We will hide you here,” one of the women says. “We all hate him. You will be safe. No one here will betray you.”

Next, we return to the desert, where Ian wakes up to find himself on his back with his extremities staked deeply into the desert sand. He struggles against the ropes, but he cannot get them to budge. One of the bandits who tried to rob him, a jaunty man named Ibrahim (EE-brah-heem), suspects that Ian has wealth concealed somewhere on his person, even though Ian insists that he has nothing of value. Thinking that he can get Ian to talk, Ibrahim has devised a ruse, a trail of honey laid from a nearby anthill to the wrists and ankles of Ian. Apparently these ants are dangerous, perhaps even deadly—although this is never explicitly stated—and it will not be long before Ian will start to see a line of black specks on the white sand.

Meanwhile, back in Richard’s throne room, Leicester is demanding answers from Vicki, asking why she appeared in the guise of a boy. I don’t get this at all. So much time has passed since Joanna discovered Vicki’s gender that it is ridiculous a knight in Richard’s court wouldn’t have had the situation explained to him, either by Joanna herself or by a third party, perhaps a gossiping Chamberlain. At any rate, it seems a poor way to escalate Leicester’s already paper-thin motives as an antagonist. Though it does make sense why the writers would try to do it anyway. At this point in the serial, it’s not quite clear to the audience yet that Saladin has already exited the narrative, and the writers need to devote a lot of energy to give Leicester some sort of menace to make him serviceable as an antagonist. But he is such a terribly-conceived tool for this task that anything he does feels overblown and unearned.

Leicester argues with Vicki and the Doctor for a moment, during which Vicki calls the knight out for spilling the beans to Joanna about the marriage Richard had arranged. Then Richard himself enters the scene. He is able to calm Leicester with a few words, sending the knight off to ready the armies for war.

After Leicester leaves, King Richard makes it known that he knows Leicester was the one to betray his confidence. The Doctor is peeved and asks the king why he didn’t call Leicester out for this. Richard says it was a tactical decision and that he relies on Leicester for his military mind—he couldn’t afford to alienate the knight so close to war. Though because the Doctor and Vicki have made enemies of Leicester, Richard recommends that they leave until the enmity is forgotten. For plot reasons, the Doctor and Vicki have to leave at some point; they must return to the TARDIS before the end of the episode. But it seems like a very odd thing for the king to tell the Doctor that the best way to keep himself safe is for him to leave the palace and the king’s protection.

At any rate, the Doctor and Vicki take their leave, wishing Richard well. On their way out the door, Vicki asks the Doctor if Richard ever sees Jerusalem, to which the Doctor answers no. Then Vicki asks if they can tell the king, and the Doctor says, “I’m afraid not, my dear. No, history must take its course.” I must say, this rings incredibly hollow at the end of a serial in which the Doctor orchestrated a situation in which Richard sent a messenger to Saladin with terms of peace. Like many things with Early Era Doctor Who narratives, the Doctor is largely noninterventionist unless being so gets in the way of the plot.

As the scene comes to a close, we get a closeup of King Richard as he says to himself, “Help me, Holy Sepulcher. Help me.” His cadence is like the begging of a man already damned. This is the last we see of the king, and unlike Saladin’s last scene, this one actually has a sense of finality to it.

Checking in on the C Plot, back in the desert, a line of black ants is creeping toward Ian. Ibrahim is almost bubbling with joy at the prospect of Ian’s demise.

In El Akir’s harem, Barbara discovers that the woman who has taken charge of keeping her hidden is Maimuna, the daughter of Haroun who was taken by El Akir. Maimuna is overjoyed to hear that Haroun and Safiya are still alive, as El Akir had sworn to her that they were dead. Barbara tells her that Haroun still cares for her and that her father wants nothing more in life than to kill El Akir and take her home. Maimuna doesn’t dare try to escape, something she says is impossible, but she does assure Barbara that they will hide her from El Akir.

Meanwhile, in Richard’s palace, Leicester speaks with a soldier about the departure of the Doctor and Vicki. “Take men and follow them discreetly,” Leicester says. “The old man tried to poison the king’s mind. He may be in the pay of the infidel, Saladin. He may be worse. Some devil in a human form, the girl a witch.” This is so out of left field that I actually laughed on my first watch-through. You can’t just dump this as a motivation for the antagonist in the eleventh hour and expect it to land for the audience. This wouldn’t fly with a well crafted antagonist, much less for a bargain bin antagonist like Leicester. It just goes to show all the downstream consequences from a serial’s poor pacing. None of this would have happened if the writers allotted the proper time for Saladin to remain as the antagonist of the B Plot.

Back in the desert, the ants have finally reached Ian’s hand. Grunting in pain, he calls out to Ibrahim, telling the bandit that he has gold in his boot. Ibrahim first cuts the right foot free, then the left, looking inside the pair of boots for coins but finding none. With his feet freed, Ian manages to kick the dagger away from Ibrahim and use the leverage of his legs to wench the stakes holding his arms out of the sand. He wrestles Ibrahim to the ground, eventually getting the bandit to submit and agree to lead Ian to the city of Lydda.

Outside El Akir’s palace, Haroun waits in the bushes for a chance to sneak past the guards.

Inside, one of the women in El Akir’s harem sneaks away from the communal chamber to snitch on Barbara’s whereabouts. Developments are quickly approaching a breakneck speed.

Next, we see Ian and Ibrahim arrive at the palace gates to find several dead guards, probably taken out by Haroun. Ian tells Ibrahim about his intentions to free Barbara, and Ibrahim wants to help, citing evil deeds that El Akir has done since coming to rule the city. This seems a bit ludicrous to me, but the plot demands someone to aid in the protagonists’ escape, so Ibrahim goes off to steal some horses from the stables.

In the communal chamber of El Akir’s harem, several plot threads converge at once. El Akir returns to the chamber with the turncoat woman to confront Barbara. Maimuna tries to save her, and as El Akir raises his sword to strike Maimuna down, Haroun appears and stabs El Akir in the back, killing him. Haroun and Maimuna embrace, and Ian suddenly enters the room mere steps ahead of an onrushing guard. Ian and Haroun together manage to overpower the guard, and Ian, Barbara, Haroun, and Maimuna all flee the palace on horses stolen by Ibrahim.

Back in the wood where the serial started, the Doctor and Vicki find Leicester and his soldiers blocking the way back to the TARDIS. They try to slip through anyway. Vicki makes it to the ship, but the Doctor is captured in his attempt. In this sequence, we discover that Barbara and Ian are already waiting for them at the TARDIS. Two things about this: 1) The last six minutes of this serial have been extremely rushed, again pointing toward the abysmal pacing of the back end of this serial, and 2) it seems very strange that Leicester could have the forest encircled without finding the two people waiting next to the big blue box.

Anyway, Ian walks into the scene to stand next to the Doctor. He uses his authority as a knight to give his words credibility, although it makes little sense why Leicester would ever listen to Ian, a man who arrived at Richard’s court in the company of a supposed demon and witch. Regardless, Ian accuses the Doctor of being a spy for the Saracens, and he demands the right to execute the Doctor himself. The Doctor asks for a final request: to see Jaffa again, a request that is granted by Leicester. Before anyone can think twice, Ian whisks the Doctor away toward the TARDIS, and the Doctor and his companions all slip inside. It dematerializes, the dumbstruck knights agree never to speak of the occasion again.

In transit, the four are all having a laugh about Ian being a knight when suddenly, the lights in the console room go dark. The only light to be seen is that of the central column. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki all stand around the console unmoving, as if paralyzed, still as statues. Credits roll.

Takeaways

The Crusade is a tale of two serials, with a solid first half that falls into utterly mismanaged chaos by the time the final credits roll. The magnitude of the collapse in this series is only narrowly beaten by that of The Sensorites, which I still regard as the biggest fall from grace in the series to date. The most glaring issue of the serial was its pacing and structure: almost everything that I found objectionable in the narrative flowed from the writers not allotting enough time to tell a cohesive story. There were hints at pacing issues at the end of Part 2, but the depth of the rot wasn’t made apparent until Saladin’s unassuming departure and the sudden introduction of Leicester, the worst antagonist in the series thus far. The beginning of the serial was clearly headed toward some grand battle between King Richard I and Sultan Saladin, and it’s such a shame that the writing took a hard left turn in the middle of Part 3 to accommodate the time constraints. Even more so than The Romans, this serial desperately wants another episode to flesh out the story and reconcile some of the glaring faults.

Despite the crash and burn, there were a few positive developments, such as a hint at future improvements to Vicki’s characterization, the satisfying tirade of Joanna, and the very emotional performance of George Little as Haroun. However, the bad definitely outweighs the good. Additionally, the mistakes are compounded, in my opinion, by the gross historical revisionism that makes it hard for me to take the serial’s portrayal of the Crusaders seriously. The more I think about The Crusades, the harder it is for me to credit the good parts stuck in the surrounding muck, especially given how the ending turned my early enjoyment into a distant memory.

Still, I appreciate this serial for giving me a lot to talk about. The fact that it stayed pretty close to mediocre until the end of Part 3 allowed for a parity in talking points, and I really felt like I had a lot to say—more than in a serial like The Web Planet, where everything is bad and it stops being interesting after a while. It’s serials like these that gave me the idea to make this retrospective in the first place: serials with one or two fatal flaws that are fun to poke at and pull apart. Looking forward, I want the each narrative in the series to give me one of two things: serials that are either well-rounded and fun to praise like The Aztecs or Planet of Giants, or serials that are bad in interesting ways like The Crusades. The next serial, The Space Museum, is a serial I remember not feeling too strongly about one way or the other, and I’m excited for the showrunners to get another crack at finally nailing a futuristic serial.

Rating: 3.8/10

Chapter Text

2.7 – The Space Museum

Thesis: Inversion

I don’t talk much about bonus content in this retrospective. This is by design: I have made a conscious decision to limit my comments to what I can see on the screen, what a casual viewer might take away from a viewing, without getting too bogged down in the weeds of what goes on behind the camera. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching extra content. With almost every serial I have reviewed thus far, there have been officially released behind the scenes and other metacommentary, things which have given me insight into things like various aspects of the production, critical reception, how the actors related to one another, etc.

I bring this up now because there is a piece of bonus content about The Space Museum which has fundamentally changed how I view the serial between my first and second watch-throughs, and it would be a disservice not to highlight it here. It’s a 10-minute mini-doc called Defending the Museum, featuring the thoughts of Robert Shearman, a writer who created a handful of audio adventures and Doctor Who short stories in the mid-2000s. If you have seen the serial but haven’t seen this bonus short, I’d highly, highly recommend you go and watch it.

The serial opens with what I can definitively say is my favorite opening episode to this point in the series. And after I finished my first viewing, that was about the only positive thing I had to say about the serial. From there on, my impression was of a mediocre progression to a rather unsatisfying ending that, at the very least, didn’t overstay its welcome. I sat on the serial for a few days to gather my thoughts like usual, and I was fully prepared to go into my second watch-through, ready to take notes on the second straight serial to have a good opening spoiled by everything that came after.

Then I watched Defending the Museum, and I gained a newfound appreciation for what the serial was trying to do. I want you to consider the flow of an average Doctor Who serial. The crew arrive at a new place and venture forth from the TARDIS, taking stock of where and when they are. They quickly become mixed up in some sort of conflict, like political intrigue, extraterrestrial warfare, or interpersonal disputes. They place themselves on one side of the conflict, usually positioning themselves against a powerful and threatening antagonist. Through bold action, they are able to decisively affect change in that place, and they are the heroes that valiantly right the wrongs perpetuated by the antagonist on some persecuted party. And then they start it all over again someplace new.

The Space Museum is what happens when the showrunners, aware of this progression, deliberately try to do the exact opposite. I don’t want to spoil my own review too much, but I want you to consider the following questions as we progress through the serial. What if the Doctor and his companions are unwilling to take bold action? What if they are afraid to take any action at all? What if the antagonists are not powerful and threatening but are instead comically incompetent? What if the protagonists don’t save the day but in fact require saviors themselves? The Space Museum goes beyond a subversion or two of the audience’s expectations; this serial represents a complete inversion of the Early Era Doctor Who formula.

Is this a success? Kind of. I think the tone conflicts with the approach, and underlying conflict of the serial is extremely generic. But if you are one of the people who, like me, found The Space Museum to be underwhelming, you should give it another shake with all this in mind. You might just discover a hidden gem.

Part 1 (The Space Museum)

When we last saw the Doctor and his companions, almost all of the lights in the console room of the TARDIS had gone suddenly dark, and all four protagonists were standing rigidly around the panel of controls, frozen as stiff as statues. This serial sets the scene with the same sequence, before cutting to an elaborate miniature depicting a barren landscape of low mountains and sand. The camera slowly pans across a section of the desert where several rockets stand closely together, each one built in a markedly different style than the others and all of them crafted in amazing detail that communicates wonderfully to the audience. The camera comes to rest on a cylindrical structure with a massive satellite dish on its roof and a pair of brown doors leading inside. The building is a bit of an eyesore—its exterior is a jumble of seemingly random polygons—but as a whole, this miniature is the most impressive one I’ve seen to this point in the series. The spaceships are simply stunning.

The shot cuts to a formation of low, knobby rocks, and we see the TARDIS materialize in front of them on the desert sand. Inside, we see the Doctor and his companions still frozen in front of the console. They remain so for a few seconds, then they start to move as if someone pressed play on a recording.

As soon as the TARDIS crew moves, it is clear that none of them remember being frozen or have any inkling that some time has passed. The Doctor seems to think the TARDIS simply landed faster than he expected. Ian does notice something strange though: they have all suddenly swapped clothes. They no longer wear their garments from the Third Crusade; instead, they are somehow back in their normal outfits. Strangely chipper about the whole thing, the Doctor laughs, saying, “Well, I must say, it’s going to save us a lot of bother changing.”

“Doctor!” Ian grouses. “You can’t dismiss it like that! We were standing here in 13th century clothes.” But the Doctor does dismiss it. He sends Vicki off to fetch him a glass of water and turns his attention onto figuring out wherever it is they have landed.

Offscreen, Vicki calls out to the others, telling them that their Crusader clothes are all hanging up in the TARDIS changing room. Then we see her get a glass of water from the food machine in the sleeping chamber—to my knowledge, this is the last time we see the food machine in the main series, although it does pop up in the audio adventures from time to time. But as she turns to make her way back to the console room, something very strange happens. The glass slips from her hands, and it shatters on the floor, water spilling everywhere. Then, as she looks on, the glass fragments come back together in the shape of a cup, the water rushes back inside, and the glass full of water leaps back into Vicki’s hand.

Back in the console room, the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are looking at the rockets and the building on the scanner. The Doctor notes that the ships are each from a different period. He calls the place a museum and suggests they go outside and investigate. Vicki reenters the scene, still dumbstruck from having a glass of water un-drop. When she frantically tries to explain what she has experienced, the Doctor takes her in hand and assures her that they all believe she is telling the truth. He gestures to the scanner before adding, “And I’m sure you will agree with me, there are several things that we would like an answer to. So I suggest we go outside and take a look for ourselves.”

They step outside into the desert, and Ian describes the ground as dust, not sand. The Doctor points at some rocks, which reveal an odd discrepancy: the rocks display a massive amount of erosion, but the atmosphere would suggest the planet should support life. Despite this, “The whole planet appears to be completely dead,” the Doctor notes.

Just as they are about to venture off toward the rockets and the building made of polygons, Ian discovers something even more important. “We’re walking on dust,” he says. “Several inches thick, I’d say…Then why aren’t we leaving any footprints?” There’s a tense musical sting, and with yet another question to answer, the protagonists start walking the half-mile or so to the building.

Arriving at the pair of doors, they don’t find a doorhandle or any obvious mechanism for gaining entry to the building. Barbara seems apprehensive. “Have you noticed something?” she asks. “It’s the silence. When we stop talking, there isn’t a sound. Listen. It’s the sort of silence you can almost hear.”

They only have time to ruminate on the seemingly dead planet for a few seconds before the doors behind them suddenly open, and we see two men in white walking down a long hallway toward the exit. The Doctor and his companions crowd against the outside of the building, though there is nothing there to conceal them, hoping to avoid notice somehow. Despite the lack of cover, it does seem that the men in white don’t see the protagonists. The men are tall, with short brown hair and very bushy eyebrows, and they wear pristine white uniforms like some sort of futuristic military fatigues. They march straight forward in step with one another, out the doors and away from the building, not looking an inch to either side, not even reacting when Vicki suddenly sneezes. They continue as if there isn’t anything at all out of the ordinary, and they disappear offscreen.

The Doctor and his companions look on in wonder, marveling that they were not discovered. “It’s extremely doubtful that they were both deaf,” the Doctor remarks. “However, the fact is, they didn’t hear. Now, let’s see what’s in here.” Still bewildered, the four enter the still-open doors.

Once inside, they discover that the building is, in fact, a museum, with various items on display, like computer banks, pressure suits for astronauts, and mechanical instruments. The interior sets throughout this serial are very sparsely populated, with lots of negative space and bland walls. However, the items on display are interesting and varied enough that the set design is at least passable—something that cannot be said about other sets toward the end of the serial. Looking around the space, Ian says, “We might almost be in a museum at home.” Wanting to find out who is in charge of the museum and what it is for, the quartet moves deeper into the exhibits.

They haven’t gone far when they suddenly come face-to-face with a Dalek. Frightened, they back away, only to realize that there is a sign attached to the Dalek’s outer casing: it reads, “Dalek – Planet Skaro.” The Dalek is simply another item on display. Vicki looks at the Dalek curiously, telling the others that the history books from her time tell of the Dalek invasion of Earth, about three hundred years prior. “It’s not a bit the way I imagined it,” she says. “Oh, I mean, the books describe them alright, but, well, this one looks quite friendly.” I find it really quaint that the writers not only conceive of information still being conveyed in books, but that these books don’t even have pictures. Just another quirk of old science fiction.

Ian tells Vicki that they were actually there, adding, “You wouldn’t say that, young lady, if ever we meet them again. Which to say the least is very unlikely. I hope.” I like this foreshadowing—the Daleks return in the very next serial.

Suddenly, the Doctor shouts for the others to hide behind the Dalek, as once again, two strange men enter the scene. These wear unrelieved black jumpsuits instead of the white military garb from before, and they are noticeably younger, with blonde hair instead of brown—although they have the same overexaggerated eyebrows of the other men. They stop just inside the entrance to the room; their mouths move as if they are having a conversation, but we cannot hear anything. Then they leave the scene.

Again, the Doctor and his companions are left trying to grapple with what just happened. First there were two men in white who couldn’t see or hear them, and now two men in black had a conversation that none of them could hear. “Perhaps they have some other means of communication. You know, on a very high frequency,” says Ian, though his tone says even he doesn’t find this very convincing. At the Doctor’s suggestion, they continue deeper into the museum.

In another room, while Ian and Barbara are watching the Doctor analyze some piece of machinery, Vicki is at the opposite end of the chamber, looking at another exhibit. She reaches out to touch a large thing with a glass sphere and a lot of plastic tubing, only her hand goes right through it, as if there is nothing there. She panics, and the others rush over to see what is the matter. Initially, the Doctor berates Vicki for touching things in the museum after he expressly told her not to, though his cantankerousness evaporates quickly once Ian reaches out and finds he can’t touch the exhibit either. “There must be a logical explanation for this somewhere,” the Doctor insists. “You know, I think it’s just a matter of putting two and two together to make three.” That’s certainly a Doctor-ism if I’ve ever heard one. It’s one of the few times the series has made me laugh at something that was intentionally funny.

From another room, more of the blonde-haired men in black enter, three of them this time. Unfortunately for the protagonists, there is nowhere for them to hide. They stand stock still as the three men pass slowly through the room, so close to the Doctor and his companions that they could reach out and touch them. Except, yet again, they hold a silent conversation, and yet again, they take no notice of the visitors in foreign clothes. They leave the scene. “If they had seen us,” Barbara says, “they would have made some sign, however slight.”

“Right, we’re invisible,” says Ian. “That settles it.”

The camera pushes in very close on the Doctor’s face. “Does it, my boy? Does it? Either that, or we’re not really here.”

I want to take a second to lay out the course of events very succinctly, because this serial is about to get very trippy. 1) The Doctor and his companions were in the console room of the TARDIS, mid-transit, when the lights suddenly went out and they became frozen in place. 2) The TARDIS materialized on this strange, dusty planet; the protagonists unfreeze and notice that their clothes have changed. 3) Vicki drops a glass of water, which shatters on the ground but comes back together and leaps into her hand. 4) Outside, they realize they don’t leave footprints in the dust. 5) Everyone they see cannot see or hear them; they cannot hear the strangers’ conversations. 6) Vicki tries to touch an exhibit in the museum, but her arm goes right through it.

The way this episode is structured very much reminds me of the mystery in The Edge of Destruction, where the protagonists had to figure out what was going wrong inside the TARDIS. This episode also features a number of disparate anomalies, which the characters know are somehow connected—they just need to figure out how. There is also a sense that something is wrong with time in both narratives: Vicki with her glass in this serial and Barbara and the melted clockface in the other.

And like with The Edge of Destruction, I’d like to call attention to the fact the showrunners haven’t created this mystery with the audience in mind. We are not meant to try and sus out the connective tissue on our own. Instead, we are just along for the ride, figuring out the details whenever the writers deem it necessary for the characters to explain them explicitly. And to clarify, this doesn’t make for a bad mystery on its own. Like I said in my thesis, I consider this to be the best opening episode to this point in the series, and how the mystery is about to resolve is the main reason why. However, I will always contend that a mystery does not achieve its maximum potential unless it allows the audience to play along, treating them as almost another character who can piece the puzzle together. Some writers disagree, which is perfectly fine; this is just one of my preferences.

The four arrive in yet another room of the museum and are shocked to discover the TARDIS parked there, as if on display. Barbara contends that it doesn’t matter exactly how the TARDIS got there—as long as they’ve found it, they might as well leave. Ian and Vicki agree, but the Doctor is rather enigmatic about their prospects. It is soon revealed why: he walks slowly toward the TARDIS and phases right through the exterior of the ship, unable to interact with it in any way, just like Vicki and Ian with the exhibit they couldn’t touch. “Yes,” the Doctor says, “I’m afraid it’s going to be a little more difficult than that. The mists are beginning to clear slightly. I’m just beginning to see reason. Where are we? Where are we?” He points across the room. “Are we here? Look!”

Across the room are four glass display cases, and inside these cases are the Doctor and his companions, standing rigidly, blank faces staring at nothing. Ian, Barbara, and Vicki stare at themselves in disbelief. “That’s us,” Barbara says faintly. “That’s not models or pictures. That’s us.”

A contemplative look comes across Vicki’s face, and she says, as if recalling something from a textbook, “Time, like space, although a dimension in itself, also has dimensions of its own…Yes, you see, we really are in those cases, but we’re also standing here, looking at ourselves from this dimension.”

The Doctor extrapolates from this idea, saying that they haven’t actually arrived yet. Something went wrong on the TARDIS, and they must have “jumped a time track.” They have inadvertently stumbled into a shadowy glimpse of their own future—or at least a potential future, one they need to change if they want to leave the space museum alive. And, since they haven’t really arrived, they can’t leave footprints, or touch displays, or be noticed by the men in white or black. The Doctor has a solution, though: “All we have to do is wait here until we arrive.” I told you it would get trippy.

Vicki wants to go back to the TARDIS—the one outside the museum—and just take off, but the Doctor quickly objects to this, saying that any move they make has the potential to bring them closer to a future where they all end up like stuffed animals in a display case. And therein lies the premise that I mentioned in the thesis. What are the Doctor and his companions supposed to do when any action they take could be the first in a sequence of events that leads to their peril? How does a character like the Doctor, a man of science who is known for using all available data to think his way out of a situation, act when he has absolutely no information? From this point on, we will see every protagonist suffer from decision paralysis to some degree or another, but none more so than the Doctor. I’ll talk more about this dynamic later in the serial.

Ian asks when they will arrive, and the Doctor says, “I can’t be certain.” He gestures to the cases. “But you’ll notice we’re all wearing the same clothes. So, it could be in a few moments or a few seconds…The cases will disappear, and we shall all become visible…We must succeed in stopping them making exhibits of us. Otherwise, well, there it is. That’s how we’re going to end up.”

Suddenly, Barbara has a strange sensation, and they all go very still. As tense music begins to accelerate, we see a shot of the TARDIS interior, with the four protagonists frozen around the center console, still in their crusader clothes. Cut to the TARDIS exterior. Cut back to the interior, with the four still frozen, now in their normal clothes. Cut to a glass shattering and staying broken. Cut to the TARDIS exterior again, this time with two men in white walking around it as if wondering where it has come from. One of the man points to the ground, and we see footprints slowly fade into existence in the dust.

Back inside the museum, the display cases containing the Doctor and his companions slowly fade away. The other set of protagonists unfreezes, as if coming out of a trance, just like they did back on the TARDIS. “They’ve gone,” Barbara says, noticing the cases.

“Yes, my dear,” says the Doctor. “And we’ve arrived.” Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Dimensions of Time)

Before I go on, I have to offer the series a bit of praise and a lot of criticism. First, the premise established in the last episode was brilliant. Brilliant. A malfunction of the TARDIS caused the Doctor and his companions to arrive before they actually arrived. Like, who can even conceptualize that, much less actualize it in a way that is even halfway decent? Something I brought up way back in the introduction to this document is that I love when Doctor Who plots involve some element that has the writers experimenting and subverting the normal flow of time. I go into much more detail there, but basically, by this I mean any episode in which the plot isn’t oriented as a strict progression from cause to effect. This could mean that a character intrudes on their own timeline, or they go back in time to an earlier point in the story, etc. The Space Museum executes on this concept in such a satisfying way: seeding it as the elements of a mystery throughout the episode and having it resolve in a genuinely heart-pounding sequence as the characters actually arrive inside the museum. Its success is the bar against which I will be comparing all future serials which experiment with time.

And yet, for a show which features a time-traveling alien and his magic box, Classic Doctor Who serials rarely play around with time, an approach which I see as the most pervasive failing of the entire classic series. As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, the 1st Doctor has very little control over his TARDIS. He bumbles around from place to place, and if he ever gets it in his mind to actually try to go somewhere—like when he tries to send Ian and Barbara home in The Reign of Terror—he misses by a few hundred years and a few hundred miles. If you’ve only ever seen the modern series, you know that the Doctor eventually develops a mastery of his ship, but this change happens gradually over the classic series. Excruciatingly gradually, in my opinion. It isn’t until the 7th Doctor that he shows a decent amount of competency with the TARDIS, even managing a few of the “short hops” that eluded him in his earlier iterations. Mastery doesn’t come until the 8th Doctor, who, in the made-for-TV movie, displays the clear intention of the writers to give him full control over his TARDIS in the quickly-shelved mid-90s reboot.

So what, then, does this mean for the way Classic Who plays around with time and time travel? For starters, any such experimentation has to occur through plot devices that are either unintentional consequences of the protagonists’ actions or the result of external forces. Put simply, the Doctor cannot intentionally trigger any of these time-bending plots; they have to happen to him. We will see things like the 3rd Doctor, in the midst of repairing his out-of-commission TARDIS, accidently travel to a parallel world where time runs slightly ahead of his own. Or like how the 6th Doctor is pulled out of his ordinary timestream by the High Council of Time Lords in order to be put on trial. I think these ideas are fun and very interesting, but because plots like these can never originate from the Doctor, they are few and far between. We have to wait for the Doctor to be acted upon by an outside force in order to experience them.

Contrast this with how the modern series experiments with time, with the Doctor in full control of his TARDIS. We see things like the 10th Doctor locking the coordinates of the TARDIS so that the Master can only travel between 2008 and the end of the universe. Or the 12th Doctor going back in time to discover why he and Clara are being stalked by a nightmarish creature in an underwater station at the bottom of a lake. Or the 9th Doctor giving Rose two tries at being there for her father as he died. Yes, there are still premises like Blink from time to time, where some weird timey-wimey plot device happens to him, but because the Doctor can freely travel through time, we don’t have to wait around for these specific instances to see time being manipulated. Upsetting the progression of cause and effect goes from something we might see once every few seasons, to a quick joke the 10th Doctor plays on Martha as he makes a short hop to remove his tie on her walk to work. For all of the successes of the classic series—and I believe there are many—the Doctor’s inability to control the TARDIS for most of the series is something I see as an overwhelming failure. It led to far less instances of the series experimenting with time, and I believe that this dynamic helped to contribute to the perceived stagnation of the classic series toward the back end of its run.

Continuing on, the next scene features a change of locale. In a sparsely decorated room, one of the men in white is working through a stack of paperwork at a desk shaped like a semicircle. The desk and the man are on a small circular dais, no higher than a step up, signifying his authority as the governor of the museum and the planet. Against the opposite wall, a long, narrow table holds all sorts of futuristic gizmos. The space has the sterile simplicity that is often a trope of classic sci-fi, as if the clutter of human vices has been eliminated. Though I find this classic approach to be uninspired, I understand that it was what someone of the time might have expected to see in a futuristic setting. That’s what tropes are for: they draw on the audience’s history with other media sources and aid in the current experiences by conforming to—and sometimes subverting—those expectations. Plus, it is a very cheap convention, and I have no problem with the showrunners saving money with these sets if it means they can spend it in other places. This is clearly a budget serial.

Another man in white enters the scene and places another futuristic contraption on a small table. “Best I could do, sir,” he says to the man at the desk. “It should be good for another hundred years or so.” As a reminder, these men wear pristine uniforms of unrelieved white, with broad shoulder pieces and high collars. In this scene, we get to see them at a much closer proximity, and we see that, in addition to being brown and curly, their hair is fashioned into a rather severe widow’s peak. Perhaps this was to call attention to the overexaggerated eyebrows, thick and hairy, which extend all the way to the temples. They look really goofy, borderline stupid—though I find it a bit charming. Early Era Who often went to such lengths to make it obvious that humanoid extraterrestrials were in fact nonhumans.

The governor asks the newcomer what was wrong with the machinery, and the man tells him the clasps had rotted away. Then the governor stands and starts to wander around the room, delivering this atrocious monologue: “Like everything on this planet, including us. Well, I’ve got two more milliums before I can go home. Yes, I say it often enough, but it’s still two thousand Xeron days, and it sounds more in days. Yeah, I know, I volunteered; you were ordered. If the truth were known, I was just as bored on Morok. Still, it was home, and youth never appreciates what it has. Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Still, let’s get on with it, shall we?” By the end, he is seated once again at his desk.

I know I have talked a bit about exposition dumping before, and I guess I should take the time to explain what I mean, though I think it’s pretty obvious. Exposition dumping is when characters talk in a very stilted, clunky manner in order to deliver a bit of worldbuilding to the audience. It’s a subjective term; the difference between exposition dumping and plain-old exposition depends solely on whether or not the viewer finds the exchange to be awkward. In my opinion, the governor’s speech is comically bad exposition dumping, the worst of the worst. I mean, just look at it. You can almost hear it apologizing for its own existence, having to justify why the governor would be explaining to a subordinate how many days are in a millium. There’s no break in his monologue, no interjections or even reactions from the other man in the room. He may as well have stared directly into the camera and broken the fourth wall.

A messenger enters the room, saying that he has urgent news. The governor grouses that no news is so urgent that one cannot take the time to knock on the governor’s door. “You’re supposed to show some respect and knock.” I’m getting a bit bogged down in the details of this scene, but look at how much this simple, natural exchange communicates to the audience. The governor thinks highly of himself. He values decorum. He is willing to extend the duration of a crisis as long as he gets the satisfaction of having his lowly subordinates demonstrate their respect. All that from a 10-second exchange, and he doesn’t have to turn to the camera to explain this to the audience. This is classic show-don’t-tell storytelling; I want much more of this and much less exposition-laden monologues. I don’t want the governor to tell me that he’s bored. I want to see it happen and make the connection myself.

The messenger tells the governor that an alien ship has landed and that they have found the footprints of at least three uninvited visitors. The governor orders a search, and the third man, the one who brought in the machine, asks about the rebels. I wish the show would name its characters, so I wouldn’t have to identify these almost-identical men by arbitrary descriptors. Anyway, the governor says, “Rebels? This local rabble? They’re children…When they pose a danger, we will destroy them. Until then, the problem will keep. Nevertheless, they’ll try and contact our visitors for help. I must remember to notify the commanders to keep watch. As for the aliens who have just landed, we may even be able to add to the museum.”

The next scene shows us what could be yet another part of the museum or maybe another building somewhere else. It’s a narrow storage room of some sort, with crates and boxes stored on shelves. Two of the men in black from earlier enter, and now that the audience has the time to look at them, they look even more ridiculous than the men in white. They look like a pair of ordinary blonde men in their late teens or early 20s, except for one distinct feature: their eyebrows. At least the men in white had a hairdo to make the eyebrows seem, if not entirely natural, at least intentional. With the rest of their features appearing normal, the men in black look like they were attacked by a blind makeup artist. Unlike the men in white, I don’t find these design choices endearing at all.

These men are Sita and Dako. I give you their names because, unlike with the men in white, the writers have actually provided that information in this scene. Sita is nervous about the absence of a third man named Tor, while Dako tries to play it down. Their dialogue quickly points to them being the rebels that the men in white spoke of. Tor is their apparent leader, and though Sita trusts him, Dako wants to take more drastic action. “Look, we’re just waiting to be rounded up,” Dako complains. “I know the Moroks have ray guns and we’re unarmed, but our only chance is to strike. The longer we leave it, the greater the risk.”

Just then, Tor enters, yet another blonde man in black. The three are difficult to tell apart, especially in scenes where there is a lot of movement around the set. The issue of indistinguishability plagues both groups, black and white. Tor chides Dako for his impertinence, saying, “But we’ll only get one opportunity, Dako, and when we attack, we’ve got to win.” He then tells Dako and Sita about the arrival of a strange spaceship, and they go off to try and locate any strangers in the museum before the Moroks can get to them.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and his companions are still in the room where their doppelgangers and the intangible TARDIS once stood. There is a meandering three minutes of dialogue talking about how they can avoid that potential future, which can basically be summed up in a line from the Doctor. “If we walk out of here, it could change the future. Perhaps if we wait until we’re taken out, that might change the future. The point is, what are we going to go? Which is it to be?” Even with the new perspective in my second watch-through, I still think that this scene—and several others like it—are extremely tedious. I love the concept: the Doctor too paralyzed by indecision to act in the bombastic recklessness that otherwise defines his character. But the execution often leaves much to be desired. The tone of the writing is far too serious for what is a funny concept on its face, something I will talk more about later.

At the end of this ponderous discussion, the four resolve to go back outside to where they left the TARDIS and do what they can to make sure it doesn’t end up in this room. However, as soon as they step out into one of the museum corridors, they realize that none of them can agree on which way they took to get there. They choose a path suggested by Vicki, though after the first turning, she doesn’t seem very confident about her memory. “Straight ahead?” she says, more a question than a command. They move offscreen, looking for the exit.

Before I go on, there is one more notable thing that happened in this scene: Ian removes a ray gun from a display case to arm himself. Aside from a cavalier remark about “cowboys and Indians,” the Doctor doesn’t have anything to say about this, which, as most fans are aware, breaks with a main point of his characterization in the vast majority of the series. In Journey’s End, an episode toward the end of the 10th Doctor’s run, the character Davros accurately describes the Doctor as “The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun.” That being said, aversion to firearms clearly isn’t part of his character now, and won’t be for a little while yet. There was that one remark the Doctor made to Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth about never taking the life of another unless it is a last resort, but aside from that, there’s really nothing else to say he wouldn’t be okay with Ian picking up a gun and possibly using it. I’ll be keeping an eye out for when this changes.

Back in the governor’s office, we see the governor speaking into a communicator. As we learned from the men in black, all of the men in white are called Moroks. A transmission tells the governor that the alien spaceship is in hand and that footsteps have been discovered near the museum.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and the others are lost, picking their path more or less at random. As they move through the museum, the three men in black—the rebels—see them and begin to hatch a plan to isolate one of them. “We’ll catch either the old man or the girl,” says Tor. “We can explain and let them introduce us to the others.”

Soon enough, the Doctor lags behind the other three in their wanderings, stopping to analyze some piece of machinery on exhibit. When he turns to move on, a door behind him opens, and the rebels pull the Doctor through.

The scene cuts to the other side of the doors, where the rebels are standing over an unconscious Doctor, worried that they may have killed him. As they fret, the Doctor opens one eye, making it clear to the audience that he’s faking it. Tor and Sita leave to get something that will bring the Doctor around, leaving Dako to watch over him.

Back to Ian, Barbara, and Vicki, who have realized the Doctor has disappeared, and they frantically try to picture when they last saw him. Ian is especially agitated, yelling at Barbara until Barbara calls him out on it. “I am not irritable!” he yells back, then sighs and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. Of course I’m irritable. I just wish he’d stay with us for once, that’s all.”

What follows is another conversation about what they should do to prevent themselves from ending up on display, much briefer than the first. These instances can usually be summed up by one line of the exchange, and in this one, Barbara says, “Well, what do we do now? Which is the way into those cases? Staying here, going back, or still trying to find our way out?”

Throughout this exchange, Vicki is silent, her body language stiff and indignant as she lets Ian and Barbara hash it out. When the two finally decide to keep looking for a way back to the TARDIS, she gives a dramatic sigh and says wryly, “Oh good. This way, I think.” She sets a brisk pace, expecting the other two to follow. It is clear that Vicki finds the whole notion of policing their own actions to be ridiculous—in this way, she functions as an analogue for the audience. Additionally, this is a continuation of the serial’s inverted premise, as the most subservient companion in any other context has become the most willing to act.

Next, we see Tor and Sita returning to where they left the Doctor, but the Doctor is nowhere to be found. Instead, Dako has been bound and gagged. They free Dako, who has no idea where the Doctor went. Then they rush off to find him. Once they have left the room, the camera slowly pans to reveal that the room is the one with the Dalek on display. The headpiece of the Dalek pops off the exoskeleton, and the Doctor rises from the machine with a smug grin on his face. In a monotonal, Dalek-like cadence, he says, “I fooled them all! I am the master!”

In an adjacent room, two Moroks are searching the premises when the Doctor, still grinning and giggling to himself, steps through the door without a care for what might be on the other side. The two Moroks quickly take him into custody. It reminds me of The Daleks, when the Doctor shorted out the Dalek power supply. Susan tried to warn him about Daleks coming to get them, but the Doctor stood there, laughing and gassing himself up until they were both surrounded and taken into custody. This is the type of comedic tone that I wish the writers had taken with the rest of the serial. It is lighthearted and a welcome change of pace, and I think it would make the tedium of the premise a little easier on the audience.

Elsewhere in the museum, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki are still lost when Ian has an idea. He takes Barbara’s cardigan—which she very reluctantly gives over—and suggests they unravel the fabric, leaving a trail of thread. “Do you remember your mythology?” he says excitedly. “When Theseus went into the labyrinth, he took with him a ball of thread so that he could use it to retrace his steps.” They plan to use the thread so that they don’t accidentally go in circles.

Meanwhile, the Doctor finds himself alone in a cell. The only furnishings are a chair in the exact middle; he sits in it, and a metal bar encircles his waist, trapping him there.

Next, the three rebels in black find Ian’s trail of thread and start to follow it.

Back in the Doctor’s cell, a wall slides open to reveal the governor sitting at a table, facing him. “Welcome to Xeros, a planet in the Morok Empire. What is your name?” The Doctor doesn’t answer. “Very well,” the governor continues. “Mine is Lobos. I am the governor of this planet.” Oh great, an actual name for a Morok. I feel honored.

“Xeros is a museum,” Lobos continues, “a lasting memorial to the achievements of the Morok civilization.” The Doctor speaks then, commenting on how deserted this museum is. “People tire of their heritage,” says Lobos. “Three hundred milliums ago, sightseers filled this planet, marveling at what they saw. Today, the occasional spaceship from Morok calls…Our civilization rests on its laurels. Galactic conquests are a thing of the past. Life, it is now said, is purely a thing to enjoy.”

“Decline and fall of the Roman Empire,” the Doctor says with a chuckle. “Oh yes, it’s happened before, yes. In many galaxies, far beyond your reach.”

Governor Lobos begins to question the Doctor, asking him where his friends are. The Doctor refuses to answer, laughing at the man, but the governor seems to have gotten what he wanted anyway. He speaks into a communicator, telling his men to search the exact coordinates of where the Doctor last saw his companions. Then the governor smugly turns a screen to face the Doctor, showing Ian, Barbara, and Vicki in the room where the Doctor had been taken by the rebels. “A simple matter of thought selection,” he says. “By asking a question, I plant an image in your mind. No matter what you say, as long as you’re seated in that chair, I will see your mental pictures reflected. You see, it is quite useless for you to lie to me. Now, shall we return to the questioning? How did you get here?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer, but the image of a penny-farthing bicycle appears on the screen. The Doctor chuckles gleefully at the look of consternation on the governor’s face.

Back with Ian and the others, they have reached the end of the thread from Barbara’s cardigan without finding the way out. They are disheartened by this for a moment, but Ian walks around the corner and does indeed find the exit—though this is communicated very poorly to the audience. He flings open a pair of doors without once referring to them what they are, and we don’t get to see outside. All we see is Ian, Barbara, and Vicki staring out of a pair of doors. We can hear the commotion of a few people talking offscreen, and Vicki says, “The TARDIS! They’ve got the TARDIS!”

Meanwhile, the Doctor sits in his prison, smiling, while a frustrated Governor Lobos continues to ask questions. “Where have you come from?” The governor’s screen displays a rocky island with a large herd of seals, and the Doctor cackles. Again, this is the comedy that should be the feature of the serial, rather than the occasional comic relief.

The governor receives a transmission over his communicator: one of his men saying that the Doctor’s companions are not at the location the governor had provided. Lobos shouts at the man, calling him a fool, but the Doctor says arrogantly, “Don’t blame your men. I think my friends most probably left the area long before you put questions to me. I imagined them still there, of course, because that was the last place I saw them. So you see, your little toy isn’t infallible, is it?”

“So you see fit to joke with me, eh?” says Lobos. “Well, let us give you something to joke about, shall we? You are of no further use to me and would make a perfect specimen for our museums.” The screen displaying the Doctor’s thoughts changes to show the Doctor inside a display case. “Yes, Doctor, I see you take my meaning. Guards, take him to the preparation room.” Two Moroks escort the Doctor out of his prison cell. Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Search)

Back with the others, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki watch as three Moroks and several men in black inspect the TARDIS. Several things about the way this is depicted annoy me. First, like I said in the last episode, the scene does a poor job actually demonstrating to the audience that these are the exit doors of the museum. The TARDIS is indeed against a backdrop that is the polygonal exterior of the building, but the audience hasn’t seen the outside of the museum since the middle of the first episode. In my first watch-through, I didn’t pick up that the TARDIS was outside until much later in the episode.

Second, to this point, we have been led to believe that the Moroks are in white and the rebels are in black. Why, then, do we see both of them in this scene? We will soon learn that the men in black are not really rebels, at least not all of them. They are Xerons, the natives of Xeros, the planet on which the Morok Empire has decided to put its museum of galactic conquest. The Moroks use the Xerons as slave labor, and there is an underground faction trying to rebel, led by Tor. But here, the writers have chosen to display this dynamic after the audience has associated the men in black as rebels but before the dynamic has been properly explained. Although it is often a good thing to surprise the audience with new information, what we see in this scene is clunky and confusing. Plus, we don’t really get to see the Xerons doing any labor here. If the implication is that they were the ones who moved the TARDIS to the exterior of the museum, that doesn’t come across well either. It’s just poor writing.

As they watch, Ian and Barbara have yet another exchange about what they should do that can once again be summarized by one of their lines, Ian this time: “Choice is only possible when you know all the facts. Don’t you realize? We know nothing about this place.” Then Barbara hears a commotion outside, and they return their attention to the crack of the door.

Into the commotion struts one of the Morok commanders, ordering the Xerons to clear off and surveying the TARDIS with a look of contempt on his face. Not just contempt for the TARDIS, but also for his compatriots, the museum, and probably life in general. Ivor Salter is the man who plays the commander, and though nothing really stands out about his acting, he has a knack for oozing disgust and discontent for everything and everybody.

When one of his subordinates informs the commander that they couldn’t get inside the ship, he says, “That’s all I need. You know what Lobos will say about that, soldier. He will blame me. Everything that goes wrong on this wretched planet is my fault. Think yourselves lucky that you have me between you and our illustrious governor.” He paces in front of the TARDIS as he badmouths his superior. “A scapegoat, and for what? For this rank and a meager pittance of extra pay. Oh, what’s the use.”

Lobos himself enters the scene, and the commander drops his moping as if he has flipped off a light switch, snapping to attention with his right fist over his heart. When Lobos begins to lambast the commander for not being able to enter the craft—exactly as the commander had predicted—the commander turns to one of his men and makes his own scapegoat. “Why was not the cutting equipment brought to me? I asked you to bring it several times, didn’t I, soldier?” The soldier, apparently not taking the hint to go along with the scapegoating, starts to speak up, but the commander speaks over him before he can. “Now, don’t you give me any of your feeble excuses. I will deal with you later. Get it!” The man leaves to go get the equipment.

I quite like this exchange. It shows the decay of the once-grand Morok Empire that was hinted at toward the end of the last episode. The command structure of the military lacks basic respect and proper order, with every soldier looking longingly toward the end of their tour and thinking only of themselves. There is no cohesion there, just the façade of rank and civic duty. It’s another thing I talked about in my thesis: the Doctor and his companions have run into antagonists who are completely incompetent. Again, a great premise, but I think it lends itself much more readily to comedy than to the serious tone taken for most of the serial. The more I watch of The Space Museum, the more I feel that it was a missed opportunity to be something special instead of something largely disliked by the fanbase.

Still listening at the crack in the door, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki overhear that the Moroks have taken a prisoner: the Doctor. Unbeknownst to them, a guard has turned a corner behind them; he slowly approaches them, gun raised, and calls out for them to freeze where they are. The three do so, and Vicki complies when the guard asks her for the gun she is holding—at some point, Ian gave her the ray gun to look after.

Then, there is a not-so-brief aside between the three companions, which seems like an odd thing for the soldier holding them at gunpoint to let them do. Nonetheless, they give an abridged rendition of the whole does-taking-any-action-lead-to-the-display-cases schtick that feels a little past its expiration date at this point. At the end of it, they decide to act, and Ian tells them to follow his lead. He slowly approaches the guard, saying, “Now, what were your orders? To capture us? To bring us in?…There was nothing about killing us, was there?…Well, think what your superiors are going to say. They’re going to ask, ‘Did you bring in the aliens?’ ‘No,’ you’re going to reply, ‘I went out and shot them all.’ ” Having closed the distance between himself and the gunman, Ian suddenly swipes at the gun, gripping it in his hand and struggling with the guard for complete control. “Run, both of you!” he shouts, and Vicki and Barbara flee.

Hearing the shout, the Moroks who were outside with the TARDIS rush into the museum. Several chase after the women, and a few remain in the entrance chamber to help the guard struggling with Ian. Continuing his character arc from the mild-mannered schoolteacher to valiant Sir Ian of Jaffa, he manages to fling the armed guard to the ground and kick the gun away from his unconscious body. Then he dispatches one, then another of the Moroks, before running offscreen to make his escape.

Next we see Barbara ducking into a storeroom, similar to the one in which we were first introduced to the rebels. This one has a dusty mannequin and a stack of boxes. Hearing the guards in pursuit, she ducks behind the boxes just as one enters to search. Luckily, the guard isn’t very thorough, and he leaves without seeing Barbara, shutting the door behind himself. Barbara takes a few seconds for the sound of footprints to dissipate and makes for the exit, only to find that the door has locked itself. She is stuck in the storeroom.

Elsewhere, Vicki is also running from the pursuing guards when she is suddenly grabbed by rebels and pulled into an adjoining room, much like the Doctor had been in Part 2. Inside is Tor, Sita, and Dako. They ask Vicki to trust them, though she is reluctant to do so after the abrupt manner of her capture, especially once she discovers that they were the ones that originally captured the Doctor. Tor gets her to hear them out, saying, “We hate the Moroks. We want to see them dead. Well, you can see we’re nothing like them…We’ll explain everything later. First of all, we must find your companions.” Vicki gives them Barbara’s name, as well as the rough location of where they were separated in the chase. Dako leaves to go find her.

Back near the TARDIS, Governor Lobos angerly addresses several Moroks, including the jaded commander, calling them fools for letting the trio escape. “There are other ways of getting them out,” he says. “Withdraw our men from this building. Have all exits guarded, and have the rest search the area for the one these fools allowed to escape.” Meaning Ian. The soldiers depart, all but one who remains to guard the TARDIS.

As soon as the rest have gone, Ian peaks around the rear of the TARDIS at the lone guard, who stands at attention with his back to him, a gun in his hand. Ian creeps around the ship and, much like he did with the earlier guard, grabs the man by his gun hand, this time slamming it against the TARDIS doors and knocking the gun to the ground. He picks it up and points it at the guard, demanding to know what has happened to the Doctor. “They took him to the preparation room,” says the frightened guard. “He’ll be got ready for the museum. But you can’t help him. Once the process starts…Well, it’s a kind of embalming.” Ian demands that the guard takes him there, and the two exit the scene, the sputtering guard forced to move at the barrel of Ian’s gun.

Elsewhere, Governor Lobos and the jaded commander enter the governor’s office. The governor crosses to his desk, where he leans toward his communicator and issues an order to his men: “In one hour, the air is to be replaced by zaphra gas. See that my order is carried out.” When the commander asks what the gas is for, Lobos answers, “It is very effective. If the two women do not leave the building and surrender to the guards, the gas will eventually paralyze them.”

The scene cuts to Barbara pulling and pulling at the storage room door without any success, which is a great way to maximize the tension of the governor’s last line. We know now what’s at stake if she can’t get out. She gives up, and the scene fades to black.

Next, the show fades back into the very same room, with Barbara sitting dejectedly against the stack of boxes. Slow fades like this were a common convention of the time to convey to the audience that some amount of time has passed between the two scenes. Suddenly, Dako opens the door from the outside and steps into the room, calling out Barbara’s name. Having been on the point of striking Dako with a piece of wood, the use of her name surprises Barbara, and she asks Dako how he knows it.

Back with Vicki, the two remaining rebels, Tor and Sita, see that the way out of the museum is no longer guarded. They leave for their secret headquarters, telling Vicki that Dako will bring Barbara and meet them there.

Meanwhile, Dako and Barbara are still in the storage room. Barbara listens as Dako tries to get Barbara to trust him by explaining some of the history between the Moroks and the Xerons. “Their planet is three lightyears away,” he says of the Moroks. “They invaded us without warning. Xeros was a place of peace and knowledge, and the wisdom of our elders made us free from want.”

Something that really bugs me about the oppressor vs. oppressed dynamics often crafted by the writers of Doctor Who is that the oppressed people are always portrayed as having been the perfect society, where the people were entirely peaceful and free from vices. I like to call this the virtuous victim trope—a derivative of the perfect victim trope that is often displayed in media, usually pertaining to victims of sexual assault or murder. I define a virtuous victim as a person or group of people who have been portrayed as being good by definition, so good, in fact, that they are incapable of doing anything wrong. A virtuous victim is the yin to the unambiguously evil antagonist’s yang—and in my opinion, just as flat and uninteresting. I’ll talk about this more in a future serial, probably making it a thesis of one that devotes more runtime to foregrounding a virtuous victim. Just know that we have already seen a lot of them: the Thals in The Daleks, the perfect society in The Keys of Marinus, everyone but the City Administrator in The Sensorites, the Menoptra in The Web Planet, and now the Xerons in The Space Museum. Even Vicki can be considered a virtuous victim with the way she was portrayed in The Rescue.

Anyway, Dako and Barbara leave the storeroom and are making their way through the exhibits of the museum when the zaphra gas suddenly begins pouring in through the ventilation system. Sputtering, Barbara urges Dako to cover his face as they start to run.

The scene cuts to a new set: the rebel headquarters. There’s not much to look at—the entrance is at the top of a set of metal stairs. At the bottom of these stairs, Vicki, Tor, and Sita share a meal at a table laden with food. It’s implied that the room continues on for a while—after all, it is supposed to be a headquarters—but nothing else is actually shown. One of the biggest flaws of this serial so far is definitely set design and readability. Aside from the opening miniature, everything else has been either underwhelming or downright bad.

Tor and Sita are conveying to Vicki the same history that Dako was telling Barbara, and it picks up from where Dako left off. “They destroyed everything,” says Tor. “Only the children were spared to work…We are a slave race. When we grow older, we are taken to other planets. Sita, Dako, and myself were due to go. That is why we hide here and plan.”

But it soon becomes clear to Vicki that all their planning hasn’t amounted to much of anything at all. The Xerons have the Moroks greatly outnumbered, but Tor says that the rebellion is weak and unarmed and that a small army can maintain control of the museum fairly easily. Vicki scoffs at this. “But you’re supposed to be planning a revolution!”

She asks them where the weapons are kept. Tor says that they are in the armory, but there is some sort of lie detector that prevents anyone from entering under false pretenses. Undeterred, Vicki asks to be taken to the armory so she can work at the problem for herself. When Sita asks why Vicki is so interested in helping them, she replies, “I’ve as many reasons as you, perhaps more, for wanting to see the future changed.” Like I said in Part 2, it’s really cool to see Vicki, normally the least likely of the protagonists to show agency, be the one most willing to take drastic action in the topsy-turvy premise of The Space Museum.

Additionally, it’s fantastic to see what she is like on her own, away from the Doctor’s influence. This is the first protracted period of time we have seen Vicki away from the Doctor since her introductory serial. I love the ambitious, snarky risk-taker that she has been since about midway through Part 2, and I really hope the series continues to build on her character and further distinguish her from Susan. This is exactly what I had wanted from the previous three serials, though I fear regression in her characterization when we return to a serial with a more normal premise.

Outside, the captive guard has led Ian to the building which houses the governor’s office and the preparation room where the Doctor is being turned into an exhibit. To this point, I had assumed that these rooms were somewhere in the museum, especially since the opening miniature of the Xeron landscape only featured the one building. Where they are now features the same polygonal exterior as the museum, which only adds to the confusion. The more I think about it, I am comfortable saying that the set design isn’t just a weakness of this serial; it’s some of the worst set design the series has given us so far.

The two men see the jaded commander approaching, and Ian orders the captive guard to make something up that will allay any suspicions. When the commander asks the guard why he has abandoned his post at the TARDIS, the guard says that the governor has summoned him. Satisfied, the commander goes offscreen to find a replacement for the captive guard’s post. Ian motions with the gun and tells the guard that they are to wait for an opportunity to enter the building.

Next we see the entrance room of the Morok armory. It is sparsely decorated, which makes sense, as it only has one function. This function is performed by the large piece of machinery in the middle of the room which looks like a complex computer, complete with see-through panels so the audience can see the bits of wire and metal that make up its core. The Xerons refer to this computer as an electronic brain—no one can enter the armory proper unless they can answer a series of questions posed by the computer. Any wrong or untruthful answer, and the doors will not open.

The Xerons try to tell Vicki that there is no chance, but Vicki says, “Isn’t there? I wouldn’t give in as easily as that.” She tells the two men to help lift off the front panel of the computer, and she stoops down to see what she can manipulate.

Something that I find hilarious is just how poorly equipped these supposed rebel fighters are to actually conduct a revolution. They are unmotivated, unimaginative, and cowardly. They speak about revolution as if it is just a thing that will happen one day, and they talk about planning like they are doing anything at all besides being a minor nuisance to the Moroks. The Moroks are incompetent, but the Xeron rebels are also laughably terrible. In fact, the only reason the Moroks are even able to maintain control over the Xerons is because the Xeron rebels are an even bigger bunch of bumbling idiots. Morok resembles the word “moron,” and Xeron resembles the word “zero,” and I think this is intentional. Again, imagine if this was all played for comedy instead of being a serious conflict. Such a wasted opportunity.

Back in the gas-filled museum, Dako and Barbara are still coughing and hacking their way through the corridors, though they seem to be rapidly losing strength. They both collapse.

In the armory, Vicki has finished meddling with the internal workings of the computer. The Xerons are still doubtful that she has done anything at all, and Vicki steps up to the armory door, prepared to answer the computer’s questions. “What is your name?” it asks in a drawling monotone.

“Vicki.”

“For what purpose are the arms needed?”

“Revolution!” she exclaims, and the armory door slides open. Tor and Sita are amazed, and Vicki says, “I fixed it so that I only had to answer the truth. I didn’t have to give the correct reply.” As Tor and Sita start inside and grab armfuls of weapons, a serious look comes over Vicki’s face, and she says to herself, “I wonder if this will keep us out of the cases.”

At the governor’s office, Lobos is sitting at his desk when there is a knock on the door. Ian enters, gesturing for the captive guard to stay ahead of him. Lobos is calm, and when he speaks, his voice is cold and arrogant. “Well, at last. You aliens have caused me enough trouble. I shall see that you pay for it.” Ian demands that Lobos take him to the Doctor and reverse the preservation process. “It is too late for you to help him,” Lobos answers matter-of-factly. “He has already passed into the second stage of preparation.”

Ian makes his demands again. Lobos stands slowly, casually walking over to a door as if he and his man are not being held at the point of a gun. When he opens the door, there is an awful, droning, mechanical whine—and when I say awful, I mean suitably awful. It really carries all of the menace and agitation of a process that supposedly threatens the Doctor’s life. It puts me on edge; it’s really great sound design.

Lobos and the captive guard enter the preparation room ahead of Ian. We don’t get to see what’s inside, but we see Ian stop and stare in disbelief in the entrance to the room, saying, “Doctor!” Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Final Phase)

Inside the preparation room, the Doctor is unconscious, in a sort of half-capsule with a plexiglass front that comes up to his torso, with his face and shoulders exposed to the air. He is positioned almost vertically, with a very slight angle to the back of the capsule. In the middle of the room, a large dome-shaped device flashes, probably exuding that grating whine that fills the room. It looks to be of similar technology to the computer in the entrance to the armory, which is a great design choice—perhaps the only good set design choice since the opening miniature.

Lobos says, “He has completed the second stage of preparation. He’s as good as dead.” Ian threatens to kill the man unless he tries to reverse the process, and though Lobos keeps insisting that this is impossible, he gets to work. It seems a little odd to me that the preparation process is a task the governor of a planet would know all the intricacies of, but it’s a very minor gripe.

Back at the Xeron hideout, Tor is handing out weapons to a group of rebels who leave to attack the Morok barracks. Vicki tells him that she must go back to the museum to try to save her friends, and Tor tries to talk her out of it, saying that she’ll only be captured. “I’m still going,” Vicki says resolutely. “Look, Tor, I’ve got to find them and tell them what’s going on…If I am captured, I’ll just have to hope that you’re successful and you find me in time. I know it sounds silly, but whatever I do may be wrong.” Tor gives Vicki a gun and orders Sita to accompany her to the museum.

At the TARDIS, three men arrive with the cutting equipment to try to enter the ship. Before they begin, the jaded commander enters the scene and asks about who is supposed to be guarding the museum entrance—remember, this is the post that was abandoned when Ian took the soldier captive. One of the men says there was no guard when they arrived. The commander sighs and sets one of the soldiers to guard the door, telling the other two to come with him. “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” he says, his voice full of scorn.

Inside the museum, the gas is still being pumped through the building. Barbara regains consciousness, coughing as she pulls herself to her feet and shakes Dako awake. Together, they stumble on. I take issue with this. The gas is supposed to be some kind of neurotoxin, something that will paralyze anyone that inhales it. Once they were unconscious, that should have been it for them. By having the characters regain consciousness, it only undercuts the gas as a plot device by minimizing the threat.

Back in the preparation room, Lobos finishes reversing the process, and the Doctor stumbles out of the capsule, using Ian for support. The process had reduced the Doctor’s body temperature to several hundred degrees below freezing; the Doctor says, “It’s a bad attack of rheumatism. Yes, it always happens to me when I’m cold.”

As Ian frets over the Doctor, Governor Lobos quietly tells the captive soldier to rush them on his command. After a moment, he screams, “Now!” But the guard’s attempt is halfhearted, and Ian only needs to point the gun at the man to halt his progress.

The Doctor scoffs at Lobos, saying, “I don’t think your soldiers have really got their heart in their job, have they?” Then he monologues for a bit about having been aware of his surroundings during the process, threatening to put the governor into the capsule so that he can find out what it’s like for himself. “My conscience won’t allow me to do that. It’s a pity, isn’t it?” This speech is pretty underwhelming, and I am reminded again what this could have looked like if the serial was more explicitly a comedy. We could have had the Doctor lean much more into the incompetence of the Morok army, which would have been ironic considering what follows.

As they Doctor and Ian discuss what they should do next, the jaded commander and his two subordinates enter the governor’s office. Seeing the governor being threatened at gunpoint, they creep up behind the two, bash Ian over the head, and regain control of the situation. Smiling, the governor tells the Doctor that it looks like he will be getting a new exhibit after all.

In the museum, Barbara and Dako have reached the entrance chamber, but the guard standing outside by the TARDIS watches them through the crack in the door. The scene then cuts to the governor’s office, and we hear as the guard reports to the governor that the aliens are about to leave the museum and that they will soon be in hand. “Well,” says Lobos, “it would appear that this little diversion will soon be over.” He flicks a switch on the communicator, and there is no response. “Strange. No reply from the barracks.” He orders the jaded commander and the once-captive soldier to go aid the others in rounding up the aliens. Then he goes over to the preparation room, where the Doctor and Ian are being held prisoner. “I’ve just a word about your friends,” he says gloatingly. “You’ll all be together again soon. Perhaps for centuries?”

Barbara and Dako exit the museum and are immediately apprehended by the lone guard outside, who tells them to stand against the wall. Luckily, Vicki and Sita arrive in the nick of time, and Sita shoots the guard. The man falls to the ground, and Vicki and Barbara happily reunite. Barbara tells Vicki that she thinks Ian has been captured, probably taken to wherever the Doctor is. This doesn’t upset Vicki as much as Barbara expected. “Everything’s going to be alright,” Vicki assures her. “I know it is. When the revolution succeeds, Tor and the Xerons are going to destroy this museum and all the exhibits. Well, we can’t be put in a museum that doesn’t exist anymore, can we?”

Suddenly, the jaded commander and his subordinate arrive and shoot the Xerons, who fall to the ground, dead or unconscious. One of them takes Vicki’s gun, and the commander orders them to move, saying, “It seems as though our illustrious governor is going to have more than his usual batch of questions to ask.”

In the governor’s office, we hear a brief exchange between the governor and the commander. In it, we learn that there is no response on the communicator from either the armory or the barracks, that the governor realizes that the gun is from the weapons store, and that the four aliens are still going to be put in the museum once everything has settled down.

In the preparation room, all four protagonists are awaiting whatever happens. They have one more did-we-change-anything conversation. Vicki says, “But we must have changed the future! We must have done!”

“Must we, Vicki?” asks Barbara. “Or were all the things that happened planned out for us? Four separate journeys. Four choices, that led all the time, closer to here. Maybe it could have changed things if I hadn't left that museum.”

The Doctor is more optimistic. “My dear Barbara, you must try and remember, the short time we've been on this planet, we've met people, spoken to them and who knows, we might have even influenced them.”

“You mean we don't necessarily have to change our own future,” says Ian. “It could be changed for us.”

“Like the revolution!” says Vicki.

This brings into play the only remaining element that I brought up in the thesis: instead of the Doctor and his companions rushing in and saving the day, it is them that need to be saved. The only problem is, with the serious tone of the serial that I keep criticizing, the next few minutes become rather tedious. Over a handful of scenes, we see the Xerons and the Moroks fighting in various locations around and inside the museum. I don’t really care about either group, because the serial has done a very poor job at actually getting the audience invested in these characters. If the tone were comedic, like I’ve been suggesting, there might be some value in seeing one group of bumbling idiots finally besting and routing another. As it is, I’ll skip to a point I actually care about—after the fighting—and leave the action up to your imagination.

Tor and a group of Xerons storm into the governors office and shoot Lobos and the jaded commander. The Doctor and his companions are freed, and the Doctor says, “The future doesn’t look too bad after all, does it?”

The scene cuts to the resolution, where all of the characters are saying their goodbyes. There’s the usual bit about the Doctor wishing the Xerons well in rebuilding their society, telling them to pursue science and look out for one another and all that. Pretty generic stuff. Before they get in the TARDIS, though, the Doctor mentions a machine he took from the museum, one he thinks he can get working again. He calls it a Time-Space Visualizer, and he hints to his companions that they will soon be able to see it in action. The four make their final goodbyes to Tor, enter the TARDIS, and dematerialize.

Suddenly, the scene changes to show a heavily-crated planet in the blackness of space. There is a repetitive droning sound, and it doesn’t take long to place it as the ambient sound heard in Dalek spaceships and in the Dalek city on Skaro. Inside a control room, one Dalek appears to be monitoring an instrument of some sort. “Our greatest enemies have left the planet Xeros,” it screeches. “They are once again in time in space.”

“They cannot escape!” says another Dalek over the communicator. “Our time machine will soon follow them. They will be exterminated! Exterminated! Exterminated!” Credits roll.

Takeaways

The Space Museum is an okay serial. Considering that it begins with what I think is the best opening episode to this point in the series, the fact that I’ve come out the other side feeling that it was just okay should say a lot about the experience. I opened this review calling the serial a hidden gem, and I still stand by that claim. I consider it to be underrated by the fanbase, and there is much more than meets the eye at first glance. Part 1 alone is worth the mediocrity of what comes after, and it is genuinely fascinating to watch the showrunners try to execute on the serial’s inverted premise, even if it never really hits the mark.

Like I mentioned several times, the serial’s biggest problem rests in its serious tone. There are so many elements of the premise which lend themselves to comedy: the hesitance of the protagonists to do anything at all, the incompetence of the Moroks and the Xerons, etc. But instead of framing these elements as things the audience should be laughing at, the serial tries to make them things the audience should care about and take seriously. This creates a disconnect, and in my opinion, it’s the reason so many fans consider The Space Museum to be a bore.

There are other problems which also serve to cheapen the serial, further dragging down the average. The Xerons suffer from the virtuous victim trope—I plan on breaking this idea down more in the future, but basically, it boils down to a persecuted person or group being portrayed as good definitionally, by virtue of them having perfect morals or living in a society free from violence and other vices. It’s a prime example of flat, lazy characterization. Additionally, the set design is pretty bad, nearly as vacant and uninspired as some of the interior scenes in The Sensorites. It is impossible to tell where different locations are in relation to each other, and the incredible miniature used in Part 1 as an establishing shot is criminally underutilized.

On the bright side, the highlight of the serial is definitely Vicki, who, for the first time, really demonstrates her value to the show as a distinct character from Susan, whose actions she had largely been replicating to this point. She takes the Xerons in hand and singlehandedly triggers the revolution that ultimately frees her and her friends. I want to see much more of this in the future.

Looking forward, I’m very excited to see the birth of the Daleks as a marauding race of time-traveling exterminationists. The cliffhanger already hints at a chase through time and space, with the Daleks being able to access their own time machine. This is more in keeping with the way the Daleks will eventually be portrayed as a threat to the whole universe, even encroaching on the indomitability of the omnipotent Time Lords. Like The Dalek Invasion of Earth, I don’t recall much about the next serial, The Chase, aside from the ending, and I’m looking forward to see the showrunners take another crack at a sci-fi heavy serial. I’m also excited to see how Vicki is characterized after having so much agency in The Space Museum, though again, I really worry about the possibility of regression when the series returns us to a more normal premise. Only time will tell.

Rating: 5.5/10

Chapter Text

2.8 – The Chase

Thesis: The Intersection of Pacing, Structure, and Scope

I’ve talked a quite a bit about these three elements of media, trying to highlight how they are always in a symbiotic relationship with each other, with one often dictating how writers approach the other two, and vice versa. Pacing and scope have gotten a ton of attention in this document, so I want to touch briefly on structure in this opening paragraph. A serial’s structure consists of all the elements that might come to mind if you think back to a high school literature or—in the case of the United States—English class: exposition, rising action, climax, resolution, etc. Structure also includes things serial length, runtime, and network-mandated commercial breaks. I’ve spoken about a lot of these elements, but I’ve also been operating under the assumption that any readers have at least a rudimentary idea of what these things mean.

Often, these three elements are hard to parse on their own because of how a choice with one impacts any choices with the other two. Let’s say a Classic Who writer wants to create a serial with a very large scope, a narrative that must cover a lot of ground. Good writing will probably dictate that the narrative also has a faster pace, or a longer runtime, or both to get through all of that information. Consider Marco Polo, a serial with an enormous scope, with the protagonists covering hundreds of miles and many months over the course of the narrative. The pacing was kept relatively slow, so in order to deliver all the information to the audience, the serial was structured into seven parts. Contrast this with The Reign of Terror, a serial which, despite also having a broad scope with many twists and turns in the narrative, had a runtime of only four episodes. Instead, the writers opted for a brisk, almost frantic pace, covering a lot of narrative ground in a short time.

In some of the poorer quality serials, it often seems like these three elements are out of balance. Despite having both a fast pace and six episodes of runtime, The Keys of Marinus had such a massive scope that it couldn’t deliver on its premise, even with its speed and length. Contrarily, The Web Planet had a relatively small scope, which made the slow paced, six-episode plot feel extremely sluggish. Now, if you’ve read what I’ve had to say about these serials, you already know that these are far from the only criticisms I have of them. Their failures extend well beyond pacing, structure, and scope. But when these three elements are out of alignment, the result is a very unstable foundation for the entire serial. Other mistakes are often second-order consequences that flow naturally from these flaws, and even if they are not, their impact may be magnified because they are in close proximity to those that are. When these three foundational elements work against each other, it is very hard to create an appealing, comprehensive final product.

And I want to make it clear: this symbiosis is not to say that these elements operate independently of the litany of other writing decisions that go into the creation of a serial. How the writers adapt these concepts to suit a particular serial also depends on things like tone and feel. For example, the slower pace of Marco Polo suits the ponderous pace of a horse-drawn caravan in the 13th century, and the fast-paced The Reign of Terror meshes well with the political turmoil and societal disarray of the French Revolution. Writing is a complex give-and-take, and I don’t want to minimize the difficulty of the creative process. However, for the purpose of introducing The Chase, I want to take a moment to look at how it utilizes pace, structure, and scope in isolation.

The premise of The Chase is that the Daleks have created their own time machine. They lock onto the TARDIS, and the Doctor and his companions are unable to shake them. Seeing no alternative, they spend a lot of the serial looking for a suitable place to stand their ground before ultimately making that stand. I want you to take a moment to put yourself in the mindset of a writer trying to bring this premise to life. Think about these three aspects of narration: pacing, structure, and scope. Bearing in mind that a writer will often focus primarily on one of these facets and let it dictate decisions regarding the other two, which facet would you prioritize?

In my opinion, there are two correct answers. The first is pacing. After all, it’s called The Chase, and it would make sense for the narrative to be constantly driving forward. It could feel frantic, almost desperate, with the Daleks harrying the protagonists from location to location, never giving them time to stop and think. And the second is scope. The universe of Doctor Who is supposed to encompass, well, the whole universe. Make the Daleks push the protagonists all across the universe, landing on a wide variety of alien planets. It could feel as if a great distance has been traversed in this serial, with the protagonists exhausted by the end of it.

Instead, the writers of this serial seem to have prioritized structure, and I find the way this was executed to be concerning. The Chase is a six-episode serial that can be divided into three acts: the first two episodes could be a story on their own, with a beginning, middle, and end; the middle two give us some smaller vignettes which are stylized like comic relief; and the final two contain the ultimate showdown between the protagonists and the Daleks. Additionally, the exposition and resolution of this narrative are unusually complex, each requiring a large portion of Parts 1 and 6 respectively. Overall, it feels like the writers wanted this serial to flow very neatly, with four of the six episodes ending with a TARDIS dematerialization, utilizing these natural breaks in the action to add order to the serial.

Here’s why that’s a problem. First, it’s a chase. It shouldn’t feel orderly. In fact, this approach so succinctly undermines the premise of the serial that I frankly have to question the writing bona fides of Terry Nation (one of my hotter takes of Classic Who is that Terry Nation isn’t all that great of a writer, but I’ll get to that more in the next Dalek serial: The Daleks’ Master Plan). And secondly, although structure is every bit as important as pacing and scope, it is the least determinative of the three. By this, I mean that once a decision has been made about a narrative’s structure, it’s not so obvious what choices should be made about pacing or scope to compliment it. At least, not as obvious as how a small scope compliments a slow pace or how a fast pace compliments a large scope. When structure becomes the focal point of a narrative, a writer runs the risk of not taking the pace or scope into due consideration.

And this is where I think The Chase falls short. Structuring the six episodes into three acts is fine, though I would prefer something that wasn’t so regimented, something a little more chaotic to suit the premise. But the pacing and the scope seem to have been somewhat neglected. For what is ostensibly a chase, the pacing feels incredibly slow. Despite having five unique settings, they either take too long to develop or—in the case of the comic relief sequences—overstay their welcome. This is especially evident in Part 4, one of the comic relief sequences, throughout which I was almost tearing my hair out while waiting for the narrative to get back to something resembling substance and urgency. In addition, the scope is quite small for what is supposed to be the protagonists being chased throughout space and time. The Chase begins on one alien planet and ends on another, but in the middle, we get three settings on Earth, two of which are within 30 years of each other. Why not use this serial as an opportunity to expand what is supposed to be a vast and diverse universe? Instead, the universe continues to be rather condensed around a single planet: Earth. And while this is perfectly valid for future Doctors who have an affinity for humans and can control their TARDIS, it feels very contrived for the 1st Doctor to be essentially flinging himself around at random and yet still somehow managing to land on the Earth for a majority of serials—another thing I want to discuss at a later date.

In the end, I don’t consider The Chase to be a bad serial, but I don’t think that highly of it either. It’s flaws are too pervasive and fundamental for me to truly suspend my disbelief in the first two acts. However, there is a lot to like about the serial, not the least of which being how it takes the Daleks from your run-of-the-mill alien invaders in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and turns them into a fourth-dimensional threat. It constitutes a step in the right direction, and we will continue to see the writers get more and more comfortable with sci-fi serials over the next few seasons.

Part 1 (The Executioners)

The Chase begins by reminding us how the last serial ended: Daleks in some control room monitoring the TARDIS as it moves through time and space, pledging to follow the ship in their own time machine and exterminate the enemy of the Daleks.

We then get a late title card superimposed over a miniature of the TARDIS, with flowing psychedelic effects edited in to represent the time travel. The jazz music that plays during the title card is reminiscent of old spy movies—a decent way to set the tone of a serial where the protagonists are being hunted.

Inside the TARDIS, we are treated to something that hasn’t been shown explicitly, although it has been alluded to a few times: the Doctor and his companions enjoying downtime in the TARDIS. The Doctor is working with a (regular) screwdriver on the machine he pilfered from the space museum, the Time-Space Visualizer. This is a massive circular dish, perhaps eight feet in diameter, with a small round screen in the exact middle. Around the screen are several dials, each labeled with a different planet of the solar system. Given what we find out about the machine in a few minutes, these labels are nonsense, an example of set designers trying to make an object look space-ish without knowing much about the cosmos.

Vicki stands off to the side, whistling as the Doctor works. This irritates the Doctor, and he mumbles incoherently around the screwdriver in his mouth, gesturing for Vicki to go away. She does, but not before giving the Time-Space Visualizer an annoyed slap on her way out.

Next, we see Ian sitting on a couch, reading a book called “Monsters from Outer Space.” Vicki enters the room and begins to read over Ian’s shoulder. This annoys Ian, and he moves away from her. Seeing that she is not wanted here either, she leaves in a huff.

Then there is Barbara, who is working at an expanse of black fabric on the floor in front of the murphy beds. Vicki enters, noticeably agitated, saying “I am redundant around here…I am a useless person.” This is funny on multiple levels. First, she won’t be so redundant by the end of the serial, and second, up until very recently, she has been a near carbon copy of Susan, something that has severely hampered the development of her character.

Anyway, Vicki proves to be a nuisance here too. She sits down too heavily onto one of the murphy beds, upsetting a bowl of some liquid which gets all over Barbara’s fabric. Barbara yells at Vicki before sighing and saying, “It was a dress for you.” Suddenly, the two are interrupted by a very penetrating beeping noise, and they and Ian go out into the console room to see what the problem is.

Before I move on, I just want to say how much I enjoyed this sequence. We’ve known about the ship’s living quarters, but we haven’t really seen any of the main characters doing much actual living in the TARDIS. There have been a handful of scenes with a protagonist sleeping on an oddly shaped murphy bed or getting something to eat or drink from the food machine. Having the Doctor’s companions doing some benign, domestic tasks is very nice to see, and it sets a very warm tone which offers a nice contrast to the Daleks later.

It turns out that the shrill beeping is emanating from the Time-Space Visualizer. The Doctor soon has it under control, and the noise stops. We learn that the machine is, as Barbara points out, “a sort of time television.” With the right inputs, the operator can tune into any event that has ever happened, due to some technobabble about converting neutrons of light energy into electrical impulses…yadda yadda. Then they test the machine and are able to see Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Queen Elizabeth I addressing William Shakespeare. I’m not going to go into much detail with the scene itself. It is fairly lengthy, and all it is meant to do is establish the concept of the Time-Space Visualizer so it can be used for an inciting incident later. The scene is fine, if a bit boring. However, there are a few aspects I want to touch on before I continue.

First, the way in which these moments in history are called upon is very confusing. For example, the Doctor asks Ian for a time and a place, and he gives “19th of November, 1863…Pennsylvania, USA.” And from that, we get the Gettysburg address. I get it; the speech is the most historically important thing to happen in Pennsylvania on that date, but wouldn’t the machine need much more specific inputs, like the time of day and exact coordinates?

Second, the portrayal of these historical events is alright, and I don’t have much to say about how they were written or acted. However, there is some pretty awesome cinematography with the camera zooming in on the grainy image on the screen of the Time-Space Visualizer. Then the scene cuts to a clear image of the place portrayed on the screen, and we get to watch the scenes as if we were actually there. And as we approach the end of these events, the image suddenly gets grainy again, and the camera pulls out to reveal that we are once again looking at the screen of the machine. I love these transitions. They aren’t the most important thing in the world, but small details like this make it feel like there was a clear vision in mind. Plus, having a consistent framing of these events allows for a wonderful callback at the end of Part 6.

Third, just like in The Space Museum with her comment about the dimensions of time and her dissembling of the security computer, Vicki displays her knowledge of the 25th century by translating the Doctor’s technical jargon into layman’s terms for Barbara and Ian. This is another small departure from Susan’s characterization, but it is a very odd one. While Susan was originally set up in An Unearthly Child to be an extraterrestrial wunderkind, this characterization didn’t last very far into Season 1. Though she occasionally demonstrated a small measure of the intellect usually relegated to the Doctor, it was never so explicit, so in-your-face. Based solely on the backstories of the two characters, I would have expected Susan to have more of these moments than Vicki, even if she still had to play second fiddle to the Doctor all the time—which is why I find Vicki’s overt intelligence to be so odd. Plus, Vicki displayed none of this intellect in her first four serials, though admittedly, this is probably because she was shoved into scripts that were originally intended for Susan. While I welcome any attempt to further distinguish Vicki from Susan, this one in particular served to diminish Susan’s characterization in my mind rather than enhance Vicki’s.

Lastly, there is a third historical moment that exists in the transcript of this serial, yet it has been cut from the version on BritBox. Apparently, the Time-Space Visualizer also shows the Beatles performing in concert. I don’t know why this was cut, but it smells like a copywrite issue. Regardless, I didn’t feel like downloading a different version of this serial just to see another iteration of the machine in action, so I’m going to continue on as if this missing footage never existed.

Moving on, there is suddenly a beeping noise—not nearly so piercing as the one from the Time-Space Visualizer—which lets the Doctor know that the TARDIS is about to materialize. By the way, how long are trips in the TARDIS supposed to take? In the modern series, we are led to believe that they are almost instantaneous: the TARDIS dematerializes from one place and materializes in another. From Rose onward, we see very little deviation from this idea. But here, it is as if the Doctor and his companions are on an international flight with how far Ian was into his book and Barbara was into the dress she was making. This might just be another thing that has to be ignored in Classic Who for canon to make sense, but I’ll keep an eye out for how consistent these trips are over the next several seasons.

Anyway, the TARDIS materializes in a hollow between two sand dunes in a vast desert. The Doctor declares the atmospheric readings to be safe, and they all exit the ship. Outside, it is very hot, and the Doctor points to the two suns in the sky as a reason why. The suns move through the sky at a rapid pace; the Doctor suggests that the days and nights are very short. When we get a closer look at the sand dunes, there are several oddly shaped black rock formations. They almost look like statues that have been weathered beyond the point of recognition. Although they are clearly meant to catch the eye—and Barbara even calls attention to them by referring to them as “those strange things”—they will never be acknowledged again. This serial has a lot of logical dead-ends, where you’re led down a train of thought that never goes anywhere. When they’re done well, such ideas can function as red herrings, but done poorly like this, they come across as fluff and can be quite frustrating as a viewer.

Vicki decides to run off, wanting to see what’s over one of the dunes. The others tut-tut at this, and Ian grudgingly goes after her as a chaperone. It’s been a while since we’ve seen any of the things I’m adding to my lists, but this definitely counts as SomeoneWandersOff #4. It’s the first of three new additions to my lists in this serial—a bountiful harvest. The Doctor gives Ian a small device he calls a TARDIS magnet, which he says can lead him back to the TARDIS like a compass. This is very careless writing. If the Doctor always had such a device, why is this the first we are hearing of it? It would have come in handy in almost every serial. It doesn’t take much thinking to understand that introducing a TARDIS magnet now is in and of itself a plot hole.

Ian catches up to Vicki and they go galivanting toward the horizon. This and a few other desert scenes consist of footage that was shot on location, the first to my knowledge since The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It’s nice to see Ian and Vicki running up a dune with some actual mass, rather than some approximation in studio.

The dunes quickly give way back to a studio set, where Ian and Vicki find a mysterious dark substance coating the sand, forming a trail. “Probably blood,” Ian says in jest. Vicki laughs, and they follow the trail offscreen. As soon as they are gone, a long tendril unearths itself from the sand right where they stood, feeling around.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara lay on a blanket outside of the TARDIS, sunning themselves. Barbara notices a shrill beeping, and the Doctor says the Time-Space Visualizer is probably still on, telling her to go switch it off. When she enters the TARDIS, she sees the Daleks on the screen. How? We were led to believe that events can be viewed only after some inputs are made into the Time-Space Visualizer. Why, then, are the Daleks visible without them? I understand that the classic writers often didn’t have much of a grasp on the elements of science that they were including in their narratives—like the dials on the Time-Space visualizer—and I expect to have to take these things with a grain of salt. But breaking rules that were established by the same writer less than half an episode ago is just unacceptable.

On two occasions, now, I have made it a point of emphasis that I will avoid calling attention to specific individuals behind the scenes as much as possible, though I also hinted that there may be some exceptions. Well, here is one exception I will be making: Terry Nation, the esteemed creator of the Daleks. He is so closely tied with the Daleks because, in addition to coming up with the concept, he has the lead writing credit in the vast majority of the classic Dalek serials. In fact, aside from The Keys of Marinus—in my opinion, an unmitigated disaster—Terry Nation has only worked on serials with Daleks in them. Therefore, I feel much more comfortable judging his body of work, because the breadth of that work is so narrow. Again, I want to wait until after the next Dalek serial, but I will be making the argument that although he achieved inarguable success when creating the Daleks, Terry Nation’s worldbuilding is simplistic and underwhelming, and the larger the scope of his writing, the worse it gets. I hope that my review of The Chase can start to lay the groundwork for that argument.

Moving on, Barbara cries out for the Doctor, and he enters the TARDIS so that they are both in the room to witness what comes next. From the Time-Space Visualizer, they hear a Dalek say, “The operation will proceed at once. The movement scanners have located the enemy time machine: TARDIS.” They see a screen in the Dalek command center which displays the current position of the TARDIS. “At present, it lies in the Segaro Desert of the planet Aridius.” Speaking of simplistic, saguaro is a cactus, and arid means dry. Terry Nation has essentially placed the Doctor and his companions in the Cactus Desert of the planet Dry. And as we will soon learn, the planet used to be a water world. What, did they change the name after the oceans dried up?

The Dalek continues, “The assassination group will embark at once in our time machine. They will pursue the humans through all eternity. They must be destroyed! Exterminate them! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!” Six Daleks pile onto a craft that is shaped like cylinder; they enter through a door and disappear out of sight. We cannot see inside the craft. Then the Dalek time machine makes a rapid, high-pitched whistle and dematerializes.

Frantically, the Doctor and Barbara conclude that because the Time-Space Visualizer can only pick up things that have already happened, the Daleks are either on their way to Aridius or are already there. Realizing they must warn Ian and Vicki quickly if they want to get away, they rush out of the TARDIS. I just want to point out that we are 16 minutes into this serial, and the protagonists have just now figured out the premise. This is what I meant when I said in my thesis that the pacing was super slow for a serial called The Chase.

There is another brief shot of Ian and Vicki playfully running across the on-location sand dunes before they once again return to a studio set, sitting down atop a dune to take a rest. Ian points out that the suns are rapidly heading toward the horizon, and they agree that they should be getting back soon. But before they leave, Ian finds a large metal ring the size of a bocci ball sticking out of the sand. He goes to pull it, but Vicki cries out, “No! The ring in the field!” and grabs his arm, stopping him. Ian asks what is the matter, and Vicki tells a rather inane story about some castle near where she grew up and an irrational fear she and a friend had about a similar ring in the field nearby. I don’t remember Vicki being this childish before now. Between her antics in the TARDIS, her making a break for the nearest sand dune without a care in the world when they arrived, and now this, her characterization has taken a giant step back. I’d rather see a Susan clone than whatever this is. I guess I should have been more careful with what I was asking for; I can only hope this is an anomaly and not the new normal.

Anyway, Ian ends up pulling the ring, but nothing happens right away. They make to leave again, when suddenly, with a loud creak like a rusted hinge, a trapdoor swings open in the sand, revealing steps headed down. Vicki starts down, with Ian close behind. Also, I couldn’t figure out a way to slip this into the plot summary more cleanly, but it is now full dark. While Ian and Vicki were talking, it went from bright sunlight to darkness in the span of about 15 seconds. It was a cool effect, but 1) the two didn’t even acknowledge the change, and 2) they would have had no chance of getting back to the TARDIS before sundown even if they had left when Ian suggested.

Meanwhile, the wind is picking up, and the Doctor and Barbara have lost Ian and Vicki’s tracks to the oncoming gale. Barbara calls out their names to no avail. Realizing that further searching would be fruitless in the dark, the two turn back for the TARDIS.

Back to Ian and Vicki, who are carefully making their way in the darkness beneath the trapdoor. The footing is bad; Ian nearly falls. Suddenly, they see a long tentacle gesticulate just beneath the frame of the trapdoor, which closes, sealing them underground. The camera angle changes, and we see the full body of the thing that owns the tentacle. It looks like some kind of land-dwelling squid, with a bulbous, pulsating body, glowing eyestalks, and a nest of tentacles beneath it. Ian and Vicki gasp.

Outside, the wind has advanced into a full blown sandstorm. The Doctor and Barbara struggle against the wind, holding their clothes over their mouths. As they close in on where they know the TARDIS to be, they both collapse face first into the sand and fall unconscious. The scene fades to black as night turns into day.

Now well into morning, the scene shows a patch of sand, which shifts as two creatures rise out of the shallow burials the sandstorm has made for them: the Doctor and Barbara. They look around, brushing sand out of their hair and faces. “It’s changed,” Barbara says, shocked. “The whole landscape’s changed! The TARDIS has gone. There’s no sign of it!”

The Doctor says that it was probably buried just like them, a development that gives us TARDISOut-Of-Commission #6. He then suggests that they use the TARDIS magnet to locate it before remembering that he gave the device to Ian. Of all the things I take issue with over the course of the serial, I think this is the one that angers me the most. Later, none of the characters will ever use the TARDIS magnet to get back to the ship. It’s never even mentioned again anywhere in the entire series, Classic Who or NuWho. The closest thing to it is when the 3rd Doctor uses a wristwatch that functions in a similar way. So there is literally no reason for it to exist, not even as a plot device in the serial in which it was introduced. Terry Nation created a plot hole for absolutely no reason.

Suddenly, the Doctor urges Barbara to get down, as out among the dunes, a Dalek emerges from beneath the sand. Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Death of Time)

“Doctor, look!” Barbara says. “There’s more of them!” The scene cuts to a miniature of two Daleks on a desert landscape. One is being dragged up a dune in a way that only the front of the Dalek’s base makes contact with the sand, and it almost looks like it is levitating. It’s very goofy.

The Doctor and Barbara hear the Daleks say that some of them will locate the TARDIS with their seismic detectors while others will find and exterminate the humans. Barbara reminds the Doctor that they still have to warn Ian and Vicki, but when they turn to go, they are confronted by two fish-like humanoids. We only see them from behind in this scene, but my first impression is that they look okay. From shoulders to waist, they look to be covered in reflective scales, and a spiny dorsal fin runs from their tailbones all the way up their backs to the crests of their heads. From the waist down, they are underwhelming, clearly wearing some sort of spandex that tends to bunch up around the top of the thigh. But all told, they don’t look bad, especially coming from the most recent non-Dalek extraterrestrials seen in The Web Planet.

Next, Ian and Vicki give us some poorly conceived comic relief in an underground cave. Vicki stands in place screaming at one of the land squids, and Ian jerks her away, saying, “Don’t just stand there and scream, you little fool. Run!” They reach the end of a tunnel, and this time Ian freezes in place. Vicki says, “Oh, don’t just stand there gaping, you nit! Come on! Back!” I didn’t find this amusing. Plus, it’s a bit uncharacteristic for the valiant Sir Ian of Jaffa to face an enemy with anything other than bravery at this point in his character arc. Though at the end of this scene, Ian chucks a rock at one of the squids, and it burbles in a way that I found both gross and satisfying.

Meanwhile, the Daleks are still looking for the Doctor and his companions when they encounter one of the fish people, whom they call an Aridian. They shoot the fish man, and he screams and falls amidst the typical color inversion effect of the Dalek ray gun. Again, why do fish men on a formerly water-covered planet have a word that means dry in the name of their species? It’s not nearly the biggest issue in the serial; in fact, it’s very peripheral. But we see this sort of thing time and time again in Terry Nation’s serials. It’s a pervasive problem.

Back to the Doctor and Barbara, who are talking to the two Aridians from before. Seeing them from the front, they look a lot worse than they did from behind. There are much fewer scales on their fronts, only covering them from shoulders to chest, and much more exposed spandex. Their faces are painted a solid color, but you can clearly see the line of a bald cap across each of their foreheads. In grayscale, they also remind me very strongly of the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. I don’t like them, but still, much better than the Zarbi and Menoptra.

Quick note: the Aridians we will encounter throughout the episode have names in the transcript and are called Malsan, Rynian, and Prondyn, but not one of them is mentioned over the course of this episode. So I guess just pick your favorite name and give it to your favorite Aridian, I don’t know. I’m so tired of this being an issue.

We get some exposition in this scene, with the Aridians saying the following: “This desert was once a vast ocean. We, the Aridians, lived in a city beneath the sea, but for a thousand years, those twin suns that burn have moved closer and closer. Then, the seas dried up, and all the creatures that lived within their waters perished. All but the Mire Beasts…When the waters were gone, they invaded our cities…We were driven back as the Mire Beasts took over more and more of our beautiful city…They are flesh-eaters.”

Barbara asks if the Aridians will help them find their friends, and one of the Aridians says that it is likely Ian and Vicki spent the night in the “Taltarian airlock” and sheltered in the tunnels. He then says that tunnels beneath the airlock are scheduled to be detonated, as it is the only way the Aridians have found to destroy the Mire Beasts. Even though the Aridians are doubtful they will make it in time, the Doctor and Barbara press them to lead them to the airlock. By the way, the thing we saw in the last episode was clearly not an airlock; it was a trapdoor. Just a minor point of irritation.

Elsewhere, we see another Aridian with his hands on the plunger of a detonator. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, Vicki and Ian are struggling to dislodge one of a Mire Beast’s tentacles from around Vicki’s neck. Then the Aridian pushes the plunger down. An explosion wracks the tunnel, with rocks falling everywhere and Ian and Vicki being tossed around like leaves. When the dust settles, the cave is still mostly intact, but Ian has been knocked unconscious. Vicki tells his unconscious body that she will find the Doctor and get help. She leaves, passing a dead Mire Beast on her way offscreen.

Back on the surface, the Doctor, Barbara, and the Aridians have arrived at a different airlock, one that will take them to a part of their formerly-underwater city that is free of Mire Beasts. The Doctor is adamant that helping them will earn the Aridians the ire of the Daleks, but the Aridians insist that they will feed them and help them find the TARDIS. They all enter the airlock. One thing I didn’t mention about the Aridians is their voice: they speak in a high pitched, theatrical manner, almost as if everything they say is part of some grandiose Shakespearian colloquy. Again, an annoying affectation, but after the Menoptra, I’ll take it.

Elsewhere, the Daleks have located the TARDIS beneath the sand. One Dalek commands another to take some Aridians prisoner and have them dig up the ship.

Next we have a scene in the subterranean Aridian city. Everything appears to be made of stone, as if it has been carved out of the bedrock. The place is a mess, all dark and dusty, with rubble strewn everywhere. It’s clearly a place that has seen better days. The Doctor and Barbara are alone in this large, dingy room shaped like a square with passages leading from two of its corners. They eat some food that the Aridians have given them. The Doctor seems downright chipper considering the circumstances, while Barbara worries over the fate of Ian and Vicki. He tells Barbara to stop fretting and get some rest, and she curls up in what was once probably the entrance to another corridor that has since been bricked up. She falls asleep almost immediately.

Then three Aridians arrive, and they tell the Doctor some bad news. The Daleks have issued an ultimatum, demanding that the Aridians hand the Doctor and his companions over or else the city will be destroyed. An Aridian says that the elders are still discussing what to do, but in the meantime, the Doctor and Barbara must stay in this room as prisoners of the Aridians. “If the elders agree [with the Daleks],” one says, “you will be given into their custody.”

In the tunnels, Vicki finds a set of stone steps and climbs them to discover that they lead to the surface, putting her within a stone’s throw of the TARDIS. Around the ship are two Daleks and two Aridians, whom it seems have just finish unearthing the ship. Having no more value to the Daleks, the Aridians are killed. Then the Daleks turn their firepower on the TARDIS, but they are unable to do any damage. “It must be constructed of a material that can resist our neutralizers,” a Dalek says. Put a pin in that for later; it creates a problem in Part 4. Instead, two Daleks are set to guard the TARDIS against the return of any of its crew. Having seen all of this transpire, Vicki ducks back down into the tunnels.

Back in the Aridian city, the Doctor wakes Barbara just as an Aridian comes to deliver more bad news: “The elders have made their reply to the Daleks…You are to be handed over.”

The Doctor is immediately resigned to this, which is so wrong for his character. He doesn’t try to fight it or even argue. Once the Aridians leave, all he says to Barbara is, “They have no choice.” As we will soon see, other events will transpire to set the Doctor and Barbara free anyway. However, just because the Doctor will be freed, it should not mean that the writers should take away all of his agency in the interim. Have him get angry, rage at the Aridians, and have some sort of I-told-you-so later on. He told them directly that the Daleks will come after them if they lend their aid, and the Aridians took them in anyway. It would have been kinder to deny the protagonists help altogether than to take them in and betray them like this. I’ve already said that the pacing is very slow, and this isn’t helped at all by the fact that none of the protagonists are actually doing anything, just observing. None of them are active participants in their own story, and they haven’t been for the last ten minutes of runtime.

Back in the tunnels, Ian wakes up and gets to his feet, calling out for Vicki.

In another tunnel, Vicki is grabbed by an Aridian and captured.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara sit against the bricked-up opening, awaiting their fate. Occasionally, dust falls from the brick wall and the arch above it, hinting at some sort of disturbance on the other side. The Doctor knows from earlier dialogue that this passage used to lead to a part of the city that had been invaded by Mire Beasts.

Suddenly, Vicki is pushed into the chamber by an Aridian, and they all have a bittersweet reunion. Vicki tells them that she found a path right to the TARDIS and that Ian is unconscious but okay. If only they can escape past the Aridians. Unfortunately, it is at this moment that Aridians arrive to escort the Doctor and his companions to the Daleks.

Then we get a most unsatisfying deus ex machina, as a Mire Beast smashes through the bricked-up opening, throwing the scene into chaos. Barbara is briefly ensnared by a tentacle, but the Doctor manages to pull her free. They use the confusion as an opportunity to escape. I’ve already talked a bit about how I don’t like deux ex machina as a plot device. It usually comes across as lazy writing, and even if it’s done well, it often points to weaknesses in other areas of the narrative. But in this instance, coming up on 15 minutes since any of the protagonists took any decisive action, it feels especially contrived.

Elsewhere, Ian has also found the tunnel mouth that leads right to the TARDIS and the Dalek guarding it. The Daleks are aware that the Doctor and his companions have escaped the Aridians, and the guard is on high alert. Night has fallen.

Back in the tunnels, Vicki leads them toward the TARDIS, and just before the tunnel mouth, they find Ian. They have another reunion, and Ian tells the others about the Daleks guarding the ship. But he has a plan: he has gathered a pile of sticks and asks for Barbara’s cardigan (“Oh, not again,” she groans) and the Doctor’s suit coat. I like the cardigan bit; I wish it were a gag throughout Barbara and Ian’s run.

Near the mouth of the tunnel, Barbara and Vicki hide behind the crest of a dune while Ian and the Doctor create a lattice of sticks and lay it across the edge of the hole into the tunnel. Then they put the cardigan and coat on top of the sticks and pile on some dust to make it blend into the ground. It’s clear they are making a pitfall trap, but it only covers maybe three square feet of an obvious hole. I suppose they might be counting on the Dalek moving to the very edge of the hole to get a good look inside, but this will only work if the Dalek steps on the right 10% of the hole’s circumference. Plausible, but unlikely.

Anyway, it does end up working. The Doctor and Ian hoot and holler at the Daleks, ducking out of the way whenever the Dalek fires its ray gun. When the Dalek finally decides to pursue them, it falls into the hole just as planned. “Try and get out of that hole, Fred,” Ian scoffs. He really needs to work on his one-liners.

Suddenly, Vicki points to three more Daleks approaching, and they all run inside the TARDIS just as the Daleks open fire. Again, the ray guns do nothing, and the TARDIS dematerializes. “We will embark in our time machine at once,” a Dalek commands. “The Dalek Supreme has ordered they are to be pursued through all eternity. Pursued and exterminated!” Credits roll.

Part 3 (Flight Trough Eternity)

I want to start off Act II by briefly touching on why I don’t think the comic relief works very well within the context of this serial.

First, the mood doesn’t need to be lightened any more than it already is. As a viewer, I’m already having a hard time believing that these Daleks are an existential threat to the protagonists, especially after that bit with the trap at the end of Part 2. If anything, the plot should make the Daleks seem more serious, not less. And while we do eventually get this at the very end of Part 4, it is far too late into the serial.

And second, for comic relief, it’s not all that funny. Some of this is because the writing uses a lot of slapstick and over-the-top caricatures, which present a very outdated comedic style. But it’s worth pointing out once again that the pacing is dreadfully slow, and there is a lot of empty space that hinders any comedic timing. The comedy is both poorly executed and unnecessary.

Continuing on, at first, the Doctor and his companions are ecstatic that they have escaped the Daleks. They make jests about Mire Beasts eating Daleks, and the Doctor says quite confidently, “I don’t think we shall run into them again.” Immediately, a flashing indicator lights up on the console, and we hear a beeping noise. “That’s my Time Path Detector,” the Doctor says. “It’s been in the ship ever since I constructed it…The fact that it’s registering can only mean one thing…It’s another time machine travelling on the same route.” Like I’ve said many times, there are things in Classic Who that need to be ignored in order for the series canon to make sense, and the Doctor saying that he built the TARDIS is yet another of these things.

Next, we get to see inside the Dalek time machine for the first time. It seems to be partially modeled after the TARDIS, which is odd because to this point in the series, no Dalek has ever seen the inside of it. It’s roughly circular, and in the center of the space is something that resembles the TARDIS console, with a glass cylinder jutting from the top of a hexagonal interface with several buttons that can be worked using Dalek plungers. Around the exterior of the time machine are several other interfaces, where Daleks monitor readings and press buttons. Instead of roundels, the remaining empty wall space is filled with spinning, spiral-patterned panels, like what you might picture when you think of a hypnotist. These panels are the only design element that I don’t like; they are a rudimentary solution to the question how do I make this set seem more space-ish?

The Daleks give some exposition, telling the audience exactly how far they are behind the TARDIS. One Dalek says, “Seven-seven-three Dalekian scale, nine-one-five degrees,” and another says, “One-five Earth minutes.” First, why would Daleks ever need to specify that a reading is being measured on the Dalekian scale? That would be like me saying I am 5’11” in accordance with the British Imperial system. And second, why would they also give this in Earth minutes for any reason other than as a blatant exposition dump for the audience? When I say that Terry Nation is a bad worldbuilder, it is often the small details like these that reveal how little thought went into these writing decisions.

One more note about how the Daleks are portrayed in this serial: there is no black Dalek. The Dalek in charge looks identical to all of the others, which makes it impossible to keep track of the commanding officer. Maybe the black Dalek itself wouldn’t be present on a field mission like this, but there should have been something done to distinguish the commanding Dalek for the sake of the viewers.

Back in the TARDIS, the protagonists discuss what they should do about the Daleks. Vicki wants to keep moving to stay ahead of them, and Ian suggests they stand and fight. Then the Doctor tells us that when the TARDIS lands, it takes 12 minutes for the ship’s “computers to re-orientate and gather power.” Combined with what we learned from the Dalek time machine, the audience now knows that the protagonists will have at most three minutes of grace between when they can take off again and when the Daleks arrive after them. The TARDIS then begins to land, and Barbara asks where they are.

Cut to stock footage of New York City, with upbeat Gershwin-esque jazz to accompany scenes of the Statue of Liberty and the city skyline. The montage settles on an establishing shot of the Empire State Building before cutting to a scene of tourists milling about on the observation deck of the building. I love this sequence. I know I said I have some problems with how the comic relief is executed, but the way it is introduced is the perfect way to lighten the mood—even though that’s also something I don’t agree with.

The mood is instantly diminished by what is hands-down the worst accent of any character to this point in the series. The tour guide for this group of tourists is a man in a captain’s hat who sounds like if a stereotypical Italian-American mobster decided to chain-smoke cigarettes for his entire adult life. It’s actually fascinating how awful this character sounds.

Anyway, Blacklung Soprano points out various buildings—buildings that we cannot see—to the tourists for almost two interminable minutes of runtime before herding all but one of them offscreen to the opposite side of the observation deck. The man who stays behind wears a cowboy had and a light-colored suit, holding a polaroid camera. He lags behind the group to look through one of the viewing telescopes pointed at the city. When he speaks to himself, he has a thick, deep south accent, almost as over-the-top as Blacklung. “We sure don’t have anything like that in Alabama! No sir!”

Behind him, the TARDIS materializes, and he is surprised to see it when he turns around. I won’t go into too much of the minutiae of this scene, but the comedy is supposed to be how this complete idiot of a character interacts with the time travelers. Alabama Man sees the protagonists come out of the small blue box one at a time. Barbara asks him what year it is, and he says, “What, you mean you have different years here?” before eventually telling her that it’s 1966. Vicki says that this is “ancient New York,” only further confusing Alabama Man. Eventually, he decides that the quartet must be “folks from Hollywood.” The Doctor declares that this is no place to make a stand against the Daleks, and they go back into the TARDIS, much to the delight of Alabama Man. He turns away from this ship, fiddling with his camera for a moment, and by the time he turns back to the TARDIS, it has already dematerialized. This whole sequence comes across as hackneyed and irrelevant.

A moment later, the Dalek time machine appears where the TARDIS once stood, and Alabama Man gives a knee-slap and a cackle, exclaiming, “Gol darn it if they ain’t gone and done it again!” God I hate this, though this is followed up by something I think is genuinely funny: a Dalek emerges from the time machine, and instead of being afraid, Alabama Man stands there and laughs at it. The Dalek even seems taken aback by this and presses Alabama Man back toward the mounted telescope. “There ain’t no need to get sore,” he says. “The other movie people was right friendly.” He tells the Dalek that these movie people have already disappeared, and the Dalek returns to the time machine. Once again Alabama Man fiddles with his camera, and once again he turns back to the Dalek time machine only to find that it has already dematerialized. “Well, dang me if they ain’t gone and done it again!” he exclaims, and yes, this is almost an exact copy of the line he just said a minute ago.

Blacklung Soprano and the rest of the tourists come back into the scene to find Alabama Man stomping around where the two time machines once were and feeling the air as if checking for hidden wires. “He’s a nutter,” Blacklung says to one of the tourists, which is not at all American slang. “Keep an eye on him. See that he don’t jump off the building. I’ll get a cop.”

So there’s the first bit of comic relief. It completely killed the tone of the serial, in my opinion, and we still have almost 30 minutes of comedy to get through. I do want to bring up one bit of trivia before moving on, which is that apparently, the producers were so impressed by Peter Purves’s portrayal of Alabama Man that they wrote a character named Steven Taylor into the script of Part 6, also played by Peter Purves. I won’t spoil it if you don’t already know the significance of this decision, but I find it extremely funny that the reason Steven Taylor exists is because of a borderline racist depiction of a man from Alabama.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is working on repairing or altering some piece of machinery. It’s hard to tell what the device is supposed to look like with all the internal mechanisms exposed, but the Doctor says he is trying to find something that they can use to fight back. Barbara calls out that the TARDIS is beginning to land again, but the Doctor says that he is not ready. “We shall have to land and then take off as quickly as we can.”

Next, we see an establishing shot of a beautiful miniature: a wooden sailing ship. It bobs and creaks on a calm sea, drifting through a thin fog. Cut to the deck of the ship, where two men with American accents so bad that I didn’t realize that’s what they were going for are bemoaning the slowness of their progress. One marks down their location on a chalkboard, and they both move offscreen.

Once the men are gone, the TARDIS materializes on deck, and Ian and Barbara exit the ship. Ian tells Barbara to stay close and avoid being seen, and he goes back inside. However, Barbara makes a childish assertion that she loves sailing ships and moves offscreen to see the view off of one of the railings, giving us SomeoneWandersOff #5.

At the railing, she is immediately grabbed by a member of the crew who accuses her of being a stowaway. Barbara denies this, and the man says, “Oh, I suppose you’re some sort of mermaid that’s lost at sea, eh? You swam out from Santa Maria there just to give us poor lonely sailormen a little bit of feminine company, eh?” That line is shockingly dark for something marketed as a children’s show, and it says a lot about 60s culture that this was slipped into a broader sequence of lighthearted comedy. It does serve to make me instantly loathe the man and the rest of his crew, though I’m not sure that this was the intent. Anyway, Vicki emerges from the TARDIS to see the struggle taking place and grabs a conveniently placed cudgel.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are still inside the TARDIS. The Doctor fiddles with the strange device while Ian tells him that they need to land in a place that has enough space for them to make a stand. Then the Doctor tells Ian that the TARDIS is ready to take off once again, and Ian leaves the ship to fetch Barbara and Vicki.

Outside, Barbara is still struggling to break free of the sailor’s hold when we suddenly see a hand holding a cudgel come into the top of the frame. The camera angle changes to reveal that Vicki has climbed up onto a wooden structure behind the skirmish and is poised to strike the sailor. She does so, and he goes down in a limp heap.

Barbara thanks Vicki for the help, but she soon sees someone else approaching and tells Vicki to hide. Then we see Ian come into frame, only to be bashed over the head by Vicki. He sways, nearly passing out, and Vicki hops down to help Barbara support him and get back to the TARDIS, apologizing profusely. There’s the slapstick I warned you about.

The would-be rapist sailor wakes just in time to see the TARDIS dematerialize. He goes to the captain, babbling almost incoherently about something on the lower deck. Eventually, the captain makes out something about a stowaway, and the sailor—named Richardson—says a girl has gotten away from her. The captain blows a whistle and has his men search the ship. Then Richardson tells him that there must be more than one stowaway, because someone else must have hit him over the head while he was restraining Barbara. “Do you think it was the white Barbary terror?” he asks.

“That’s ungodly superstition,” the captain scolds. We learn that the captain’s wife and child are also on the ship, which seems unimportant now but will come up again in a few minutes.

Back on the Dalek time machine, a Dalek announces that they will be arriving soon. Two Daleks stand around one of the spinning spiral features, which changes to show the Daleks an image of the sailing ship. “We are materializing now,” one of them says.

On the sailing ship, one of the sailors suddenly cries out, “The white terror of Barbary!” A Dalek trundles into frame, and all of the sailors freak out, shouting and running away from it. In what is another actually funny bit of comedy, the Daleks are not trying to exterminate the sailors, instead just trying to get them to calm down so they can ask them some questions. The sailors will not listen; they all jump into the ocean, including the captain’s wife, who holds a swaddled baby in her arms. The serial makes a big deal out of this, with various members of the crew abandoning ship over the course of several minutes. It could have been trimmed down quite a bit; I don’t need to see ten different shots of people jumping off a boat. This is what I meant when I said the comedic relief overstays its welcome.

The scene on the ship quiets down momentarily, and we see several Daleks moving about the ship, ascertaining the situation. They have not found the TARDIS, though they still have places left to search. Notably, one of the Daleks is somehow on a deck only accessibly by a ladder, with no indication as to how it is supposed to have gotten up there. For that matter, ships are filled with ladders, so how so the Daleks even expect to search the whole thing? A very strange oversight.

At this moment, one more sailor emerges from a cabin, oblivious to the chaos that has just unfolded. We get a totally unnecessary reprisal of everything we’ve just seen, as the man goes from blubbering to screaming to running to jumping off the boat. For no reason at all, a Dalek falls into the ocean after him, falling apart as it hits the water sideways. Then the Daleks declare that there is no one left on the ship, and they depart in the time machine.

What comes next is a full minute of different angles of the empty, creaking ship, which drags on for way too long. Eventually we see a placard that tells us the name of the ship, the Mary Celeste. I had to look up the significance of this, and it turns out the Mary Celeste was an American merchant ship that was discovered abandoned off the Azorean islands in December of 1872. No one ever figured out why the ship was abandoned, and none of the crew was ever found, alive or dead. This is a very cool idea spoiled by the fact that it was used as a gag in a comedic sequence. I would have loved to see this as the premise of a serial, rather than the slop we were given.

Back in the TARDIS, Barbara takes a moment to chuckle about Vicki hitting Ian over the head, though even in hindsight, Ian fails to see the humor in it. “One thing I did see, by the way,” he says. “The name of that ship we were on…The Mary Celeste.” I get that it’s a children’s show, but the audience doesn’t need to be told something that the showrunners already took the time to show us onscreen. Plus, it would have been really interesting if this was a bit of information that was known to the audience but not the companions, much like the SS Madame de Pompadour in an episode from the 10th Doctor’s run: Girl in the Fireplace.

At any rate, they don’t have long to reflect on this. The Doctor gravely informs them that the Daleks are still hot on their tail and that their lead is down to a bare eight minutes. “It will be reduced even further after our next landing. We must face the facts. The Daleks are closing in on us.” Credits roll.

I’m not sure how the Daleks can arrive on the Mary Celeste after the TARDIS has already departed, chase the sailors around the ship for a bit, search the entire vessel, and still gain time on the TARDIS, but whatever.

Part 4 (Journey into Terror)

The TARDIS materializes in what looks to be a grandiose entrance hall to some mansion or castle. It is dark and gloomy, with tapestries hanging from the forbidding stone walls, unlit candelabra ringing the room, and a wide staircase leading up to the second story. Each stone banister supports three statues of women holding bowls on their heads; fog pours out of these bowls, swirling about their shoulders before dissipating. As the Doctor and his companions exit the TARDIS, suspenseful music plays. Right off the bat, this is a fantastic ambiance for the start of the episode. I sure hope it doesn’t get ruined by a really lame plot.

Ian postulates that the stout walls might make this an ideal place to fight the Daleks. “An upper story,” he adds. “Stairs. Daleks don’t like stairs.” I don’t know, they seem to handle wooden ladders pretty well.

As Ian and Barbara head for the staircase, we hear a sudden flurry of bat wings as the saddest, most flaccid bat on a string jiggles a bit before coming to rest on one of the banisters. I get that it was standard practice for everything to be done in one take, but the showrunners should have definitely made an exception here. Vicki suggests that they might be vampires, and it’s not entirely clear if this is a joke or if she means it. I would have leaned toward joke if not for the extremely childish way she has been portrayed this serial.

The Doctor says that this is rubbish and that they have nothing to be afraid of. When Barbara and Vicki say they want to leave, the Doctor reminds them that they need to find a suitable place to face the Daleks and starts up the stairs to explore. Vicki and Barbara refuse to stray from the TARDIS. Ian looks as if he has a similar inclination, but he hesitantly follows the Doctor upstairs. Once they are gone, Barbara and Vicki bolster their courage and try to help the Doctor and Ian by exploring the lower level.

I’ll go through the next several minutes rather quickly, because I have much more to say about this sequence as a whole than any individual part. Barbara and Vicki approach a wide fireplace and a pair of glowing eyes appears above the mantel. Then they hear an ominous laugh from nowhere in particular, open an empty wooden chest, and scream when a skeleton on a string drops down from the ceiling.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Ian is exploring when we see an image of what is clearly a ghost superimposed over him. Ian doesn’t appear to see this ghost, though he gives an exaggerated shiver as if he can feel its presence. Even after the context of what we will learn later in the episode, this ghost makes no sense. Then the Doctor finds what looks like a laboratory, with a sheet covering something man-shaped on a table. When they approach the table, Frankenstein’s monster sits up and pulls the sheet off of himself. And when I say Frankenstein’s monster, I mean it literally, with the scarred face and the metal bolts sticking out of his neck. Ian and the Doctor flee from the room.

Back downstairs, Barbara and Vicki are talking nervously when a man appears through the doorway behind them and says, “Good evening.” He introduces himself as Count Dracula, and just like with Frankenstein’s monster, his appearance is as literal as the showrunners could make it, with the slicked back hair and the fangs that come down nearly halfway to his chin.

“But you can’t be,” Barbara shrieks. “I mean, not, not really.” Dracula leaves through the same door. “Vicki,” she asks, “do you think there’s something strange going on around here?” I don’t know, Barbara, what was your first clue? Barbara then tries to follow Dracula through the door, but it won’t budge. When she turns back around, Vicki is gone. Then a woman in white appears up on the landing of the second floor and screams something unintelligible. Barbara cowers in the corner of the room, but she screams as the alcove spins and takes her through the wall, much like in The Keys of Marinus, when Arbitan’s pyramid swallowed all of the protagonists through similar doors.

As the Doctor and Ian return to the landing above the stairs, the Doctor has a sudden thought. “Preconditioned. That’s it. Preconditioned!…This house is exactly what you would expect in a nightmare.” He goes on to speculate that they have landed not in a real place, but within the collective fears of human consciousness. Then he adds, “The Daleks can never land here!” Not only is this a preposterous idea that isn’t supported by anything in the series canon, but it doesn’t even make sense on its face. If the Doctor can land in there in his time machine, why not the Daleks?

The two men return to the TARDIS to find that Barbara and Vicki are no longer there. The Doctor thinks they may have followed them upstairs, and they climb the staircase again. As soon as they have gone, the Dalek time machine appears, putting paid to the Doctor’s stupid theory.

Inside the Dalek time machine, the one of the Daleks says that they somewhere on Earth. Two Daleks disembark to search. One of them finds the Doctor and Ian back in the room with the laboratory. Once again, Frankenstein’s monster—whom I will call Frankie from now on—rises from the table. The Doctor and Ian flee. The Dalek fires on Frankie, but doesn’t do any damage. Frankie closes with the Dalek and we hear the Dalek screaming in pain as Frankie flails his hands at the creature.

Next, we see the men rushing downstairs to meet with Barbara and Vicki, who wait at the bottom. If you’re wondering how the women came to be back in the entrance hall, so am I. Vicki babbles something about a secret tunnel, but she gets cut off, and we never hear about it again. The Daleks appear, but so does Dracula. The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara rush into the TARDIS, but Vicki stops to warn Dracula to get away. Dracula takes no heed, and the Daleks open fire on him. But just like with Frankie, this does nothing.

With Vicki still in the entrance hall, the TARDIS begins to wheeze, and we see it dematerialize, leaving her stranded. We don’t have long to dwell on this development, though. Frankie and the woman in white join Dracula, with Frankie picking a Dalek up and throwing it to the ground on its side. Vicki uses the commotion as a distraction and runs inside the Dalek time machine. After another moment, the Daleks realize that they are helpless and retreat into their time machine.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is still adamant that the place they visited wasn’t real, even after the Daleks also appeared there. “We were lodged for a period in an area of human thought.”

Cut back to the entrance hall, where the camera pans over to reveal a ticket booth. “Festival of Ghana 1996,” it says, “Frankenstein’s House of Horrors, price $10.” Then, as if haphazardly added after the fact, “Cancelled by Peking.” And this is where all of the air is let out of the balloon—not that there was very much air to begin with.

I’ll start off with the least important problem. Why would a Ghanaian festival be cancelled by the Chinese? It was a common trope in classic sci-fi to assume globalization would continue until the borders of nations were eventually blurred or eliminated altogether. I’m willing to let this slide, though it really does seem as if Terry Nation threw darts at a world map and picked whatever locations they hit.

Next is the year: 1996. Again, it’s a quirk of old sci-fi to vastly overestimate the pace of scientific progress. It’s not out of the ordinary for writers in the 60s to assume we would have android-esque robots by the 90s—just think about old media which portrayed things like hoverboards and flying cars coming to fruition by the 2000s. Hell, the first Troughton serial will depict interplanetary travel in the year 2020. The idea of very advanced robotics in 1996 is another thing I will let slide.

Then there are the robots themselves, and here is where the episode really starts to fall apart. Like I said, these robots are essentially androids, capable of human speech and movement. They look like they are programmed with a very limited intelligence, but they do demonstrate some intellect in the way they interact with each other and other characters. I would have no problems with the episode’s premise if the protagonists had simply arrived at the festival, been spooked by Frankie and Co., and left without incident.

The problem arises once the robots get violent. First, it’s inconsistent. Why do the robots attack the Daleks on sight but not the humanoids? It’s not as if this directive could be in their programming; they would have no way of knowing what a Dalek looks like in 1996. It makes no sense for the robots to try and scare one group and kill another. Second, why are the robots operational? After all, the festival has been canceled. It’s not like a permanent structure like a strip mall, where occasionally, a store may go out of business and leave all of its merchandise behind. It’s a festival. The operators even left all of the booby traps active. The only thing that I can think of that might explain away some of these issues is that the festival was canceled because the robots were getting violent. But that still doesn’t account for why the Doctor and his companions were able to walk away unscathed.

Next, why did the Dalek lasers have no effect on the robots? We just learned that the TARDIS was spared in Part 2 because of some futuristic, wibbly-wobbly defense mechanism. Are we really supposed to accept that Earth technology in 1996 is that advanced? I get that the whole point of the robots being unaffected is to perpetuate the Doctor’s theory that they are somehow inside the human mind, but this has already been debunked by the mere presence of the Daleks. It goes to show the carelessness of the writing. The Daleks could just as easily have not fired upon the TARDIS in Part 2, or kept the reason it survived the ray guns ambiguous. If the Daleks hadn’t been so explicit in their explanation there, I don’t think I would even be questioning the survival of the robots here.

Lastly, the stupid ghost that phased through Ian. What the hell was that? It can’t be a robot or a hologram because he couldn’t see it, but he reacted as if there was actually something there to feel. Man this place is a shitshow.

Altogether, this setting perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with Terry Nation’s writing and worldbuilding. The closer you look at it, the more it falls apart. Sure, things might look appealing at first glance, and there may even be some moments within the sequence that add legitimate value to the serial. But nothing is ever conceived as if it is meant to make sense within the context of a broader world, and it is impossible to make all the elements mesh without concocting elaborate fan theories. And I keep saying that I mean to talk about this more after the next Dalek serial, but I can’t help getting a little heated when I have to sift through what comes across as rank incompetence. At least I have the final two episodes of the serial to look forward to; those, I genuinely enjoyed.

Moving on, the Doctor continues to work on his strange device in the console room of the TARDIS. Now that I can see it properly, it is a box, roughly the size and shape of the tower of a desktop computer tilted onto its side, with plenty of buttons and gizmos on the outside. Ian calls this the Doctor’s box of tricks, so that’s how I’ll refer to it for the rest of the serial. As the Doctor works, he and Ian talk again about making a final stand against the Daleks. Then Barbara enters, bringing the men some drinks—very heteronormative, with the woman fixing drinks for the men who are talking shop around some machine. She asks where Vicki is, and a stricken look comes over the Doctor’s face. “But I though she was with you,” he says.

Meanwhile, in the Dalek time machine, the Daleks calculate that the TARDIS is headed for the planet Mechanus and set their coordinates to follow it. Then one of them mentions something about a machine they call a Reproducer. “Manufacture will commence at once,” one of them says, and several Daleks move to another part of the room and stand in front of a metal cylinder large enough to contain a humanoid. Then a Dalek says that they will reproduce “their leader, the once they call the Doctor…The humanoid will be completed by the time we arrive at our destination.” The Daleks leave, with one of them opening the metal doors of the Reproducer on its way out. Inside, we can see what looks like an empty pod behind a pane of glass.

Once they are gone, Vicki emerges from where she has been hiding in the corner of the room. She sneaks over to what appears to be some sort of communications relay. Tuning a dial, she speaks into a microphone: “TARDIS? Hello, TARDIS? Come in please, over…Get me out of this. TARDIS! TARDIS!” Then she spots the Reproducer and presses her hands to her head in disbelief. Inside, a reproduction of the Doctor is now visible.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor blames himself for leaving Vicki behind, and the other two try to console him. When Barbara asks if they can go back for her, the Doctor says, “You of all people should know that the TARDIS can’t land in the same time and place twice.” If this is true, what exactly is the function of the fast return switch introduced in The Edge of Destruction? Then the Doctor says it may take months or even years to repair the time mechanism of the TARDIS in order to retrieve Vicki.

That’s when Ian has the idea to capture the Daleks’ time machine. “Doctor,” Barbara adds, “we have nothing to lose, and now we have even more reason to stop and fight.”

Turning hopeful, the Doctor smiles and says, “I say yes. Yes, yes! Our next landing will be our battleground, and we shall fight. We shall fight to the death!” Finally; with this one line, the serial has been given a much needed injection of momentum.

Meanwhile, in the Dalek time machine, we learn that both parties are nearing the planet Mechanus. Though the TARDIS is still slightly ahead, the Daleks will arrive in “four Earth minutes.” Again, it makes no sense for them to convert their own time units into minutes except as a lazy way to communicate this to the audience. Terry Nation could just as easily have had the Doctor say that the Daleks are four minutes behind. We also learn that RoboDoc is nearly complete. “The computer is feeding its memory cells with data,” a Dalek announces. “Activate the robot.” With Vicki looking on, the robot pushes open the door of the Reproducer.

One note about RoboDoc: he is sometimes played by William Hartnell and sometimes played by a body double with Hartnell dubbing over his voice. The body double is clearly not Hartnell, and there are many instances—like this scene—where the cinematography could have done a lot more to obscure the body double’s face and make the idea of reproduction more believable. However, I found both the concept and execution of this plot point to be fantastic—more than adequate enough for me to suspend my disbelief. Going forward, I’m not going to specify when RoboDoc is being played by the double; just know that it is fairly frequent.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS materializes on Mechanus, and the Doctor looks at the scanner to see that the terrain is swampy and overgrown. The trio prepares to disembark, ready to make their final stand.

In the Dalek time machine, the Daleks revel in having successfully duplicated the Doctor. They look on as RoboDoc exits the Reproducer; one of the Daleks asks him if he understands his orders. “Understand? Of course I understand, my dear fellow,” RoboDoc answers with the Doctor’s typical impatience. “I am to infiltrate and kill. Infiltrate and kill.” Credits roll.

Part 5 (The Death of Doctor Who)

The episode starts off with our first actual look at the jungles of Mechanus, and we are greeted with a very gnarly looking fungus that stands taller than a person. What look like festering pustules are arranged in rings around its stalk, and weedy vines emerge from the top its cap, a cap with a texture that resembles old, heavily wrinkled flesh. Fantastic creature design.

It is nighttime, and the jungle is dark. The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara move away from the TARDIS doors to examine one of these fungi, while unbeknownst to them, another fungus scuttles along the ground behind them, much more mobile than one would expect them to be. The Doctor holds his walking stick, and Ian holds the Doctor’s box of tricks: the device that the Doctor repaired so that it can be used as a weapon against the Daleks. Ian calls the strange new lifeforms living fungoids, and one of the fungoids shrinks back when the Doctor pokes it with his walking stick. “I think this is the moment when discretion is the better part of valor,” the Doctor says. “Let’s get back to the ship.” But when they turn back toward the TARDIS, they find that the creeping fungoid has blocked their path. In fact, the fungoids seem to be closing in on them from all sides. Ian slaps at one, only to discover that it stings when touched.

Just when it looks like they will be overcome, a bright light suddenly shines from above, and the fungoids shrink away from the light. More than that, Ian discovers that the light shines in a straight line through the jungle, forming a corridor of light guaranteed to be free of fungoids. “Doctor, this could be an ideal place to fight those Daleks,” Ian remarks. The three of them start down the lit path.

Elsewhere, the Dalek time machine has also landed in the jungle. Three Daleks once again confirm their directives with RoboDoc, who once again says in the Doctor’s moderately annoyed cadence, “Infiltrate, separate, and kill. Yes, yes. I understand.” The Daleks also say that all forms of life on Mechanus are to be treated as hostile. Then RoboDoc leaves to begin his mission, and the Daleks follow it at a distance.

Once RoboDoc and the Daleks are offscreen, Vicki sneaks out of the Dalek time machine. Looking around anxiously, she picks a different path through the jungle.

Next, the scene cuts back to the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara, who are still walking through the jungle. Once they pass through the scene, we discover that RoboDoc follows closely behind, stealthing his way after them.

In another part of the forest, Vicki dodges out of eyesight to avoid a patrolling Dalek and is almost engulfed when a fungoid descends on her. She rolls out from underneath the creature and dashes away.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara have reached the end of the corridor of lights, and they find an empty cavern. The walls of the cavern have long, striated patterns on them, some straight, some curled in a way that reminds me of a fingerprint. I think they are supposed to be vines, or else rivulets that the vines have carved into the rocky walls. I like them; they give the cavern a very atmospheric feel.

As they enter the cavern, Ian wonders aloud at why a system of lights would lead them to a place like this. Then Barbara finds a strange object against the rear wall of the cavern—it looks a bit like a short walking stick, perhaps three feet long. It looks to be made of silvery metal, roughly cylindrical, with one end as thick as a fist that tapers elegantly to another end as thin as a pencil. The Doctor supposes it must be a weapon, and he takes it from her to examine. Then he presses a button somewhere, and the thin end lights up, a small light not even as bright as a candle. Apparently, this is meant to frighten off the fungoids, but it’s basically the world’s most underwhelming flashlight. I don’t really get how it’s supposed to help anyone.

Barbara seems to be excited by the prospects of using it, though. She takes it from the Doctor and mimes firing a gun out into an imaginary swarm of Daleks, while Ian gestures excitedly with the Doctor’s box of tricks. “Just a moment, now,” the Doctor says matter-of-factly. “There’s something I haven’t told you, dear boy. We cannot use this machine in an enclosed area. Otherwise, we shall all go up in smoke.” Turning anxious, Barbara realizes that the Daleks can use the corridor of lights to find the cavern just as easily as they did, and the Doctor begins to look around for a cable or some other mean of cutting the lights.

Back in the jungle, Vicki has found the TARDIS. She lets out a sigh of relief and begins knocking at the door, calling out for the Doctor. While she is knocking, a fungoid nearly engulfs her again, and she is forced to flee back into the jungle, whereupon she also finds the corridor of lights. Curious, she begins to follow it.

Inside the cavern, the Doctor does manage to find a cable, and Ian cuts it. Unfortunately for Vicki, the lights are extinguished and she is quickly surrounded by fungoids. She screams, a sound that is heard by the trio in the cavern. Barbara appears to recognize the scream, but before she can say anything to the others, the Doctor and Ian rush off to find the source of the cry, with the Doctor telling Barbara to stay and watch over his box of tricks.

The men find Vicki unconscious, and Ian presses the pathetic flashlight toward a fungoid to back it away from her body. Again, I don’t know why this prop is necessary; the Doctor accomplished the exact same thing with his walking stick in the beginning of the episode. “Vicki!” Ian exclaims, once he realizes who he is looking at. “She must have smuggled herself aboard the Daleks’ time machine. So they’ve arrived.”

Meanwhile, RoboDoc enters the cavern where Barbara awaits the return of her friends. When Barbara asks where Ian is, RoboDoc says, in a very nonplussed tone, “Barbara, my dear, Chesterton is dead.” Barbara is dumbstruck by this, but she also seems put off by the fake Doctor’s blasé tone, as if he might be mistaken or playing some dark joke. When she asks him to clarify, the Doctor says lightly, “Come with me. Perhaps you can help. Come along, come along. Hurry.” RoboDoc leads Barbara back into the jungle.

Next, we see the Doctor and Ian—who is carrying Vicki—reenter the cave to find Barbara missing. Ian places Vicki on the floor, saying he will go out and look for her, while the Doctor stays and cares for Vicki. Ian has hardly left the cave when Vicki awakes, and, seeing the Doctor standing over her, she recoils, thinking him to be the fraud. She cries out, which brings Ian quickly back into the cave, but when she sees Ian, she deduces that the Doctor must be the real one if Ian is with him. That logic doesn’t really check out, but she has come to the right conclusion. She tells the Doctor and Ian about the imposter, which leads the Doctor to correctly assume that Barbara would never have left the cave unless he or Ian told her otherwise. Realizing the danger Barbara is in, they all dash out of the cave to find her.

Now leading RoboDoc, an impatient Barbara comes to a small clearing in the jungle and becomes frustrated by the fake Doctor’s leisurely pace. “We must find him. You do dawdle so!” Suddenly, she hears Ian calling for her through the trees, and she is elated. “He’s alright, Doctor!” She says, putting her back to RoboDoc. “He’s alright!”

Barbara turns just in time to see RoboDoc coming toward her with his walking stick held high, ready to strike her down. She screams, and manages to grab the walking stick as she falls on her back, trying desperately to keep RoboDoc from pressing it into her throat. Perhaps hearing Barbara’s scream, Ian rushes in just in time, pulling RoboDoc away from Barbara. Then RoboDoc elbows Ian in the liver and escapes into the jungle. Ian tells Barbara that it was an imposter and helps her to her feet, and together, they chase after RoboDoc.

Next, we see Vicki reunite with Ian and Barbara in another clearing. Vicki is very relieved to see Barbara alive and in one piece. Just then, both RoboDoc and the real Doctor enter from opposite sides of the clearing in what is the oldest doppelganger trope in the book. We will see the exact same premise play out in The Rebel Flesh, an episode from the 11th Doctor’s run. The companions don’t know who to trust, with each Doctor trying to assure them that they are, in fact, the Doctor. Ian picks one seemingly at random and starts fighting with it, while the other one looks on with Barbara and Vicki, seeming pleased with the turn of events. “Chesterton,” he says, “now’s your chance. Destroy it. Destroy it with a rock!” He pulls Vicki into his arms. “Susan,” he says soothingly, “don’t look this way. It’ll be nasty.”

Hearing the Doctor call Vicki by the wrong name, Barbara realizes that Ian is fighting the wrong Doctor and that the one holding Vicki must be RoboDoc. I didn’t realize how Barbara figured this out on my first watch-through; blink, and you might miss it. However, now that I understand what is going on, I love the implications of this scene. It means that the Daleks must have trained RoboDoc on the data they collected the last time they squared off against the Doctor, which was back during Susan’s run. Seeing a girl around Susan’s height and stature, RoboDoc has no reason to suspect it isn’t actually the Doctor’s granddaughter. It’s such a clever twist, and I have to rate it as the most mind-blowing moment so far in the series.

Ian steps away from the real Doctor, leaving him free to confront RoboDoc directly. After a brief spar with their walking sticks, the Doctor reaches into RoboDoc’s shirt and yanks out a fistful of cords, incapacitating the doppelganger. The Doctor prods RoboDoc gently with his walking stick, and the robot collapses to the jungle floor, defeated. The Doctor stands over robot, smiling for a moment, before tossing the wires down onto its corpse and saying, “Hmm, I must get a Doctor.” Brutal sendoff, Doc. See, Ian? That’s how you deliver a one-liner.

Meanwhile, the Daleks have found the TARDIS, but they’ve lost contact with the robot and have no idea where the Doctor and his companions are. With the fungoids active all around them, they decide to launch a full-scale search of the jungle at daybreak.

Back at the cavern, Barbara and Vicki sleep inside, while the Doctor and Ian sit in the entrance, keeping watch. Ian tells the Doctor to go inside and get some rest. During this conversation, a careful viewer might notice something poking into the top left corner of the shot. It’s a black object on a dark background, and at first, I assumed this to be the boom creeping into the shot, something that’s happened a few times. However, as the Doctor falls asleep next to the women and Ian falls asleep on his watch, this is revealed to be some sort of camera or electronic eye. It surveys the Doctor and his companions as they sleep.

The following morning, the Doctor is the first to wake. Rising, he exits the cave and notices something out of frame, something so important that he nudges Ian awake to show him. “Look there!” he exclaims, pointing. We then see a spectacular miniature depicting an intricately shaped white city, poised hundreds of feet above the tangle of the jungle on five massive struts. The visible buildings are all interlocked curves and arches, and the whole structure appears as if it were fabricated out of stained glass. This is now my new favorite miniature in the series, eclipsing the spaceships at the beginning of The Space Museum. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out.

The Doctor then wakes up Barbara and Vicki, and the quartet marvels at the fact that they had been running around beneath such a grand city all night without knowing it. They don’t have long to gape at it, however. Out in the jungle, they see Daleks approaching from multiple directions. Retreating back into the cave, they frantically consider their options. They have to be able to leave the cave in order for the Doctor to use his box of tricks, but they can’t go out the most obvious way with the oncoming Daleks. Neither can they climb the cliff face up to the city; it’s too sheer. Ian suggests that the Doctor exit the cave and pretend that he is the robot, but after a brief discussion with Barbara, they agree it is likely a bad idea. Ian turns to tell the ask the Doctor what they should do, only to discover that the Doctor has taken a liking to Ian’s suggestion. He has already left the cave to confront the Daleks, posing as RoboDoc.

Meanwhile, the Daleks marshal their forces outside the cave, whipping themselves up into a murderous frenzy. “Align and advance! Advance and attack! Attack and destroy! Destroy and rejoice!” I like the cult-like undertones here.

Cut back to the cave, where we watch the companions as they listen while the Doctor attempts to bluff his way into the Daleks’ confidence. “I have infiltrated and killed. We may now return to Skaro.” The Daleks don’t buy it, and the Doctor makes it back into the cavern steps ahead of Dalek laser fire. With nothing else for it but to try to use his box of tricks, the Doctor goes to set it up in the middle of the cave.

Before he can put it down, a section of the wall slides open to reveal an elevator-sized compartment with most of the space taken up by a large, spherical robot, its exterior composed of triangular panels, with a small dish sticking out of the very top of the sphere. In a pinched, halting, high-pitched monotone, the robot identifies itself as a Mechonoid and tells the Doctor and his companions to enter.

The quartet seems a bit shellshocked by this sudden development, and they stand there gaping for a moment, heads swiveling between the Mechanoid and the approaching Daleks. Then Ian gestures toward the Mechanoid, and in what is peak comedic timing, he says, “You heard what the gentleman said. Let’s go!” They all rush into the compartment as the screen fades to black. Credits roll.

Part 6 (The Planet of Decision)

It turns out that the compartment actually is an elevator car; the doors slide shut as soon as the Doctor and his companions enter, and it begins to rise. The Doctor says to the Mechanoid, “You got us out of a nasty situation there. I suppose you’d like to know who we are and why we’re here.” The Mechanoid remains silent. Barbara tells him to ask it where they are going, to which the Doctor replies, “He’s taking us up to the city, obviously.”

Back in the cave, the Daleks make plans to penetrate the rock wall and infiltrate the white city.

When the elevator reaches the top of the shaft, the doors open, and the Mechanoid wheels out of the elevator. It makes some very interesting noises: a series of clicks like a woodpecker, interrupted every now and then by a resonant sound like water sloshing around in a metal drum. It tells the quartet to follow it across a narrow bridge to the city proper.

We then get a closeup shot of a miniature Mechanoid moving along the miniature bridge. I have to say, it was a mistake to film this miniature up close. From a distance, with the proper lighting, the city has a beautiful, cathedral-like feel. Up close, however, you can see small black flecks in the white material, and it almost looks dirty. It’s poor direction and cinematography, and it diminishes the miniature enough in my mind that actually no, the one in The Space Museum is better.

On the other side of the bridge, there’s this cute scene where two Mechanoids have to negotiate a hallway not quite wide enough for them to pass. The one escorting the humanoids flaps these little, rounded metal arms, almost like a small bit of robotic road rage, until the second Mechanoid backs off to let them pass.

The Mechanoid brings them to a large, square room. The most striking feature of the space is a large structure made of wood in the exact middle. It includes stairs that lead up somewhere, but it has the spindly, temporary feel of scaffolding more than anything else. Except for a narrow bed against one wall, the room is otherwise empty. Barbara and Vicki seem quite pleased with the turn of events, but the Doctor is a little suspicious. “Haven’t you noticed something very singular about this place?…We’ve seen only robots. No animal life, human or otherwise.”

Just then, a man calls out, “Stay where you are!” and hops down from the wooden structure. He is on the short side, about half a head shorter than Ian and about the same height as the Doctor. He looks a lot like Ian, actually, with a similar build and hairstyle, though his hair is about a month’s growth longer and he has a week’s worth of stubble on his face. His clothes look clean but tarnished, as if he has had to wear the same outfit for a very long time.

At first, the man looks at the newcomers as if he isn’t quite sure if they’re real. When he finds out that they are from Earth, he becomes elated, babbling, “From Earth? That couldn’t have happened! I worked out the odds. Two-thousand-to-one against— Hey, I supposed they realized I was on my way back when— Well, who won the wars? Look, I’m Steven Taylor. Flight red-fifty.” It’s the same actor who played Alabama Man back in Part 3, Peter Purves.

Steven grabs something from the jumble of wood behind him and flips it to Barbara, who catches a small stuffed panda. “That’s my mascot, Hi-Fi,” he says. I get the impression that Steven isn’t a very stable person, though none of the protagonists appear to have had that reaction. In a moment, though, it becomes clear why Steven is so erratic: the Doctor asks Steven how long he has been here, to which Steven answers, “As far as I can make out, about two years.”

Steven seems confused when the Doctor and his companions don’t appear to know anything about the city or the planet beneath it, so he launches into some exposition. “This is Mechanus…About 50 years ago, Earth decided to colonize this planet. Well, it landed a rocket full of robots programmed to clear landing sites, get everything ready for the first immigrants…Earth got involved in interplanetary wars. I suppose this place was forgotten…Two years [ago,] I crashed, you see, out there in the jungle and wandered around for days trying to avoid those fungus things. Of course, then the Mechanoids captured me.” It then becomes clear that the Mechanoids have been holding Steven in this room as a prisoner and that it seems the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki are meant to share his prison cell. “Exactly like a zoo,” he adds. “Only we’re the specimens that are on display.”

A small tangent: remember how Terry Nation started off the serial in the Desert Desert on planet Desert? Well, the name Mechanus is actually worse. Because not only is it a lazy name based on the Mechanoids, but the Mechanoids aren’t even native to the planet. They’ve only been there for 50 years, and they’re just the tools the humans used to construct a habitat for them to settle in. It would be like building the Empire State Building and naming it after one of the cranes used to hoist the beams into place. It’s ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the Daleks use their equipment to penetrate through the cavern wall into the elevator. They enter the elevator car and ready an attack against the Mechanoids.

In the city, Steven tells the others that the only way he stays sane is by building things, sating that he built the large wooden structure and that it leads to the roof. I don’t see how this is plausible; there’s basically a whole tree’s worth of lumber in this structure, so where would he have gotten it from? I doubt the Mechanoids just had all this wood lying around, and even if they did, it probably wouldn’t be in a place that Steven can access. As far as we know, he is restricted to this room.

Anyway, Ian wants to know why Steven has never used the roof as a means of escape, but Steven says that it’s a 1500-foot drop to the jungle floor. The Doctor isn’t deterred; he wants to see the roof for himself, and he and Ian climb up. Once there, they immediately find a solution: there is a spool of cable that they think they can use to climb down to the ground. The only thing keeping them from utilizing it is that one end of the cable is plugged into a junction box, though Ian says it should come free with a few good pulls.

Alright, Terry, I see you starting to slip back into your bullshit again. First, just eyeballing the coil, it doesn’t look nearly long enough to reach the ground. It seems to me like it’s about the length of two spools of garden hose. I could see it maybe extending out to a length of 500 feet, certainly not 1500. And I admit, this is a problem of set design, not writing, so I can’t really blame Terry Nation for that one. But I can for the second obvious question, which is: why the hell hasn’t Steven done this over the last two years? When the Doctor and Ian return to the others, Steven’s excuse is that the cable was too strong and that he couldn’t break it, but as we will soon see, it only takes four of them pulling on the cable to get it free. You’re telling me that over the span of two years, Steven couldn’t figure out a way to get it loose?

Like I said, the Doctor and Ian tell the others what they have found, and they discuss its viability as an escape route. The decision is suddenly made for them, however, as Vicki sees the Daleks coming up the corridor. While it confronts a Mechanoid, the Doctor finally sets up his box of tricks, and they all scurry up to the roof.

By the time the two Daleks destroy the Mechonoid and enter the room, the five humanoids are out of sight. “Dispatch a section to the roof area,” one of them commands, and I just want to say, how? Steven has made it very clear that his makeshift staircase is the only way up. Regardless, one Dalek leaves the room, while the remaining one accidentally slides backward into the Doctor’s box of tricks. It turns out that it just has one trick, which is to release a puff of smoke as the sound of an explosion is played. Like with Dortmun’s useless bombs in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, there is no visible evidence of something having exploded, except for the Dalek spinning around like a top and yelling “Am exterminated!” over and over again. It’s a very unsatisfying way to wrap up a plot point that has been a major focal point since the end of Part 2.

Then we get some of the most uninteresting action sequences I have ever seen, with perhaps the two least athletic creatures in the history of the show going at it. We see a Mechanoid put its stupid little arms around a Dalek, which then announces it is “totally immobilized” despite looking as if it should be able to just back out of the embrace. We’ll come back to the fight in a moment, but even without the context of the remaining 24 seasons, this has to rank among the bottom five fights in all of Classic Doctor Who.

On the roof, everyone but Vicki tugs on the coil and pulls it free from the wall. Vicki is too preoccupied by the dizzying drop to the surface of the planet, and it comes out that Vicki is terrified of heights. Ian and the Doctor have a cruel but effective solution for this: they blindfold Vicki, tie the cable around her underarms, and lower her to the ground. Throughout this sequence, Vicki is sobbing, with Maureen O’Brian giving one of the most convincing acting performances of the series so far.

As they begin to lower Vicki to the ground, Steven realizes that the city has started to burn, with smoke billowing out of the building. He lets go of the coil and runs back inside for his stuffed panda, and in the process, Vicki plummets what must be a few dozen feet before Barbara can take hold of the coil, nearly being yanked over the side herself. The Doctor and Ian grab Barbara’s legs, and they are soon able to resume lowering Vicki to the ground.

Below, the fight continues. We get lots of quick cuts between the Daleks and the Mechanoids to try and give these immobile entities the appearance of motion, but it doesn’t work very well. Eventually, each side forms up in some sort of gathering place with the Daleks on one side of the room and the Mechanoids on the other. There are more quick cuts and zooms to the Dalek ray guns and flamethrowers that protrude from the Mechanoids. Other images are superimposed on over the sequence, with slowly thickening smoke and cartoonish explosions to give the impression that the city is burning without actually showing it.

Next, we join the Doctor, Vicki, and Barbara on the ground, at the bottom of one of the struts that holds up the city, next to a rope dangling from above. None of them are hurt; Vicki is shaken but okay. She asks where Steven is, and the Doctor says they don’t know, telling her that his chances of surviving after going back into the building are low. Ian slides down the rope joining them on the ground. The quartet doesn’t have time to hang around for Steven—the whole city is about to collapse. They run away from the structure, and we are given billowing clouds of ash superimposed over another shot of the miniature of the city. Explosions thunder across the jungle landscape, and it is implied that none of the Daleks or the Mechanoids can survive such a disaster.

The scene fades to black before cutting to the exterior of the Dalek time machine. The Doctor, Barbara, and Vicki wait apprehensively as Ian checks the inside to make sure no Daleks remained behind. We hear a tinny “Halt! You will be exterminated!” from inside the ship, but it turns out that it was just Ian doing an impression and holding his nose. He strides out of the Dalek ship, and they all have a laugh about this. Then Vicki offers to show the Doctor around the interior of the ship—after all, she has already traveled on it. The two head inside.

Once they are alone, a thought occurs to Barbara, and she turns to face Ian, oddly hesitant. “Ian,” she says, “do you realize we could get home?”

Ian pauses. “Home? Yes. Do you want to?”

“Yes,” she says, seemingly surprised at her own lack of hesitation. “I never realized it before.”

“Neither did I,” answers Ian. “We may never get another chance.”

“Do you think we could work it?”

“Well, would the Doctor take us?”

“Let’s ask him,” says Barbara. She takes Ian’s hand and they hurry inside.

Meanwhile, we get a brief scene of Steven stumbling through the jungle, dodging past fungoids and calling out for the Doctor. It looks like he made it out of the burning city after all.

Then we cut back to the Doctor storming out of the Dalek time machine, steps ahead of Ian, Barbara, and Vicki. He is in a taking, probably as mad as we’ve ever seen the 1st Doctor. “I don’t want to know! I want none of this! I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life! You’ll end up as a couple of burnt cinders, flying around in space! You idiots! You are absolute idiots!”

“We are not idiots!” Barbara screams back at him. “We want to go home!”

“Yes, home!” Ian agrees, picking up the argument from Barbara. “I want to sit in a pub and drink a pint of beer again. I want to walk in a park and watch a cricket match. Above all, I want to belong somewhere, do something, instead of this aimless drifting around in space!”

Then Barbara tries a slightly gentler approach. “Look, I know we thrust ourselves upon you, but we’ve been through a great deal together since then. And all we’ve been through will remain with us always. It’ll probably be the most exciting part of my life. Look, Doctor, we’re different people, and now we have a chance to go home. We want to take that chance. Will you help us work that machine?”

The Doctor refuses to budge. “No! No! I will not aid and abet suicide.”

Frustrated, Ian and Barbara go off to one side, and Vicki takes the Doctor aside to speak with him. “Doctor,” she says, “you’ve got to let them go if they want to. They want to be back in their own time.”

“Don’t you want to go with them, child?” the Doctor asks scornfully.

Vicki smiles. “What for? What would I want to be back in their time for? I want to be with you. Doctor, you’ve got to help them…It’s up to them.”

The Doctor turns back to the schoolteachers. “Do you both realize the enormous risks?” They both say that they do and that they still want to go. “Very well,” he says, crossing to the threshold of the Dalek time machine. “But you must follow my instructions implicitly, understood? Implicitly! You will both have about a fifty-fifty chance. Follow me. Come along.” All four of them disappear into the ship.

Some time passes, and we see the Doctor and Vicki exit the ship. Vicki turns back to watch, but the Doctor can’t bear it, facing away from his departing companions. The Dalek time machine whistles and dematerializes, and the Doctor puts an arm around Vicki and leads her off into the jungle.

I really, really like how much light this exchange sheds on the Doctor’s character. The Doctor began this scene exhibiting a complicated mixture of selfishness and betrayal: selfishness in his desire to continue on like nothing will ever change and betrayal at Ian and Barbara’s desire to affect that change in his life. He is able to couch this within an argument about their request being very unsafe—and it’s quite possible that he has even convinced himself that their safety is his primary concern—but above all else, he is self-conscious, taking Ian and Barbara’s request as a validation of the niggling, destructive thoughts that he is somehow not good enough for them or that he has done something wrong. It’s not until Vicki expresses her desire to stay that the Doctor is able to overcome these feelings and let his friends go. And that final departure, with the Doctor unable to watch, gave me chills. He is heartbroken.

The scene cuts to the exterior of a nondescript garage. The door opens, and Barbara and Ian slowly emerge, looking around. Across the street is a station of the London Underground, and the date on the registration of a nearby car tells them it’s 1965. Barbara and Ian embrace. “We made it!” Ian exclaims.

“Hey, we’re two years out,” says Barbara, meaning two years from when they initially entered the TARDIS in 1963.

Ian shrugs this off. “Oh, what’s two years amongst friends? We’re home! I’ll just go and press that button.” He slips back inside the garage. A moment later, there is a loud beeping, and Ian and Barbara scamper across the street just in time to see an explosion light up the windows of the garage. The Dalek time machine is no more. “Well, that’s put paid to the Daleks’ time traveling for a while.”

“It’ll give the Doctor a breather, anyway,” says Barbara.

“Yes,” Ian agrees. “I wonder where he is right now?”

Barbara calls out, “Hey, Doctor! Wherever you are—”

“Shh!” Ian interrupts. “Someone’s coming.”

“Goodbye, Doctor!” Barbara whispers, looking up toward the clear blue sky. “Thanks for the ride!”

We then get still pictures of Ian and Barbara gallivanting across London, looking joyful and free: feeding pigeons at Trafalgar Square, making shocked faces at a blue police box…just enjoying being safe and sound back in the place they belong. It’s not as emotionally hard-hitting as Susan’s departure, but it is a wonderful way to represent their homecoming.

The sequence ends by changing back to footage of Ian and Barbara hopping on a bus. The conductor asks for their fares, and Ian gives what must have been the price of a bus ticket in 1963, saying, “Two threes, please.”

“Two threes?” the conductor scoffs. “You must be joking. Where’ve you been, on the moon?”

“Er, no, but you’re getting warm,” Ian says with a twinkle in his eye. Barbara shushes him, giving him a push. They both break into laughter.

Then, we have an amazing callback to Part 1, as the footage suddenly becomes grainy and the camera pulls out to reveal that the Doctor and Vicki are watching all of this happen on the Time-Space Visualizer in the console room of the TARDIS. This is so well done, tying a neat bow on a fantastic companion departure.

“Doctor, they made it!” Vicki says exuberantly. “They made it!”

The Doctor is much more somber about what he has just seen. “I shall miss them,” he says sadly, switching off the Time-Space Visualizer. “Yes. I shall miss them. Silly old fusspots.” He pauses, gathering himself. “Come along, my dear. It’s time we were off.” The TARDIS dematerializes. Credits roll.

One last piece of criticism, because I just can’t let it go. We never saw Ian give the TARDIS magnet back to the Doctor. Theoretically, he could find the Doctor again whenever the TARDIS lands on Earth during his timeline. While this would be a great premise for a future audio adventure, in the current lore, this only serves to deepen the most unnecessary plot hole I’ve encountered to this point in the series. Thanks, Terry.

Takeaways

What a great sendoff for Ian and Barbara. I don’t have much else to say about it that isn’t self-evident, other than if you haven’t seen it yourself, it’s well worth the watch. I agree with the Doctor; I’ll miss them too.

Since the serial was divided into three acts, that’s how I’ll structure this section of my review. First is Act I, the adventure on the desert planet Aridius. At its best moments, I found it to be just tolerable, and there were many points where the quality dipped well below that of an average serial. Vicki’s characterization took a major blow with how she was portrayed, a childishness that often served as a mechanism to drive the plot forward in very irritating ways. I’m starting to accept that she’s just a bad character, though she does have her moments in the sun. The narrative of Part 2 was especially stagnant, with the protagonists going most of its runtime without making a single decision or showing any agency. The Aridians were subpar, with an underwhelming design and unclear motivations. And don’t even get me started on the TARDIS magnet.

Act II started off well, with a lovely transition to New York City and the observation deck of the Empire State Building. But it was all downhill from there, as we have to suffer through Blacklung Soprano and Alabama Man and a sequence on a boat which could have been cut in half and probably still have been too long. Yet nothing was offensively bad until Part 4 and the trainwreck that was the Festival of Ghana 1996. The worldbuilding was atrocious; nothing was cohesive, with so many elements that contradicted things that happened in other serials, other episodes in this serial, and even things that were set up in the same episode. I can’t think of a single episode that has done more to obscure Doctor Who canon to this point in the series.

And then Act III managed to turn it all around with a great plot device in RoboDoc and a fantastic companion departure. Most of its problems were much more extraneous than in the earlier acts, like the disappointing flashlight and the Doctor’s underwhelming box of tricks—though its biggest problem, the fight between Daleks and Mechanoids, did take a lot away from the climax. The pacing was faster, the character interactions were much more satisfying, and the whole two-episode arc constantly felt as if it were building tension, unlike many of the sequences in the first two acts. And RoboDoc giving up the game by calling Vicki by the wrong name was pure genius—hands-down the best moment of the serial. If I were rating The Chase solely based on its final two episodes, I’d give it something in the high 8s or low 9s. As it is, the mediocre score I end up giving it is more a testament to the failure of its first four episodes than the success of its conclusion.

Looking forward, there’s the obvious question of who will fill the shoes of Ian and Barbara. Spoiler: it’s Steven. At the beginning of the next serial, The Time Meddler, we learn that Steven has entered the TARDIS, half-delirious from smoke inhalation and his run through the jungle, and passed out in the living quarters. Like with Vicki, I’m excited to see if/how the writers make a point of establishing him as a unique character, though I am a bit apprehensive having seen his erratic behavior and his dumb panda. I don’t recall him being particularly strange though, so perhaps he mellows out once the Doctor gets him back into civilization. Additionally, if I am remembering correctly, The Time Meddler is the first instance we have in the series of an alien presence manipulating the course of events in a serial set in the past. I’m ready to finally experience a narrative that mixes sci-fi elements with historical fiction.

Rating: 5.4/10

Chapter Text

2.9 – The Time Meddler

Thesis: Purely Historical Serials

In my introduction, I gave an overview of what a generic Doctor Who setting might look like. I talked about how the conventions of the setting change depending on whether it is set in the past, the future, or the present day, and I gave a few criteria of what I think makes for a good setting in each case. For serials that take place in the past, I had two main observations. First, these serials are at their best when they feature the Doctor getting mixed up in known historical events. And second, each serial needs to have an alien presence small enough to be explained away as something else—the world at large won’t have its first alien contact until 2005 in The Christmas Invasion.

I wrote that as I was approaching the end of Season 21, and there is the baked-in assumption that all serials set in the past have an extraterrestrial element. After all, it’s Doctor Who; that’s how it goes. However, I forgot about the rigid divide that existed between science fiction and historical fiction at the very beginning of the series. To this point in the show, the future has had aliens and the past has had historical figures, and the two do not intermingle. Within the Doctor Who fandom, serials that take place in the past without any sci-fi elements are known as historical serials, or more simply, historicals.

As the first serial set in the past to include elements of science fiction, The Time Meddler breaks with this precedent. I don’t want to spoil the big reveal of the serial quite yet, but speaking as generally as I can, I think this reveal did about as much to affect the trajectory of the series as any single story can. It has massive implications for the Doctor personally, and it introduces an aliens-throughout-history dynamic which will eventually become the norm for the series. I see a lot of parallels between this serial and The Reign of Terror, the finale of Season 1, which began to establish the Doctor as a time-travelling rogue who can sachet into any room and bluff his way out of any situation. What Reign of Terror did for the Doctor’s character, The Time Meddler does for the character of the entire show.

And at a more micro level, The Time Meddler also brings a much-needed change of pace to the series. I have a list where I’m keeping track of all the ratings I’m giving these serials from best to worst, and I figured I would eventually get to the point where I can track what I perceive to be the peaks and valleys of the series. But I was surprised to be able to see some trends developing this early on in the retrospective. At this point in the series, having just finished Season 2, Serial 8, we have seen what I consider to be a marked drop in quality from Season 1. Six of my top eight rated serials are Season 1 stories, and the two that aren’t are the first two serials of Season 2. Over the last six serials, I’ve rated none of them higher than a 5.5. There have been some bright spots—like the first episode of The Space Museum and the last two episodes of The Chase—but on the whole, nothing has wowed me.

The Time Meddler is the first indication of better days to come. Not right away; from what I remember of the Season 3 serials, it will get worse before it gets better. But the success of the serial and the novelty of the aliens-throughout-history dynamic is the first nail in the coffin for the purely historical serials. After Season 2, we will only encounter five more before they disappear for over a decade. This change, more than anything else so far, will mold the series into a version of the show that is more characteristic of the Doctor Who that most fans today would recognize.

Part 1 (The Watcher)

The serial opens up inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor is operating the console and Vicki is ambling about near an ornate clock—similar to the one that got mangled during The Edge of Destruction. Vicki sighs and says, “I shall miss them, Doctor.” The Doctor commiserates with her, reminiscing about Ian, Barbara, and Susan. Then he calls Vicki over for a heart-to-heart. During this, there is a great bit of dialogue where Vicki says that Ian and Barbara weren’t getting any younger and the Doctor gets mildly offended at the implication that he, too, might be an old geezer. Vicki assures him that this is not the case before prattling on about where they might be headed next.

Slightly irritated, the Doctor tells Vicki that he didn’t call her over for lighthearted quips. He continues, “I just wanted to ask you, are you sure you didn’t want to go home too? I didn’t give you very much time to consider, now did I. I should hate to think that you’re just staying for the sake of an old man.”

Vicki smiles. “Oh, Doctor, I made my decision. I wanted to stay. Anyway, I wouldn’t have anything to go back to.”

“Yes,” the Doctor begins, “your father—”

He is interrupted by a thump and a rattle from behind the closed doors of the living quarters. The way this is staged is excellent. For the second half of the Doctor and Vicki’s conversation, we’ve had one extended shot pushed very close into the protagonists, which lends the scene a very intimate and comforting feel. The doors to the living quarters are right behind them, but until the mysterious sounds interrupt the dialogue, the audience doesn’t have any reason to pay attention to them. Then there’s the thump, and both the audience and the characters are yanked out of their comfort zone and made to focus of the doors. Really great stuff.

The Doctor and Vicki are immediately on red alert; Vicki says that it must be a Dalek. They go to stand next to the doors where they might catch someone exiting by surprise, with the Doctor poised to throw his coat over a Dalek eyestalk. Instead, Steven stumbles out of the living quarters, with his stupid panda in one hand and his clothes torn in multiple places. He takes two steps into the console room and faints.

Cut to some seaside bluffs, where we see the TARDIS materializing on the beach next to the crashing waves. At the top of the cliff is a man with a horrible bowl cut wearing a monk’s habit. He stands with his arms folded, looking down at the waterfront. Seeing the TARDIS, his eyes go wide—not as if he is amazed but as if he recognizes it from somewhere. “I wonder,” he says. “Oh, I wonder.”

Back in the TARDIS, Steven has recovered somewhat and is sitting in a chair, drinking a glass of water. He tells the others that he nearly died. “I just managed to climb down that cable before it burned out. Then I came after you.” Vicki tells him he should have shouted, and he scoffs, “Should have? I never stopped!” Then he seems to take in the console room for the first time. “Say, this is quite a ship you’ve got here, Doc. Never seen anything like it.”

The Doctor rounds on him sternly. “Now listen to me, young man…Now there are two things you can do. One, sit there until you get your breath back. And two, don’t call me ‘Doc’! Now, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, yes, whatever you say, Doc,” Steven says, before remembering to add a very belated “-tor!” Right off the bat, I really like Steven’s charisma. He has a large stage presence, which is necessary if he’s going to fill the void left by two departing companions in Ian and Barbara.

The Doctor then says, “Apart from that, young man, I’m quite willing to accept you at your face value.” Which, for the 1st Doctor, is as warm a welcome as one can expect.

Then the Doctor goes back to the console, and Steven goes aside with Vicki, telling her that he must have been really out of it back on Mechanus. All he remembers is a pair of doors, but there was nothing back then to account for the size of the ship he is currently in. “I must have been delirious,” he says.

“I don’t suppose you were,” says Vicki. “It is very small outside. It’s just in here it’s big.” Steven gets a huge grin on his face and guffaws at this, and I must admit that my fears about him being the manic recluse from The Chase are not panning out. He has definitely been distanced from that characterization. Then Vicki hits him with the coup de grace when she says, “This isn’t an ordinary ship, you know. This is a time machine.”

Steven doesn’t believe this one bit, so Vicki crosses the room to the Doctor for support. The Doctor and Vicki share a knowing smile, and the Doctor tells Steven that he’ll find out the truth soon enough. Steven gets up from his chair and says, “Look, Doctor, I’ve seen some spaceships in my time, admittedly nothing like this.” He points at something on the console. “Well, what does this do?”

Then we get the Doctor very much in his element, showing off his wealth of knowledge to someone much less knowledgeable than him. “That is the dematerializing control. And that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy.” He pokes Steven in the sternum. “Now please stop bothering me.”

Vicki grins at the Doctor’s tomfoolery as Steven goes back to sit in his chair. Steven asks her about the name of the TARDIS, which she had mentioned in passing earlier. “TARDIS,” she says. “T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.” The fact that she incorrectly uses the plural dimensions in the title is a sticking point for some hardcore fans, but I don’t really care all that much.

Then Steven says, “IDBI.” When Vicki cocks her head in confusion, he spells it out for her. “I-D-B-I…It means, I don’t believe it.” Vicki gives a wry smile before telling him once again that he will see. Then the Doctor announces that Steven needs a wash and a change of clothes before they head out and explore. Vicki asks where they have landed, and the Doctor says Earth.

I have a lot to say about this scene. First of all, even though his debut as Alabama Man in The Chase left a lot to be desired, I can see why the producers wanted to snag Peter Purves to play the Doctor’s next companion. He is able to immediately portray Steven as a multidimensional protagonist: charming, bombastic, skeptical, and a touch combative. And in my opinion, that last trait is the key—no other companion has demonstrated much willingness to butt heads with the Doctor or the other companions. Right from the jump, he is sparring with Vicki, creating fantastic chemistry between himself and Maureen O’Brian. If this combativeness persists as a character trait, it could make for some very compelling character interactions, either playful or argumentative or both.

When I compare companions, I try to look at them as fairly as I can, taking the nostalgia out of it. I get that Ian, Barbara, and Susan were the first companions in the series, and for that alone, I will always have a certain fondness for them. However, from the standpoint of a critic, I don’t think nostalgia should sway how I look at the way these characters were written or acted. I love the original three companions, but I don’t idolize them. I view them as an archetype that could—and should—be improved upon. There will be dozens of companions throughout the years, and I would be doing them a disservice if I gave Ian, Barbara, and Susan an unfair advantage simply because they were the first.

I bring all this up as a defense for this: I think Steven has the potential to become the best companion so far. Ian, Susan, and Barbara were all good companions, but in my opinion, this is more a function of how well these characters were written rather than the way they were acted. Don’t get me wrong, William Russell, Jacquiline Hill, and Carole Ann Ford all did a fine job portraying their respective roles, but Peter Purves goes above and beyond. Plus, the combativeness of Steven’s characterization gives him the potential to be a better written character as well. Up until now, there has been very little conflict among the protagonists and no consistent tension since The Edge of Destruction. A bit more conflict would go a long way.

And I want to make it clear: the potential for greatness does not mean that Steven will necessarily dethrone any of the original three companions. At the beginning of Vicki’s run, I thought she had the potential to be a better companion than Susan—Maureen O’Brian gave a very strong acting performance in The Rescue, showing a much greater depth of character than Susan ever had. Then she was written into a box, made to exhibit an almost sociopathic level of nonchalance in the following few serials. Other than a handful of bright spots like The Space Museum, Vicki has not lived up to her potential at all, and I’ve come to accept that she never will. Steven’s character may very well go the same way—I remember Season 3 being a sore spot the last time I went through it, and it would be hard for Steven to overcome the poor writing around him if that is indeed the case. Only time will tell.

Also, I really want to do a proper ranking of companions soon, but I think I’ll wait until the end of the 1st Doctor’s run so I have a few more companions to work with.

Moving on, the scene changes to show a burning campfire. The camera pulls out to show a woman with long blonde hair cooking a meal over the fire. Her face is smudged with soot or dirt, and her clothes are rough woolens. Behind the woman is a hut constructed of unsanded beams of wood and coarse plaster, and all around is dense forest. Whatever time period this is, it’s certainly nowhere near the present day.

Standing slowly, the woman looks off into the surrounding woods, tense, as if hearing a rustle in the foliage. Then a man emerges from the woods, tall and lanky, with thick black hair which runs into his unkempt beard. He moves quickly, urgently, wearing the same simple woolens as the woman. When he asks for a man named Wulnoth, the she points him inside the hut.

Wulnoth emerges from the hut, pushing aside the leather flap that functions as a door. He is a burly man, with short blonde hair and a curly blonde beard. The dark-haired man tells Wulnoth that a strange box has washed up on the shore, and he and Wulnoth leave to investigate. “The tide’ll be turning,” Wulnoth says. “We must hurry.”

Outside the TARDIS, we see that the Doctor has found a horned Viking helmet on the beach. He shows it to Vicki, deducing that they have landed in England, probably some time in the tenth or eleventh century. Behind him, Steven steps out of the TARDIS now dressed in a clean black shirt, with a black cloak fastened neatly about his shoulders. He isn’t ready to accept the Doctor’s assertions of time travel just yet. We get a great line from the Doctor as he grouses, “What do you think it is, a space helmet for a cow?”

Then Steven says, “If it is a time machine—I’m not saying it is, mind you, but if it is—shouldn’t you know where we are? You know, your control panel?” A fair point.

The Doctor says that they have been having a “technical hitch” and walks a short way off to look at a boulder. Vicki translates this as: “As a matter of fact, we never know where we are going to land next.” This is when Steven realizes that the Doctor can’t take him home, though he doesn’t have much of a reaction to this. I don’t know whether or not this makes sense for Steven’s character. On one hand, he’s probably been dreaming of going back home ever since he crash-landed on Mechanus, and discovering that this is impossible should elicit a strong reaction. On the other hand, he could have resigned himself long ago to the fact that he’d never see home again, and just leaving Mechanus might seem like a huge relief regardless of the destination. Plus, we know nothing about Steven’s home life. He never mentions any family, so perhaps he doesn’t have that strong of an attachment to wherever he used to live. I guess his reaction was fine; it probably would have been difficult to fit grief into this sequence naturally anyway.

Vicki and Steven join the Doctor at his boulder, where Steven asks about the odd design of the TARDIS. As he does so, the camera pans down to show the other side of the boulder, where the monk from before is hiding and eavesdropping. “The design is completely immaterial, young man,” the Doctor answers. “The TARDIS is required to land and blend in with its surroundings…For instance, if we were to land in the middle of the Indian mutiny, well, I’m sure the ship could possibly take on the appearance of a howdah.”

“A how what?” Steven asks.

“A howdah! A carrier on the back of an elephant.”

“Oh, I see,” Steven says, feigning earnestness. “If it landed on the beach against a cliff, it’d take on the appearance of a large rock?” The Doctor says it would. “Do you wonder why I don’t believe you?” Steven continues. “You know, that large rock over there looks exactly like a police telephone box to me.”

This makes the Doctor decidedly grumpy, and he announces that he is going off to find a place where the cliffs run down to the beach and he can walk, rather than climb them. He tells the other two to wait by the TARDIS and join him later when they see him at the top of the cliffs. On its face, this seems impractical—why should Vicki and Steven be forced to climb the cliffs if the Doctor can find a way around? But it’s clear that the Doctor wants some alone time after all of Steven’s badgering. This is exactly the sort of conflict that I think could benefit the dynamic of the protagonists: playful banter with the potential to turn into something more serious on occasion.

As soon as the Doctor is gone, Steven further demonstrates his combative nature by immediately disregarding the Doctor’s orders. “Come on, let’s go up,” he says, prodding Vicki toward the cliff. “That bit there looks climbable.” Vicki objects, first citing the Doctor’s words, then bringing up her fear of heights. “Oh come on, you’ll be alright,” Steven says with finality, pulling her offscreen. And this gives us SomeoneWandersOff #6.

Once Steven and Vicki are gone, the monk emerges from behind the boulder and jogs up to the TARDIS. He tries to get in, but it is locked. Then he presses an ear against the door and smiles, nodding knowingly. Walking away from the TARDIS, he suddenly grabs at his wrist, sliding his sleeve all the way up to his elbow as if something is missing, like a bracelet. He frowns anxiously.

Next, we see a few shots of the waves crashing against the rocks, with the sky above growing darker.

Cut back to Wulnoth’s hut, where night has fallen completely. The Doctor enters the scene to very suspenseful music, crossing in front of the campfire and entering the hut through the leather flap. He rummages through a few items he finds inside: a wolf pelt, a sword, a longbow. Then he steps outside, only to have someone offscreen suddenly press him against the side of the house by holding a forked stick to his neck.

Elsewhere, the monk arrives back at his monastery, a solid edifice of stone with a stout wooden door. An outbuilding with a lit window is visible beyond some thick foliage. The monk enters the main building and bars the door behind himself. As the camera zooms in on the lit window of the outbuilding, we begin to hear monks singing Gregorian chant. Then we get a very atmospheric shot of the interior of the monastery, with the camera slowly panning across a dilapidated hallway. The cinematography and direction in this serial have been lovely to start, probably the best they’ve been so far in the series. It feels like the director has been given enough empty space in the script to really shine. And I don’t mean empty space in a derogatory way; it is room for the serial and the audience to breathe.

Back on the clifftop, Wulnoth and the dark-haired man have arrived to find that the tide has come in. The box is gone. “It would have been crushed against the rocks by now, whatever it was,” says the dark-haired man. Then there is a shot of waves crashing against the base of the cliff, with no beach visible below. For someone who has never seen the rest of the series, this must have come as a shock, as there has been no indication thus far that the TARDIS could face a force like the ocean and come away unscathed. With nothing else to go off of, I’m sure many viewers assumed the TARDIS had potentially been moved, if not completely washed out to see. At any rate, it is at the very least underwater and inaccessible, giving us TARDISOut-of-Commission #7.

Meanwhile, the scene cuts back to the interior of Wulnoth’s hut, where the blonde woman is pouring a liquid into a hollowed-out horn or tusk. She exits the hut and passes it to the Doctor, who we find alive and unharmed, resting next to the woman’s fire. The woman says the drink is mead, and the Doctor drinks, toasting the woman’s health. We can hear the monks chanting faintly in the background, and the woman tells him the monastery lies just at the top of the hill.

Then the woman apologizes for the rough treatment with the forked stick. “I hope you will forgive a woman’s harsh welcome. We do fear strangers, but we’re very happy to welcome a traveler.” What’s the difference? She continues, “I’m sure that when my husband returns, he’ll insist that you stay the night. And then you can rejoin your friends in the morning.”

The Doctor accepts the invitation, then asks some circumspect questions, trying to figure out exactly when and where they have landed. We learn that the king is Harold Godwinson, who isn’t well liked by the woman for not lending any aid in the recent Viking raids. We also learn that Harold’s predecessor, King Edward, was laid to rest at the beginning of the year. Edith goes inside to get the Doctor some more mead, and in her absence, he speaks to himself, putting two and two together and realizing that it is late summer of 1066. The woman returns with the mead, and the Doctor has her confirm that they are in Northumbria. She tells the Doctor to rest by the fire and goes inside to do some chores.

As the Doctor sits, the camera pushes in close on the fire, like what one might expect if the scene is about to change. But instead, the sound of the monks chanting suddenly becomes distorted, slowing down and dropping in pitch. It lasts only for a moment before correcting itself, but it is enough for the Doctor. The camera pulls back out to show him hollering, “Woman! Woman! Where are you?” I know I’ve beat the poor naming conventions of this series to death, but this woman has a name, and this would have been the perfect time to introduce it to the audience. And it would have had the added benefit of making the Doctor sound less like a sexist asshole.

The woman returns, and the Doctor asks some frantic questions about the monastery, wondering if the monks have been there long. They haven’t; the woman tells him they moved back into the monastery several weeks ago. Then he says, “And you haven’t seen them? No one in the village has?”

“One’s been seen,” the woman answers, “but never spoken to.” She frowns. “How does he know that?” Then the Doctor excuses himself, insisting that he has to get up to the monastery at once. He leaves her standing there with a perplexed look on her face.

Elsewhere in the forest, Steven and Vicki are walking along a trail. Steven calls back to Vicki, who is lagging behind, telling her to hurry; Vicki demands to rest. Steven relents, and they squat down on the forest floor, though Steven grumbles that they are lost and can’t afford to stay in one place for long if they expect to get out of the forest before morning.

Suddenly, a twig snaps, and Vicki sees someone coming—it’s the dark-haired man from before. Steven makes to stand, saying that they can ask him the way to civilization, but Vicki pulls him back down, urging caution. Steven goes to stand anyway, and Vicki yanks him back down again. “Supposing you do what I say for once!” she growls. I love the dynamic developing between Steven and Vicki. Steven clearly elevates Vicki’s character, which is something she sorely needs at this point in her character arc.

Then they see the dark-haired man stoop down to look at something shiny on the ground. Steven finally does stand and make himself known—much to the chagrin of Vicki—calling out to the man. The man looks like he’s going to run, but Steven grabs him and wrestles him to the ground, pinning him on his back. The two men struggle on the ground for a few seconds, with Vicki yelling for Steven let the man go. Then the dark-haired man manages to get the best of Steven. He punches Steven in the jaw and flees.

Vicki watches the man leave, then turns back to find Steven rubbing at his jaw. He says he’s alright and that he’s got whatever it was the man had found. With a smug grin, he holds up a metallic wristwatch, saying, “You still say this is tenth century England?”

At the top of the hill, the Doctor arrives at the monastery to find the door locked. Inside, we see the monk quietly unbar the door, and the scene cuts back to the exterior to show the Doctor’s suspicion as the door slides open a fraction, seemingly on its own. He slowly pushes the door the rest of the way open before jumping around it, just in case someone is hiding behind it. There is no one there.

Carefully, the Doctor creeps through the empty corridors, heading toward the source of the chanting. Tossing back a cloth tapestry, he finds it: a gramophone playing in a small alcove. He lifts the needle, and the chanting stops. He giggles to himself, turning. Suddenly, a wooden grate crashes down from the ceiling, trapping him in the alcove. The monk enters the scene, laughing maniacally. Credits roll.

This was a standout opening episode, just a hair’s breadth below the opener of The Space Museum, which I place as the best opener of the series so far. The cinematography and direction were wonderfully atmospheric, which really suited the long, slower sequences that grounded the episode. The character interactions were top notch, especially those between Vicki and Steven. And the intrigue with the wristwatch and the gramophone culminates in such a dramatic cliffhanger, the best since the fire at the end of Part 1 of The Reign of Terror.

Part 2 (The Meddling Monk)

The episode opens on a bright countryside, with a cock crowing in the background to signify the passage of time. Cut to a toaster. A sleek, metallic, modern toaster, which spits out two charred bagels into the monk’s hands. The camera pulls out to show the interior of the monastery, inside what looks to be a makeshift kitchen, complete with a toaster and an electric frying pan. The monk puts the burnt bagels on a tray, then does the same with the eggs on the frying pan. The tray is full of porcelain dishes, neatly arrayed into a respectable modern breakfast. Nothing at all like the animal horns and wolf pelts of Wulnoth’s hut down in the village.

Humming a little tune, the monk walks the tray through the corridors to a locked door. We can’t see into the room, but the Doctor is presumed to be inside. The monk looks through a square hole in the door, much like the viewport in the door of a prison cell; he finds the Doctor to be sleeping. Chuckling to himself, he unlocks the door and opens it as quietly as he can, sliding the tray inside before closing it and locking it again. Then he opens the viewport and shouts, “Breakfast! Breakfast! Come along. Early to bed, early to rise! Come on. Do you want the eggs to get cold?”

Liquid comes through the viewport and douses the face of the monk—presumably from a cup of tea. “Go away,” the Doctor says dismissively. “I’ll come out when I’m ready.” The monk marches away in a huff. Quality comic relief.

Meanwhile, in the forest, the dark-haired man has brought several men from the village back to the scene where he was attacked by Steven, including Wulnoth. They come upon Vicki sleeping in a hollow, and they retreat back into the bushes to wait. Vicki wakes, standing suddenly and turning in a circle. She calls out Steven’s name, but there is no response. There is a cracking twig, and Vicki goes silent. A dark shape enters the scene and resolves into Steven, crossing to Vicki and giving a cheery “Morning!”

Vicki relaxes, and Steven asks her if she wants some breakfast. He holds out one hand full of blackberries. “You can either have some blackberries”—he holds out the other hand, also full of berries—“or some blackberries.” Vicki gives a disdainful grimace and leaves the berries to Steven. Then Steven suggests they go wait for the Doctor back at the TARDIS. Vicki wonders what time it is, and Steven holds out his newly acquired watch, giving a satisfied, “Twenty-past-five.” Vicki thinks aloud about whether or not the Doctor ever wore a watch, and Steven counters with, “You said before he didn’t…Oh, why don’t you admit all this tenth century stuff’s just—”

Another twig cracks in the forest and they both go still. After a moment of silence, Steven creeps toward the bushes, peering into the darkness. Behind him, a man suddenly grabs Vicki, holding her at knifepoint. She screams, and Steven whirls around, only to then be hit over the head by a club. Several men have entered the scene by this point, and they look to Wulnoth to tell them what to do next. “Take them to the village,” he says.

Outside the monastery, the monk exits the main building and peers down the path to the village. Seeing someone coming, he quickly sits down on the side of the road and pulls out a scroll, peering at it as if he has been studying it for a while. The blonde woman from earlier enters the scene, accompanied by a second woman holding a whicker basket. The women greet the monk and deliver him a basket of food. Then the monk tells them he must get back to his studies, saying that it is a morning for solitude. The women leave. As soon as they are gone, he leaps up and reaches inside the collar of his habit, pulling out a pair of binoculars on a string around his neck. Checking to make sure the women have truly gone, he gives a satisfied smile and turns his back to the road.

Inside the monastery, the Doctor pounds on the locked door, demanding to be let out. Nobody answers.

At the waterfront, the monk arrives at the top of the cliffs, sits crosslegged, and takes out his binoculars again. Peering through them, he sees a Viking longship cutting through the swells. On board, dozens of bare-chested men pull on the oars while a captain in fine furs mans the tiller and shouts out commands. Pulling the binoculars away from his face, the monk looks ecstatic. “At last!” he says. “At last!”

In the Saxon village, Steven and Vicki wait outside of Wulnoth’s house for the villagers to decide their fate. Ian points at the vestments of the villagers and says, “It’s pretty authentic Saxon, isn’t it?”

Vicki rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve actually started to believe us?”

“I mean, they’d hardly go to all this trouble for a fancy dress ball, now would they,” Steven concedes. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He starts to make a break for it, but two men block his path, one holding a spear threateningly.

Wulnoth, whom we will soon learn is the headman of the village, wants to let Steven and Vicki go on their way, thinking it likely they are just travelers. The dark-haired man, whom we learn is named Eldred, vehemently objects to this. “Travelers? With no provisions or belongings? And traveled from where?…They’ve been put ashore somewhere along to the coast to spy for the Vikings!” What follows is a very fierce argument between Wulnoth and Eldred that looks as if it could escalate to fists, with Eldred even going as far as to call into question Wulnoth’s legitimacy.

When this argument results in a standoff, Wulnoth’s wife, the blonde woman, who is finally named as Edith, speaks up, asking the two protagonists if they are looking for an old man with long white hair. Steven says, “You’ve seen him?” but before Edith can answer, Wulnoth asks her about the old man. Edith says that he came to the village last night and that he wore the same strange clothes as these new people.

Then Wulnoth sighs and says, “I think these people are what they say they are, Eldred. Innocent travelers.” He turns to Steven and Vicki. “You can go. Edith, take the girl inside and get some food for their journey.” Inside the hut, Edith wraps some food in a cloth and gives it to Vicki, telling her that the Doctor went up to see the monastery. Then the two exit the hut, and Steven and Vicki get ready to leave.

There is a wonderful exchange where Steven is stony faced and more than ready to go, but Vicki stands there, eyeing him like an angry mother until he finally thanks Edith and Wulnoth for the food. “God be with you,” the two Saxons say. Then Vicki has to glare at Steven again until he turns to the Saxons and replies, “God be with you.” This is what I mean when I say Steven makes Vicki a better character—their dynamic gives Vicki a reason to act as something other than the kind-of Susan that she’s been for most of her run. This brother/sister infighting thing they have going on is very endearing.

The monk returns to the monastery and goes inside.

At the clifftop, we see grappling hooks latch onto boulders, then five Vikings scramble onto firm ground. The captain from earlier is calling the shots. We don’t learn his name, but he is easily identifiable from his helmet, an ornate conical cap with a golden eagle perched on the very top. If you’re a writer and you don’t think a character has enough screentime to warrant a name, this is exactly what you should do: give them something to distinguish them from the characters that do end up having names. This has been a problem in Doctor Who, especially with humanoids in sci-fi settings that all wear the same clothing and hairstyles. Like the Thals in The Daleks or the Moroks and Xerons in The Space Museum.

The captain orders three men, Sven, Ulf, and Gunnar, to scout out the lie of the land, focusing on the locations of food and water and the strength of nearby villages. Sven has a very ornate wig on, blonde, with a braid down the right side of his face and some of his hair gathered into a high ponytail. Ulf has a simpler mop of matted brown hair. And Gunnar looks exactly like Odin from Marvel movies, complete with long white hair, a bushy white beard, and an eyepatch. All of them wear studded leather armor and furs. These Viking costumes are definitely another high point of the serial; these men look menacing.

Before the trio leaves, the captain stresses that they need to keep their presence in Saxon territory a secret if possible. “Harold Hardrada will have surprise on his side. Now go.” The three Vikings march off to begin their raid.

Outside the monastery, Steven and Vicki have arrived; Steven knocks on the door. The monk opens the door, greeting them. Steven tries to say that they are looking for the Doctor, but he is interrupted when the monk gives a magnanimous “Indeed, we’re all searching for something. Some, like myself, seek it in the peace and solitude that repose behind these monastery walls.” Steven finally gets in that they are looking for a friend, and Vicki adds that he left word in the village he was coming this way. Again, the monk begins to ramble. “Would that we could all realize our ambitions, be they a lifelong wish or a stated intention of journeying for self—”

“Look,” Steven cuts in, peeved, “are you trying to tell us that he didn’t come here?” The monk assures him that no one has come round, though when Vicki asks if the other monks have seen anyone, the monk ducks back inside the monastery to pretend like he is asking them.

Once the door is closed behind him, Steven voices his suspicion of the monk. “You know, I don’t believe a word of it. It’s just as if he expected us. And if the Doctor didn’t come here, well, where else could he go except back to the village?…I’ll tell you what, when he comes out again, I’m going to try something. So whatever happens, don’t say a word. Nothing. Okay?” Vicki agrees.

Cut to the other side of the door, where we see the monk has been eavesdropping the whole time with his ear pressed to the door. After a pause, he opens the door again and steps outside, telling Steven and Vicki that no one has seen the Doctor. When Steven asks if the monk will remember the Doctor’s description, the monk says, “Let me see. Long white hair, a black cloak, and rather strange checked trousers.” Steven says that’s correct, and the monk retreats back into the monastery.

When they are alone again, Vicki turns to Steven with a surprised look on her face, telling Steven that they never gave the monk a description of the Doctor. “I know we didn’t,” Steven answers. “That means he must have seen him, doesn’t it? He’s keeping him prisoner in there. I’ll stake my life on that Vicki.”

Vicki is suddenly skeptical about whether not they actually fooled the monk. “[That was] too easy. I don’t think we’ve been as clever as we think we have…Well look, say he’s the one who’s tricked us. Say he gave himself away deliberately like that, in order to make us think we’d fooled him.” The audience knows that this is exactly what happened. Though, I’m a bit torn on whether or not this plot point would be better if Steven and Vicki never have this suspicion. We will soon find out that it doesn’t make a difference either way, and I think there could be more tension if they don’t realize the monk is trying to lead them into a trap.

Either way, Steven reaches the conclusion that, intentional on the monk’s part or not, they have no choice but to break in if they want to find out what’s going on inside. They leave, deciding to return after dark.

That night, Edith is standing in the entrance to her hut, staring out into the surrounding forest as if suspicious of what might be hiding out in the dark. She grabs a spear and creeps toward the foliage to investigate. Suddenly, she is grabbed from behind by Gunnar and hoisted into the air, while Sven and Ulf dash inside her hut.

Up at the monastery, Steven and Vicki agree that it would be best to look for a back entrance into the monastery.

Back at the village, Wulnoth returns to his hut to discover the place ransacked and his wife laying on the cot. At first, it looks like Edith might be dead—she stares into space and is unresponsive when Wulnoth cradles her in his arms. “It was those travelers,” Eldred snaps. “I know it. I said you would regret not listening to me, Wulnoth. But even I would not have felt them capable of this.” Wulnoth shouts for Eldred to get the men, and Eldred rushes out.

Cut to the Vikings, stalking through the forest and drinking Edith’s mead.

In the hut, Edith finally stirs, breaking out of a catatonic state. “Vikings,” she groans. It is at this point that I realize that Edith is heavily implied to have been raped.

This is the third time that rape has been used as a plot device in Doctor Who, what is ostensibly a kid’s show. Although the first two instances were done in extremely poor taste—as a comedic punchline with Barbara in The Romans and The Chase—I don’t find this one to be atrocious in the same way. Yes, it still evokes all of the jarring, uncomfortable feelings one expects whenever rape is portrayed in entertainment media, and that is absolutely the intent of the writers. But it is done in such a way that it does not draw attention to itself in any way a child might recognize. I wouldn’t expect a child to assume anything happened other than Edith being physically hurt by the Vikings. Adults will recognize it for what it is, but I don’t think it would inspire any poignant questions from children in the room.

Compare that to The Romans, where Nero chases Barbara around his palace for almost nine minutes of runtime before cornering her in his bedroom. Or the sailor in The Chase who says to her, “You swam out from Santa Maria there just to give us poor lonely sailormen a little bit of feminine company, eh?” This isn’t even rape that’s relegated to the subtext. It’s out in the open. And I have no doubt that these exchanges triggered some awkward questions in households throughout the United Kingdom.

And let me be very clear: I don’t think rape as a plot device should be within a country mile of a children’s television program. It’s just unnecessary, full stop. But in this context, limited to the subtext, it does add value to the experience of an adult viewer in 2024. It’s a fucking disturbing scene. You can feel the despair and numbness of Edith as she languishes in the aftermath of what has been done to her. And it lends a chilling edge to the sequence that follows. Eldred returns, saying that he has gathered the men. Wulnoth says one word: “Vikings.” Wulnoth walks out of his hut, past his men, and into the forest in silence. And in silence, his men follow him.

[Edit: I completely forgot about the time Barbara was almost raped by the brutish mountain man, Vasor, in The Keys of Marinus. It's not as off-kilter as the other two prior examples of rape as a plot device, but it didn't add any value like the sequence in this serial. Everything else around it being so poor made it so that the scene with Barbara and Vasor was just one of a long line of forgettable moments, which is probably why it didn't originally come to mind.]

Deep in the forest, Eldred has found the Vikings’ trail. Cut to the Vikings, who, having finished the mead, walk through the forest laughing like idiots, leaning against one another. Suddenly, the Saxons converge on them from all sides, hollering and armed with swords. What follows is a pathetic action sequence, even by Classic Who standards. I won’t go into it in detail because it’s just not worth it. Just picture the slowest swordfight lasting about half a minute longer than it should have. The whole thing might have six or seven actual swipes of the weapons in it, with most of the fighting devolving into men grappling with each other or stuck in standoffs, pressing sword against sword. At the end of it, two of the Vikings escape, but Gunnar is slain. Eldred takes an axe to the chest and is bad shape. Wulnoth says the monastery is closer than the village, so Eldred wraps an arm around the headman and they head offscreen.

At the monastery, Steven and Vicki wait for the coast to be clear before crawling in a glassless window. There’s a great moment where they both say “Follow me” at the same time, and they both go in different directions. There’s a pause, then Steven grudgingly turns and follows Vicki.

Elsewhere, the monk starts the gramophone once again and checks to make sure the wooden grate that captured the Doctor is ready to drop. He obviously intends to capture Steven and Vicki the same way.

Outside, Wulnoth and Eldred struggle up the monastery path.

Inside, the monk watches as Steven and Vicki are about to enter the alcove with the gramophone, but he is interrupted by a pounding at the door. Sighing, he goes to answer it—outside, we see Wulnoth is the one pounding.

Steven and Vicki find the gramophone; unlike the Doctor, they leave it playing. Then they find the Doctor’s prison cell. Steven looks through the door, tells Vicki the Doctor is inside, and whips out his penknife to pick the lock.

The monk opens the door, finds Wulnoth supporting wounded Eldred, and invites them inside.

Steven gets the door open, and they rush inside the room, Vicki shouting for the Doctor to wake up. But she soon realizes that what Steven thought was the Doctor is actually a pile of furs neatly arrayed beneath the Doctor’s black cloak. “He’s gone!” she says. Credits roll.

Another fantastic episode. I may have to adjust the score I was originally going to give The Time Meddler. It just keeps getting better with each rewatch. Vicki and Steven carried this episode with their bickering and Steven’s clever trick with the Doctor’s description. Peter Butterworth as the monk has incredible charisma, and the monk is a joy to watch with his punctilious, holier-than-thou affectations, even when he isn’t speaking. The aftermath of the rape was utterly chilling, and even though I don’t think it belongs in a children’s television show, it adds an incredibly dark undercurrent to the serial that not many Doctor Who stories can manage. I definitely have to knock a few ticks off for the abysmal fight sequence, but if I had to score the serial at this moment, I would give it a 9.7, which would be the highest rating so far. Let’s see if it stays there.

Part 3 (A Battle of Wits)

The monk escorts Wulnoth and Eldred to a long, barracks-like corridor with several alcoves that have straw mattresses in them, pointing Wulnoth to a cot and telling him to make Eldred comfortable. “I’ll return soon and tend his wounds,” he says on his way out of the corridor.

In the prison cell, Vicki confirms that the cloak is definitely the Doctor’s, and Steven assures her that the door was indeed locked. Steven assumes correctly that the monk must have thought the Doctor was in the cell all this time—after all, the cloak and furs had not been moved. “There’s only one possible answer,” Vicki says. “A secret passage…Listen, they always have them in castles and monasteries and things in case of siege or fire or something. Well, don’t just sit there. Help me look.” They check the boundaries of the room, and sure enough, Vicki finds a loose stone. Steven pulls on it, and a whole section of the wall comes away, revealing a hole big enough to crawl through. They leave, closing the secret passage behind them.

Next, the monk enters the corridor outside to find the cell door open and unlocked. Alarmed, he rushes inside the cell, only to discover the truth about the Doctor-shaped pile of clothes. The monk doesn’t have time to do much other than look nervously around the room, as Wulnoth calls for him. “Coming, my son,” he calls back. “Coming!”

Inside the secret tunnel, we see Vicki and Steven crawling along damp earth through a tangle of roots, sticks, and ivy. Steven supposes they might find the Doctor waiting for them at the other end, but Vicki says, “If I know the Doctor, it’s not going to be as simple as that.”

Cut to the Doctor, who is in Wulnoth’s hut, chatting with Edith. I just want to get it out of the way up front: Edith is very much back to normal in this scene, almost chipper. I will never be one to use absolutes regarding how a rape victim copes or heals from their assault, but it seems unrealistic to me that Edith could go from absolute despair in one scene to casual banter in the next. I can’t be too hard on this, though. The rape was relegated to the subtext for a reason, and if the writers want to distance the character from the event, that’s their prerogative. Though I must say it undermines the darkness of the tone set in the previous episode.

Anyway, in this scene, the Doctor learns that Steven and Vicki have also gone up to the monastery. Then Edith tells him that Wulnoth and the men of the village have gone after the Vikings. “You’ve seen them?” asks the Doctor. “And their fleet?”

“Oh, no, no, not a fleet. This was just a small band of men,” Edith replies. “They must have come from one ship.” A look of realization comes over Edith’s face. “You speak of a fleet as if you knew it existed.” The Doctor says he has heard of many plans from all the places that he’s visited, including plans for a Viking invasion. “So that’s why Harold Godwinson’s struck on forming an army,” Edith remarks. “Our men have traveled south already to join it. I thought it was William of Normandy’s invasion across the channel, not a Viking invasion.”

The Doctor tells her that the monk in this situation can’t just be a coincidence, saying that he must go back to the monastery at once. “I must go. Yes, goodbye. Oh, and don’t worry, don’t worry. The Vikings will land south of here, in the Humber. And King Harold will defeat them.” He begins to walk away, then stops, and he adds to himself, not quite low enough for the comment to be truly private, “Yes, and then, in a few weeks’ time, he loses the Battle of Hastings to William the Conqueror. Well, at least that’s what the history books said happened.” He leaves, with an utterly baffled Edith standing there in his wake.

In the forest, Vicki and Steven emerge from the secret tunnel. Vicki calls out for the Doctor, but no one is around to hear them. Steven says that she was right; the Doctor wouldn’t just be waiting there for them. Then he adds, “You know, there’s something very peculiar going on. Now, I’ve got to accept something. So alright. I accept you’ve got a time machine.” Vicki gives a sarcastic cry of thanks. “But the watch,” he continues, “the gramophone, and the Saxons. That doesn’t add up. It must be something to do with that monk. You know, I think we should go back to the monastery.” Vicki convinces him that they shouldn’t go back without the Doctor, and they head for the TARDIS instead.

In the monastery, the monk retrieves a small white pill from a hidden first aid kit, then conceals the kit underneath a whicker basket once again. He takes the pill to Eldred and tells him to swallow it. When Wulnoth asks him what it is, the monk accidently lets slip “Penicillin” before catching the slipup and saying, “It’s a sort of herb.” Then he tells Wulnoth to take his sword outside, arguing that it’s a monastery and he’s trying to tend to a sick man. Wulnoth leaves.

As soon as the blonde man is gone, the monk leans close to Eldred and shakes him a little to pull him out of his pain-induced stupor. “Listen,” he says urgently. “The Vikings you met. Now, if they were a scouting party, how soon would it be before the other ships arrived?” Eldred takes a moment to gather his thoughts, then says two or three days.

The monk moves a bit away from Eldred as Wulnoth comes back in and kneels next to his friend, trying to get Eldred to his feet. The monk isn’t really paying attention to them, whispering quietly to himself, “Two or three days. I’m on schedule. I’m on schedule.” Then Wulnoth tells the monk that Eldred is no fit condition to travel and that he’ll have to stay at the monastery for a while. Still lost in thought, the monk casually says, “Yes, of course. He’s weak. He’s lost a lot of blood. I’d like to have given him a blood transfusion, but—” He catches himself again. “My son,” he says, taking Wulnoth in arm, “all we can do now for Eldred is to wait and pray.” The monk tries to get Wulnoth to take Eldred back to the village, but Wulnoth gets the monk to admit that staying at the monastery is the best thing for Eldred right now. Wulnoth leaves Eldred in the monk’s care, promising that either he or Edith will return regularly.

Out in the forest, Ulf and Sven move through the darkness until they come to a small clearing. Sven says they will rest for a while, then continue with their mission. Ulf urges him to reconsider. “Sven, we have failed!…Let us think of our own safety…If we meet up with the Saxons again, they will kill us easily…We could hide.” Sven calls Ulf a coward, drawing his sword, but Ulf presses on. “Kill me! Go on, kill me! If you don’t, the Saxons will. And you’ll be dead, too, if you don’t listen to what I say.”

Sven sheathes his sword, and Ulf takes this as a sign he should continue. “Nothing has changed. Our army will still land…We can meet up with [the king] once he is inland. Say we were attacked and held. Don’t pretend that it is only me. I’m saying what we both think. Our army will still land, even if we’d all been killed back in the forest.” Sven asks Ulf if he’s given any consideration to where they would hide. “Yes,” Ulf says, “The monastery…They can’t refuse us [sanctuary]…[The monks] will hide us. Once inside, we can take hostages.” Grudgingly, and with disdain for the dishonor of it all, Sven agrees.

Cut to what might be the most ridiculous thing in this whole serial: a scroll in the monk’s monastery titled “Progress Chart.” Get a load of this list: 1) Arrival in Northumbria (check). 2) Position atomic cannon (check). 3) Sight Vikings (check). 4) Light beacon fires. 5) Destroy Viking fleet. 6) Norman landing. 7) Battle of Hastings. 8) Meet King Harold. I can’t tell if it suits the monk’s character or if it’s too over-the-top even for him, but as soon as I saw it, the monk went from a campy misfit to an Austin Powers caliber villain at the (literal) stroke of a pen.

The monk revels in his plan for a moment, talking to himself about how everything is going exactly as it should. Then he rolls up the scroll and places it on top of a sarcophagus, next to a map of England. Taking a mathematical compass, he eyes the map irritably, mumbling about distances. “Now, to convert this ridiculous thing into miles. Absurd measurements, miles, kilometers.” I missed it on my first watch-through, but this line is the first inkling we get that not only is the monk somehow out of his time, but he might not even be human. Then there is a knock at the monastery door, and the monk grumbles, “Oh, no more visitors. It’s getting so that you can’t call a monastery your own.” He hides all of his papers behind the sarcophagus and heads for the door.

But when he opens the door, nobody is there. Scratching his head, he reenters the monastery and closes the door, only to have the banging start again as soon as it is closed. The monk opens the door again and carefully steps outside, going a few steps beyond the threshold. Suddenly, the Doctor appears behind him, pressing a thick stick into the small of the monk’s back. With this, he goads the monk back inside the monastery follows him closely, pulling the door shut the door behind himself. The monk tries to make a break for it, but the Doctor presses the stick harder into his back, saying, “Uh-uh. I have a Winchester ’73 right in the middle of your spinal cord.” It’s been a few serials since we’ve seen the Doctor make a bluff like this; not since The Crusade. It’s a welcome return.

The monk relents, telling the Doctor he thought he’d seen the last of him, still showing a wry smile, even under duress. I haven’t gone into the specifics of why the monk works so well, but he has such a charm to him that you almost feel bad for the guy, even as you’re rooting for the Doctor. In response, the Doctor says that he has some questions for the monk, prodding him further into the monastery.

Outside, Vicki and Steven have reached the clifftop above the TARDIS, but just like the previous night, the tide has come in. Vicki is distraught, and when Steven tries to cheer her up by suggesting the Doctor may have moved the ship, her mood only gets worse. “The only way the Doctor could move the TARDIS would be to dematerialize…If the Doctor left in the TARDIS, he couldn’t get back. Oh, it can’t be that. It can’t be!”

Steven says they should get back to the monastery, but Vicki says there’s no point, already mourning the loss of the TARDIS. Frustrated by Vicki’s pessimism, Steven goes off a little ways and discovers the nozzle of a weapon like a rocket launcher facing the waves. Vicki recognizes it as a gun, and Steven adds, “Trained out to sea, hidden by the bushes…The monk. It must be. You still say there’s no point in going back to the monastery? Come on.” They make for the secret tunnel.

Inside the monastery, the Doctor tells the monk to stop this endless meandering, calling him out on the fact that they’ve gone through this very corridor twice already. “It’s no use playing for time, you know. I want some answers!” The monk whirls around and tries to grab the gun, only to discover that it’s actually a stick, which the Doctor takes in both hands and says can still do a considerable amount of damage.

The monk tut-tuts at this. “Oh, a man of violence. I’m surprised at you.” Before anything else can transpire, there is yet another knock at the monastery door. The Doctor tells the monk to ignore it, but the monk says whoever is outside may get suspicious. Then the Doctor suggests they both go and answer it, but the monk says the Doctor isn’t wearing the right clothes and tells him he would need to don a habit. The Doctor initially objects to this but eventually concedes, telling the monk to lead the way. “And remember, no more monkery!” the Doctor adds, which I think is my favorite line of the serial.

The scene cuts to just inside the main door, where the monk enters the scene ahead of a habited Doctor, who is still holding his stick. The monk allows the Doctor to answer the door, but not before he pauses just to say, “Doctor? It suits you.” I think it’s safe to say that the monk is the best antagonist in the series so far, dethroning Nero from The Romans. He’s still a black-and-white antagonist, but his mannerisms lend him a lot of sympathy, and he has some fantastic bits of dialogue.

When the Doctor opens the door, it’s not a villager or a traveler looking for refuge—it’s Sven and Ulf. Sven takes the Doctor at swordpoint and forces him back into the building. By the time Sven and Ulf enter and the door is closed, the monk is nowhere to be seen. The two Vikings throw the Doctor into the very same cell he occupied before, the one with the secret tunnel. Without a key to lock the cell, Sven stands guard while Ulf leaves to deliver his demands to the other monks: shelter him and Sven or the Doctor gets it.

In the room with the sarcophagus, Ulf is searching for other monks when the monk pops out from behind the tomb and whacks Ulf over the head with a very resonant piece of timber, knocking the Viking unconscious. Unraveling a ball of string, he bends to tie Ulf up.

In the forest, Steven and Vicki have found the entrance to the secret tunnel. It is now morning.

Back inside the monastery, Sven peers inside the hole of the cell door and is alarmed to see the Doctor missing. He rushes in to survey the situation and discovers the section of the wall is open to reveal the secret tunnel. But this time, the Doctor hasn’t used the route as an escape, only as a diversion. He sneaks out from where he has hidden behind the open cell door and whacks Sven over the head with a piece of timber, just like the monk did with Ulf. Normally, I wouldn’t appreciate such repetition, but we will soon discover why the writers are going out of their way to draw obvious parallels between the two characters. The Doctor leaves the cell past the unconscious Sven, saying, “My dear man, you had me quite worried. I thought you were never coming in.”

Down in the village, the monk arrives to knock on the door of Wulnoth’s hut. Wulnoth and Edith both greet him, and the monk says that he has come down to the village to ask a favor of Wulnoth and his men. “Prepare beacon fires on the clifftops,” he says. “I’m expecting some building materials for reconstructing the monastery. They’re coming by sea, and I promised I’d give the ship our exact location.” Wulnoth asks how long, and the monk answers, “In a day or two, maybe three. Now, Wulnoth, you will light the fires when I ask, won’t you, and keep them burning?” Wulnoth agrees, and the monk departs.

Once the monk is gone, Wulnoth turns to Edith and asks her to remind him what the old man said about the Vikings. Edith says that the Doctor spoke of a planned invasion, with hundreds of ships. Wulnoth’s frown becomes awfully suspicious. “Beacon fires,” he whispers, “on the clifftops.”

At the cell-end of the secret tunnel, Vicki and Steven discover the unconscious body of Sven. “Whoever he is, he’s lost an argument with somebody,” Steven remarks. He takes Sven’s sword, and they head off into the monastery.

Elsewhere, the monk returns to find Ulf exactly where he left the man, bound and gagged with his back to a wall. All Ulf can do is glare daggers at the monk as he says, “Oh, by the way, you’ll be pleased to know, I’ve arranged the fires for your colleagues.”

Suddenly, there is a sword at the monk’s throat. The Doctor steps into the scene, holding the monk at swordpoint. “There you are, my dear fellow,” he says, watching the monk rise unsteadily to his feet. “I knew you’d come back. Now, which fires? What are they for, hmm?”

In the room with the sarcophagus, Vicki and Steven are looking around when Vicki notices a black cable running along the ground near the tomb. They follow it to the back of the sarcophagus, where Vicki finds a door, and Steven falls to his knees, telling her they can crawl inside. They do so, but suddenly, they are no longer crawling. They are standing just inside a room with large roundels covering the walls, a room that hums faintly. “It’s a TARDIS!” Vicki says, dumbstruck. “The monk’s got a TARDIS!” Credits roll.

What a momentous reveal! I have a lot to say about it, but I want to wait and cover it in the conclusion.

Part 4 (Checkmate)

The Doctor asks the monk once again about the fires and for whom they are intended, still pointing at the monk with his sword. Seeing no way out of answering the Doctor’s questions, the monk talks. “Alright, then. They’re a signal for King Hardrada and the Viking fleet…They’ll think it’s a landing place. They’ll come in unsuspecting, and then…I’m going to destroy them!”

Back in the monk’s TARDIS, Steven and Vicki have discovered the monk’s massive collection of things he has gathered from everywhere he has visited, with lots of ornate statues and artifacts. “He’s got something from every period and every place,” Vicki remarks. Steven discovers a chest of what look like black artillery shells, each longer than a forearm, and he deduces that they match the weapon they found poised on the cliffside. “He could sink a whole navy with that lot, I should think.”

Then Vicki finds a black notebook and begins to read aloud. “Listen! Met Leonardo Da Vinci and discussed with him the principles of powered flight…And listen to this. Put two hundred pounds in a London bank in 1968. Nipped forward two hundred years and collected a fortune in compound interest.” A slight continuity error there—2168 would place the monk four years after the Daleks destroy London in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Presumably, the bank and all its contents would have been lost in the fires. And even if they weren’t, it is implausible that the monetary system looked anything like what it once was after the vast majority of the population had died in the turmoil.

Cut back to the monk, who is being read the riot act by an irate Doctor. “So that’s it! You’re a time meddler! No wonder you wanted to get rid of me…Are you quite mad? You know as well as I do the golden rule about space and time traveling. Never, never interfere with the course of history.”

“And who says so?” the monk counters with a wry grin. “Doctor, it’s more fun my way.” This is rather illuminative about the mechanics of time travel within the Doctor Who universe. In The Aztecs, I talked about how time traveling typically works in science fiction, and I compared Doctor Who to two common dynamics that I consider to be the extremes of the genre. On one end, you have what I call the Harry Potter model, where time travel can never truly change the outcome of events. Nothing you do in the past can change the present, although you can play a role in making sure that the present is preserved. In essence, what has happened has happened, and—in NuWho terms—everything is a fixed point. Then there is the Back to the Future model, where you can go back in time, radically alter the past, and create a future where you yourself are nonexistent. Absolutely nothing is a fixed point; anything and everything can be changed.

I argued that in the Doctor Who universe, time travel exists somewhere between these two extremes. In the modern series, it is made abundantly clear that there are a handful of events which are fixed points and must always happen, and everything else is in a state of flux and can be changed. I also argued that when something in the past is changed, the world exhibits a kind of reverse Butterfly Effect. Rather than a series of cascading consequences that inevitably lead to massive alterations in the timeline, it’s as if the universe takes the change and folds it into the existing timeline, provided the change is small enough to be accepted. Future events still happen, and generations of people down the line still exist. Time heals itself. Is this dichotomy ever satisfactorily explained by the series? No. Will it at times feel contrived, countermanded, or downright broken? You bet. But for the vast majority of stories in Doctor Who, this rough understanding will suffice.

I bring this up again because in my review of The Aztecs, I focused a good portion of the review on a line that the Doctor said to Barbara. When Barbara told the Doctor about her intention to end the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, the Doctor scolded her. “But you can’t rewrite history! Not one line!…What you are trying to do is utterly impossible. I know. Believe me, I know.”

Now we know for a fact that changing history isn’t impossible. The monk gave Da Vinci his famous plans for the creation of a flying machine, and he will go on to say that the ancient Britons built Stonehenge with the help of the monk and his anti-gravitational lift. But is this like The Romans, where the Doctor ultimately caused the Great Fire of Rome, thereby being the route cause of an event that we consider to be a “proper” part of history? Obviously the monk altered things by talking shop with Da Vinci and helping to build Stonehenge, but are these really changes to history if they are part of what we already consider to be the natural course of events? At this point in the series, I don’t have enough information to give you a firm answer, and I’m not going to speculate any more about that here.

But I do want to focus more on the first half of the Doctor’s line: “You can’t rewrite history! Not one line!” At the time, I thought this was a determinative statement about the mechanics of time travel within Classic Who. Later Doctors will give us “Time can be rewritten,” but for the classic series, I figured the 1st Doctor’s statement was a strict directive. Now, having seen the monk’s alternate modus operandi, I choose to interpret the Doctor’s line a little differently. Instead of an unbreakable rule, I see it as more like when a parent tells their child they cannot go outside. It’s not that one cannot change history; it is one ought not change history. It’s like how the Boy Scouts of America are taught to interact with wilderness: you go into a natural space and leave it exactly the way you found it. There’s no higher authority that will prevent you from trashing a campsite, but it’s accepted that leaving a clean campsite is better for everyone involved. In the same vein, in Doctor Who, treading carefully throughout history is generally accepted as the best way to go about your business—and this is how I will choose to look at in-universe time travel until the series does something to alter my perception once again.

Continuing on, the monk finally tells the Doctor about his master plan to eliminate the Viking fleet before they even land, thereby freeing up King Harold to rebuff William the Conqueror and win the Battle of Hastings. “Oh, yes, it’s quite a plan,” the Doctor says, sharing a laugh with the monk for a moment. Then he turns angry. “I count myself a very fortunate person indeed to be here in time to prevent this disgusting exhibition!” Pointing his sword at the monk, the Doctor demands that he be taken to the monk’s TARDIS, and they leave the scene.

Back at the prison cell, Sven emerges, rubbing the back of his head and calling out for Ulf. Lurking back in the shadows, Eldred watches and learns that there are Vikings in the monastery. Sven finds Ulf and unties his friend. Together, they stalk off after the monks again.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and the monk have arrived in the room with the monk’s TARDIS. “A perfect Saxon sarcophagus,” the monk gloats. “And more in keeping with the period, I would say, than a modern police box? What’s the matter, Doctor? Can’t you repair your camouflage unit?” The Doctor grumbles that the monk just got lucky, and the monk continues, “Luck? Oh, no, there’s no luck about it. I couldn’t have picked a better place for my headquarters than this. A deserted monastery right on the coast, gullible peasants who believe everything I say to them. No, Doctor. No, I planned to materialize my ship right on this very spot, disguised as a sarcophagus, and here it is.” This hits the Doctor where it hurts: right in the ego. The two men duck inside the monk’s TARDIS.

Inside, Steven has found the monk’s checklist and reads it out to Vicki, who wonders why the monk would do such a thing. “That’s a very good point, my child,” the Doctor says, striding into the console room ahead of the monk. “Indeed, a very good point. I must ask him myself.” The three protagonists have a happy reunion; they haven’t seen each other since the Doctor left Steven and Vicki at the beginning of Part 1.

Next is a fun little exchange where the Doctor praises the monk’s TARDIS. A Mark 4, he calls it. In the future, we will eventually learn that the Doctor’s TARDIS is a Type-40, so at some point, the way that TARDISes are named must get retconned. At any rate, the monk says that his TARDIS is fitted with automatic drift control, giving him the ability to suspend the ship in space without danger. Then he asks the Doctor pointedly what model of TARDIS he has, to which the Doctor gives a curt “Mind your own business.” We also learn in this sequence that the monk is “from the same place” as the Doctor, having originated 50 years later in the planet’s future than the Doctor, but nothing more specific than that. More about this in the conclusion.

We also get an exchange where Vicki sadly informs the Doctor that his TARDIS has been swallowed by the tide, to which the Doctor very flippantly says, “The water cannot affect the TARDIS. It won’t wash away. It’ll still be there when the tide goes down. Now, stop fretting, my dear.” I have a problem with this—not within the context of this episode but for the confusion it brings to the series canon. Throughout the series, we will see beings pushing and moving the TARDIS from one location to another. And fairly easily, too—it often only takes a few hands to move it. In Marco Polo, the ship was moved throughout the serial, perched on a caravan wagon like it weighed no more than the police box that makes up its exterior. What, then, is the mechanism for the TARDIS to resist the power of the ocean when it clearly can’t resist the power of a few humans? As far as I am aware, this is never properly explained in the series.

Then we finally get to the core of the monk’s motivations. “I want to improve things,” he says. “For instance, King Harold, I know he’d be a good king. There wouldn’t be all those wars in Europe—those claims over France went on for years and years. With peace, the people’d be able to better themselves. With a few hints and tips from me, they’d be able to have jet airliners by 1320! Shakespeare’d be able to put Hamlet on television.”

“What are we going to do with this fellow?” the Doctor scoffs, pacing around the console. “What can we do with this man? He’s utterly irresponsible. He wants to destroy the whole pattern of world history.” The Doctor has let his guard down, putting some distance between them and even turning his back on the monk. The monk uses this opportunity to make a break for it and dashes out of the TARDIS.

But the monk runs headfirst into Sven and Ulf, who make to grab him. Thinking quickly, the monk says, “Long live King Hardrada!” He points to the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki, who are rising from behind the sarcophagus. “Those are your enemies, there. Quick!” The Vikings let the monk go and turn menacingly toward the trio.

Back in the Saxon village, Wulnoth is whipping the other villagers into a frenzy, telling the others about the Doctor’s warning of a Viking invasion and connecting it to the monk’s request for beacon fires. “Fires on the clifftops would guide the ships in to land. Viking ships!” Edith then fingers the monk as a spy for the Vikings. Then, Eldred stumbles into the village, having come all the way down from the monastery, telling the villagers that there are Vikings there. “Arm yourselves!” Wulnoth cries. “We know how to treat the raiders!”

In the monastery, the monk escorts Sven and Ulf toward the exit, having the Vikings carry cases full of artillery shells for his cannon. When the Vikings ask him what it is they are carrying, he tells them that they are charms meant to guide their ships to a safe landing. He lets the Vikings get a little bit ahead of him before chuckling and saying quietly to himself, “I know you don’t understand, but believe me, your ships will know they’re there!”

In the room with the monk’s TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions are bound hand and foot at the base of the sarcophagus. Steven tries to argue that the monk can’t be successful. After all, he is from the future, and he knows that William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings. Vicki supposes that the monk could still change history, and if he does, their memories would simply change. Even the history books would change to reflect the new version of events. Then Steven says this: “But that means the exact minute, the exact second that he does it, every history book, every—well, the whole future of every year and time on Earth will change, just like that, and nobody’ll know that it has?” I love this as a concept. I hope it gets explored more in a future serial.

The Saxon villagers are armed with spears, creeping toward the monastery.

The monk and the two Vikings have arrived at the monastery entrance, the Vikings still toting the heavy artillery cases. Suddenly, the Saxon villagers are upon them, and they chase the monk and the Vikings back inside the monastery. The trio hides behind the door as the Saxons run by, then they dash outside. The villagers see this and follow them out, hot on their trail.

Next, we see Edith untying the Doctor and his companions, thanking the Doctor for tipping them off about the Vikings and telling them they must return to the village for a grand send-off before they go. Edith departs, and the Doctor tells the others that they must find a way to stop the time meddler and end his monkery for good. He tells Steven to go into the monk’s TARDIS to get a pen and paper. “Yes, okay, Doc,” Steven says, once again adding a much-delayed “-tor!” When Vicki asks to whom the Doctor intends to write, he tells her it’s the monk.

Out in the forest, the monk and the Vikings have come to a small clearing, with the villagers still following behind. The monk stops Sven and Ulf, points offscreen toward what he says is a well that would make for a good hiding spot, and pushes the Vikings into a running start in that direction. Once they are out of frame, the monk quietly nips off in the opposite direction. A moment passes, and the Vikings return, looking frantically for the monk and saying that there was no well. A few seconds later, they are surrounded by angry Saxons. The screen fades to black as the Vikings are jabbed repeatedly with the business end of Saxon spears, and it is implied that Sven and Ulf are killed.

Back inside the monk’s TARDIS, the Doctor is fiddling beneath the center console, manipulating what looks to be an electronic box the size of a mousetrap dangling below the underside of the console from a two-foot length of cable. Apparently, whatever he is doing is very dangerous—he is very testy when his companions distract him. He takes a long peace of string from Steven, then harries him and Vicki from the ship.

Slowly backing out of the ship into the monastery, the Doctor very carefully tugs the string, which is attached to the electronic box. He continues to reel in his catch until the box and its attached cable come free. With a giggle, he says, “There it is! Ha, ha! I’ve done it!” He isn’t very forthcoming about what exactly it is he has done, but he gives the electronic box to Steven and tells the two that it’s time to go back to the TARDIS. But not before he places an envelope on top of the sarcophagus addressed “To the monk.”

In the forest, the monk jogs laboriously through the foliage. He is winded and dirty, but it seems he has managed to lose the Saxon villagers for good.

At the bluffs above the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions arrive to find the ship down on the beach, safe and sound. The Doctor says that they should take off as soon as they can. After all, now that history has been set on its natural course once again, there is about to be a Viking invasion. “You know,” Steven says, “I’m beginning to like the idea of being a crew member on a time machine.”

“A crew member?” Vicki counters. “You’ll be lucky.” She nods toward the Doctor. “He’s the crew. We’re just the passengers.” The three share a laugh and begin their descent down to sea level.

Back at the monastery, the monk returns to the room with his TARDIS, and what follows is over three minutes of Peter Butterworth’s absolute command of a scene, even when he has no other actors to play off of. He is all at once charming, conniving, and a touch loathsome as he discovers the Doctor’s letter and smiles as if in appreciation of a worthy rival. He begins to read: “ ‘My dear fellow, I’m sure you will excuse me, but I didn’t want to say goodbye, as you are obviously going to be very busy for some time.’ He’s right, there. ‘Just in case you still have ideas about your master plan, I’ve taken precautions to stop your time meddling.’ ” The monk guffaws at this. “How could he stop a mark 4? ‘Possibly, one day in the future, when you’ve learnt your lesson, I shall return and release you.’ Release me?! Ha! Me? Oh, the fool.” Then the monk pauses, considering. “I wonder what he meant by— release me? Well, I’ll be going.” He ducks down behind the sarcophagus.

But when he peers into his TARDIS, he discovers that the interior has shrunk and the console room is now the size of the sarcophagus on the outside. The monk is in disbelief at first, then he begins to rage. “Ah! Ah! What’s he done? He’s taken my dimensional control! He’s ruined my time machine! I’m—I’m marooned.” He stands up, back in the room of the monastery. “Marooned! In 1066.” He stumbles about the space, blind to his surroundings. “Oh, Doctor. Doctor! Doctor!” He collapses on a set of stone steps in the corner of the room, clutching his head in despair.

Down at the waterfront, the TARDIS dematerializes. Credits roll.

Takeaways

From start to finish, The Time Meddler was almost perfect. Right at the beginning, the narrative gives us an odd monk with a strangely familiar reaction to seeing the TARDIS materialize on a beach in 1066. Throughout the first episode, we get some great hints that this monk may be more than he seems, culminating in a wonderful cliffhanger, with the monk cackling in the face of a captured Doctor. Across the entire serial, Peter Butterworth steals the show, giving us a likeable antagonist despite his maleficent intentions, and his final monologue and the way he is able to express emotion seals his portrayal of the monk as the best antagonist to date in the series—and Nero falls all the way back to a distant second.

But the monk isn’t the only star of the serial. Peter Purves as Steven Taylor brings a ton of charisma to the Doctor’s companions, and he injects a good amount of playfulness and a bit of tension into the Doctor-companion dynamic, something that could really benefit the show after a period of stagnation. Not only that, he elevates Vicki from a character I found mildly annoying to one half of a very amusing pseudo-sibling dynamic, with the two of them quibbling and quipping throughout the serial. They were a joy to watch interact with one another.

The scope of the serial was very small, and this allowed for the plot to breathe, giving the director and cinematographer time to play around with staging, establishing shots, and slow pans. This made for some wonderfully atmospheric sequences, especially in the first episode, with dramatic shots of the waterfront and the monastery. And for the first time in this retrospective—at least that I can recall—I went an entire serial without having anything negative to say about the writing. Every plot device was logical, consistent, and enjoyable, and I didn’t notice any flagrant plot holes.

And then there are the implications that the existence of the monk has for the rest of the series. I want to make it clear: the monk is not a Time Lord. Neither is the Doctor, really. Not yet. The words “Time Lord” won’t be uttered until the final serial of Season 6, The War Games. I find it highly unlikely that the showrunners have settled on many absolutes about the Doctor’s background, least of all what a Time Lord is and how they function. We still have 11 serials to go in Hartnell’s run, and the producers might have begun to consider how they will eventually write Hartnell out of the program, though I think even that is unlikely. No, what we have here is the first instance of the Doctor encountering another of his own kind—other than Susan, of course. And that is momentous enough on its own. There are others like him, other TARDISes zipping around out there. The possibility of the Doctor returning to his home planet has been brought into the fore of the viewers’ minds, and we have been placed on a trajectory that will eventually lead to the establishment of the Time Lords and their role in the universe.

Looking forward, I’m not super excited to delve into Season 3, but I will power through. Of its ten serials, only three have been preserved in their entirety, and I won’t be seeing one until the sixth serial of the season, The Ark. Additionally, I don’t remember enjoying any of these stories, except perhaps The Daleks’ Master Plan, though I am always open to be proven wrong on a fresh rewatch. Some, like Galaxy Four and The Celestial Toymaker, I remember being decidedly awful. But I began this retrospective with the lost episodes in mind, and I always knew that I would have to cross this chasm eventually. At any rate, I am excited to see how Steven’s character develops, and I really hope he isn’t spoiled by writing that I remember being mediocre at best. I want to see more banter between him and Vicki, and I hope he continues to give the Doctor a hard time. It’s nice to see the companion dynamic be something more than the congeniality of Ian, Barbara, and Susan. I’ll take a day or two to write up a summary of Season 2, and then it’s on to the next one.

Allons-y!

Rating: 9.8/10

Chapter Text

Overview

As I sit here thinking about how I should talk about Season 3, I’m having difficulty finding a cohesive throughline for this season in a way that I did not with the first two. I see this season as a period of transition, but much of its transitional elements are relegated to its final two serials. The majority of this season feels disconnected, without much in the way of momentum or direction—and unfortunately, I believe this is a direct result of a drastic downturn in the quality of its serials. I mentioned in my overview of Season 2 that there had been a noticeable dip in quality from Season 1, and that trend continues here. To put things into perspective, the average rating of a Season 1 serial is 6.31, and Season 2 serials average at 5.57. Season 3 sinks to an abysmal 3.48, an astounding low for a series that was once routinely churning out high-quality stories.

Several factors contribute to this dynamic. First, the quality of the writing has fallen off a cliff. Galaxy Four, the first serial of the season, gives us a plot with more logical inconsistencies and plot holes than any other serial to this point. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve almost completely removes the Doctor from the narrative, leaving his ill-equipped companions to wander aimlessly through the streets of Paris for several episodes. The Ark gives us the most poorly-conceived creatures since Season 1’s The Sensorites, and The Gunfighters presents us with a somewhat satirical try at an American Western that fails on multiple fronts.

That’s not to say there’s nothing of value here. Season 3 also gives us The Daleks’ Master Plan, a massive, 12-part epic that once again pits the Doctor against his perennial foes, sending him flying across the galaxy in what is a much more successful narrative gambit than what was given to us in The Chase. We also get The Savages, a fantastic story with lots of high-concept science fiction, where a futuristic society has developed technology which allows them to absorb energy and knowledge directly from other life forms.

And Season 3 does turn out to be very crucial for the development of the Doctor’s characterization. If you recall, back in An Unearthly Child, the showrunners made a point to explain that the Doctor and Susan were not from Earth, but the exact nature of their homeworld was never explained. Looking forward, the Doctor will be regenerating in the second serial of Season 4, something that is obviously not consistent with human physiology, and as such, the writers need to bridge the gap between this vague allusion to his extraterrestrial origin and his very real inhuman rebirth.

I still contend that at this point in the series, the showrunners probably don’t have a comprehensive grasp on what it means to be a Time Lord—that’s if they have even thought of the term Time Lord at all. But they do know that they must shift the Doctor away from what has so far been a predominantly human portrayal. This is executed in the final two episodes in the season, where the writers will begin to show that he is something more than human: physically, mentally, and in his ability to manipulate the course of events to his advantage—the last of which is a trait which will come to define the Doctor for the rest of the series.

And let’s not forget the Doctor’s companions—how do they fare in the upcoming season? Put simply, not well.

I’ll start with Steven, as he is the companion that I see as the biggest disappointment. To anyone reading these reviews in order, you will know that I came away from the last serial of Season 2, The Time Meddler, thinking that Steven has the capacity to become my favorite companion, even better than the original trio. I thought he was the perfect foil to Vicki, whom he elevated from being little more than a Susan clone to a fun, sarcastic character that I wanted to see more of. Unfortunately, as the quality of the writing went downhill, so did the quality of Steven’s character. In his serials with Vicki, he spends most of his time away from her, leaving little room for the two to banter. At other times, he has very little agency, swept along by the Doctor, who dominates the scene and the narrative. Overall, by the time Steven leaves the show, I actually prefer Vicki.

Speaking of Vicki, in this season, she reverts back to the Susan-clone that she was prior to the introduction of Steven—which is really a shame, as I also thought she had some potential after her solid introductory serial, The Rescue, back in Season 2. Like Steven, she is constantly in the Doctor’s shadow, but at least as a Susan-clone, she does hit some of those same emotional beats that Susan once did, though with markedly diminishing returns. When she leaves the show, I’m less saddened by her departure and more disappointed by what could have been.

As always, with every companion departure, we get the opportunity for the Doctor to pull new faces aboard the TARDIS. The first is Dodo, a teenage girl with short dark hair. Dodo is stupid. Like really, really dumb. It’s her primary character trait—her only character trait, really. At the beginning of her run, she drives me up a wall with her inability to absorb context clues or say anything even remotely resembling intelligence. But by the end, the writers do course correct her character into something more like a Susan-clone, which, though a definite improvement, shows a real lack of an ability to write a compelling female companion that doesn’t fit into the Susan mold. And yes, she will be gone by the end of the season—she is written off in the most unceremonious and disrespectful way possible.

Lastly, there are Ben and Polly. They join the Doctor in the last episode of the season: Polly, a tall, slender secretary with blonde hair, and Ben, a handsome sailor decked out in a naval uniform, both in their 20s. I don’t have much to say about either character, at least not yet. They don’t get much room to breathe in their opening serial, though there are more good signs than bad. I like Polly a little more than Ben, and the writing hints at a playful relationship along the lines of Ian and Barbara. Only time will tell if they can live up to the reputation of their predecessors.

Chapter Text

3.1 – Galaxy Four

Life vs Sentience vs Humanity

For the last four reviews, I’ve been starting with what I’ve been calling a thesis—a page or two to call attention to a specific trope or element within the episode. It has allowed me to make an argument about the serial before I start breaking it down, and I like how it lets me give the readers a lens through which to look at the rest of the review. There’s a trend that’s been developing in serials set on far-flung planets, but I couldn’t figure out a way to fit it naturally in this review. So I figured, why not put it at right the top? It’s not really something that defines this serial, so I won’t call it a thesis. Still, I’ll probably keep looking for things to lead with as often as I can manage, even if they’re not necessarily crucial to the serial at hand.

The writers have a strange conception of the words life and humanity. If you’ve watched enough science fiction, you probably have very explicit connotations for how these words are usually used within the genre. Life typically refers to anything that is living, whether it be flora, fauna, or species of sentience, and humanity typically refers to, well, humans. Not so in early Doctor Who. Sometimes these words can have the expected connotations, but more often than not, the early writers will use these words interchangeably when what they really mean is sentience.

This serial will feature the usage of both in this way. When the Doctor lands on the unnamed planet, he looks at the scanner, and—despite the scanner panning across the landscape and showing what are clearly some bushes or ferns—he declares that there are no signs of life. He goes on to suggest that the planet is deserted, which clues us in that what he really meant all along is sentience.

In a similar vein, this serial features a contingent of female humanoids called Drahvins, and in the scene which establishes their hierarchy, the leader of the Drahvins refers to the intelligent members of their species as human. Later, a member of another species called Rills, a decidedly nonhumanoid species, will say, “Not all the dominant species in the universe look like humans.” And way back in The Daleks, the Doctor and his companions referred to the Thals as human beings and to the Daleks as inhuman. From this, we can infer that whenever human is used as a descriptor in the Early Era of Doctor Who, what the writers really mean is both sentient and humanoid.

It's not a super relevant observation—I don’t use it as a reason to lower a serial’s rating, and it’s really easy to get used to what these words mean to the writers. But I think it’s fascinating to see these sorts of raw, unpolished, classic science fiction tropes in action. One of the things I’m most interested in seeing from this project long term is not just how Doctor Who evolves, but how science fiction evolves as a genre as humanity makes scientific advancements and as other franchises like Star Wars help popularize science fiction as a mainstream genre. Even though the way I write my reviews has basically guaranteed that I won’t really get to analyze broader trends for at least a couple of years, I’m very excited to see how they play out.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another serial with missing episodes, with Parts 1, 2, and 4 being lost. Additionally, the audio and visual elements that were salvaged from these missing episodes are of incredibly poor quality. Loose Cannon did a wonderful job as always in reconstructing them, but the tools they were working with were extremely limited. It’s a hard watch; if you are trying to watch along and you already think reconstructions are tedious, you should probably skip to the next serial. Lastly, as I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (Four Hundred Dawns)

Right off the bat, there is an issue I have after watching this serial once through that does not bode well for it on my second go around. The serial is called Galaxy Four despite the fact that it is never confirmed that the Doctor and his companions are in such a galaxy. The Drahvins we meet say, “We are from the planet Drahva, in Galaxy Four.” Doesn’t the way that this is phrased strongly suggest that they are telling this to someone outside of that galaxy? This is the only time Galaxy Four is even mentioned in the serial, so even if that’s where the story takes place, the name of the serial has virtually no bearing on the story it tells. We’re not off to a great start.

Season 3 begins with an establishing shot of planet…what should I call it? The serial never bothers to give it a name—one of my biggest pet peeves. I’ll refer to it as Planet A. That way, the next time something like this happens, I can call it Planet B, then Planet C, and so on, so at least this project can be internally consistent. Anyway, we get a shot of the environment of Planet A, which is bare earth in front of what is either an ocean or some desert flats. The image we see is grainy enough that it really is hard to tell—that’s how poor the quality of these visuals will be for the majority of this serial.

The TARDIS materializes on the bare earth, and we cut to the interior of the ship, where the powering down of the central console tells the crew that the TARDIS has landed. Vicki is cutting Steven’s hair, and the Doctor is standing at the console, checking over the readings. There’s an exchange where Steven asks the Doctor where they have landed, and Vicki snaps at him not to be a nuisance, and they both begin to argue over top of one another until the Doctor shouts both of them down. I hope you’re not expecting more of the awesome chemistry Steven and Vicki had in the last serial; as far as I remember, that is the only time it shows up in this one. In fact, both Steven and Vicki are criminally underutilized throughout Galaxy Four, something I will come back to again in the conclusion.

Anyway, the Doctor shushes his companions and tells them to listen carefully—there is no sound from outside. What I want to know is, should we expect there to be? There has been no indication thus far that the scanner has ever given them sound when they have checked it before, with a notable exception being Susan’s departure scene. However, I had always written that off as the Doctor having opened some alternate method of communication, as there was also a mechanism for Susan to hear what was being said inside the TARDIS—another thing that hasn’t happened since. But here, the Doctor takes it for a given, saying, “There isn’t a sound out there. Not a sound! Just silence.”

This is when he makes his comment about there being no signs of life, though from what we see on the scanner, there are bushes and other plants nearby. Even though this could easily be something added in the reconstruction, from this and from things that have happened in other serials, it’s clear that the Doctor means sentience. At any rate, Vicki finishes with Steven’s haircut, and the Doctor tells them it’s safe to go outside, saying, “It appears absolutely deserted. As a matter of fact, I think we shall get some…peace for once.”

Meanwhile, outside the TARDIS, something is moving. It looks like a robot or a drone of some kind—squat, about waist-high on a human, made up of four round, dome-like segments, one on top of another, each next one diminishing in size like a Russian nesting doll, with three feeler-like antennae on top. It glides as if it is on wheels, and I’m really curious about how they move these things. Unlike with Daleks, there is no space for an operator inside, so my best guess is that they’re being pulled around on wires. As it moves, it makes various noises: a low drone, a midrange beep, a slightly lower beep with lots of reverb, and a constant chugging like the wheels of a locomotive. It’s annoying. Not Zarbi-level annoying, but irritating nonetheless.

Inside, the protagonists are getting ready to leave the TARDIS when they suddenly hear the machine’s whirring and beeping. Having just mentioned the Zarbi, I did just remind myself that that awful shrieking could be heard inside the TARDIS, even when the doors were closed. Nonetheless, sound permeating the TARDIS exterior is something that is wildly inconsistent throughout Classic Who.

Based on its sound, Vicki is able to deduce that the machine is feeling its way around the exterior of the ship, and the Doctor adds, “Like something trying to discover by touch. Something blind.” Keep in mind these machines and what we figure out about their ability to see, hear, and speak throughout this episode. It becomes almost indecipherable. Then the three look up to see the machine on the scanner, and they watch as it slowly extends a longer antenna, makes a shrill whistle that actually does rival the Zarbi on the irritation index, and moves out of frame.

“Oh look,” Vicki says happily, “it’s got a sort of chumbley movement!” This sets the protagonists up to call the machines Chumblies for the remainder of the serial. The Doctor says the Chumblie was relaying a message to its controller, and Vicki thinks the Chumblie is cute and that whatever it is shouldn’t hinder their exploration of the planet. Steven says it might be dangerous. Whatever the Doctor thinks about all of this, he leads them through the TARDIS doors and outside. A brief sidenote: I don’t know if it’s spelled Chumblie or Chumbley—I’ve seen it both ways. I’ll just go with Chumblie because that’s how it is spelled on IMDb.

Standing on the bare earth outside the TARDIS, the first thing they all notice is that the Chumblie has gone. Then, they see that there are three suns in the sky. They are only standing there for thirty seconds or so when they suddenly see a Chumblie very close by; this one has a nozzle jutting out from between two of its domed segments. The Doctor and his companions have a very surprised reaction to seeing it, which makes no sense to me. They left the TARDIS mere seconds after seeing a Chumblie on the scanner. Did they really not expect to encounter them outside?

The Doctor tries to tell the Chumblie that they come in peace and that they don’t wish it any harm. It doesn’t respond. “It can’t speak,” says Vicki—keep this in mind. Then Steven makes as if he is going to pick up a rock and throw it at the Chumblie; the Chumblie sees this and trains its gun on the trio. The Doctor points out that the Chumblie didn’t move until they had made a noise, to which Steven says, “Yes, it is blind.” The Doctor says that it must be locating them with some kind of heat vision. Again, this makes no sense within the context of what we will soon learn about this serial. The operators of these Chumblies have crash-landed on Planet A. There is no feasible way for these machines to function as their eyes and ears if the only thing they can see is heat signatures. How could they cross a vegetated landscape like this? They couldn’t see any plants or rock features.

Moving on, the Chumblie responds to Steven’s threat by turning to a bush—which it shouldn’t be able to see—and lighting it on fire with a burst from its gun. “As neat a threat as ever I saw,” the Doctor says. The Chumblie makes as if to direct them away from the TARDIS, and the protagonists have no choice but to oblige, following its lead.

As they are herded across the landscape of Planet A, we soon see that two women are watching their movements. They are tall and blonde, with their hair pulled back into a sort of French twist with bangs left to dangle down to their brows. Their most distinctive feature is these brows, which have been shaved off. In their place are a series of small black dots in the rough outline of where their eyebrows should be. They both wear black knee-length skirts and a black shirt with a white collar, making an arch-like pattern of white fabric that falls down to their hips. It looks a bit like some sort of military garb, though skirts are entirely impractical for military activity.

The two women take a mesh net and ambush the Chumblie, tossing it over the machine. The Chumblie is immediately incapacitated, it’s domed segments collapsing into one another as it powers down. Then the women introduce themselves as Drahvins. “From the planet Drahva, in Galaxy Four.” Doesn’t this seem as if they are talking to someone outside of Galaxy Four? Anyway, one of the Drahvins tells the protagonists that as long as a Chumblie is covered by a mesh of metal, it cannot receive orders from its controllers. Then the Drahvins say that the protagonists are to be escorted to Maaga (pronounced MAH-guh), the Drahvin leader. Vicki doesn’t trust them, but one of the Drahvins insists they go for their own safety. “If you stay here, more machines will come,” she says.

Then the Drahvins say that if they do not come with them, the Chumblies will capture them and take them to the Rills. The Doctor asks if the Rills are the people who control the Chumblies, and the Drahvins answer with a tone of disdain. “They are not people. They are things. They crawl. They murder…They have already killed one of us.” The Doctor says he would like to meet the Rills anyway, but he eventually concedes that it would be safest to go with the Drahvins.

Suddenly, Vicki sees more Chumblies in the distance, moving toward them. It’s hard to tell from the reconstruction how many of them there are, but it seems to be about three or four. One of the Drahvins tries to pull the metal mesh off of the out-of-commission Chumblie, but it won’t budge. The Doctor tells them that the Chumblie has magnetized the net to prevent capture, and the Drahvins are distraught that they will have to return without the net, thereby disobeying orders. This is another thing that doesn’t make sense to me. If the Drahvins have used the net enough to know that it incapacitates the Chumblies, shouldn’t they already know that the Chumblies are magnetized and therefore won’t get the nets back?

Moving on, the two women take the Doctor and his companions to a ship that doesn’t really look like a spaceship. It’s more like a hut, octagonal in shape, with large buttress-like struts attached to the hut at its corners. There’s nothing remotely aerodynamic about the structure. Inside, we get a rare treat: actual recorded footage, nearly four minutes of it. The interior of the ship looks very similar to the flight deck of Maitland’s ship in The Sensorites, with banks of computers and a series of control modules. Steven comments that it was once a decent ship, though it is far from sound now. “Yes, it’s almost fossilized,” the Doctor concurs.

The Drahvins order the others to silence, telling them that Maaga is coming. Right from the jump, it is clear that Maaga is someone that the other Drahvins fear. They are practically trembling as they tell her about the net they have lost, and their voices are filled with terror as Maaga assures them, “I will deal with you both later.” Their voices are the only thing that really distinguishes Maaga from the others. Until I heard Maaga speak, I didn’t realize just how robotically the other two women have been speaking this whole time: clipped and slightly monotonous, as if they are actually androids. Maaga’s voice has a distinctly natural inflection, though she is so cold that it may as well be as robotic as the others. She tells the Doctor and his companions that they are at war with the Rills and their machines.

It turns out that just by being on Planet A, the protagonists’ lives are in grave danger—Planet A is set to explode, an event that will occur in just fourteen dawns. Throughout the serial, dawn is the operative word for the passage of time, not day. I have a real problem with this trope. First, it is something that is more typical in the portrayal of primitive civilizations, and while the Drahvins are warlike and barbaric, they are not primitive. Second, it is confusing, both within the context of the serial and for the viewers watching at home. Both the Rills and the Drahvins will refer to days as dawns, and it seems very implausible for both races to have come to use the term independently. Plus, this phrasing will force the Doctor to use the phrase “in less than two dawns’ time” rather than simply saying “tomorrow morning,” which is just ridiculously clunky.

Steven asks how the Drahvins know that the planet will explode, and Maaga answers, “The Rills told us. That is why they’re repairing their spaceship, so that they can escape…We must capture that spaceship from them…[Ours] cannot fly. The Rills shot us down. We cannot move.” When Steven asks if the Drahvins belong on Planet A, Maaga says, “No. Nor do the Rills. There is no life on this planet. We come from Drahva. Some four hundred dawns ago, we were investigating this particular section of the galaxy. We were looking for a planet such as this, capable of supporting life so that we might colonize it.”

Then Steven and the Doctor ask if all Drahvins are women. “Oh, we have a small number of men, as many as we need,” Maaga says dismissively. “The rest, we kill. They consume valuable food and fulfill no particular function.” Then she points to the other Drahvin women. “And these are not what you would call human. They are cultivated in test tubes. We have very good scientists. I am a living being. They are products, and inferior products. Grown for a purpose and capable of nothing more…[Grown] to fight. To kill.”

The Doctor asks if the Drahvins attacked the Rills, to which Maaga says, “No. We were in space above this planet when we saw a ship such as we had never seen before. We did not know it, but it was a Rill ship. It fired on us, and we crashed. But before we did, we managed to fire back so that they’d crash, too. On landing, they killed one of my soldiers.” Steven asks what the Rills are like, and all Maaga will say is “Disgusting.”

Suddenly, one of the Drahvins calls out that a Chumblie is approaching. It raises its communications antenna to send a message back to its controller, something Maaga tries to prevent from happening. She orders her Drahvins to man the guns, and they fire a beam which sets fire to the ground beneath the Chumblie. The Chumblie collapses its domes to whether the flames, and once the flames are gone, it rises again, unharmed. It sends its message and leaves the vicinity of the Drahvin ship. Maaga concedes that they haven’t been able to destroy a Chumblie yet, promising that she will find a way.

The Doctor proposes to use the equipment on the TARDIS to discern whether or not the Rills’ claims about Planet A exploding are true, and Maaga accepts, with one catch: one of them has to stay behind. “I could not guarantee to rescue you again,” she says very sweetly. “I shall feel easier if one of you remain behind.” Three things about this. First, it makes no sense—wouldn’t three people stand a better chance against the Chumblies instead of two in just about every scenario? Second, as we will discover in the third episode, Drahvins have no concept of compassion. They have a tough time even conceiving of caring for another person. So why, then, is Maaga able to replicate so easily something that she has trouble even conceptualizing? And third, why would the Doctor agree to this? Except for being the most contrived reason for the Doctor to be unable to get into his TARDIS and fly away, why would he allow the Drahvins to keep one of them under any circumstances?

Anyway, Vicki sees through this ploy as a blatant way for the Drahvins to take one of them hostage. Then she suddenly decides that she is okay with being that hostage, and she stays behind as the Doctor and Steven leave for the TARDIS. There are so, so many logical inconsistencies in the narrative so far, but aside from all of that, the bones of this serial are fairly solid. The tension between the Drahvins and the mysterious Rills is interesting, and the backdrop of Planet A exploding is a decent impetus for the plot. It’s far from a good serial at this point, but the potential is there.

When the Doctor and Steven arrive back at the TARDIS, they find two Chumblies already there, trying to enter the ship. Steven asks if they can, to which the Doctor replies, “They’d have to be pretty well advanced to break my force barrier.” Cut back to the Chumblie, which has donned some sort of circular drill attachment. It tries the drill on the TARDIS door, but it is unsuccessful.

Back in the Drahvin ship, Vicki has been relegated to the Drahvin living quarters. Nothing about this room is communicated visually in the reconstruction, though subtitles do tell us that Vicki is sitting on a bench. Crossing to the door, she presses an ear to it and hears Maaga berating the other Drahvins for their failure to come back with the mesh net and asking them if they want to be caught by “those creeping, revolting, green monsters.” Her subordinates are actually crying, blubbering a barely discernable “No” while Maaga calls them all fools. I feel bad for Maaga’s subordinates. Though when we learn a little more about them in the third episode, I’ll talk about how disappointing I find the Drahvins.

Meanwhile, the Chumblies are escalating their attempts to enter the TARDIS. One of them uses the same gun that they used to ignite the bush from earlier, but once again, there is no visible damage done to the ship. A Chumblie sends a message to its controller, and both machines chumble away.

The Doctor and Steven enter the TARDIS, and the Doctor spends a few moments analyzing his astral map, adjusting dials and taking readings. He says the Rills were right. Steven says they have to get off the planet, and the Doctor grumbles, “Yes, if the Drahvins let us go…They need our help with the Rills! Why do you think they’ve held Vicki back?” It makes me even more upset that the Doctor knew what Maaga was doing and still left Vicki behind. Even if he ultimately couldn’t leave the Drahvin ship with both Vicki and Steven, there is absolutely no reason for him to leave someone behind without at least getting Maaga to reveal her true intentions.

Then the Doctor says that while the Rills were correct about Planet A blowing itself up, they were wrong about their estimate of fourteen dawns. “Two dawns!” he says. “Tomorrow is the last day this planet will ever see.” Credits roll.

Part 2 (Trap of Steel)

Steven and the Doctor realize that they have to get back to the Drahvin spaceship as soon as possible to get Vicki back, but suddenly, two Chumblies appear on the scanner. One places an object on the ground next to the TARDIS doors. I don’t know how else to describe it; it looks like a big black butt plug with two wires trailing from the bottom of it. A short distance away, a Chumblie holds the other ends of the wires in goofy arms much like those the Mechanoids had in The Chase. Come to think of it, there has been a proliferation of round, inflexible creatures in the last few serials. Anyway, the Chumblie touches the wires together twice, causing two massive explosions that wrack the TARDIS. The Doctor and Steven end up on their backs, but once again, no visible damage has been done to the ship. The Chumblies leave, and the Doctor and Steven make their escape.

Meanwhile, Maaga and Vicki are in the Drahvin living quarters. It’s a fairly meaningless scene in which Vicki is impatient for the return of her friends, but there is one thing worth noting. Maaga admits that Vicki has been held back as a point of leverage to get them to help the Drahvins capture the Rill spaceship.

The Doctor and Steven have made their way back to the Drahvin spaceship. On their way inside, the Doctor takes out his (regular) screwdriver and is actually able to scratch the outer hull with it. I have so many problems with this. Any metal that is soft enough to be scratched by a screwdriver isn’t good enough to function as part of an airplane, much less a spaceship. I know I let a lot of things slide when it comes to the early showrunners and inaccurate science, but this is more egregious than most.

When they get inside, Vicki is very happy to see them. They tell Vicki and the Drahvins that the Chumblies tried to blow up the TARDIS, and Maaga is surprised to learn the Chumblies didn’t succeed. “Well, of course they didn’t,” the Doctor snaps. “My ship’s not made of tin like this old trash. Oh, good gracious me! Seems if I cough too loudly, the whole thing’d fall to pieces.” I know the 1st Doctor is acerbic, but damn, Doc; get her ass.

Then Maaga asks the Doctor when Planet A will explode, and the Doctor answers, “Exactly when the Rills said it would. In fourteen dawns’ time.” Yet another thing that makes no sense. Why on Earth would the Doctor lie to Maaga here? Unless he has already made plans to betray her and leave the Drahvins at the mercy of the exploding planet—which is completely out-of-character, even for the 1st Doctor—lying only serves to make Maaga more suspicious of them if and when he eventually tells her the truth. No sense at all.

Anyway, Maaga asks the Doctor if he will help the Drahvins capture the Rill spaceship, telling him that she plans to leave the Rills on Planet A to die. “I can’t help you,” the Doctor says. “I never kill anything. Neither do my friends.” First, yes you do; it’s happened quite frequently. And second, I wouldn’t mind if this was the junction where the writers begin to make a concerted effort for this sentiment to become a part of the Doctor’s character. He has killed, but for the consistency of his future characterization, he needs to distance himself from that.

Maaga pulls a gun from her belt and points it at the Doctor and his companions, making it clear that she will conscript their help by force if necessary. Steven lunges for the gun, and the two wrestle with it for a minute until two Drahvins enter the ship, returning from their patrol, and point their guns at Steven. Steven gives up, and the Doctor realizes that they have no choice. “You have none whatsoever,” Maaga says. “The Rills are repairing their spaceship. They have fourteen dawns in which to complete it.” The Doctor and Steven share an uneasy look, which Maaga picks up on. Sensing the two are lying to her, Maaga threatens to shoot Vicki until the Doctor comes clean and reveals that there are only two dawns left for the planet. Maaga matter-of-factly tells him he will need to work quickly. She points him in the direction of the Rill ship, and the Doctor and Vicki depart, leaving Steven behind as the hostage this time.

I’m flying through this episode; it’s already halfway over. There is so much fluff going on in these scenes to pad the runtime, and I’m starting to resent the slowness of the pace, given that it only calls attention to the litany of plot holes each time one crops up.

Outside the Drahvin ship, the Doctor wonders why the Rills haven’t wiped out the Drahvins yet if they are as dangerous as Maaga made them seem. “That ray gun could go through this like a piece of paper,” he says, running a hand along the hull of the ship. Then he and Vicki start to walk in the direction of the Rill ship.

Back in the Drahvin spaceship, there is an extended exchange between Steven and one of the lesser Drahvins, where Steven nearly convinces the Drahvin that it would be okay for her to take some of the leader’s things if it ultimately served the Drahvin cause—namely, Maaga’s gun. I would go into more detail here, because it’s a long sequence and it’s actually quite compelling. But it seems like the plot is being set up for Steven to eventually trick a Drahvin into helping him or to question Maaga’s leadership—and this isn’t touched on again for the rest of the serial. It is more meaningless filler, a thread that is never pulled.

Anyway, Maaga returns in time to see this conversation, and she reprimands the Drahvin for her stupidity, telling her, “He was trying to trick you, like the machine.” Then Maaga makes Steven an offer, saying that she would let him go if he would betray the Doctor and Vicki and take the Drahvins away in the TARDIS. Steven rejects this, saying that even if he wanted to, he doesn’t know how to operate the ship. Frustrated, Maaga orders Steven into a corner where he lies down and closes his eyes. One of the other Drahvins asks Maaga why they don’t just kill Steven, to which she says, “I will let you kill him when I am good and ready.”

Next, we have some more fluff, though this scene actually brings us a great character moment with the Doctor and Vicki. They arrive at a ridge where several Chumblies are on patrol. The Doctor watches them, urging Vicki to be patient. “In this case,” he says, “first, we must observe, note, collate, and then conclude. After that, perhaps we can act.”

Instead, when the next Chumblie passes close by their hiding spot, Vicki throws a rock at the ground behind it. The Doctor is apoplectic, but Vicki says, “Didn’t you see? They only pick up sounds in front of them. If we keep immediately behind them, they won’t know we’re there.” That doesn’t make sense. First, that’s not how sound works. Even a directional mic pointed the wrong way should be able to pick up something with a rock that large. Second, I thought these things were supposed to pick up heat signatures. How will walking behind them do the Doctor and Vicki any good? Third, there has been nothing thus far to indicate that the Chumblies can only hear things in front of them, so Vicki should have had no way of even suspecting this was the case.

Nevertheless, we get a very good line from Vicki here. The Doctor is still mad that she was careless, so she adopts a sweet tone and says, “That was no risk. I noted, observed, collated, concluded. And then I threw the rock.” The Doctor scoffs at this, but there’s a tinge of amusement to it. The two of them get up and follow right behind a Chumblie, continuing on toward the Rill ship.

Inside the Drahvin ship, there’s another minute of fluff that means nothing to nobody.

Back with the Doctor and Vicki, they have arrived at some sort of temporary habitat made of metallic triangles welded together. At one end of the habitat is something that looks like a drill rig; the Doctor says the only way to find out what the Rills are drilling for is to go inside. They creep around Chumblies and examine the structure more closely. In the Doctor’s opinion, the Rills seem to be more advanced than he thought—there is a high-tech machine of some kind that converts air into something else.

They find two corridors leading into the building: one that is very large and one that is the exact shape and size of a Chumblie. They have a giggle about the Chumblie-shaped corridor before wondering if the enormous one was shaped for the Rills. As they make their way inside, they both notice a slight smell; they think they recognize it, but they can’t quite place it. Then they find the Rill spaceship. We don’t get to see it in the reconstruction, but the Doctor marvels at the design, definitely suggesting that it is far superior to that of the Drahvins.

As they move inside the habitat, the audience can hear a very familiar and foreboding sound—the repetitive, low-pitched droning of a Dalek corridor. Let me be clear, there are no Daleks in this episode. As a long-time fan of Doctor Who, and after hearing this drone as a thematic device in the three Dalek serials and nowhere else, I find the choice to utilize the sound here to be legitimately offensive. I don’t know if they wanted to evoke the menace of the Daleks or if they just couldn’t find another suitable sound or if they were just being careless. I hate it regardless.

The two protagonists find what looks to be a Chumblie repair room, with lots of spare parts scattered about and a tiny Chumblie that Vicki giggles at for a moment. But her giggles turn to screaming as she turns and sees a massive, bulbous head with a tusked snout and two oval eyes peering at her through a viewport. Credits roll.

Part 3 (Airlock)

This is the only recovered episode, and to be honest, it only makes it worse when the flaws become more visible.

The Doctor and Vicki try to make a break for it, but there is a Chumblie coming up the corridor, blocking their exit. They run back into the Chumblie repair room and hide behind a piece of equipment the size of a large trunk that couldn’t possibly conceal them—it’s about as blatant as when the protagonists crowded against the side of the building in The Space Museum. Nevertheless, the Chumblie does not see them. It goes off in another direction, and the Doctor and Vicki flee the room.

Then, as they are running between two rows of triangular struts, they are separated when one such triangle descends from the ceiling between them. This thing is really flimsy-looking, with the Doctor and Vicki being able to talk to each other through wide-open gaps in the structure of the triangle. “I can’t move it. It’s immovable!” the Doctor cries, as he gets the flimsy thing to jiggle roughly a foot back and forth. This prop work is horrible. Then the Doctor thinks he can sabotage the Rills’ air conversion machine. “This is the thing that gives them the gas to breathe with…The Rills can’t go outside. It’s a foregone conclusion.”

Behind Vicki, two Chumblies appear, looking as if they want her to follow. Vicki is scared, but she leaves the Doctor, who gets to work with his screwdriver.

Back in the Drahvin spaceship, the inferior Drahvins ask Maaga why they are relegated to the ship at a time when they would normally be out patrolling. In the background, Steven still sleeps on a bench. Maaga seems irritated by the Drahvins’ questions. “Soldier Drahvins,” she begins, “you can’t understand anything that’s different, can you. You are made unintelligent, and you remain that way for the rest of your lives. I told them solders were no good for space work. All they can do is kill. But they wouldn’t listen. If you are to conquer space, they said, you will need soldiers.”

She then poses a series of questions to the other Drahvins, to which they conclude that Maaga is the leader because the is the only one that knows how to think. Maaga tells them that in order to save themselves, they need to watch their prisoner, so that the Doctor and Vicki will be incentivized to work for them. “I do not understand why they would want to help a friend,” one of the lesser Drahvins says. “We would not. We would leave him here.”

“Yes, we would,” says Maaga. “But I have heard of creatures like these. They help one another…I have heard that on occasions, they even die for one another…There are many strange things in the universe.”

Okay, this is very revealing about the Drahvins. And it makes me hate how they have been portrayed in this serial. We are told that Drahvins are a race run by conniving, backstabbing, cutthroat women who care for nothing but the advancement of their own ambitions and status. Think of how cool it would have been to have two of these women butting heads throughout the duration of this serial. Or a whole contingent of them. What if instead of their downfall coming at the hands of the Rills or the Doctor and his companions, their ultimate failing was caused by the structure of their society and the traits that it valued?

Instead we have one intelligent Drahvin and a bunch of drones. And I mean drone in the most derogatory sense of the word. They are the mindless worker bees, and Maaga is their unquestioned queen. It’s boring. There is no conflict there. And the amount of pure fluff and filler in this serial is emblematic of just how bad these characters were written. Even the sequence that illuminated all of this about Drahvin culture was nothing but unnecessary fluff with how the serial has been structured. Even though it is actually interesting information, it means nothing to a plot which never utilizes it properly. Rather than something actually compelling, we get a borderline sexist group of dumb blondes. Really disappointing stuff.

Anyway, at the end of this scene, Maaga goes on a tangent about how good it will feel to fly away from this planet knowing that the Rills and the Doctor’s crew are all dead, and we learn that Steven has only just been pretending to sleep the whole time. Then Maaga orders all but one of the drones to go out on patrol—hold on, if they were just going to patrol anyway, why was there that long exchange about having to stay inside to watch the prisoner? Maaga warns the remaining drone not to fall asleep, then leaves the room. Boy, I wonder if the drone is going to fall asleep.

Back in the Rill habitat, the Chumblies have brought Vicki to a halt, and she asks, “What do you want, anyway?” Then the Chumblie speaks. I shit you not; after all of this time not speaking for no reason other than that they apparently chose not to, the Rills decide to speak to Vicki through the Chumblie. Just think of how much trouble could have been saved had the Rills decided to speak during the roughly eighty-seven other encounters they’ve had with the protagonists. What dumb writing. It would have been perfectly fine if Vicki had actually been taken to talk face-to-face with a Rill.

Anyway, Vicki tells the Rill that she and the Doctor have been forced by the Drahvins to try and capture their ship. The Rill is confused by this—they say that they offered to take the Drahvins with them in their spaceship when they leave. Then the Rill tells Vicki that they are not killers, and that everything the Drahvins have told them has been a lie.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is still tinkering with the air converter.

The Rill tells Vicki a lot of exposition. “We were investigating outer space when we encountered a strange ship. Rills do not attack or kill without good reason, so we stopped our ship. Their ship also stopped. We hung in space facing each other. We could have turned and gone away, but we were afraid that we would be attacked…For four dawns we hung there. Then we decided to turn. As we were doing so the Drahvins fired. Immediately we did the same, and both ships crashed. When we escaped from our ship, we discovered that we could not breathe the atmosphere here, but we had a small supply of our own, and set out to help the Drahvins.”

The scene fades to a really cool flashback sequence, showing what happened next. “The first one we found was badly injured. We started to help the soldier. Then Maaga, their leader, appeared. She started to shoot at us, so we left. We could have fought back. Our weapons are superior to theirs. But we do not kill! The Drahvins do. When we looked back, we saw Maaga kill the injured soldier.” The Drahvin drones have been fed a lie by Maaga.

Despite this, the Rills have continued to extend to the Drahvins an offer to leave on their spaceship. “What do we gain if they die?” The Rill says. “We will help you rescue your friend.” Then the Rill reveals that they cannot breathe oxygen at all, and Vicki suddenly makes a mad dash back to the Doctor, realizing that if he succeeds, the Rills will die. I don’t know why this comes as such a shock to Vicki; it was already acknowledged that they can’t breathe the air outside.

Back at the ship, Steven slowly opens his eyes and sits up on the bench. Nearby, the Drahvin drone has indeed fallen asleep. Oh, who could have seen that coming? Steven knocks the drone unconscious and snatches the gun, but as soon as he opens the door to the airlock, Maaga and another drone corner him inside it. Luckily, he can just step outside, but as soon as he does, a Chumblie is coming his way, and he doesn’t yet know that they are friendly. He ducks back inside the airlock and seals both doors, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Back in the Rill habitat, Vicki gets to the Doctor in time; he hasn’t yet managed to disable the air converter. There is a lot of fluff as the Doctor and the Rill speak with each other, and we hear a lot of things the audience already knows. Then the Doctor asks what the Rills are drilling for, and we get the most insane, awful science that the series has given us to this point. “We must have power for launching our spaceship. The suns are too weak to supply this power. Therefore, by drilling, we may find some in the ground.”

Their ship is solar powered. They don’t have enough solar power. So they decided to drill for it. Fucking, what? Then we get: “But the only power we find is a gas, and that is of no use to us.” Yeah, no shit. What did you expect to find, a red giant? That would be like if a coal power plant ran out of coal and decided to buy yellow cake Uranium instead. I try not to focus on the names of individual writers in this retrospective, but William Emms is the man responsible for this travesty, and he never wrote another Doctor Who serial before or after. Thank God for that.

The Doctor tells the Rill that he can supply the power for their ship from his TARDIS, provided the Rills can give him a long enough cable and do “a conversion,” which is never explained any further than that.

In the Drahvin ship, Maaga begins to drain the air from the airlock containing Steven, and a pressure gauge slowly ticks backward toward his doom.

In the Rill habitat, a Chumblie out in the field sends a message to the Rills, telling them that Steven is trapped in the Drahvin airlock and making some very distressed noises. The Doctor, Vicki, and two Chumblies rush of to save him. I say rush, but they can only move as fast as the Chumblies, which is about a brisk walk. If this show were going for realism, Steven would have no chance. In front of the Drahvin spaceship, they run into a drone on patrol. Vicki tries to bluff their way past, showing the drone that the Chumblies now obey her commands. The Drahvin doesn’t fall for it, and Vicki resorts to wrestling the gun out of her hands. Holding the drone at gunpoint, Vicki and the Doctor rush to the ship.

Inside the airlock, the pressure continues to drop. Steven collapses, falling unconscious. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Exploding Planet)

The title of this episode has reminded me about a point I meant to bring up earlier. Why is Planet A exploding? There’s never any reason given for it. Planets don’t just explode for no reason, certainly not in any way that can be reasonably predicted by the Rills or the Doctor. It would be one thing if the Doctor looked at his astral map and it told him that there was an asteroid on a collision course with the planet or something. But it’s just set to explode on its own, like a ticking timebomb. And as we are about to see in this episode, the Rills, the Drahvins, and the Doctor also seem to have this explosion timed down to the exact minute it will blow up. It would have been cool if something the Rills were doing with their drilling had led to the planet’s demise; at least then the drilling would have served some actual purpose, even if it was just in being a plot device. But no, we get nothing.

Anyway, I’m gonna blast through this closing episode. We’re back in a reconstruction, and I don’t want to spend a second more on this garbage than I have to.

The episode opens with a Chumblie holding the black butt plug bomb again. Only for some inexplicable reason, it does something different now. The Chumblie tosses it into the open window of the Drahvin spaceship, and it shoots jets of ammonia gas into the flight deck. A second Chumblie shoots the airlock, and Steven stumbles out to rejoin the others. As far as I can tell from the reconstruction, Steven is walking under his own power, when just a minute ago, he fainted. Maybe the Chumblie’s gun jolted him awake somehow? At least it’s something that’s just regularly bad like a continuity error instead of everything else we’ve been getting. Might actually bring up the average.

Before I go on, I want to take the time to bring up one more dynamic of this serial that was great in theory and botched in execution. One of the intended themes of Galaxy Four is obviously ‘don’t trust a book by its cover.’ I say intended, because it comes across as very opaque. The narrative contains a trope as old as time itself: the ugly saint and the beautiful sinner. We have the Drahvins: sleek and attractive on the outside but cold and manipulative at their core. And we have the Rills: monstrous creatures on the outside which reveal themselves to have hearts of gold. You’ve seen this hundreds of times. Beauty and the Beast with Beast and Gaston. Mean Girls with Regina George and Janis Ian. You get the picture.

The problem with it in this narrative is two-fold. First of all, the timing is all wrong. Unlike with those other narratives, Galaxy Four doesn’t introduce its saint and its sinner anywhere close to one another. We get two-and-a-half episodes of Drahvins before any of the protagonists ever speak to a Rill, and we still haven’t seen a Rill in full. By the time we end up actually sighting one of the creatures, the viewer has most likely forgotten the visual comparison that the writing was trying to establish back in the first episode—that is, if the viewer even noticed the comparison in the first place. Because second of all, there is so much fluff and other junk to muddy the waters that I wouldn’t blame anyone for missing the trope entirely. All of the pointless dialogue is bad enough as a distraction, but above everything else, you can’t make a bunch of beautiful sinner antagonists and then make me feel bad for all of the Drahvin drones. It undermines any poignancy of the distinction the writer was trying to make.

Moving on, the Drahvins run out of their ship, guns poised to fire, but a Rill speaks through a Chumblie, warning Maaga that if the Drahvins do anything, the Chumblie will fire. The Rill assures the Drahvins that the butt plug ammonia canister will no longer expel gas, and the Drahvins retreat back into their ship. Back inside, they can only watch as the Doctor and his companions escape. Then Maaga orders one of the drones to sneak out of the rear entrance—which we haven’t seen before now—and exit it silently—we haven’t seen evidence that the doors can be silent.

Back at the Rill habitat, the Doctor says that they have precisely six hours until the planet explodes—how he knows this so exactly, I have no idea. The Rills have finished their nebulous conversion—again, we don’t know what that is either—and the Doctor and Vicki leave to run a cable all the way to the TARDIS. Why Steven stays behind is unclear, except as a blatant mechanism to force the protagonists back to the Rill habitat one last time.

More fluff, fluff, fluff.

At the Drahvin ship, it turns out that the drone’s new plan for disabling the Chumblie outside—something that they haven’t managed to do to this point in the serial—is to hit it over the head really hard with a metal bar. And it works. Are you kidding me? Really? I haven’t dwelt on it much, but there has been ample evidence of Drahvin weapons not working on the Chumblies, from their guns being completely ineffective to the Chumblies being able to steal their metal mesh. And all they needed to do this whole time was beat it with a stick? Anyway, while the drone is doing this, a tremor wracks the Drahvin ship, and Maaga is able to determine from this that they only have five hours left. How?

It’s time to lightning round the rest of this.

The Doctor connects the cable to the TARDIS.

The amount of time it will take to charge the Rill spaceship is roughly thirty minutes less then the amount of time until Planet A is set to explode.

The Drahvins are unable to penetrate the Rill habitat during this period.

The Doctor and his companions finally get to see the full bodies of the Rills—they look like Jabba the Hutt with heads that are slightly more distinct from their bodies. The protagonists make their goodbyes.

The charging finishes.

The Doctor and his companions rush back to the TARDIS, avoiding Drahvins.

The Rill spaceship takes off.

The TARDIS dematerializes, leaving Maaga and the Drahvins to perish as Planet A breaks apart.

Inside the TARDIS Vicki has hurt her ankle. This will play a role in the beginning of The Myth Makers.

Elsewhere, on a jungle planet, a man regains consciousness, sits up, looks around, and says that he must kill. Credits roll.

Takeaways

Galaxy Four wasn’t entirely without merit, but it was pretty dang close. A lot of its problems begin and end with the Drahvins, who, despite having a rather intriguing backstory, are extremely mismanaged. We are told about a cutthroat society with fierce women who know nothing about compassion, but we are given only one such woman and a bunch of subordinates bred for their stupidity. Together, the antagonists were an empty husk that had so little presence in the serial that the narrative had to be padded with fluff to fill in the gaps. The Drahvins sorely needed another strong character to butt heads with Maaga and create some friction within the ranks of the antagonists.

Then there are the Rills, which don’t have much of a presence either. But unlike the Drahvins, this has less to do with the way they were crafted and more to do with how the narrative was structured. There simply wasn’t enough runtime dedicated to the Rills; until Part 3, the writing gave the protagonists no excuses to actually meet them. Imagine if one of the companions had fallen in with the Rills somehow toward the beginning of the serial—there could have been so much done to flesh them out as support characters. There could have been some interesting storytelling where the audience is told one story from the Drahvins and another from the Rills, having to decide who they believe. A companion meeting them earlier also would have solidified the ugly saints and beautiful sinners trope, rather than having it buried among the fluff.

Speaking of the companions, what did they even do? Neither Steven nor Vicki contributed anything of value to the serial, aside from being taken hostage and used as a plot device. They were completely unnecessary. I found their inactivity especially disappointing coming on the heels of The Time Meddler, where their pseudo-sibling dynamic was a clear highlight of the story. Aside from a few playful jabs they took at each other at the very beginning of Part 1, they barely saw each other for the rest of the serial. Getting these two characters in scenes together as much as possible should be an imperative, not an accident.

And then there are the plot holes. Oh boy, where do I even begin? From the exploding planet that never gets explained, to the Rills arbitrarily choosing not to speak until Part 3, to the Drahvin drone beating a Chumblie to death with a metal bar, to the solar powered ship digging for oil, very little about this serial made any sense. It’s the type of narrative where the closer you look at it, the worse it gets. You hit a kind of saturation point when you’re watching it straight through, but when you have to take notes as you watch, there’s just so much that falls apart at the slightest application of logic. Galaxy Four isn’t the worst serial this series has had to offer, but it’s far and away the most logically flawed.

Looking forward, the next serial is just one episode long. I was debating whether to rate it on its own or group it in with The Daleks’ Master Plan, of which it essentially functions as a prologue. Ultimately, I decided that because it is listed as its own serial, I’ll give it its own rating, even though I know it won’t tell a cohesive story. When I get to The Daleks’ Master Plan, I’ll take its prologue into consideration for that review as well. More than anything else, I’m just excited to get back to some decent writing and serials that don’t leave me feeling like tearing my hair out.

Rating: 1.7/10

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3.2 – Mission to the Unknown

No Doctor, No Companions, No TARDIS

This serial is conceptually strange. It is only one episode long, which makes it one of only two such serials in all of Classic Who, and the second was the 20th anniversary special with almost quadruple the runtime. It also has very few elements of the typical narrative arc—there is not much to it besides some exposition and a cliffhanger. But most notably, the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki are all completely absent from the story, and there isn’t a blue telephone box in sight. In NuWho, we get a smattering of episodes that minimize these elements, such as Blink and Love and Monsters. We get episodes where either the companions are almost entirely absent from the story or the Doctor has no companions, such as Midnight, The Waters of Mars, and Heaven Sent. We even get an example of an episode where there is almost no Doctor in Turn Left. But nothing quite like the total absence of protagonists that we get in Mission to the Unknown.

And there is good reason for it. From what I’ve gathered in my research, audiences of the time found the episode to be extremely confusing. Mission to the Unknown is functionally a prologue for another serial, but that serial doesn’t immediately follow this episode. Instead, the next serial is The Myth Makers, a historical which takes place in ancient Troy—and which has absolutely nothing to do with Mission to the Unknown. Viewers were baffled.

In the modern series, we get prologues that are almost always built into the episode—those cold opens at the beginning of the narrative that come before the late title card. And on the rare occasion where a whole episode is functionally the prologue for another story, there are still expected elements which give the audience a sense of comfort. Turn Left is essentially a prologue for the two-part finale of New Season 4, but you still get a companion, a TARDIS, and a few seconds of the Doctor at the very end to tie everything together.

Mission to the Unknown was a bold choice at a time when the viewing public wasn’t very receptive to such drastic changes. It feels very Doctor Who to me despite the absence of the core cast, and I think there is a lot of merit to the serial even if it wasn’t appreciated by the audience at the time of its original broadcast. I like what the showrunners were going for. I think if a similar episode cropped up within the context of the modern series, today’s fans wouldn’t bat an eye. As it is, Mission to the Unknown is a unique narrative within the Doctor Who universe, and I’m excited to break it down.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial. Although an animation does exist, I am reviewing a telesnap reconstruction because it gives me the most insight into the visual elements that existed in the original broadcast. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (Mission to the Unknown)

This episode starts where Galaxy Four left off: on a mysterious jungle planet where a man with dark shaggy hair lies unconscious. The man groans, rolling over onto his hands and knees clutching at his neck; he wears a spacesuit without a helmet. According to the transcription, he rises to his feet and pulls a gun from his holster, though this doesn’t come across in the reconstruction. “I remember now,” he says in a halting cadence, like a man possessed. “I must—I must kill. Must kill. Must kill.” A dramatic musical stinger hits, as we get some actual recovered footage—an establishing shot, with the camera slowly panning across a bubbling bog and some dense, claustrophobic foliage.

Cut to a rocket sitting in the middle of the jungle. It sits upright on four aerodynamic fins, which raise the fuselage off the ground enough for two men to stand beneath it. On each of these fins is a Union Jack and the words: “UN Deep Space Force Group 1.”

I want to take a moment to talk about a problem that exists not just within the context of Doctor Who but with sci-fi more broadly. The further into the future a narrative is set, the less it should resemble the frame of reference that we have in the present day. Writers have had to grapple with this dilemma for as long as science fiction has existed as a genre, and quality solutions tend to follow one of three models. 1) The setting is near enough into the future where things like pop culture references and present-day technologies don’t feel so out-of-place. 2) The setting includes elements that are so vastly different from the present day that it borders on culture shock for the viewing audience. 3) The setting takes a Star Wars approach, putting everything “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” removing the narrative from our timeline entirely.

Doctor Who narratives set in the future are at their worst when they don’t conform to any of these approaches. Perhaps the most egregious examples are two episodes from the modern series set five billion years into the future: The End of the World and New Earth. Despite having many decent elements, The End of the World has half a dozen very ham-fisted pop culture references, from Britney Spears to the antagonist intentionally using the dated phrase “burn baby, burn.” Simply from a logistical standpoint, the odds of any society five billion years into the future having even one callback to the turn of the 21st century is astronomically low. Having several only serves to cheapen the narrative by crushing its believability.

The problems exhibited in New Earth are less to do with pop culture references—though there are still a handful—and more to do with how the technology of the year 5 billion is portrayed. Most of the episode is contained within a supposedly futuristic hospital, which is still structured into wards with curtained partitions, still treats patients with IV fluids, and still has a rotating cast of nurses on duty. Yes, these nurses are also cat people, but the rest of the narrative goes out of its way to demonstrate how similar this place is to a present-day hospital, which I found to be an extremely disappointing writing choice. And don’t get me started on the antagonist using an 8-millimeter film projector in the hospital basement. Everything about this place feels much too familiar for the fantastically distant future that it is supposed to portray.

Ironically, the loosely connected successor to these episodes, Gridlock, doesn’t feel nearly as close to our current frame of reference as do its predecessors. Instead of jarring pop culture references and anachronistic technology, the elements that the audience can relate to are generally accepted as permanent fixtures of the human condition, such as traffic, class differences, using drugs to alter our state of being, and worldwide pandemics. In my opinion, Gridlock is able to redeem the lackluster worldbuilding set up by The End of the World and New Earth.

I bring this all up to say that it feels very odd to see a UN spaceship in Mission to the Unknown. As we will eventually find out in The Daleks’ Master Plan, this serial takes place in the year 4000. Although this may not seem like a far-distant time according to the expectations of the modern series, in its Classic Who context, it is extraordinarily far away. The year is almost three times further into the future than the previous record holder, The Sensorites, which took place in the 2700s. And while a UN spaceship in 4000 isn’t out of the realm of possibility by any stretch, it will be one of only two reference points we get for humanity in the entire serial, the second being a general allusion to human habitation throughout the planets of our solar system. It would be one thing to show humanity in a broader capacity, with flying cars, or cities on Venus, or a deep space battle fleet, and then, oh, by the way, the UN still exists as a governing body. That would be a wonderful way to flush out the world. But having a reference to the UN as one of only two pieces of information about human civilization feels very contrived, even if it is within an implied broader context. It’s not as bad as the episodes from the year 5 billion, but it is a troubling example of worldbuilding that actually serves to shrink the perceived universe and is something I will be watching as Doctor Who serials continue to push further and further into the future.

Moving on, the two men beneath the spaceship wear the same helmetless spacesuits as the unconscious man from before. One of them is tall and thin, with dark hair cropped very short. The other has an average build, with a round face and longer light brown hair. We learn in this scene that the thin man is called Cory and the man with the round face is called Lowery.

Lowery is the captain of this expedition, though we don’t yet learn what exactly this expedition is meant to accomplish. He labors over the UN spaceship, which has crash-landed and is apparently damaged enough that they cannot take off without repairs. More than that, he demonstrates a resentment of Cory, who has been given carte blanche to do whatever he wants on this mission by Lowery’s superiors. “I know my orders were to let you have full reign,” Lowery says, “but as captain of this expedition, my first responsibility is to get this ship off the ground.” He goes on to say that the retaining bolts on the fins have melted into solid lumps of tarnium and that if they don’t get into orbit soon, they’ll miss their rendezvous with the freighter. “If we’re not in the pickup orbit, they won’t wait.”

Cory is not a very forgiving crewmember. “Just get on with the job, will you?” Then he looks around, adding, “Where the devil’s Garvey? He should be back by now.” Unbeknownst to either of them, the unconscious man from earlier—presumably Garvey, the third member of their crew—watches them from the bushes, gun still drawn, muttering under his breath, “Kill. Kill.”

As Lowery continues to struggle with a wrench, Cory enters the ship to find a spare part at Lowery’s request. Behind him, Garvey edges closer to the rocket and his crewmate. He points his gun at Lowery, poised to kill. Suddenly, there is the sound of a firearm, but it is not Lowery who is shot. Garvey falls to the ground, shot by Cory, who had exited the rocket just in time to prevent Lowery’s murder.

Lowery is extremely upset by this turn of events, and despite Cory’s assertion that it was either Garvey or Lowery who had to die, he attempts to strangle Cory. Cory reacts quickly, displaying some martial prowess as he routinely dispatches Lowry with a punch to the gut. With Lowery still reeling, Cory bends down to examine the body of Garvey and pulls a long black thorn out of his neck. “A Varga thorn,” he says. “Careful you don’t prick yourself with it, or you’ll end up the way Garvey is. I’d have to kill you.” Then the two men retreat into the rocket, Lowery still very shaken. What they don’t see is the body of Garvey twitching on the ground. On the back of his hand, there is a growth of curly white hair, oddly shiny against his pale skin.

Inside the ship, we see some beautiful set design, with a series of computers and control panels in a cramped, circular compartment. From what I can tell, there aren’t any more props than what we’ve seen in other serials with spaceship interiors, most notably The Sensorites and Galaxy Four. However, the fact that these props are very close together—rather than in those other spaceships where they shared a large space with what was essentially a living area for the crew—gives this rocket a much more futuristic feel. I hope we get more of this type of spaceship design in the future.

Lowery demands some answers from Cory, who flashes a badge that designates him as an agent for the Space Security Service. “I might have known,” Lowery says dejectedly. “Licensed to kill.”

“This document gives me the authority to enlist the aid of any persons, civil or military,” Cory says in a tone that brooks no nonsense. “You were just enlisted. From now on, Lowery, you can take your orders from me.”

Then Cory asks Lowery if he has ever heard of the Daleks, to which Lowery answers that the Daleks invaded Earth a thousand years ago. When we eventually learn two serials from now that this is the year 4000, this makes no sense—he should have said two thousand years—but I’ll let it slide. Cory says, “That’s right. Well, they haven’t been active in our galaxy for some time now, but that doesn’t mean they’ve exactly been sitting around. In the last five hundred years, they’ve gained control of over seventy planets in the Ninth Galactic System and forty more in the Constellation of Miros…About a week ago, we had a report from the captain of a space freighter. His navigator spotted a spaceship of a type never before used in our system. He saw it only for a second, but he gave us a good description…What he described was a Dalek spaceship.”

Outside the ship, we get some more recovered footage, showing Garvey from the waist down as he stands up. Then the camera slowly pans up to reveal that his torso, arms, and head have been completely covered in a mass of cottony white hair.

Inside, Cory tries to contact the rendezvous ship, but the comms system was also damaged in the crash. We get some more exposition when Lowery asks Cory if he thinks the Daleks are on the jungle planet. “It could be,” Cory replies. “This is the most hostile planet in the universe. People from other civilizations avoid it. I suddenly had a hunch that this might make an ideal place for any secret preparations that the Daleks wanted to make. That’s why we brought this ship down here.” In my opinion, that’s a bit of a stretch of logic. It makes sense for Cory to start looking for the Daleks in nearby systems, but it seems rather daft for him to land on a planet and expect to find Daleks just because it is a dangerous place. It seems like there should have been a more obvious link to the jungle planet, such as the seeing Dalek ships specifically in this planet’s airspace or finding evidence of recent construction on the planet’s surface.

Anyway, Cory goes on to say that he has decided to tell Lowery about his suspicions because of the thorn he found in Garvey’s neck. “A thorn from a Varga plant. A thing part animal, part vegetable. Looks like a cactus. The poison attacks the brain. Rational thought is replaced by an overwhelming desire to kill. Eventually, the poison seeps through the system, and the victim is gradually transformed into a Varga…The only place in the universe where Vargas grow naturally is on the Daleks’ own planet, Skaro. If the Vargas are here, the Daleks are, too.” A quick note: the thing outside that was once Garvey looks nothing like a cactus.

Next, we see the inside of a Dalek control room. Two Daleks are making a report to the Black Dalek. The transcript identifies the Black Dalek as the Dalek Supreme, but since the series has not yet identified it as such, I’ll continue to refer to it by its color. The first Dalek report says that emissaries from seven other planets have arrived for some sort of conference, and the second says that the alien spacecraft has been located and will soon be destroyed.

Back at the UN spaceship, Lowery and Cory have exited the craft and are working at some sort of small probe, shaped roughly like the rocket in the background. On the edge of the clearing, three Varga plants sway slightly; one of them is presumably Garvey, now completely transformed. Cory says that the Vargas can move very slowly, using their roots to drag themselves along the ground, but is seems like as long as the men keep an eye on the Vargas, they should be relatively safe.

We learn that the probe is actually a rescue beacon. Cory intends to record a message that includes their location and what he suspects about the Dalek presence on the planet. It is made very clear that without a clear voice message, no one would ever be able to find them. It seems odd that communications technology in 4000 is restricted to what is essentially an answering machine, but I’ll let that slide, too. Lowery is still skeptical that the Daleks are even on the planet, but Cory makes it very clear that the Vargas are not only native to Skaro but were created in Dalek laboratories specifically for their defense.

Elsewhere in the jungle, Daleks have gotten close to the UN spaceship and make plans to close in on it from two directions.

Cory and Lowery are still working on getting the beacon operational, when they suddenly hear a loud rumble and look up to see a massive spaceship. I wish there was recovered footage to show how this was actually represented in the episode, but I can only speculate that it was something like the flying saucers in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Cory makes it clear that the ship is not of Dalek make, instead identifying it as originating from one of the outer galaxies. “There’s something very big going on here,” he says, “and if the Daleks are involved, you can bet your life that our whole galaxy is in danger.”

In the jungle, the Daleks also see the spaceship, calling it a ship from the planet Gearon. “And the beginning of the Great Alliance,” one adds.

Back at the UN spaceship, Lowery has finished setting up the rescue beacon, and they are about to record their message when Cory suddenly hears movement out in the foliage. Realizing that it is too quick to be Vargas, they duck behind some bushes just before a coterie of Daleks enters the scene and blows up the UN ship. Horrified, Cory and Lowery grab the beacon and run deeper into the jungle.

As they are making their escape, Lowery brushes against a Varga and ends up with a black thorn embedded in his palm. He recoils, frantically trying to suck the poison out of the wound, before giving up and following Cory into the undergrowth, not saying anything about the incident. This is one of the few tropes that I absolutely cannot stand whenever it is employed in sci-fi. Someone gets bitten or jabbed or otherwise infected by a zombie-esque creature and chooses to say nothing about it, and everybody and their mother already knows what is going to happen. It’s so goddamn predictable.

Moving on, we return to wherever the Daleks have their central control, though we see a different part of the building. It is a cheaply-built space fringed by dark fabric, with a circular table in the middle displaying all the planets in the Earth’s solar system. Nothing about this space adds to the importance and menace of the events that are occurring here—in fact, the obvious shoddiness of the set design severely hinders the gravity of the moment.

Around the circular table, ambassadors from six planets have gathered, along with two Daleks. Earlier, a Dalek mentioned seven ambassadors, which is a minor continuity error. In the reconstruction, this scene is very hard to read at times, but from what I can see, I only find one of these creature designs to be impressive. It’s a humanoid that the Black Dalek calls Malpha, who looks like The Thing from DC comics, with a face that resembles the fissured surface of a desert basin. Everyone else looks very underwhelming. Three of the six wear spacesuits that largely obscure their features, though the costume designers attempted to make the suits looks somewhat disparate from one another—they come across as a cheap attempt to make beings that look vaguely space-ish. Next, there is a very short man in a tan jumpsuit that I keep calling Little Elvis in my head. And lastly, the only nonhumanoid creature of the bunch looks like a black stovepipe with slanted white eyes glued to the outside.

The Daleks attempt to begin the conference, but Malpha, the knock-off Thing, says that there has been a hostile presence detected on the planet, which we learn is named Kembel. The Black Dalek says that the beings from Earth are of no importance, adding, “If they do not die by our Varga plants, my patrols will kill them! They will be exterminated! Exterminated!”

Cory and Lowery are still making their way through the jungle.

Back at the conference, it seems that an agreement of some sort has been reached. All of the aliens talk over one another, excitedly giving their own monologues about conquest and power. It’s all a little ridiculous. Then Malpha says, “This is indeed a historic moment in the history of the universe. We six from the outer galaxies, joining with the power from the solar system, the Daleks!”

Throughout this episode, there has been another curious mismanagement of language, much like how in Galaxy Four I pointed out that the writers used life and humanity interchangeably whenever they actually meant sentience. This time, the hangup seems to be with distinctions between celestial bodies, such as solar systems, galaxies, and the universe. Several times, now, it has been implied that all of the events so far—from the sighting of the Dalek ship to the happenings on the surface of Kembel—have occurred within the Earth’s solar system. From the way that the word galaxy is used, I can only assume that whenever someone says “solar system,” the writers actually mean the Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way. Like I said in Galaxy Four, I’m generally okay with the early writers not understanding scientific concepts, but when the core of the show involves traveling through space, you would think someone would have had the foresight to make sure these basic terms were being used properly.

Anyway, Malpha goes on to pontificate on the future. “The seven of us represent the greatest war force ever assembled. Conquest is assured! Mars! Venus! Jupiter! The moon colonies!”

“They will all fall before our might,” says the Black Dalek. “But the first of them will be Earth!”

Out in the jungle, Lowery is now alone. He has pulled back his sleeve to reveal wispy white hair growing from wrist to elbow; he stares at it, weeping. Cory enters the scene, and Lowery quickly hides the affliction. “There’s a city down there, a Dalek city,” Cory says. “I got quite close. Close enough to hear an announcement through the loudspeaker system…Our whole galaxy is to be invaded and destroyed.” This is ludicrous. Cory just so happened to go off in the right direction at just the right time to hear a vital piece of information.

Then Lowery starts muttering about killing, and Cory realizes that he has been stung by a Varga thorn. Lowery raises his gun, but Cory is faster, shooting Lowery in the chest. Then Cory turns to the rescue beacon and starts recording his message. “Marc Cory, Special Security Service”—it was Space Security Service at the beginning of the episode—“reporting from the planet Kembel. The Daleks are planning the complete destruction of our galaxy. Together, with the powers of the outer galaxies, a war force is being assembled…”

Meanwhile, the Daleks have found Cory and are closing in.

“…If our galaxy is to be saved, whoever receives this message must relay this information to Earth immediately. It is vital that defense mechanisms are put into operation at once! Message ends.” He tries to put the message into the launcher of the rescue beacon, but he is unable to complete this task, as several Daleks surround him and he is shot dead. The Daleks return to their city, leaving Cory’s body behind, unaware of the message in the capsule that lies on the ground next to him.

Back at the conference, all the aliens rejoice and pledge their allegiance to the Dalek cause. Credits roll.

Takeaways

Mission to the Unknown contains a lot of elements that would have really irritated me had it been a longer serial. All of the scenes inside the Dalek city really undermined the serious tone the writers were going for—the aliens were too goofy to take seriously and the set design was very underwhelming. The zombie trope, with Lowery getting pricked by a Varga thorn and not telling Cory, was about as predictable as ever, with the only question being whether or not Cory would ultimately die too. Then the narrative took even that small question out of the equation, as the Daleks ended up killing him anyway. Yet despite this, the brevity of the serial really helps to minimize these elements, relegating them to just a few minutes of runtime.

Plus, there were plenty of good elements to offset the bad. I thought the Vargas were a very interesting concept, and they way they were executed made them a menacing threat throughout the narrative. I liked the dynamic between Lowery and Cory, which had a constant tinge of conflict that I keep saying the main cast of protagonists could benefit from. I also like the overarching idea of a group of baddies teaming up to be a threat to the Earth and its solar system and/or galaxy. I know the Daleks are not too keen on allies conceptually, but I am willing to assume even if the alliance was successful, the Daleks would backstab their allies eventually.

Overall, this serial did exactly what it set out to do, which is build hype for The Daleks’ Master Plan. This is the first time in the series that it has felt like a narrative has been written with the future of the show in mind. Later, we will get seasons that build up toward some grand threat or that have some connective tissue which links each individual story together. For now, this is as close as we get to a cohesive narrative, and while it is extremely basic, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Looking forward, I cannot wait to watch The Daleks’ Master Plan. Even though it is not for two serials, it gives me the impetus to get through The Myth Makers, the next serial, which I remember being fairly mediocre. Since this serial did nothing to advance the plot for the main characters, I’m still left with a lot of the same concerns that I had at the end of Galaxy Four, most notably whether or not the writers actually start taking advantage of the great chemistry we saw between Steven and Vicki during The Time Meddler. Vicki leaves the series very soon, and the showrunners are quickly running out of time to turn her into something resembling a redeemable character. Either way, I’m excited to see more of Peter Purves, who I still think gives a dynamic enough performance as Steven to potentially become the best companion to date.

Rating: 6.1/10

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3.3 – The Myth Makers

Thesis: The Secret of Time Travel

When you watch an episode of Doctor Who, whether it be classic or modern, there are a few core elements of the series that are sacrosanct. The narrative begins and ends with a TARDIS dematerialization. The Doctor always tries to save the day. Aliens as a concept must be kept hidden from humanity at-large prior to first contact. And the Doctor and his companions keep the fact that they are time travelers very close to the chest. That last point becomes a sticking point for me throughout the series.

I want to be clear: there are many instances where it makes perfect sense for the protagonists to reveal that they can travel through time. Barbara and Ian stumbled into the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child, and it was only natural for the Doctor and Susan to be forced to explain themselves. In The Rescue, it made sense for the Doctor to disclose the situation to Vicki, who he had taken a liking to and who would otherwise be stranded on the planet Dido. And it even makes for good comedy in The Time Meddler, as Vicki tries to prove to Steven throughout the serial that they have traveled in time despite the multitude of anachronisms they find in 11th century Saxony.

But there have also been occasions where the Doctor and his companions have been far too casual about revealing the truth to the supporting characters. In The Sensorites, the protagonists were quick to tell the crew of Maitland’s spaceship that they left Earth in the 20th century, simply to give the crew a reason to tell Ian and Barbara—and by extension, the audience—a few things about 28th century England. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Susan told David about her adventures through time, noting that she had never felt as if she belonged anywhere. We didn’t even get to see David’s reaction to this reveal; it happened entirely offscreen. And this isn’t just a problem with Classic Who—there are plenty of examples from the modern series, too. In Silence in the Library, the 10th Doctor casually says to River Song, “I’m a time traveler. I point and laugh at archeologists.” Which makes for a great one-liner until you realize that this is incredibly out of step with the Doctor’s characterization.

It seems to me that these poorly conceived reveals are allowed to occur whenever the writers feel that such a reveal has no bearing on the plot—or whenever there is a later plot device that renders the reveal inconsequential, such as River Song already being familiar with the Doctor’s time traveling. These instances always come across to me as extremely thoughtless writing, with the reveals being wholly inconsistent with the Doctor’s reluctance to share his secret on most other occasions. In order for a reveal to make sense, it should depend entirely on whether the circumstances seem reasonable in that moment—not on whether it is acceptable in retrospect. Keeping with the River Song example, the Doctor holds his secret in such high regard that it makes no sense for him to be so blasé about it just to take a cheap shot at the study of archeology.

In The Myth Makers, there are not one but two instances of the protagonists being very careless about revealing the nature of their time traveling. The serial takes place in the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans, the very war that would be mythologized by Homer in the Iliad—hence the title of the serial. The Doctor finds himself captured by the Greeks, and Vicki ends up in the hands of the Trojans—and they both come to the conclusion that their best course of action is to tell their captors that they have traveled through time. And I understand that there have been many instances where, left with no other option, the Doctor or one of his companions are forced to disclose their secret under duress. But in my opinion, the situations the protagonists face in this serial are built on out-of-character decisions which only make the choice to reveal their secret feel weak and unnecessary. It seems ludicrous to me that either of these protagonists would even be in the situations they ultimately create for themselves, much less both of them making the same choice independently.

The only way these reveals make any logistical sense is when you arrive at the end of the serial and realize that they have no bearing on the future of the world or the supporting characters. But just because this may be the case, it does not legitimize what is essentially a minimization of one of the best aspects the show has going for it. The secret of time travel is a secret shared not only by the Doctor and his companions; the audience is also in on the secret. Revealing this information to a new character should be a momentous occasion. Not only is this in keeping with the Doctor’s characterization, but it also has the potential to create tension and scenarios that feel rewarding to the audience. Reducing this dynamic to a simple plot device or a cheap joke only cheapens one of the core tenets of Doctor Who, and it is an issue that I will be calling more attention to going forward.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial. I am experiencing it in the format of a telesnap reconstruction, which is essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (Temple of Secrets)

At the top of this serial, I want to be clear that I don’t remember much from my schooling about the Iliad, the piece of literature that this serial is based on. Ancient history was never something I was particularly interested in, and anyway, my teachings focused much more on the Iliad’s sequel: the Odyssey. However, I try to be consistent with how I look at these historical narratives, caring far more for their capacity to tell a quality story than I do for how well they conform to the source material or the established historical record. While I have taken into account particularly egregious historical inaccuracies from time to time, I’m not the kind of person who feels the need to brush up on Homer’s epics just to be able to draw parallels to The Myth Makers. If you like to prioritize the history behind the narrative, that’s perfectly valid; it’s just not my thing.

The serial opens on a sandy plain, where two men in armor square off against each other, swords drawn. They are Hector, champion of Troy, and Achilles, champion of Greece. Achilles has a small round shield and a helmet with a plume in the shape of a mohawk. Hector carries a long, oblong shield and wears a helmet accoutered with a horsehair ponytail emerging from its crest—we will soon learn that the Trojans worship horses, which makes this a very nice touch.

The battle between the two is very Shakespearian, in the sense that the men trade more insults than they do actual blows. Achilles calls Hector a stable keeper and a barbarian horse worshipper, and Hector responds in kind, mocking a friend of Achilles whom he slew on the battlefield. Like some of the prior reconstructions, we don’t get to see any of the actual combat, which is a shame. Action sequences throughout Doctor Who have never been particularly commendable, but anything is better than an extended sequence with just grunts and the sound of clanging metal.

The transcript says that the TARDIS is positioned somewhere in the background of this fight, though this isn’t communicated visually in the reconstruction. The scene cuts to the inside of the TARDIS, where the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki watch the fight unfold on the scanner. Despite the violence, the Doctor seems eager to go outside and ask the men where they have landed, which seems very odd to me. It apparently does to Steven and Vicki as well, who try to get him to see reason and stay within the safety of the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, outside on the plain, the two champions continue to trade insults. Hector mocks the Greek gods, saying, “You pretend that old Father Zeus will descend to Earth and take Troy for you. I guarantee to trim his beard for him if he dare attempt it!” A distant boom of thunder rumbles, and Achilles warns Hector not to take the gods lightly. Hector continues, “Oh, I do not fear the thunder, you superstitious, dark-dodging decadent! Hear me, Zeus! Accept from me the promised life of your cringing servant Achilles! Or else, I challenge you. Descend to Earth and save him!”

At this moment, the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS. Thinking him to be Zeus, Hector falls to his knees, begging the Doctor for forgiveness. Achilles uses the distraction to stab Hector through the heart, killing him. The Doctor is furious over the killing—which, again, seems strange when he was so casual about the fight just a moment ago. Achilles kneels, but the Doctor yells at him to get up, prompting Achilles to say, “If Zeus bids me to rise.” When the Doctor realizes who Achilles has mistaken him for, he is quite flattered. There is a funny exchange where the Doctor preens while Achilles talks about how he would have been by the Doctor’s radiance if he had appeared to Achilles in his true form. Though when Achilles refers to the Doctor’s current guise as that of “an old beggar,” the Doctor is offended until Achilles assures him that his glory still shines through. I love it when the writers play around with the 1st Doctor’s vanity. It never fails to amuse me that it is one of his primary character traits despite the fact that he acts like a doddering old man most of the time.

Next, the Doctor turns to face the TARDIS, calling it his temple and making a hasty goodbye. But Achilles moves to block him, insisting that the Doctor accompany him to the camp of Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, to assist in the prosecution of the war. The Doctor goes with him, leaving the TARDIS and his companions on the Trojan plain.

I have a major problem with how the Doctor acts as Zeus. Insofar as he is familiar with the mythologies presented in the Iliad, he is well acquainted with its major characters, enough so that he immediately realizes where he is once Achilles names himself and identifies the man he slew as Hector. He is also very familiar with the Greek pantheon and Zeus’s position as the king of the gods. Therefore, it seems very unlikely to me that he would allow himself to be brushed aside so easily by Achilles. There have been many instances where the Doctor has been far more assertive with far less perceived authority than he has in this scene. For plot reasons, the Doctor needs to be separated from the others somehow, but the way the writers chose to make it happen is so unrealistic that it breaks the Doctor’s character. It’s flawed writing, very similar to the dynamic I mentioned in the thesis, where the writers are too willing to overlook what makes sense in the moment in favor of where the plot will eventually go.

Inside the TARDIS, Steven and Vicki watch the scanner as the Doctor follows Achilles out of sight, wondering where he has gone. Steven decides that he should change into more suitable clothes for the time period, just in case he also has to venture outside.

Elsewhere—or perhaps not so far away; I’ll get to that in a minute—Achilles reveals to the Doctor the grand city of troy, with several tapering towers poking above a stout city wall, rising out of the flat surface of the plain. They don’t have much time to dwell on this, though, as they are confronted by the arrival of a man leading a squadron of soldiers whom Achilles identifies as Odysseus. Odysseus is a greasy-looking man in his middle ages with receding brown hair and a short goatee. From his first line, it is clear that the actor was told to be boorish and bombastic, but it’s so needlessly over-the-top that it comes across as overacting throughout the serial. There is never a moment where I don’t find Odysseus’s presence to be extremely irritating, and not in a way the showrunners intended.

Odysseus mocks Achilles, saying sarcastically, “What’s this, Achilles? So far from camp, all unprotected from a prisoner?” Achilles tries to say that the Doctor is no prisoner, which Odysseus uses to mock him further, implying that Achilles can’t even handle taking a feeble old man into custody. In an attempt to show Odysseus up, Achilles points to the dead body of Hector and gloats about his military prowess.

This really confused me on my first watch-through, and taking notes on my second didn’t make it any better. Even though this is a reconstruction, it came across very clearly that Steven and Vicki watched the Doctor and Achilles go off somewhere, with Vicki saying, “[Achilles is] probably showing him the way to the nearest town.” How, then, are they still within eyesight of the TARDIS? And if they are still next to the TARDIS—which we will soon learn that they are—how is it that we get seven minutes into the episode before anyone acknowledges the massive city that marks the most predominant feature of the Trojan plain? And if the TARDIS is so close, why is that not the first thing that Odysseus notices upon approaching the Doctor and Achilles? Nothing about the timing and placement of the characters makes sense, and I don’t think it would be any less muddled if we were able to see the original footage.

And one more thing before I move on. This scene depicts the city of Troy, but there are none of the Greeks that are supposedly laying siege to the city. Instead, the plain is barren. A siege is a specific type of warfare where an attacking force traps a defensive force inside its own walls, restricting their movement and systematically starving the city. I know that the Iliad is about the siege of Troy, but there are no actual elements of a siege in this serial. It’s such a baffling mistake.

Anyway, Odysseus does not believe Achilles when he identifies the Doctor as Zeus. “What? This old man? This threadbare gray pate?” Achilles asks the Doctor to forgive Odysseus, calling him a rough and simple sailor. Then Odysseus finally notices the TARDIS and approaches it, wondering aloud at what it could be.

Inside, Vicki is suddenly tense, worried that Odysseus is about to enter the ship. Steven, now dressed in Greek robes, is unconcerned, sure that the Doctor will find a way to stop him. At this point in the series, the specifics of what it takes to enter the TARDIS have not been properly explained. We’ve seen creatures try to break inside on two occasions—the Daleks in The Chase and the Chumblies in Galaxy Four—and both cases resulted in failure. Also, in The Daleks, there was another aspect of the TARDIS that I didn’t include in the review, as I didn’t think it was very important at the time. In addition to the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara being incapacitated by their radiation sickness, Susan was the one sent to the TARDIS because she knew the secret of using the TARDIS key. Apparently, there is more to it than simply inserting the key and turning the lock; there are 21 internal keyholes, and if the key is put into the wrong one, the entire lock melts. This was what the Doctor was referencing when, in Marco Polo, he told the titular character that you need more than a key to enter the TARDIS; you need knowledge. As far as I know, this is never again mentioned in the series and is later retconned.

Assuming that the Doctor locked the door when he left the TARDIS—which is what he normally does, even if it doesn’t come across in the reconstruction—why does Vicki immediately assume that Odysseus could even get inside? And why doesn’t Steven tell Vicki about the Chumblies not being able to enter the TARDIS, which he witnessed in the previous serial (not counting Mission to the Unknown, where the protagonists were not present)?

These might seem like frivolous complaints, and in the grand scheme of things, they aren’t very important. But they point to a problem that plagues any production with multiple writers and many seasons of content: logical consistency. In many writer’s rooms, there exists a document which catalogues every known quirk of the literary universe, usually referred to as a worldbuilding bible or a lore bible. The purpose of a worldbuilding bible is twofold: writers can check what they have written against the precedent established in previous episodes, and they can add any new elements of the universe to the every-growing list of rules that need to be followed.

Although I have spent a good deal of time looking, I have been unable to find any evidence of whether or not there was a worldbuilding bible in the early days of the series. Any search with the term “lore bible” gives me results about the actual Bible, and even though “worldbuilding bible” gets me closer to results actually related to Doctor Who, I still didn’t find anything close to what I was looking for. But just based on some of the logical inconsistencies I have seen in the series so far, I think it is safe to assume that the early days of Doctor Who either didn’t have a worldbuilding bible or had one that was insufficiently detailed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the showrunners relied solely on their script supervisors and executive producers to make sure the world was consistent. And while it makes sense that this approach would catch more broad mistakes, like how the TARDIS functions more generally and the established relationship dynamics of the protagonists, it also makes sense why small mistakes—like a few throwaway lines about Odysseus entering the TARDIS—would slip through the cracks.

I won’t speculate too much on the existence of a worldbuilding bible going forward—I care a lot more about the tangible elements of the series that can be definitively observed onscreen. However, the inconsistency of Doctor Who, in both classic and modern episodes, is one of the series’ most prevalent issues, and there should have been additional steps taken to minimize these problems, even in the show’s infancy.

Moving on, Odysseus tries the TARDIS doors and cannot enter, which further invalidates Vicki fretting over the prospect just a moment ago. Odysseus then mocks the size of the temple, which the Doctor refers to as his “traveling temple,” something I found incredibly endearing. The Doctor once again states his intent to leave, and although Achilles seems disappointed but willing to let Zeus go about his business, Odysseus will not allow it. He commands the Doctor to go to the camp of Agamemnon, saying that his soldiers will carry him there if necessary. “Have a care!” the Doctor snaps. “Do not touch me!” He walks off under his own power, under the sneering gaze of Odysseus.

What follows are conflicting accounts between the reconstruction and the transcript. In the reconstruction, subtitles detail a Trojan patrol coming across Hector’s dead body and glancing at the TARDIS, but this is not referenced at all in the transcript. Based on what happens in the following scene, I am more inclined to believe the transcript in this instance, though either is possible.

Inside the TARDIS, Steven says that he intends to follow the Doctor and free him from his captors. Vicki wants to go with him, but Steven says, “And how far do you think you can get on that ankle?” This is the injury that Vicki suffered at the end of Galaxy Four, and as far as plot devices go, it’s a very weak contrivance to force the protagonists to split up, especially because it has no impact on the narrative going forward. For the time being, though, Vicki relents, staying behind while Steven leaves the TARDIS. This is why I don’t think it is likely for there to be Trojans close to the TARDIS; they probably would have encountered Steven.

Cut to the interior of a large ten, where Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, are enjoying a meal. Something that this serial does a very poor job of communicating is the power structure of the major players on the Greek side of the conflict. Throughout the story, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus will bicker and argue as if each expects to be followed. And in a sense, they should. They are leaders of three Greek city-states; Agamemnon commands the Achaeans, Menelaus commands the Spartans, and Odysseus commands the Ithacans. However, the writers seem to rely entirely on the viewer’s foreknowledge of the Iliad, and I was only able to figure it out through googling. Regardless of what you know about Greek mythology, it is writing malpractice to not include a line or two explaining this dynamic.

Agamemnon is a burly man with bushy black hair and a thick beard, wearing the most ornate armor of anyone we’ve seen to this point. Menelaus appears to be a few years older, with gray hair and a rather dramatic widow’s peak, wearing luxuriant robes rather than armor. Agamemnon criticizes Menelaus, urging him to show the dignity befitting a king and to remember that as Agamemnon’s brother, his actions reflect poorly on both of them. “One of the reasons I drink, Agamemnon,” Menelaus grouses, “is to forget that I am your brother. Another is this ridiculous Trojan expedition. We’ve been here for ten years! I want to go home. Besides, I’m not getting any younger.” He sounds like a petulant child.

“You won’t get any older if you talk to me like that,” Agamemnon scolds, “brother or no brother.” He goes on to ask Menelaus about his wife, Helen, whose abduction was the inciting incident for this whole ten-year campaign. “Don’t you want to see your wife again?”

“Quite frankly, no,” Menelaus answers. “If you must know, I was heartily glad to see the back of her…It wasn’t the first time she’d allowed herself to be abducted. I can’t keep on going off to the ends of the Earth to get her back. It makes me a laughing stock.” Agamemnon says that getting her back is about more than their marriage; it’s about family honor. “Not to mention the trade routes through the Bosphorus,” Menelaus counters, accusing his brother of using Helen’s abduction as an excuse to chase his own ambitions. “It isn’t enough for you that you control the Achaean League, is it? Now you want to take over Asia Minor as well, only King Priam of Troy stands in your way.”

“May I remind you that these ambitions would have been served just as well if you had killed Paris in single combat, as you were expected to?” Agamemnon retorts. “Priam would have been quite prepared to let this contest settle the issue between us…Don’t blame me because you’ve landed us into a full scale war.”

“Yes, but I did challenge Paris, if you remember,” says Menelaus. “Ten years ago. Fellow wouldn’t accept.” Agamemnon says that Menelaus and Paris are both cowards, saying that in order to prove himself, Menelaus needs to issue a challenge to Hector, a challenge that Agamemnon says he will issue on Menelaus’s behalf the following morning.

I have included so much of this dialogue because I want to show how the writers have taken a comedic approach to familial relations at the top of the Greek power structure, something which will also typify the Trojan rulers when we meet them later. I don’t think this works very well. It’s too facile, too unimportant, especially coming on the heels of the seriousness of the opening action sequence, in which a man was killed in combat. All things considered, the relationship between Agamemnon and Menelaus feels very out of place.

Before Menelaus can object to the challenge his brother has proposed, Achilles enters the tent, announcing that he has just slain Hector, putting paid to Agamemnon’s plans. Agamemnon is initially regretful about this, which infuriates Achilles. Agamemnon assures him that he meant no offence, saying, “It’s only that Menelaus was just about to challenge him…Don’t think I’m not pleased with what you’ve done. I am. Sit down. Tell us about it.”

Then Achilles recounts the events of the day, from meeting Hector in battle to the appearance of Zeus to Odysseus arriving and taking him captive. “Odysseus mocked him. Then they seized him and are bringing him to camp. I ran ahead to warn you.” Agamemnon says that Achilles did well—he hasn’t fully bought into the idea of the Doctor being Zeus, but he wants to be careful on the off chance they have offended the real king of the gods.

Meanwhile, at the TARDIS, a Trojan soldier approaches the ship reverently, on hands and knees. He places a small, round buckler decorated with a black horse against the base of the TARDIS, then leaves, bowing.

Back at the tent, Odysseus swaggers into the scene, first demanding to know who dares to issue him commands, then breaking into raucous, over-the-top laugher and ushering the Doctor into the tent, still not believing he is really Zeus. Everything that Odysseus does is shouty and unappealing. I can’t stand him whenever he is in a scene. He accuses the Doctor of being a Trojan spy, and the Doctor counters by suggesting that he has supernatural knowledge that will prove he is a god. “Your wife, for instance, is unfaithful to you,” he says to Agamemnon.

Odysseus breaks into more raucous laughter, saying that this was common knowledge to all but Agamemnon and Menelaus. With his wife’s fidelity called into question, Agamemnon is very angry. “Silence! I will not have my wife’s name bandied about like that. Besides, we have no way of checking on your slanderous assertions, divinely inspired or no.” Then he asks the Doctor what he proposes to do.

The Doctor says they should treat him with honor and return him to his temple, saying that if they try to kill him, it will mean disaster for the Greeks. Agamemnon points out that if the Doctor is a spy and they don’t kill him, the same thing is likely to happen. “I propose to place you under arrest,” he says. “A reverent arrest. You must not be offended. We shall enjoy the benefit of your experience and your advice, and in return, you will enjoy our hospitality.” The Doctor has no choice but to agree.

Later that night, Steven approaches the Greek camp, stealthily dodging past the watching sentries. But he doesn’t get through entirely unseen. A man spots him—a short man with only one eye, dressed in rags. The one-eyed man goes to Odysseus, who refers to him as Cyclops, and we learn that in addition to missing an eye, Cyclops is also mute. This character pisses me off to no end. His most important function is what he is doing right now, gesturing to Odysseus and telling him about Steven. After this scene, Cyclops will have plenty of screentime, suggesting that he will do something crucial to the plot eventually, only for him to end up being an absolutely pointless red herring.

Anyway, Odysseus intercepts Steven, capturing him and bringing him to Agamemnon’s tent, where he says very sarcastically, “My prisoner, the god Apollo. Achilles, will you not worship him? He is a Trojan spy, but of such undoubted divinity that he must be spared.” Steven and the Doctor each pretend not to know the other, otherwise the Greeks would assume that they were both Trojan spies. Odysseus asks if Steven should be put to death. Initially the Doctor says that it would be the safest thing to do, but as soon as Odysseus draws his sword, the Doctor calls out for him to stop. Odysseus thinks he has caught the Doctor in a lie, but the Doctor thinks quickly, saying that he will perform a miracle if Steven is sacrificed the following day in front of his temple. “Your temple, as you call it, has disappeared,” Odysseus says arrogantly. “Vanished into thin air.”

Cut to the plain, where a round buckler with a horse on it lies alone in the dirt. Credits roll.

Part 2 (Small Prophet, Quick Return)

The following morning, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and a contingent of soldiers escort the Doctor and Steven out onto the plain, to the place where the TARDIS once stood. As a viewer, I never believed for a second that the TARDIS dematerialized. The writers have employed this exact same plot device much too recently, in The Web Planet, when Vicki was alone in the TARDIS. And in that serial, at least they had Vicki manically pressing buttons and flipping switches to give believability to the idea that she might have taken off. Here, there was no effort put into actually making the audience consider that the TARDIS has left the Doctor and Steven stranded.

At least the serial doesn’t belabor the point; they aren’t been on the plains for long before they find tracks, indicating that the TARDIS has been dragged toward Troy. This is the final straw for Agamemnon and Odysseus, who are now fully convinced that the Doctor and Steven are Trojan spies. Agamemnon commands Odysseus to execute them, then starts back for the Greek camp. Odysseus demands to know who the two men really are before they are killed, and the Doctor says to Steven, “I think you had better tell him.”

This is the first instance in this serial of the protagonists choosing to reveal that they can travel through time. Despite the fact that the Doctor and Steven have been backed into a corner, it still comes across as unnecessary. In my thesis, I talked about how these poorly conceived reveals happen because later events render them inconsequential to the broader plot, and this is definitely the case with this reveal. But I also mentioned that it sometimes makes sense for the protagonists to share their secret in instances where they are under duress, and there isn’t anything more life-threating than an impending execution. I didn’t remember this sequence as being particularly dire because of how quickly the Doctor and Steven end up getting out of it, but the threat is definitely real.

However, the reason this sequence feels so unnecessary is because it took several out-of-character moments to arrive at this point. The first was the Doctor failing to take advantage of Achilles’s credulity in their opening exchange, choosing not to bully his way back into the TARDIS despite countless examples of him acting similarly to other characters throughout the series. The second was in Agamemnon’s tent, when, out of all the things he could have done to demonstrate his “supernatural knowledge,” he said something that could not be immediately proven. And the third was him choosing to keep up his ruse of sacrificing Steven at the foot of his temple, even though he had already been told the TARDIS was gone and had had an entire night to come up with an alternative plan. Any one of these things might be fine in isolation, but taken as a whole, they paint a picture of the Doctor that is just plain stupid compared to the intelligence he has shown to this point. Sure, it may seem reasonable for the Doctor to give in and tell his secret to Odysseus at the point of a sword, but the Doctor would have never been there in the first place if he had simply been characterized consistently.

Elsewhere, the TARDIS has been placed in the central square of Troy, next to the stone steps leading up to the entrance to the royal palace—or perhaps the temple, it’s never specified. Next to it is a man with dark hair and a lantern jaw, somewhere in his mid-20s, wearing a shiny black uniform. He is Prince Paris of Troy, son of King Priam and brother to the deceased Hector. He struts around the square, making several trumpeters sound their horns to announce his arrival with the blue box. King Priam comes into the square, demanding to know what all the noise is about. He has curly brown hair and a beard that comes to a point; his clothes are rumpled and unadorned, very reserved compared to his pompous son.

Priam is disappointed when Paris says that he hasn’t yet managed to kill Achilles and avenge his brother’s murder. “Upon my soul,” he says disdainfully, “what sort of brother are you? Furthermore, what sort of son?” More familial discontent, similar to what we have already seen from the Greek encampment. Then Priam finally sees the TARDIS and asks Paris what it is.

Paris says that it is some sort of shrine that he has captured from the Greeks—inside, Vicki watches the exchange anxiously. Paris goes on to say that he thought it could go in the temple. “Ha!” says a woman, “You’re not putting that in my temple!” The woman is Cassandra, High Priestess of the Trojans and Paris’s sister. She wears an ankle-length dress and has a very prim demeanor. Standing halfway up the stairs to the palace, she sneers down at Priam, suspicious of the blue box. “Why do you imagine that [the Greeks] allowed you to capture it?…Can’t you see that you were meant to bring it into Troy?”

Then there is a bit of dialogue from Cassandra that really annoys me: “I dreamed that out on the plain the Greeks had left a gift, and although what it was remained unclear, we brought it into Troy. Then, at night, from out its belly, soldiers came and fell upon us as we slept.” First, this is obviously the story of the Trojan Horse. And second, it really irritates me that the writers have chosen to depict someone actually foretelling the future. Throughout the series, there will be a handful of instances where seemingly supernatural powers are used as a plot device, such as telekinesis, telepathy, and augury. However, they are always depicted from a more scientific angle, and there is usually some extraterrestrial element enabling the abilities—like when rock creatures beneath Pompeii trigger perfect foretelling in The Fires of Pompeii.

It is never explained why Cassandra is able to predict the Trojan Horse, something that will come to pass much later in this serial. And this is one of my pet peeves that I mentioned in my introduction: the more the rules of a sci-fi universe feel like magic, the less likely I am to find a narrative to be compelling. Cassandra’s ability to predict the future has no place in a Doctor Who story, at least, not without some attempt at a technobabbled explanation. I know that we are still in the early days, and the showrunners aren’t even close to hammering out the rules and expectations of the universe. Despite that, I can’t get past the sense that this was a swing and a huge miss, taking the universe in a direction I don’t appreciate.

Paris argues that Cassandra’s augury couldn’t possibly be referring to his new blue box. After all, how many soldiers could even fit in such a cramped space? “Fool!” Cassandra spits. “One soldier could unbar the gate and so admit an army. It’s exactly the sort of scheme Odysseus would think of.” When they are unable to open the doors of the TARDIS, Cassandra declares that the box will be burnt as an offering to the gods of Troy—inside, Vicki panics, frantically looking through the wardrobe for something suitable to wear.

So far, I don’t find the family dynamic of the Trojans to be nearly as irritating as the Greek power structure. Cassandra isn’t great, but she isn’t anywhere close to the intolerability of Odysseus. And Paris is delightful. Barrie Ingham, the actor who plays Paris, really hams up his lines, playing the part of the disappointing son desperate to please his father. He goes from showy laughter to cringing servility to taking pointed jabs at his sister, sometimes all three within the span of a single line of dialogue. Aside from the missing action sequences, the fact that we don’t get to truly see Ingham’s performance is the thing I regret the most about this serial being missing.

Back on the plain, the Doctor and Steven have finished telling Odysseus the truth of their travels. Odysseus gives a long and annoying monologue about the unbelievability of their tale, ending with, “Your story is probably true, otherwise you would never have dared to tell it.” Why would that be Odysseus’s conclusion? Almost any other justification for Odysseus’s belief would have made more sense than that. Then Odysseus says that he will release the Doctor and Steven on one condition: “That you use your supernatural knowledge to devise a scheme whereby we capture Troy. I will give you two days. Two days to think of something really ingenious.”

Meanwhile, in the Trojan square, a priestess has piled branches against the base of the TARDIS and is pouring oil over them. Her name is Katarina, which is something we don’t find out until the final episode. She will play an important—yet incredibly underwhelming—role in the story to come.

Katarina steps away from the pyre, but before Cassandra can light it, Paris says, “Before we actually light the fire, shouldn’t we see if such a gift would be acceptable to the gods? I mean, if it does contain treachery, might it not seem the most awful insult?” Cassandra hears the sibling mockery in Paris’s tone, but Priam takes the suggestion seriously, asking Cassandra to commune with the Trojan gods.

After shooting a glare at Paris, Cassandra holds out her arms and raises her attention to the heavens. “Oh, hear me, you horses of the heavens, who gallop with our destiny. If you would accept this gift, let us see a sign. Show us your will, I pray you, for we are merely mortal and need your guidance.

At this moment, Vicki exits the TARDIS in an elegant gown, and the Trojans in the square gasp. Cassandra asks who she is, to which Vicki answers, “I’m nobody of any importance. I’m just someone from the future.”

You can make a case that the Doctor and Steven needed to say this on the plain for their own survival. I still think that several uncharacteristic Doctor moments led to the necessity, but you could say that it was justified in the moment. But this is so stupid. The only reason Vicki tells the truth here is precisely because the Doctor has already done so. It has already been introduced into the narrative, and it won’t end up having any bearing on the world or the supporting characters. So what does it matter if more people are told?

The problem isn’t that Vicki would tell the truth to someone she’s only just met; it is the circumstances under which she made the decision. Like I said in the thesis, I wholeheartedly believe that the Doctor and his companions revealing the secret of their time traveling should be a momentous occasion—which is more in keeping with the Doctor’s mysterious nature. Vicki’s life was not threatened; she could have said virtually anything else to try and talk her way into the Trojans’ confidence. Plus, we already have a storyline with two protagonists trying to prove that they are indeed from the future. Seeing it play out again is unnecessarily repetitive. And why did Vicki bother changing into appropriate clothing if she was just going to say she was from the future anyway? Wearing something outlandish would have helped her make her case. Nothing about this is well-conceived.

Cassandra, the resident prophesier, is immediately doubtful. She first assumes Vicki to be some Greek goddess—and therefore an evil pagan deity according to the Trojans—before eventually deciding that she is some sorceress who needs to be eliminated. King Priam dismisses the notion and asks Vicki what her name is. When she says it, we get an amusing exchange where Cassandra says, “A heathen sort of name, if you ask me,” and Priam says tiredly, “Nobody did ask you, Cassandra.” The familial dynamic of the Trojans definitely works better than it does with the Greeks. Perhaps it is because Paris and Cassandra are closer to the age where one would expect siblings to bicker, rather than Agamemnon and Menelaus, who just come across as whiney and bitter.

Priam says that Vicki is too outlandish a name and says that they will call her Cressida instead. Then he snaps at Paris to get back to the war, adding, “If you’ve not killed Achilles by nightfall, I shall be seriously displeased.” I feel bad for Paris, but he is also a coward, doing everything short of cartoonishly gulping to demonstrate how weak-kneed he is at the prospect of facing the Greek champion. Finally, Priam guides Vicki toward the royal palace, saying that they have much to discuss. He hasn’t bought into Vicki’s assertion that she is from the future, but he is willing to listen. Left alone in the scene, Cassandra delivers a baleful soliloquy: “Hear me, gods of Troy. Strike with your lightnings this usurper. Or show me a sign that she is false, and then I’ll strike her down myself!”

One last thing before I move on: it is made clear that Cyclops, the one-eyed man from Part 1, was in the square and watching the whole time. How is this possible? Troy is supposed to be besieged. It is highly unlikely that the Trojans would let anyone enter the city, just as it is unlikely that the Greeks would let anyone out. Though, from there being no actual evidence of a siege to this point, it is clear that the writers had no idea what a siege when crafting this narrative. Anyway, if you think that Cyclops being here is any indication as to where the plot might go, you’d be dead wrong.

Back in the Greek camp, the Doctor and Steven are brainstorming ways to help the war effort. Steven asks why not just go with the giant wooden horse, and the Doctor answers, “Oh, my dear boy, I couldn’t possibly suggest that. the whole story is obviously absurd. Probably invented by Homer as some good dramatic device. No, I think it would be completely impractical.” With this line and Cassandra’s foretelling, you can probably guess where this story is going.

Odysseus enters the scene, and the Doctor tries to bargain with him, saying that they will only help the Greeks if they can ensure the safety of Vicki, who remains in Troy. Odysseus rejects this out of hand, pointing out that the Doctor has no leverage to bargain with and saying that he cannot guarantee the safety of one girl among many in a besieged city. Before the Doctor can say anything else, a messenger arrives, saying that Prince Paris has called for Achilles to meet him in combat—just as Priam demanded of him in the last scene. But Agamemnon has requested that Odysseus go in Achilles’s stead. Odysseus dismisses this, calling Paris an awful fighter, saying that the man is not worth his time, and telling the messenger to tell Agamemnon that if he is looking for someone to fight Achilles’s battles, he should go himself.

Upon learning that Paris is a bad fighter with no taste for killing, Steven has a brilliant idea. He asks Odysseus to be allowed to dress as a Greek soldier and go looking for Paris. That way, he can yield and be taken as a prisoner of war—all without much risk of being killed because of Paris’s aversion to fighting. Odysseus agrees to the gambit, admiring Steven’s courage. He gives Steven leave to use the gear of Diomedes, a Greek soldier who recently died, and Steven leaves to go get changed.

Once Steven is gone, Odysseus turns to the Doctor and asks what plans he has made for the war, specifying that he expects something revolutionary. “Tell me,” the Doctor says, “have you thought about flying machines?”

This piece of dialogue, more than anything else in the series, is what made me think that there is no worldbuilding bible, or at least not at this point in the series. Because how could the writers so stupidly contradict what was a major plot point just three serials ago? In the last historical, The Time Meddler, the Doctor was aghast to find that a monk, another time traveler, had been the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for a flying machine. He was absolutely appalled, and his primary motivation in the serial was to stop the monk’s time meddling for good and correct the natural course of history. The Doctor would never, ever do the very same thing he so vehemently railed against. I mean, it’s not even as if this is some sort of tangential parallel where the Doctor could find a way to justify his actions. He’s just straight up doing the same damn thing that the monk did. I know the early writers didn’t often work together on their scripts, and even though I think a writer has no business not knowing what came a just a few serials prior, I understand the mistake. What I don’t understand, though, is why this wasn’t caught by the script editor or whomever was in charge of maintaining the continuity of the series. It’s a mistake so egregious that it’s downright disrespectful to the rest of the production. Like the cinematography in The Web Planet and the choice to swap antagonists halfway through The Crusade, I view this editing oversight as a fireable offense.

Moving on, Paris is now out on the plain, fully armored. “Achilles!” he calls out. Then, seeming to remember that he doesn’t actually want to face the Greek champion, he whispers, “Achilles! Come out and fight, you jackal! Paris, prince of Troy, brother of Hector, seeks revenge. Do you not dare face me?” I love this gag. He says the words just so that when he goes back to his father, he’ll be able to say he did it and wouldn’t technically be lying. It’s totally the kind of thing I would have done in elementary school.

Unfortunately for Paris, there is someone close enough to hear him. “I dare to face you, Paris,” says Steven. “Turn and draw your sword.” Once Steven introduces himself as Diomede, Paris laughs the challenge off, making it clear that he has no quarrel with anyone besides Achilles. “I’m Greek; you’re Trojan,” says Steven. “Is not that quarrel enough?”

Paris answers, “Yes, well personally, I think this whole business has been carried just a little too far. I mean, that Helen thing was just a misunderstanding.” Speaking of Helen, I cannot fathom why the writers chose to leave her completely out of the narrative when they still reference her several times over the course of the serial. I’ve already talked about how I don’t need the serial to prioritize accuracy to its source material, the Iliad, as long as tells a compelling story. In my opinion, it would have been perfectly adequate for the writers to take Helen completely out of the story, as long as they rewrote the motivation of the Greeks—or at the very least omitted it. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they left Helen as the inciting incident for the Trojan War but didn’t even bother to include her as a character. In the Iliad, Helen is the most important figure. Without her, the story has no reason to exist. A good narrative is a bit like a body—even if parts get cut or broken, as long as the rest of the body is sound, the story can still grow and recover from small mistakes. But you can’t just lop off the head and expect the rest of the body to function normally. The head of this narrative has been removed, without a care as to what it does to the efficacy of the story more broadly. It’s just shoddy writing.

Continuing on, Steven is adamant about fighting, so Paris grudgingly draws his sword. There is about a minute of grunting and clanging—another action sequence lost to the void of missing episodes. At the end of the fight, Steven pretends to stumble and goes down to one knee, crying out, “I yield!” Paris is taken aback by this, saying that warriors would rather die than be taken prisoner. Steven says that he agrees with the sentiment, adding, “But only in a general sort of way…You see, when I first challenged you, little did I know that you were indeed the Lion of Troy.” Steven is thick with the flattery in this exchange, praising Paris’s prowess and valor. After being thoroughly buttered up, Paris agrees to take Steven into Troy as his prisoner, hoping Steven will tell his father all about his perceived might and grandeur.

Before they leave the scene, Paris turns to address the plain and calls out, “Farewell, Achilles! For today, Paris of Troy has other business!” You can hear his relief at having found an excuse to no longer seek out the Greek champion. Once again, as the scene closes, it turns out that Cyclops was on the plain watching the whole exchange. And once again, it means absolutely nothing to the overall plot.

Inside the Trojan palace, Vicki and King Priam have just finished a meal and are having a lighthearted conversation. When Priam mentions that the Trojans worship horses and would do anything for them, this reminds Vicki of a story she heard long ago. She doesn’t say it by name, but it’s obviously story of the Trojan Horse. Vicki writes it off as a legend, but Priam is very keen to hear the story anyway, especially when it comes out that it has something to do with the war between them and the Greeks.

Vicki changes the subject, saying, “Prince Troilus, who was here just now. Is he your youngest son?” Two things to note. First, there is a Shakespeare play that I am unfamiliar with, called Troilus and Cressida. All I know about it is that it was set during the Trojan war, and as Cressida is the name given to Vicki by Priam, it’s clear that this serial is very deliberately referencing Shakespeare’s work. And second, I despise whenever the writers introduce a character by talking about them instead of putting them into the scene. It’s telling when the writers should be showing. Troilus doesn’t get any screentime until the next episode, so I suspect that the showrunners only hired the actor for the final two installments. Still, we’re down to the last few minutes of Part 2; if you’re gonna have Troilus in the next episode, just wait a few minutes and introduce him then.

Anyway, Vicki calls Troilus handsome, and Priam says that he thought Troilus was taken with her as well. Looks like we have a budding romance on our hands. Then Priam gets frustrated that the conversation has drifted away from the war, and he asks Vicki about this long-ago legend of Troy that she has remembered.

But before Vicki can tell the story to Priam, Paris comes in, laughing and boasting that he has captured a Greek prisoner. Priam is angry that his son would so rudely interrupt, but he tells Priam to bring the prisoner in, offering a hasty apology to Vicki. When Paris calls out for Diomede and pushes him into the room, Vicki takes one look at her friend and cries out, “Steven! What on earth are you—”

“Shush, Vicki!” Steven interrupts. Realizing what has just transpired, Priam is suddenly suspicious of the man in Greek armor that has called Vicki by her given name, as if they already knew each other.

“You heard, didn’t you?” Cassandra says scornfully. Whether she was already in the room or has just arrived is unclear. “That was the name she called herself when we found her. And she recognized him, too. Since he’s a Greek, what more proof do you need that she’s a spy? Guards!” Several armed men rush into the room. “Kill her. Kill both of them!” Credits roll.

This is a great cliffhanger. I find the Trojan royal family to be a much more believable threat to Steven and Vicki than the Greeks are to the Doctor, and I think this is a function of the Trojans having a much more palatable dynamic than the Greeks. Sure, Odysseus probably represents the most inherently genuine threat of any of the supporting characters, but everything about his portrayal feels so forced that it is hard to take him seriously. I believe Cassandra in this moment. And when the title of the next episode flashes onscreen, there is a real sense that the series’ first companion death is a distinct possibility.

Part 3 (Death of a Spy)

I’ve been really long-winded so far in this review, but most of the things I wanted to pick apart have already come and gone. I’ll try to keep the last two episodes brief.

Paris comes to Vicki’s rescue, telling the guards to sheathe their weapons and asserting himself as their commanding officer. “I will not tolerate interference from a fortuneteller of notorious unreliability,” he sneers.

“How dare you!” Cassandra growls. “I am High Priestess of Troy!”

“All right then, get back to your temple before you give us all galloping religious mania,” Paris says dismissively. “Oh, really father, I can’t tolerate another of her tedious tirades at the moment.”

Cassandra sputters, turning to her father. “Do you hear him?”

“Yes, it’s quite refreshing,” Priam says with a tinge of amusement. “It seems there’s a man lurking behind that flaccid façade after all.”

“Really, father,” Paris begins, “I do wish you’d refrain from patronizing me in front of the prisoner.”

For me, this is the best exchange in the whole serial—a perfect encapsulation of the Trojan royal family dynamic. I wish there was footage for this; it sounds like the actors are having a blast playing off of one another.

Paris’s remark snaps Priam back to his senses, and he finally takes stock of Steven. Vicki tries to say that she can explain everything, but Priam doesn’t give her an opportunity. He hasn’t fully committed to punishing Vicki or being openly set against her, but since Paris identified Steven as a Greek prisoner, it’s clear that Priam will not believe anything Vicki has to say. Instead, he gives Vicki the opportunity to prove herself, telling her that she has one day to give the Trojans a surefire way to win the war—this puts her on the same timeframe as the Doctor, who has been given the same directive from the Greeks.

At this point, I think it’s easy to see what the writers were going for: the same story unfolding on both sides of the war. Both the Greeks and the Trojans have family problems at the top of their leadership structures. And both are confronted with someone who claims to be from the future. Aside from the fact that the circumstances behind these claims are still something I find unconvincing, the dichotomy of this serial is incredibly boring. It’s just the same story, twice, first on the Greeks’ side and then on the Trojans’. Although I think the Trojan storyline is better executed, it doesn’t elevate it beyond the tedium of having experienced it already. There are plenty of more appealing ways this could have been done. Just imagine if Helen was actually a character on the Trojan side. Think of the possibilities she would bring as the only character to have spent time among both the Greeks and the Trojans. She adds complexity and depth to the narrative simply by existing—yet another reason why her absence is a confounding decision.

Moving on, Cassandra tells Vicki that if she cannot deliver a solution by the following evening, she “will be burnt as a sorceress, a false prophet, and a spy.” Priam concurs, and Paris orders Steven and Vicki to be taken away to the dungeons.

Back in the Greek camp, the Doctor and Odysseus are discussing the Doctor’s progress at coming up with a plan to win the war. The Doctor demonstrates to Odysseus how to launch a flying machine using a catapult, using a paper plane and a drawstring. I won’t rehash how much this breaks the Doctor’s character—I said my piece about that in the last episode—but it still infuriates me. When the Doctor says the flying machine is so simple that even a child could operate it, Odysseus laughs, clapping the Doctor on the shoulder. “I’m very glad to hear you say that, Doctor, because I intend to build this flying machine…And you shall have the honor of being the first man to fly!” The Doctor’s eyes widen.

In the Trojan jail, Vicki and Steven are in adjoining cells, arguing about the events that have transpired. Vicki tells him that he should have known she would have had everything well in hand and that she can take care of herself. Steven retorts that she had better start thinking of a way to end the war, because the Doctor is over in the Greek camp trying to do the same. “It’s you against the Doctor now.”

This thought is sobering for Vicki, who never looked at it like that. Steven goes on to say that if she doesn’t succeed, he doesn’t think Cassandra will wait for the city to fall before she gets rid of Vicki. “Paris wouldn’t let her do that,” Vicki counters. After a moment, she adds, “Neither would Troilus.” Steven asks who Troilus is, and Vicki says, “Paris’s younger brother. He likes me. I like him.” Again, show, don’t tell. We’ve never even seen Vicki and Troilus in a scene together, and we’re supposed to view them in a romantic light? It doesn’t feel natural.

Suddenly, they are interrupted by someone throwing rocks at the windows of their cells. Steven looks out into the city square to see Cyclops, standing just beyond the bars of his window and grinning. Relieved, Steven tells Cyclops to run back to the Greeks and tell “the old man” that he must not attack Troy until the day after tomorrow—otherwise, he and Vicki will be killed. Don’t expect this to go anywhere.

Before he can confirm that Cyclops has understood, there is the sound of a door opening, and Vicki and Steven suddenly pretend as if they haven’t been doing anything out of the ordinary. Troilus enters Vicki’s cell with a tray of food and tells her that she shouldn’t be talking with Steven. Tall and curly-haired, Troilus has a chiseled build that reminds me of a Roman marble statue. And despite the fact that he is supposed to be seventeen years old, the actor who plays him looks to be at least in his late 20s. His name is James Lynn; I can’t find any information about his age or his personal life online, but he is laughably ill-suited to play a lovestruck boy.

Troilus tries to tell Vicki that he is on duty and can’t fraternize with his inmates, but Vicki disarms him with a smile. Patting the ground next to her, she gets him to sit down with her and share some of her food.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is still in the Greek camp, trying to talk Odysseus out of using the flying machines he has just endorsed. “You mean you’re too frightened to fly it by yourself,” Odysseus says, which is exactly the reason. The Doctor stammers for a bit, eventually getting out that he has come up with an even better idea.

“A huge horse,” he says, “about forty feet high…We build it hollow, and we fill it with soldiers and leave it on the sandy plain for the Trojans to capture it.”

Odysseus catches on quickly, adding, “And it’s just possible that the Trojans will come out and take the horse back into the city.”

“And the Greeks pretend to sail away,” the Doctor finishes. Odysseus laughs giddily.

Back in the Trojan jail, Vicki and Troilus are still talking in Vicki’s cell. It’s a lot of fluff, trying to establish a romantic spark between the two—which is hard for me to buy into this late in the serial. There is an important exchange near the end, though. “Well, between you and me,” Troilus says, “I don’t honestly enjoy killing at all. But I love adventure.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” Vicki says. At this point, it feels like a very real possibility that we are being introduced to the next companion.

In the Greek camp, Odysseus and the Doctor present their battle plan to Agamemnon and Menelaus. It is a long exchange, with a lot of doubt expressed by the two brothers and a lot of unnecessary time spent by the Doctor and Odysseus on explaining everything that the audience already knows. There are only two new pieces of the plan. The first is when Odysseus says, “During the night, we shall leave the horse [and] open up the gates to let you all in again.” And the second is when Odysseus demands that the Doctor accompany him and his soldiers inside the giant horse. The Doctor tries to object but ultimately realizes that he has no say in the matter.

Meanwhile, in the Trojan jail, it feels as if the pacing has started to drag. Troilus spends far too long saying goodbye to Vicki before promising to try to convince the others to let her out as he leaves the dungeon. Then Steven and Vicki banter for another interminable period, with Steven chastising her for her new “boyfriend” and Vicki defending Troilus, calling him very nice. “You know, Steven, I think I could get to be quite happy here in time,” she says. They close the scene with a few bits of dialogue about how their hope of a rescue rests upon the message Steven sent to the Doctor through Cyclops.

Cut to the plain, where Cyclops is murdered by a group of Trojan soldiers. What a pointless character. Beyond his first exchange with Odysseus, he meant absolutely nothing to the plot. Every second of screentime with him lurking in the background was a complete waste of time. I hate his existence almost as much as I hate how Odysseus is portrayed.

Back in the Greek camp, the Greek carpenters have finished building the Trojan Horse, and the Doctor and Odysseus are admiring the craftsmanship. I’m not sure how they managed to build such a thing in the span of an afternoon, but I’ll let it slide—anything to push the narrative forward is a welcome development at this point. The Doctor is resentful about the upcoming excursion, but Odysseus laughs, saying that it is time for them all to go for a ride.

In the jail, Steven tries to jump the guard that has come with his food, but he is quickly rebuffed. “I told you strongarm tactics wouldn’t work,” Vicki remarks.

On the plain, the giant horse containing the Doctor, Odysseus, and several soldiers has been deposited within eyeshot of Troy. The Doctor tries yet again to talk his way out of the horse, but Odysseus says no. At any rate, it is too late; Trojans have found the structure, approaching it with ropes to haul it back to the city.

A while later, Troilus comes running into Vicki’s cell, filled with glee. He tells her that she is to be freed. “The whole [Greek] fleet has sailed, and not there’s not one to be seen. They’ve all gone home. The war’s over!…Father’s terribly pleased with you…He said that you’ve brought us luck as he always said you would. Cassandra’s furious about it. She hates you more than ever now.” Troilus says that Priam wants to thank Vicki personally, and he whisks her out of the dungeon, leaving Steven alone.

Inside the Trojan Horse, Odysseus reminds the Doctor and his soldiers to be absolutely silent.

Back inside the Trojan royal palace, Priam, Paris, Cassandra, Troilus, and Vicki have all gathered. Everyone but Cassandra is joyful; the High Priestess is filled with hatred and resentment. The men thank Vicki and talk about what is to come now that the war is finally over. Then Paris says, “I think I’ve just found the Great Horse of Asia…Something uncommonly like it anyway.”

When he describes it to the others, Vicki goes stony-faced, whispering, “It is the Trojan Horse.”

Troilus asks her what she said, and Cassandra growls, “Yes, ask her! Go on, ask her! She knows what it is. It is our doom! It’s the death of Troy, brought upon us by that cursed witch!” And when I say she growls, I mean growls. There have been many instances throughout the serial where the actress who plays Cassandra is overacting, but this might be the worst example of it. She can barely get the words out, sounding like a pack-a-day smoker as she gargles her way through the line.

Paris says he won’t tolerate any slander toward the horse, and Troilus says the same about Vicki. “I’m afraid you’re a bit too late,” Paris adds. “I’ve just given instructions to have it brought into the city.” The Trojan soldiers with ropes approach the city wall with their prize. Credits roll.

Part 4 (Horse of Destruction)

If you haven’t seen this serial, I think now is a good time to play a little game I like to call, Who is the Next Companion? It’s exactly what it says on the tin. Based on everything you’ve know about the unfolding plot of The Myth Makers, which of the dozen-or-so supporting characters ends up inside the TARDIS at the end of this episode?

Moving on, Cassandra still tries to convince the others that the Trojan Horse is nothing but bad news, saying, “It’s a trick. My dreams have always been right, and they foretell disaster…The whole family [is] besotted by that sorceress.” Then Troilus looks around and asks where Vicki has gone—the fact that she slipped away is not communicated well by the reconstruction. Priam tells Troilus to go into the city and find her.

When Troilus is gone, Cassandra pulls a lesser priestess, Katarina, aside and tells her, “Go and look for the sorceress. I don’t trust my lovesick brother.”

Meanwhile, Vicki steals into the Trojan dungeon and unbolts the door to Steven’s cell, saying, “They’re bringing the horse into the city. Follow me.” Steven has no reaction to this, which makes no sense. This is the first time he is hearing about the Trojan Horse, and there is no world in which he wouldn’t burst into a thousand questions. Not only is he the most talkative and skeptical companion so far, but it would have been a great opportunity for him and Vicki to butt heads once again. In service of expediency, the writers have given us yet another out-of-character moment.

Inside the Trojan Horse, Odysseus watches through a peephole as the horse is placed in the center of the main square.

Up on the royal balcony, Priam, Paris, and Cassandra watch the commotion below, Cassandra still disparaging the whole thing, calling this the “doom of Troy.”

Down in the square, Vicki and Steven are milling around with the rest of the townsfolk. Steven tells Vicki that they won’t continue to treat her kindly if anyone sees them together, and Vicki points to the horse, telling Steven that she is alright as long as the Trojans believe that she is responsible for its appearance. “Yes, only so long as they think it’s a gift from the gods,” Steven argues. “They’ll know differently once the Doctor and company come out of it.” The prospect of the Greeks sacking Troy is something that Vicki never considered, which makes her seem very stupid. She knows the story; what did she think was going to happen?

Suddenly, Steven and Vicki spot Katarina in the crowd, and they duck behind some pillars. Steven tells Vicki that she must get back to Troilus and the others, or else they’ll become suspicious once they discover that Steven is out of his cell, adding, “If you really are that fond of [Troilus], you’d better tell him to get out of the city.”

Back at the palace, Troilus returns to his father, brother, and sister with the news that Steven has escaped. “That Cressida,” Cassandra spits. “Troy’s doom is nigh!” More like neigh. Then Vicki arrives and denies having any knowledge about Steven or who might have set him free. Priam and his children leave to address the public on this momentous occasion, but Cassandra orders Katarina to stay with Vicki and watch her.

Later, Troilus visits Vicki in a private room of the palace. In a very serious tone, Vicki takes Troilus by the hand and asks, “Troilus, dear Troilus, will you do something for me?…Leave the city…It’s Diomede…I’m sure he’s out on the plain. You’ve got to go and look for him and find him. If you bring him back, you’ll prove yourself the warrior you really are. He’ll be your prisoner then, as well as Paris’s.”

Troilus is confused by the request. “Cressida, I said I’d do anything for you, and a Trojan stands by his word, but please, why do you want me to leave the city and go and search for a highly skilled Greek warrior?” Vicki’s tone develops an edge of desperation, and she begs him to go right now. Troilus agrees, saying, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be alright.”

That night, the square is empty, and the Doctor, Odysseus, and the Greek soldiers emerge from the belly of the Trojan Horse. Odysseus and his men kill all of the Trojan sentries as the Doctor looks on in disgust. “This plan of yours, Doctor, is going to be a great success,” Odysseus says mirthfully. “Stay close to me.”

Out in the plain, Troilus calls out for Diomede. Instead, Achilles appears, which surprises Troilus, as all the Greeks are supposed to have gone away. “Has Cressida played me false?” Troilus says to himself. “Very well. I’ll fight my brother’s murderer.” The two men square off, and after another lost action sequence, Troilus strikes Achilles with a killing blow. But in the process, Troilus is caught in the torso by Achilles’s raised sword, and he staggers away from the dead body of Achilles, badly injured.

Two soldiers throw open the gate of Troy, and legions of Greeks pour inside the city.

Inside the palace, Priam, Paris, and Cassandra have all been awoken by the commotion outside. Paris realizes what has happened, shouting that the Greeks were inside the horse and that the city gates are wide open to the enemy. Even at their darkest moment, the insufferable Cassandra has to get in an I-told-you-so, saying, “And none of you would listen to me!” Suddenly Odysseus and several Greek soldiers burst into the room, chasing the Trojans deeper into the palace.

In the square, Vicki and the Doctor have both managed to make it back to the TARDIS, and they have a quick reunion. Katarina, who is still with Vicki, is introduced to the Doctor. Then Vicki points her offscreen and says, “Now, go and find the man you call Diomede. He’s hiding amongst those pillars over there.” Obediently, Katarina leaves the scene. Then Vicki turns to the Doctor and frantically says that they need to talk, whisking him inside the TARDIS.

In the middle of those pillars, Steven is fighting for his life against a Trojan soldier; they trade furious blows with their swords.

Cut back to the TARDIS, where we see Vicki exiting the blue doors. Turning to the ship, she gives it a quick hug. Then she leaves, moving into the square and out of sight. Exiting the TARDIS a few seconds later, the Doctor watches her leave, saying nothing.

Steven takes a devastating jab to his shoulder and drops to the ground, but before the Trojan can finish him off, a Greek soldier arrives and kills him, saving Steven’s life. Then Katarina enters the scene; she helps Steven to his feet, and together, they make for the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, Odysseus and several Greeks have cornered Cassandra in a room of the palace. Priam and Paris lay dead on the floor. Odysseus takes Cassandra by the shoulders and shakes her, telling her not to struggle and that she is “reserved for Agamemnon.” Which gives us yet another inappropriate rape implication in a children’s show. Like all of the others—with the exception of the instance in The Time Meddler—it just feels gross.

Then Cassandra turns and utters the curse that will be the impetus for the events of the Odyssey, Odysseus’s long and fraught journey back to Greece: “Ten long years we fought you, Odysseus. And ten long years it’ll be before you see your home again!” Then she is manhandled out of the room by Greek soldiers.

In the square, Katarina arrives at the TARDIS with Steven, and the Doctor tells Katarina to take him inside and lay him down on the couch. The two disappear inside, but before the Doctor can follow them, Odysseus appears behind him, claiming that the TARDIS is his as part of his spoils of war. The Doctor says, “I’ve gone far enough with you, my Lord Odysseus. You go adventuring on your own. Be off with you.” The Doctor enters and closes the doors; the TARDIS dematerializes.

Standing there in awe, Odysseus laughs and says. “Zeus! I wonder, were you really Zeus after all?” I’m sure I would have found that entertaining if Odysseus were a less annoying character.

On the plain outside Troy, Vicki finds Troilus watching the destruction of his home. I’ll give Vicki’s final moments in great detail, because it’s what I have been doing with every companion departure. Just know that I don’t find this scene anywhere near as compelling as Susan’s departure in The Dalek Invasion of Earth or Ian and Barbara’s in The Chase.

Seeing Vicki approach, an emotional Troilus says, “Cressida. Cressida, could you have betrayed us? Cressida!…What are you doing here? Where’s Diomede?”

“He’s gone with another friend that you never met,” Vicki replies.

“Back to Greece.”

Vicki smiles. “No, to where I came from. You see, he wasn’t really a Greek. He—” She notices Troilus’s injury. “Oh, Troilus, you’re hurt!”

“Just a bit,” he says weakly. “Look, Cressida, I don’t understand.”

“I—I don’t suppose you ever will. That doesn’t matter, so long as you trust me.”

“Trust you?” Troilus says scornfully. “After all you—”

“I didn’t betray you,” Vicki cuts in quickly. “That’s why I stayed behind. I wanted you to know that I didn’t. The main thing is, I belong here, now, with you. If you’ll have me.”

Still despairing, Troilus looks back at the burning city. “Cressida, look what’s happened.”

“There’s only us now.”

“What do you mean?” Troilus asks.

“I’ll explain someday. I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, Troilus sees a group of soldiers in the distance and recognizes one of them as his cousin, Aeneas. “He’ll help us,” Vicki says resolutely.

“But there’s—there’s nothing left.”

“Yes, there is,” Vicki assures him. “There’s us. We can start again. With your cousin’s help, we can. We can build another Troy.” Taking Troilus’s hand in hers, they start across the plain.

I have a lot to say about how Vicki leaves the show, but I’ll save it for the conclusion.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS is in transit. Inside, Steven is incoherent, badly injured on one of the murphy beds in the TARDIS living quarters. “That’s not good at all,” says the Doctor. “We must get help.” Katarina watches on, very content for someone who has just entered a box that is bigger on the inside. It soon becomes apparent why: she believes that she has died and that the Doctor is a god escorting her through limbo to the afterlife. Steven opens an eye, sees Katarina, and grumbles something about Vicki. For all that I will complain about how Vicki’s departure was handled, this moment was genuinely heartbreaking. The Doctor tells him that Vicki decided to stay, and Steven falls into a fitful sleep.

The Doctor asks Katarina to watch over Steven, adding, “And remember Katarina, you must call me Doctor.”

“Oh, as you wish, Doc,” Katarina answers. This line really pisses me off. It’s a deliberate callback to Steven’s first serial, The Time Meddler, but it doesn’t make any sense coming from a priestess in ancient Troy.

“I’m not a Doc,” the Doctor says. “I am not a god.” He pauses. “Oh, my dear Vick, I hope you’ll be alright. I shall miss you child.” He looks back at Katarina and Steven. “Oh, yes, now. Those drugs, those drugs. What am I going to do? I must stop somewhere. But how? I’ve got to! Yes, I must! I must!” Credits roll.

Takeaways

The Myth Makers is the worst historical I’ve encountered so far in this retrospective. There were some decent moments, most of which involved Paris in some capacity, but after two watch-throughs, there isn’t anything that sticks out to me as being particularly memorable. And in a serial that includes both the introduction of new companion and an old companion leaving the show, this is very concerning. Back in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, I argued that any serial in which there is a companion introduction or departure deserves an additional layer of scrutiny, being judged on how well if functions as an independent narrative and how well it serves as a beginning or end of a companion’s run. And no such episode has been a bigger failure in both regards than The Myth Makers.

I’ll start off with Vicki’s departure, because I feel that this is the most important thing that this serial got wrong. Throughout Vicki’s run, I’ve been begging the show to treat her as more than just a knockoff Susan, wanting the showrunners to do something to prove that she is her own character. And while there have been nudges in the right direction—and one serial that was an inarguable success for Vicki in The Time Meddler—this serial brings any semblance of differentiation between her and Susan crashing down. Everything about Vicki’s departure is derivative of how Susan left the show. There was a burgeoning romance, and at the end of the serial, the companion stayed behind to start a new life without the Doctor and the TARDIS.

But in every conceivable way, Vicki’s departure was much, much worse. First of all, the writers absolutely botched Troilus’s introduction, talking about him at the end of Part 2, well before he actually enters the narrative ten minutes into Part 3. Then, once he finally shared a scene with Vicki, there were only 30 minutes of runtime for Vicki to go from barely knowing Troilus to giving up her life in the TARDIS to be with him. Nothing felt earned. Compare that to Susan and David, who spent the first five episodes of The Dalek Invasion of Earth getting to know each other and growing slowly in their affection.

Plus, I want you to think about Susan’s final moments: her tearful goodbyes to the Doctor, her numbness and raw emotion as she was left behind in the rubble of post-apocalyptic London, the sorrowful music as David took her hand, saying, “He knew. He knew you could never leave him.” No matter how many times I have seen this sequence, it never fails to break my heart. Then there is Vicki. We don’t even get to see her final conversation with the Doctor—the writer’s did her the utmost disrespect in keeping it entirely offscreen. There’s not the closure that there was with Susan and David, who were left in the relative safety of an Earth recently freed from oppression. Only turmoil and uncertainty, with Troilus watching everything and everyone he ever loved burning on the Trojan plain. Lastly, I don’t think that happiness lies in Vicki’s future. And while I understand that not every companion is going to get a happy ending, I get the sense that the showrunners really expected me to think that this was one.

Next I want to talk about the overarching narrative of the serial. I don’t have much to add that I haven’t already discussed in length. The same story happened twice, once on the Greek side of the conflict and once with the Trojans, leading to a boredom I don’t normally associate with most below average serials. Everyone in the Greek power structure irritated me to some extent, but none more so than Odysseus, who didn’t have a single line that wasn’t annoyingly over-the-top. The Trojan royal family was more tolerable, with Paris more than making up for the disappointment that was Cassandra, but again, all of their interactions were hampered by the fact that they were in service of a plot that I had just watched play out among the Greeks. Then there was Cyclops. For the relatively few minutes that he spent onscreen, Cyclops made me unreasonably angry. I hate feeling like my time has been wasted, and he added absolutely no value to the serial in any capacity. And even taking all of these issues into consideration, I’d still say that the Doctor’s decision to tell Odysseus about flying machines—a total contradiction with the position he held in the last historical—is the worst aspect of the entire serial. It’s such a baffling, rudimentary mistake.

Oh, and I almost forgot, we just got a new companion. Did you forget, too? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. There was no setup for Katarina. She wasn’t even named until the final episode. She has no backstory, no agency, no purpose. In fact, like I mentioned in my introduction, I will make a strong case during the next review as to why I don’t think Katarina should even be considered a companion at all. I don’t have anything more to say about her for the moment, because the serial gave me nothing to talk about, but trust me, there’s a tirade brewing for the next serial.

Looking forward, I’m still really excited for the next serial, The Daleks’ Master Plan. Everything from Mission to the Unknown is still fresh in my mind, and I can’t wait to see it be resolved. It’s a 12-part serial, which is the longest single story until the 14-part The Trial of a Time Lord, which makes up the entirety of Season 23. We’re still in the era of Doctor Who that I don’t remember much about from my original watch-through, but I do remember somewhat thinking that the length of The Daleks’ Master Plan ultimately worked against it. I feel like it was long and overly-meandering, but I’m welcome to being proven wrong. Either way, I’m looking forward to ripping the showrunners to shreds for the travesty that is Katarina and getting to see the next stage of the Daleks’ backstory. Just don’t expect a quick turnaround for the next review. It’ll take me a while.

Rating: 2.5/10

Chapter Text

3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan

A Note on Terry Nation

When I wrote my review of The Chase, I included a section where I lambasted Terry Nation’s worldbuilding abilities, saying that I would be including a section breaking down his inconsistent writing in the next Dalek serial. At the time, I remembered The Daleks’ Master Plan as a ponderous, rambling adventure that should have been wrapped up in eight episodes instead of the canon twelve. I remembered thinking that the settings and the characters were overly simplistic, and I was ready to come into this review guns blazing for Terry Nation.

I was wrong. I don’t know if I didn’t give this serial my full attention the first time I saw it, or if I wasn’t in the right headspace, or whatever else might have happened. I really enjoyed this one. Sure, it has some of the problems that I remembered: I found episodes seven through eleven to be a bit of a slog to get through, and there are a lot of simplistic elements that I still think typify Terry Nation’s writing style. But the good definitely outweighs the bad. The first six episodes contain some wonderful drama, with a hijacked spaceship, the death of a protagonist, and a supporting character committing fratricide. All of this sets the stage for a tumultuous ending filled with melancholy, with the surviving protagonists left to reflect on what they have lost rather than what they won.

Altogether, The Daleks’ Master Plan isn’t my favorite serial with Daleks as the primary antagonist, but it isn’t bad by any means. It has its flaws—many things feel repetitive, and once you get to the end and look back at what the Daleks were trying to accomplish, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But it did change my opinion of Terry Nation from a below average Doctor Who writer into a man who might just earn his position among the esteemed figures of the series’ pantheon. Only time will tell. At any rate, it will be a while before I get the change to delve into another Terry Nation story; he doesn’t return until Season 10 with Planet of the Daleks.

Before I start, there are two corrections I have to make. First, I was wrong when I said Terry Nation’s only non-Dalek story was The Keys of Marinus. He also wrote The Android Invasion, a Dalek-free serial from Season 13. And second, I mentioned in my review of The Daleks that the audience didn’t get to see what lies inside a Dalek’s casing for over a decade, not until Season 12’s Genesis of the Daleks. That was another misremembering on my part—we see the blobby creatures within in Part 12 of this serial, though a still of this occurrence sadly does not make it into the reconstruction.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another serial with missing episodes. Only episodes 2, 5, and 10 have been salvaged. For the rest, I am experiencing it in the format of a telesnap reconstruction, which is essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (The Nightmare Begins)

Having just escaped the sacking of Troy at the hands of the Greeks, this serial opens with the Doctor, Steven, and Katarina safe aboard the TARDIS in mid-flight. Though safe is relative: Steven is badly hurt from the spear he took to the shoulder and is unconscious in the living quarters. The Doctor tells Katarina that Steven has blood poisoning and that they will need to land somewhere and get medication to treat his condition.

The TARDIS begins to slow, and Katarina asks, “Can we have reached the place of perfection so soon?” She still thinks that the Doctor is a god—or at the very least a sort of ferryman escorting her through the underworld. I don’t know why the Doctor doesn’t disabuse her of this notion. He merely says something about stopping at a lot of places before that, asking her to watch over Steven and make sure his wound is kept clean.

One more thing about this scene. He refers to Katarina as “my child” in this scene. Since the beginning of the series, there has always been a young girl that fits this description: first Susan, then Vicki, and now Katarina. I wish I could say that the streak ends with this serial. The next one, The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, introduces another young girl that I distinctly remember as the worst companion in all of Doctor Who. Maybe it was her failure as a character that got the showrunners to ditch the grandfather-granddaughter dynamic altogether.

But I digress. In a dense jungle—recognizable as the planet Kembel from Mission to the Unknown—a man in a crisp black uniform speaks into a communicator. He is handsome, with short dark hair and a sash of white across his high-collared black shirt. The actor is Nicholas Courtney, which many fans will recognize as long-running character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It’s really cool to see him here; the first time I saw the serial, I hadn’t yet met the brigadier and never made the connection. Nicholas Courtney is the actor who has the distinction of having been on screen with the most Doctors to date, appearing alongside the first seven Doctors. If you include the audio adventures, he has also acted alongside the 8th, 10th, and 11th Doctors, bringing his total to an even ten.

Moving on, the dark-haired man is repeatedly calling out for Central Communications, but no one answers him. “Nothing!” he says in disgust. “When we get back to Earth, I’ll have every fool in CCE court-martialed!” Next to him is another man. He wears the same uniform, though it is decidedly tarnished, covered in dirt. So is the man’s face, sooty and oily beneath a mop of lank brown hair. He groans helplessly, with his leg in a makeshift splint. The dirty man urges dark-hair to continue trying for the sake of the entire solar system, and dark-hair turns back to the communicator and tries to hail Central Communications again.

Hundreds of millions of miles away, a blinking indicator flashes on a long, rounded desk of controls. None of the bald, clean-shaven men in loose black uniforms appear to notice—some talk jovially in the foreground while others are at distant stations and cannot see the light. The room is spacious, with various design elements that make it look futuristic. One wall is a series of intersecting lines charting the path of something, perhaps the flight of a ship or the orbital path of a planet. The ceiling consists of large acute triangles, rotated so that they follow the gentle curve of the rounded desk below, oriented somewhat like slices of pizza in a circular pie. Broad, square exits lead further into wherever building this is. All in all, it is fantastic set design compared to some of the sci-fi nonsense we’ve seen in the series, like the lifeless governor’s office in The Space Museum or the perplexing layout of the Elders’ chambers in The Sensorites.

Two people enter the room, a man and a woman, and they are wearing some examples of sci-fi nonsense. The man wears a beige turtleneck beneath a vest adorned with a very busy design made of random polygons—much like the exterior of the museum from The Space Museum—maybe a molecular structure of some kind. And the woman wears a dark button-down shirt, with three white boxes arrayed vertically, marching down one side of the buttons. Later, it becomes clear that these symbols are actually an indication of rank, but I don’t care how cohesive of a system it makes—it just looks stupid.

Anyway, the man has short brown hair and a receding hairline—a very typical look for a Doctor Who background character. The woman has blonde hair which is close-cropped on the sides and left longer on top. Neither of these characters get a name in this episode. In fact, only the woman gets a name, in Part 4, just before she exits the serial for good. If you’ve read any of my reviews before, you probably know that failing to properly introduce a named character is one of the most prevailing pet peeves I have with early Doctor Who writing. Giving the audience a name to put to a face is such a layup for creating a coherent narrative; I don’t know why this is such a problem in Doctor Who.

The man and the woman are chatting away, arguing over what they will watch on television. “So it’s checkmate, is it?” the man says. “I want to see the Venus-Mars games. You want to see your hero, Mavic Chen…I tell you what. If we tune into channel 403, we’ll get the news. That should cover both our requirements. Agreed?” I find this exchange to be a bit underwhelming, though I’m sure the prospect of 400+ television channels was amusing to the audience in 1965.

The blonde woman argues that they should get back to work, lest they miss some of their routine calls. The man tells her not to worry, saying that the next call, from callsign Five-Zero-Alpha, isn’t expected for another twenty minutes. I didn’t mention it in the last scene, but this is the callsign of the dark-haired man on Kembel trying to get through to Central Communications. “Five-Zero-Alpha?” the woman asks. “Is that the patrol out looking for Marc Cory?”

“Yes,” the man replies, “the agent who disappeared near the planet Kembel. Probably crashed, so they think.” Marc Cory was the Space Security agent who was killed by the Daleks before he could launch his rescue beacon in Mission to the Unknown. I have to say, it feels great to have two stories intersect like this, even if Mission to the Unknown was just a blatant prologue for The Daleks’ Master Plan. I cannot wait to get to the point where this sort of thing is the norm and not the exception.

One of the bald technicians turns on the television, and the woman is delighted to see Mavic Chen appear immediately onscreen. Before we go on, I have to talk about the appearance of Mavic Chen. Up to this point, there have been white actors playing the roles of characters of color. They’ve been prevalent in historicals like Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Crusades, and The Myth Makers. I want to be very clear: the practice of altering a white actor’s appearance so that they look nonwhite is always egregious—I have not called attention to it in this retrospective, and the fact that I have thus far overlooked the practice is a personal failing. But the choice to cast Kevin Stoney as Mavic Chen is especially flagrant. His makeup appears to be both yellowface and blackface. His eyelids have been stretched toward his temples to give them a slanted appearance, and wispy white eyebrows have been drawn halfway up his forehead in a replication of an angry Asian stereotype. And on top of this, his skin color is very dark, a marked departure from all of the images of Kevin Stoney I have been able to find online.

The offensiveness of this character is twofold: it perpetuates the longstanding practice in the entertainment industry of marginalizing actors of color in favor of white actors, and it gives the role of the antagonist to somebody they have made to look foreign, thereby playing into the “scary foreigner” trope. Even though I think Kevin Stoney gives a serviceable performance as Mavic Chen, it’s hard to get past the general ick I feel whenever he is in a scene.

A few more general notes about Mavic Chen’s appearance: he is well past his middle ages, with hair that has gone completely white, and he wears a shirt much like the blonde woman watching the television, only in black, with the vertical box design on both sides of the buttons.

Mavic Chen is being interviewed, and we get a lot of information in this scene. The first thing e first is the back end of one of Chen’s answers: “…The mineral agreement with the Fourth Galaxy proved a little more complicated than was at first expected.”

“And as that had been concluded so successfully,” the interviewer cuts in, “I’m sure that no one will begrudge you a little time off. Where are you going to on this trip?”

“That, I am keeping a secret,” Chen answers coyly. I know I already said that Chen will end up being an antagonist, but it is very apparent early on that his actions are not all above-board. No politician would answer the question like this unless they had something to hide. And even if they did, they probably would have answered with more tact than Chen here. He’s basically holding up a sign that says, “I’m evil! Don’t trust me!”

There’s some crosstalk between the man and woman in Central Communications, where we learn that Mavic Chen is the Guardian of the Solar System, the system’s most powerful executive. Remember, I pointed out in Mission to the Unknown that Doctor Who writers have been very inconsistent about what they mean when they use terms like “solar system,” “galaxy,” and “universe.” Kembel was said to be in the same solar system as Earth, which we know is untrue. However, there was also a clear distinction made between solar system and galaxy. Based on context, I think it’s safe to say that the writers do indeed mean the Milky Way whenever they refer to the galaxy containing the Earth, but I frankly have no idea what they mean whenever they say solar system. Perhaps it is the sphere of influence of human civilization.

Then the interviewer asks Mavic Chen if he has any parting words for the citizens, and Chen delivers this exposition dump: “It is my earnest hope that the solar system may continue along this path of peace, this path that was laid by the signing of the non-aggression pact of 3975. Now, in this year of 4000, we can feel justly proud of that pact. May the past twenty-five years prove that they are the dawn of an everlasting peace which will spread throughout the universe. Let us go forward together, secure in the knowledge that the life ahead is built on the cornerstone of richer understanding, not only of the past or the present, but also of the future. And may it be this cornerstone, so firmly laid, be built upon in brotherhood and bring peace, progress, and prosperity to each and every one of us.”

As Mavic Chen’s speech comes to a close and the technician turns the television off, the blonde woman thinks she sees a flash on the console. But when she goes over to her station, the indicator bulb is dark. “Okay, so I’m imagining things,” she says.

Back in the forest on Kembel, the man with a broken leg—another character whose name we don’t learn until he’s no longer relevant—tells the dark-haired man that “they” are out there in the surrounding forest and getting closer. “You’re just imagining things,” the dark-haired man says. “Now shut up.” I love how this line mirrors the last line from the previous scene. From the first scene on Kembel, there has been a lovely throughline to connect scenes that are separated by millions of miles: the dark-haired man calling Central Communications was immediately followed by the flashing indicator, and now we get the mirrored dialogue. It’s very smart writing that helps the narrative maintain momentum.

Suddenly, there is a sound like leaves rustling, and the dark-haired man is convinced that there is something out there after all. He says it’s time to move, but the man with the broken leg insists on staying, pointing to his leg and saying that he’d only slow the dark-haired man down. There is a lot of good exposition here, with casual mentions of the Varga plants introduced in Mission to the Unknown, relying on the audience to remember what they have already seen rather than explaining it anew. There is also talk of the Daleks without mentioning them by name, like “Our weapons are useless against those things” and “You know they don’t take prisoners.” A great way to build tension without spoiling the reveal for anyone who might not have scene the prologue.

The two men continue to argue until the man with the broken leg pulls his gun on the dark-haired man, warning him to leave or else he’ll shoot. The dark-haired man finally relents, picking up a transmitter the size of a car battery and making for the edge of the clearing. Before he exits the scene, the man with the broken leg says, “Bret. Good luck.” Would you look at that—almost halfway into Part 1 and a supporting character has actually been named. Hallelujah.

Bret leaves, and the remaining soldier trains his gun on the surrounding foliage. “All right, I’m ready for you now.” There is a long moment of silence. “Where the devil are you? Come on!” Behind him, leaves tremble, and a Dalek bursts into the clearing. It fires its gun at the man, who collapses to the ground, dead. A second Dalek enters the clearing and orders the first to look for the remaining human.

Elsewhere, Bret is running through the forest. He trips, narrowly dodging a coterie of Varga plants, smashing his transmitter as he hits the ground. He looks at it in despair, but before he can do anything else, there is suddenly the wheeze of the TARDIS materializing behind him. Amazed, he takes a few steps toward the blue box, but when the doors start to open, he quickly dashes behind it and out of sight.

The Doctor and Katarina emerge from the ship, with the Doctor telling Katarina to stay behind and watch after Steven. He shows her the TARDIS key, telling her to close the doors behind him via the switch on the console. “I’ll do as you ask,” Katarina answers, which leaves the Doctor so pleased that he’s like a peacock strutting away from the TARDIS. It is very telling about his character that his preferred companion is one who’s lack of knowledge makes her totally subservient and dependent on him for survival.

I want to take a moment to address something that is often brought up in discussions about the 1st Doctor, which is the idea that he is very sexist. And I want to say right off the bat that I agree with this sentiment, though with a major caveat: a lot of the writing is very sexist. We’ve seen many examples of female characters being disbelieved or disempowered by their counterparts. In The Daleks, none of the other protagonists believed Susan when she claimed to be touched by a figure she couldn’t see, not even after a mysterious vial of drugs appeared outside of the TARDIS. In Marco Polo, the titular character didn’t believe it when Susan and Ping-Cho accused Tegana of malfeasance, even though they had credible evidence. In The Reign of Terror, Susan and Barbara—especially Susan in this instance—were made to look like helpless damsels throughout the first two episodes, unable to do anything to help themselves until men with guns came to rescue them. In The Romans, Barbara is reduced to the losing end of a ten-minute rape gag while Ian is allowed to break out of a Roman slave ship, escape from captivity again in Rome, and sneak into the emperor’s palace. And again in The Crusade, Barbara is the damsel in distress while Ian is quite literally the valiant knight that comes to rescue her.

I could go on and on. My point is, a lot of what we have been given—whether it was well-written or not—reveals a pervasive bias towards men in the narrative, leaving women as auxiliary characters with comparatively less agency. Now, there have of course been exceptions to this. Barbara was a take-charge badass in The Aztecs, and Vicki saved the day by starting a revolution in The Space Museum. But overall, the sexist tendencies of the writing staff are not in dispute. And while I don’t believe that the 1st Doctor was any more or less sexist than the other male characters around him, it is also important to look at his characterization with the context that the Doctor still exists as a character to this day. The 15th Doctor is not just a new character in a long-running series; he is an interpolation of all of his previous iterations, including the 1st Doctor as he was portrayed in the 1960s. The sexism of the 1st Doctor—and to a lesser extent all of the classic Doctors that followed—is something that the series will need to reckon with. And there is a 12th Doctor episode, Twice Upon a Time, which I think does this very well, where the 1st Doctor makes an appearance that serves to highlight how much the character has changed rather than sweep the character’s past biases under the rug. In the meantime, I will be looking out for more instances like his satisfaction with Katarina, an empty husk of a character—instances which show a level of sexism above and beyond what is typical of early Doctor Who writing.

Moving on, the Doctor sees the distant lights of the Dalek city through the jungle. Not realizing the nature of its inhabitants, he believes that the city will be his best bet for finding a cure for Steven. But before he can leave, Bret appears in front of him, blocking the Doctor’s path, gun in hand. “Give me that key, or I’ll kill you,” he says coldly.

Inside the TARDIS, Steven gains a groggy measure of consciousness and finds Katarina watching over him. He asks where they are, and Katarina answers, “On our way through the underworld…We all make the journey together.” Steven tries to speak again, but he passes out.

At that moment, the TARDIS doors open to admit not the Doctor but Bret. He bluffs his way into Katarina’s confidence, answering affirmatively when she asks if he has been sent by the Doctor to cure Steven’s sickness. He tells Katarina to close the doors and looks around the ship in wonderment, saying, “What sort of craft is this? I’ve seen most, but nothing like this. From the outside, it looked so small.” Then he asks Katarina how to control the TARDIS, and he is dismayed when she tells him that only the Doctor can control it. Bret flips a few switches on the console, one of which enables the scanner, but he is unable to figure out the controls. He tells Katarina that he can’t help Steven until they get back to Earth, saying that he has already explained this all to the Doctor. Unnoticed, Steven awakens yet again.

Outside, the Doctor has returned to the TARDIS, chuckling as he approaches the doors. He discovers that Bret has left the key in the door—something I find extraordinarily contrived—and he makes to enter the ship.

Inside, Bret is still trying to make sense of the TARDIS controls when Steven sneaks behind him and bashes him over the head with a wrench. Bret falls unconscious, followed close behind by Steven, who is overcome by the strain of his physical exertion.

Still outside with his hand on the TARDIS door, the Doctor is distracted by a spaceship which passes overhead, heading for the city. He wonders aloud whether it has anything to do with Bret or the unknown city.

Inside Dalek central control, a regular Dalek tells the Black Dalek that a spaceship is approaching the landing pad. “Everything is ready,” it says.

Back in the TARDIS, a little time has passed. Bret regains consciousness to find that he is in a chair; despite no obvious restraints, he is unable to move. Chuckling, the Doctor tells Bret that he sits in an invention of his called the magnetic chair, which has a force field capable of holding a herd of elephants. Then he crosses the room to Katarina, who watches over Steven, who is still unconscious and back on the bed in the living quarters. Quietly so Bret cannot hear, he tells Katarina about the city, saying he will go there to seek help for Steven and that he will question Bret when he gets back. Telling her not to worry, he leaves the ship.

Once outside, the Doctor struggles through the underbrush for a while, narrowly avoiding a Varga plant, when he suddenly comes across a skeleton dressed in decaying clothing. The Doctor stoops down to examine the corpse and finds a small tape recording on the ground next to the body, making this the body of Marc Cory from Mission to the Unknown. He pockets the tape and continues toward the city.

Next, we actually get a few seconds of real footage: a spaceship landing in the middle of a miniature of the Dalek city. The miniature is nothing to write home about; the city is plain and darkly lit to obscure an obvious lack of detail. But the spaceship looks really unique, a circular, satellite-like vessel that spins like a top as it touches down in the middle of the round landing pad. It’s nice to see a spaceship that is a marked departure from what we would conceptualize as a spaceship in the modern day—it’s in keeping with what I mentioned at the beginning of Mission to the Unknown, where the farther you go into the future, the less things should fit into a modern-day frame of reference.

Concealed in the shadows at the edge of the landing pad, the Doctor is horrified to discover that a contingent of Daleks have gathered to greet the spaceship.

Back in the TARDIS, Bret asks Katarina what is wrong with Steven, and she tells him that Steven has blood poisoning. When Bret tells Katarina that he has some tablets in the pouch of his belt that will cure Steven, she is rightfully suspicious. But Bret is persistent, making it clear that the planet will not provide Steven with the cure that the Doctor wanted, and he is able to convince her to reach into his pouch for the tablets.

Just from this exchange, you can see the strength of Nicholas Courtney as an actor. In a similar vein to how Peter Purves elevated Maureen O’Brian’s character whenever Steven and Vicki shared a scene, Courtney is able to elevate Katarina into something of a sympathetic character in this sequence. There is an endearing exchange where Katarina empties the contents of a pill bottle into her hand and Bret scolds her for not knowing what a tablet is. Courtney pulls off a gruff, irascible character so well, and I can’t wait to revisit his run as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in a few seasons.

Katarina goes on to feed Steven the pills, and she watches him anxiously, saying that the Doctor will be very angry if Bret played her false. Suddenly, Bret sees a Dalek on the TARDIS scanner, just outside the doors.

In a reception area of the Dalek city, a Dalek announces the approach of their new ally. Striding confidently into the scene, Mavic Chen greets the Daleks, saying, “I am honored to be here and to be a part of your plan to conquer Earth and all the planets in the solar system.”

First of all, show don’t tell—I don’t need to hear Mavic Chen say this so explicitly. It will be evident in every action he takes from now until the end of the serial. And second, the serial plays this like it is meant to be a shock to the audience, but it was way too obvious for that. The interview scene from earlier did too much to telegraph the fact that he was getting on a spaceship destined for an undisclosed location, and there is no one else it could possibly be. It’s been a while since I criticized the series for not being subtle enough, though a lot of that has to do with me getting used to just how unsubtle the narrative beats tend to be. But this is definitely an instance where the series has spoiled its own mystery by being too overt.

The next scene in the reconstruction includes an element that is incorrect. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS to find the doors wide open and surrounded by Daleks—which would make no sense with what happens in the next episode. However, in Part 2, an episode whose footage was recovered after the reconstruction had been created, we see that the TARDIS doors are closed. Either way, the Doctor finds his route to his friends blocked by his deadliest foe. Credits roll.

Part 2 (Day of Armageddon)

This is the first of three recovered episodes.

As the Doctor backs away from the Daleks, retreating further into the jungle, one of the Daleks says, “A message from the Dalek Supreme: Operation Inferno to be put into execution at once.” A second Dalek issues orders for a countdown to begin once all Dalek patrols have been evacuated to safe areas.

Next, we see a conference room, empty except for Mavic Chen, who sits at a throne-like chair, writing on a piece of paper. This set is not like the cheap conference room from Mission to the Unknown, with its cheap backdrop of black curtains. Instead, we get an imposing space. On either side of an empty circle in the middle of the room are rounded, arch-like tables, with four high-backed chairs behind each. Above this space, recessed lighting is set into a metal circle, reminiscent of the design of the Dalek flying saucers seen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. A well-lit catwalk leads away from the central space to a bright exit in an otherwise unrelieved black wall. This is exactly the kind of domineering menace that should have been implemented in Mission to the Unknown.

A figure dressed all in black enters the room, striding down the catwalk toward the central circle, prompting Mavic Chen to stand and greet him. The newcomer wears a black robe that covers even his face, all but his hands and feet, which resemble clumps of seaweed. His appearance is fine; I suspect that most of his body was covered to save money on his costume, but that lends an air of mystery to his appearance that I find intriguing. But how the director has chosen to have him act is so poorly done. He maintains a high-pitched monotone throughout the scene, much like a Dalek cadence but without the voice modulator. And in a series full of Daleks, the showrunners should be opting for a greater diversity of sounds and mannerisms, not less. Additionally, he holds his arms rigidly out to his sides for the entire scene, away from his body at a 45-degree angle. Creature design has more to do than just the visual aspects; how a character acts and moves is just as integral to the creature’s depiction. While it can be helpful to give creatures with a near-human appearance an odd quirk or two to set them apart, this creature is so visibly different from humans that it makes this approach unnecessary. And even then, having a creature act like an elementary schooler playing a tree in the school musical is just plain stupid.

The seaweed creature in black robes introduces himself as Zephon, Master of the Fifth Galaxy. Sorry, I have to go on another tangent. The Doctor Who writers have been very lazy with their fictional place names to this point in the series, but nowhere more so than how they represent galaxies outside of our own. We’ve already encountered Galaxy Four, and with the addition of the Fifth Galaxy, it’s clear that they’ve opted to just give them each a number. Not only is this lazy writing, but it gives the audience nothing to latch onto. With a made-up name, any subsequent mention of the place has the potential to spark the viewer’s memory, rewarding the viewer for retaining information. But it is incredibly difficult for the audience to remember and distinguish between places when the only thing that identifies them is a number. And furthermore, it just doesn’t make sense within the context of the world. Regardless of its place in the universe, no one from the Fifth Galaxy would ever conceptualize their home as being the fifth anything, just as how no one from Texas would ever choose to conceptualize their home as the 28th state. It might make sense if this galaxy was some colony or protectorate ruled by the Earth, but this is not the case. It’s just bad worldbuilding.

Anyway, when Zephon introduces himself, a look of recognition comes across Mavic Chen’s face, and we get this expositionary back and forth:

“Of course,” Chen says. “I had hoped to meet you once before, at the Intergalactic Conference of Andromeda.”

“I did not attend,” says Zephon, “and now you know the reason. The Daleks held a separate council at the same time. None of us of the outer galaxies went to yours.”

“Except Trantis,” Chen points out.

“We agreed to send a delegate in order that the conference should not become suspicious,” Zephon clarifies. Which is just incredibly stupid. The best way to not be suspicious is to schedule the Evildoer Convention so that it does not conflict with ambassadorial engagements, not to send a single token representative.

“I’ve been reading the reports on the previous meetings here,” Chen says, holding up a rolled up piece of paper. “The Daleks have evolved a most interesting plan.” Keep that in mind. Except for a very specific weapon that will, in Part 12, not end up making a whole lot of sense, we hear nothing about any of the Daleks’ extensive war plans.

A little later in the exchange, Zephon sites his suspicions of Chen’s motivations, saying, “One thing surprises me: that you, Guardian of the Solar System, have agreed to become one of us.”

“Why the surprise?” Chen asks. “As you say, I am Guardian of the Solar System. But that is nothing more than a part, however influential, of one galaxy. Would you be satisfied with just a part of a galaxy?” Then Chen asks Zephon to take a walk with him, so they can continue to talk more candidly.

There are a lot of things about this scene that annoy me, from Zephon’s dumb mannerisms to expositionary elements that never really get a payoff. Throughout the series, there are many elements of simplistic worldbuilding and lazy mistakes like those in The Chase, which I attributed to Terry Nation’s writing. However, despite there being the occasional disappointing scene, the strength of the overall narrative arc and the dramatic tension is more than enough to make up for it—in most cases. Plus, this scene did a good job of establishing the general sense of suspicion that the other ambassadors feel for Mavic Chen.

Meanwhile, in the Dalek control room, one of the Daleks tells the Black Dalek, “Guardian of the Solar System Chen must be watched. His ambitions exceed his usefulness.”

The Black Dalek replies, “When he has served his purpose, he, like the others, will be eliminated. No power in the universe can stop the Daleks.”

Two things about this exchange. First, although the Daleks have mentioned the name “Dalek Supreme” a few times, there has been nothing in the narrative to explicitly connect the name to the Black Dalek. As such, I will continue referring to the Dalek leader as the Black Dalek until that fact becomes clear to the audience. And second, this is exactly the dynamic I predicted in Mission to the Unknown, where I said the Daleks would be quick to cast aside all of their allies once their plans for world domination have been accomplished. I love the ruthless and cunning picture this paints of the Daleks. It is the perfect baseline to be built upon in later Dalek serials.

In the jungle, Steven awakens, looking up at Katarina from where he lays on the forest floor. Katarina explains about the tablets she gave him, adding, “We had to leave the temple—the TARDIS. The evil ones came…He called them the Daleks.”

I just realized that I haven’t described Katarina yet. She is shorter than the Doctor, with thick black hair falling below her shoulders and a dark dress embroidered beneath the chest. She is perhaps a few years older than Vicki, and she speaks an archaic manner befitting her ancient Trojan origin.

My problem with Katarina—and I will speak more about this in a few episodes—is that there is nothing to her character. When you look at anyone else in this serial, it’s pretty easy to assign each character one or two primary character traits. The Doctor is arrogant and intelligent. Steven is skeptical. Bret is militaristic and insulting. Mavic Chen is ambitious. But Katarina is very hard to define. Loyalty might be the operative word—we saw her serve beneath Cassandra in The Myth Makers just like how she follows the Doctor now. But her loyalty seems like a function of her religiosity and her belief that the Doctor is her guide through the underworld, not a deep-seated value that she holds. It seems to me that the writers tried to make her primary character trait the fact that she comes from ancient Troy, which fails simply because a place of origin is not an aspect of one’s personality. There needs to be something else to her that the audience can relate to. It’s possible that given time, Katarina could develop into a three-dimensional character with a voice of her own, but as we will soon see, she does not get that time.

Cut to the Doctor, who is slinking through the undergrowth. He sees Katarina and Steven in a small clearing, and he calls out to them before joining them. Katarina quickly fills the Doctor in on what has happened, saying that Bret told her they had to flee the TARDIS. The Doctor regretfully tells her that the best thing they could have done would have been to stay where they were. Steven’s condition has noticeably improved, and the Doctor notes ironically, “Yes, and I clamped [Bret] in that chair, and he’s the very fellow with the antitoxin.”

Elsewhere in the jungle, Bret looks on as several Daleks prepare to initiate Operation Inferno. Three Daleks have been equipped with flamethrowers in place of their prototypical plungers. Shooting jets of flame, they prepare to burn down the forest.

Bret runs back to the others to warn them, and although the Doctor wants to run right back to the TARDIS, Steven is able to get him to see the sense in avoiding the flame-wielding Daleks. There is a long sequence of Steven and the Doctor arguing and growing increasingly agitated, until Bret yells, “Sir! Will you shut up!” The Doctor lapses into an affronted silence. “At least that’s stopped you arguing,” Bret remarks. “Now, look here, I don’t care what happens to you, but I have got to warn Earth.”

“Yes, and you will have to do far more than that,” the Doctor says coldly, rounding on Bret. “If the Daleks are doing something drastic, then we have to stop the Daleks! Now, will you shut up, sir?! Hmm?” I gotta say, not your best comeback, Doc. Though I did enjoy seeing the pettiness of the 1st Doctor after he was upstaged by Bret.

Next we get half a minute of the Daleks setting fire to the prop plants of the jungle set. Knowing the dangers associated with an open flame in a closed set, these shots were very well done, with a few fake trees igniting quickly while preserving the efficacy of more set pieces in the background. It’s quite effective.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Steven, Bret, and Katarina see a wall of fire coming closer to their position. Thinking quickly, the Doctor says that the best place for them to go is the Dalek city. “That’s the last place they will expect us to go.”

From a safe vantage point in the Dalek city, Mavic Chen and Zephon watch the forest burn. Zephon criticizes Chen for appearing subservient to the Daleks. “The Daleks needed me,” Zephon says arrogantly. “Without my help, they would never have got the cooperation of the Masters of Celation and Beaus. We are on equal terms.”

“Really?” Chen says, a touch of mockery entering his tone. “Three galaxies for the price of one?”

When Chen says that the meeting is about to begin, Zephon scoffs at him. “They will not start the meeting without me. I feel like waiting here.” Chen leaves him standing on the balcony.

Back in the conference room, two Daleks watch the arrival of the all of the other delegates from the outer galaxies. I described these aliens in Mission to the Unknown as largely underwhelming, and it seems like the showrunners thought so, too. Out of those original designs, three have been retconned. The stovepipe monstrosity is gone, as well as two of the disappointing spacesuit-wearing creatures. We still have Malpha, the alien I said looked like the Thing, with a face like a fissured desert flat. One of the spacesuited aliens also remains the same, wearing a black suit with a white breathing apparatus trailing down from its helmeted head. And the last returning creature is the man I referred to as Little Elvis. In this serial, he is much easier to make out, though he looks much worse than the blurry still from Mission to the Unknown made him out to be. He is a humanoid with lank black hair and stalactite-like skin tags clinging to the surface of his face.

As for new characters, we have Zephon, currently absent from this scene, with his black robes and his seaweed extremities. Then there is a tall creature in black, formfitting, plasticky clothes, with a white veil covering its face. And lastly, there is the dumbest creature of the bunch: an alien with a bald head, porcelain white skin, and a full-body suit that looks like fist-sized black balls were cut in half and glued to every available space. He looks like the Aridians from The Chase, only worse, which is hard to do. Not only that, when he walks, he has a sort of dainty flowing motion, as if he is trying to wade through neck-high water, and whenever he speaks, he hisses like a snake. He is easily the worst alien of the bunch, and the others aren’t anything to write home about.

The aliens all walk down the long catwalk and take their seats around the curved tables, where Mavic Chen is already waiting. The two Daleks notice Zephon’s absence, and one says, “It was expected. His usefulness is over.”

One thing to note: there are two empty seats here. I mentioned in Mission to the Unknown that at various points, the Daleks referred to both six and seven ambassadors. With Mavic Chen being a subsequent addition to the group, the actual number is still a mystery to me. If six was correct, why is there another empty chair? And if seven was correct, why don’t the Daleks note the other missing member? These are the types of inconsistencies that really get under my skin as a writer. I know there are many cooks in the kitchen for a production like this, but on paper, the number of ambassadors is such a crucial part of this serial that it should be impossible to mess up, especially when it was established in a 1-part serial where there should have been little opportunity for continuity errors.

At the edge of the Dalek city, the Doctor and his contingent look down at the spaceport and the array of spaceships that have arrived for the conference. With a frown, Bret recognizes the spaceship of Mavic Chen. The Doctor asks Bret if he can fly it, and Bret says yes in passing, more hung up on the fact that the Guardian of the Solar System is at a secret Dalek city. The Doctor is more concerned about hijacking the Guardian’s spaceship so they can warn Earth.

Before they can settle on a course of action, Zephon enters the scene, walking unhurriedly down the hall despite being late for the conference. Up close, his extremities have a very unique texture, looking less like seaweed and more like a very scabrous, reptilian skin. I like it a lot. Once Zephon’s back is turned, Bret takes him in a sleeper hold, and the alien loses consciousness.

Back in the conference room, the Daleks are growing impatient for Zephon’s arrival. I have to make a correction, although it is definitely a mistake on the part of the showrunners. The humanoid with lank hair doesn’t actually have stalactite skin tags on his face—but he will at some point. Maybe the producers didn’t think he looked alien enough, though that wasn’t a problem with the Thals in The Daleks, the two races in The Space Museum, or the Drahvins in Galaxy Four. Regardless of what they thought of this character, changing his costume after his debut episode is such a horrendous decision. Did they think no one would notice? Anyway, the Black Dalek orders for a search of the complex.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and company have managed to tie Zephon’s hands behind his back using vines from the jungle and are debating what to do next. The Doctor wants to don Zephon’s disguise and attend the Dalek conference. Everyone else objects to this—except Katarina, who never has an independent thought about anything—saying that it will only guarantee the Doctor’s capture. The Doctor waves off their concerns, bullish about his chances, and he tells them all to take over Mavic Chen’s spaceship and wait for him there. “I want you to give me enough time to get to that meeting and find out exactly what’s going on…If, of course, you hear any kind of uproar, well, then you’ll have to get into the spaceship and go off without me.”

In a nearby corridor, the Doctor, now disguised as Zephon, runs into two Daleks, who escort him to the conference room. The others watch him go, then head off toward Chen’s ship. Lastly, there is an awesome shot of Zephon’s seaweed/reptile hands wriggling within the bonds as he slowly regains consciousness.

At the conference room, the Doctor enters ahead of the two Daleks, and the Black Dalek tells him to take his place. There is a moment of indecision where the Doctor looks at the two empty chairs, unsure which one belongs to Zephon, before Mavic Chen saves him by gesturing to the empty chair next to himself. I swear to God, if there is an extra conference member absent just to give the Doctor this fleeting moment of tension, I’m going to be very upset.

Once the Doctor is seated, the Black Dalek addresses the conference: “This seventh meeting is now in session. Representatives, I have important news. The Time Destructor is now completed. It only requires the core to be fitted.” Then there is twenty seconds of the most awkward and forced round of applause I have ever seen depicted in media. All of the aliens bang their hands on the table as a camera slowly pans across each of them. The knockoff Aridian does the motion at a third of the speed of all the others, still as if moving underwater. I didn’t even understand that this was supposed to be applause until the camera finally landed on Mavic Chen to show him clapping his hands like a human. This sequence is so lame. Whoever directed this should be embarrassed; it’s almost as bad as when the Menoptra yelled at the Zarbi in The Web Planet.

Next, the Black Dalek cedes the conference to Mavic Chen, who stands to deliver this monologue: “As your most recent ally and the newest member to stand in this great universal council, I am delighted to be able to make so significant a contribution to our conquest of the universe. I now present you with the core of the Time Destructor. A full emm of taranium, the rarest mineral in the universe. It’s taken over fifty Earth years to acquire even this amount.”

The lank-haired man counters with, “If it has taken so long for the solar system to acquire it, why was not one of the outer galaxies asked to provide it?” Two things about this line. First, it has the exact same high, even cadence as Zephon and the Daleks, which I will take to mean that for some reason, the showrunners found this cadence to be distinctly alien. And second, when he opens his mouth, he displays teeth that come to sharp points, the only attribute that distinguishes him from a human. Until the writers deign to give us his actual name, I will be calling him Sharkboy.

Chen continues, “As the Daleks know, taranium can only be found on one of the dead planets of the solar system. Without this, the Time Destructor is useless. All the plans made here could not succeed. I, Mavic Chen, give you the core of the Time Destructor.” He holds up a small cylindrical metal cannister and places it on the table in front of him. I’m confused about this point. How can Chen be the last addition to the Dalek cause if he’s been spending fifty years compiling his resources to produce this emm of taranium? With what we learn later, it becomes known that he has been refining the taranium in secret, and it’s not like he would have done this without already being in league with the Daleks in some capacity.

In the corridors, Zephon has managed to get to his feet, still with his hands tied behind his back.

Next, we get our first look at the interior of Mavic Chen’s spaceship. It’s fairly typical based on how we’ve seen spaceships depicted to this point in the series, with banks of computers and controls with lots of dials, switches, and levers. On board are two bald men in black. I’m not sure if every technician in the year 4000 has to have a shaved head, but the technicians in Central Communications in Part 1 were the same.

Bret boards the ship with his gun drawn, ordering the two technicians to go to the corner, where Steven and Katarina bind and gag them. Then all three of them carry the technicians off the ship and stash them somewhere on the landing area.

Elsewhere, Zephon, still bound, finds the switch for an alarm and pulls it. Sirens blare. In this scene, we finally see what was under his hood, and it’s very underwhelming. His head looks like a hairy cabbage, without any discernable features. No wonder the showrunners hid it in his cowl.

These sirens can be heard everywhere, including in Chen’s ship and the conference room. The ambassadors and the Daleks all mill about in confusion, and the Doctor uses the opportunity to snatch the cannister of taranium off the table and flee from the room. As he does so, Zephon stumbles into the chamber, calling out, “That’s him! Stop him! Stop the creature!”

On the ship, Bret starts up the engines, beginning the takeoff process. Steven and Katarina beg him to give the Doctor more time, but Bret is only doing what the Doctor had said: leaving at the first sign of an outcry. “Stop!” Katarina cries. “Without him, we can’t reach the place of perfection.”

“We won’t,” Bret says, flicking switches. “We’re going without him.” The engines begin to whine. Credits roll.

Fantastic cliffhanger. Sometimes, the series has difficulty producing cliffhangers with believable negative outcomes—it’s hard to buy into a premise that has protagonists falling off of cliffs or being killed by Robomen or Zarbi or any other monster of the week. But with the Doctor’s orders to leave if there is a commotion, combined with the fact that the TARDIS is still on Kembel and the show’s propensity to split up the protagonists, it feels very plausible that the Doctor could be left behind.

Part 3 (Devil’s Planet)

Back to the reconstruction.

In the end, the Doctor does make it to Chen’s spaceship in the nick of time, and Bret floors the engines, accelerating away from the surface of Kembel.

Back in Dalek central control, the Daleks monitor a series of readouts, tracking the path of the rogue spaceship. One Dalek prepares to initiate a “Neutronic Randomizer,” which is a fantastic piece of technobabble. Another Dalek says, “All is ready for their space extinction,” which brings up another sci-fi pet peeve of mine which has come up from time to time. It’s just an extinction. No need to call it a space extinction just because it is happening in space. Anyway, the Black Dalek calls off the space extinction, demanding, “The intruders must be caught alive.”

Safely beyond the pull of Kembel’s gravity, the Doctor compliments Bret on his quick takeoff, then shows the others the cylindrical cannister he pilfered from the Dalek conference, saying, “[Their] plans are utterly useless without this.” When the others ask about the meeting and about Mavic Chen, he adds, “[The Daleks] have allied themselves with the rulers of the outer galaxies to take over the universe…their first objective being Earth and then the solar system…[Mavic Chen is] one of them, my friend. By sacrificing the solar system, he hopes to gain more power.”

When the Doctor says they must get to Earth before Mavic Chen, Katarina asks how they can go there, still believing that they are in the underworld. Based on everything that has happened, I get why she still thinks this; it just annoys me that no one has made any serious attempt to make her think otherwise. Until she moves past her Trojan frame of reference, her character will be forever stunted. Then there is a funny exchange where Bret asks Steven what’s the matter with Katarina, and Steven says casually, “Oh, it’s alright. She helped us in Troy. She doesn’t really understand.” This only perplexes Bret further, but the conversation moves on.

The Doctor passes the cannister to Steven, warning him not to open it. “It will burn your eyes,” he says. “You’ll go totally blind! That is a full emm of taranium.” Bret understands the implications of this, telling the others that taranium can only be found on the planet Uranus and that this amount would take years to mine. “Fifty years, to be precise,” the Doctor adds, “and Mavic Chen has given this to the Daleks to complete one of the most evil weapons ever devised: their Time Destructor.”

Throughout this serial, the Doctor and the rest of the protagonists will react fearfully whenever the Time Destructor is mentioned, but we don’t ever get a clear picture of what the weapon is supposed to do until it is activated in the final episode. While a measure of this general fear does rub off on the audience, this never allows the narrative to maximize the dramatic tension of this plot device. I almost always prefer when the audience knows what the consequences are if the good guys do not prevail, because it gives the audience a specific mental image on which to focus that fear. A great example is The Christmas Invasion, the first episode of the 10th Doctor’s run, where the Sycorax use blood control to force one-third of the Earth’s population onto rooftops and threaten to make them jump to their deaths.

And there are exceptions to this, of course, especially in narratives that feature horror elements. In Under the Lake, a 12th Doctor episode, most of the tension comes from having no idea what the deadly ghosts want from the crew of the underwater base. But generally speaking, more information is better, especially in a long serial like this. Give the audience a specific threat, and allow the tension to naturally build as the Daleks come closer and closer to making that threat a reality.

Meanwhile, in the Dalek conference room, the Daleks are interrogating Zephon, trying to get to the bottom of the security breech. We only get one still of Zephon from this scene, but in it, Zephon is standing with his seaweed hands on his hips, not out at a forty-five degree angle as he did for the entirety of every scene in the pervious episode. Additionally, his cadence is still high, but decidedly more human, with much more inflection and emotion than he demonstrated before. This inconsistency is another example of weak directing in this serial, a mistake that is even more perplexing when you consider that Zephon only had one other scene with a significant amount of speech.

Anyway, Zephon says that he believes that the intruder came from the solar system, which puts Mavic Chen momentarily in the hot seat. Chen retorts, “This is absurd. Why should I arrange that fifty years be spent secretly mining to acquire this mineral only to have it stolen?” Like I mentioned in the last episode, this added context makes it absurd for Chen to be referred to as the Daleks’ most recent collaborator. He’s been working for them for decades.

The Daleks accuse Zephon of negligence, and Zephon threatens to leave, saying that if he does so, the Masters of Celation and Beaus will go with him. He turns to leave, but a Dalek blocks his path. The Black Dalek issues an order for Zephon’s execution, and the seaweed-reptile is shot dead. Then the Black Dalek asks for the location of the hijacked ship, to which another Dalek answers, “It is approaching the influence of the planet Desperus.” The Black Dalek orders the preparation of pursuit ships and for another Dalek to stand by the Neutronic Randomizer.

One last thing about this scene: the worst ambassador from Mission to the Unknown is back in this episode. It looks like an old iron furnace, about seven feet tall, with a ridged, accordion-like body and slanted white eyes which are clearly pieces of printer paper that have been glued to the outside of its stovepipe head. Awful design aside, this is clearly the creature which was absent from the meeting of ambassadors in the last episode, which is so dumb. It was only missing to give the Doctor that momentary confusion over which seat to take, which is not worth the incongruity of the Daleks being unconcerned by its absence yet insulted by Zephon’s.

Back on the hijacked spaceship, the Doctor holds the cannister of taranium, now opened, while all four travelers look at it through protective visors. Steven asks the Doctor what they are going to do with it now that they have it, and he is dissatisfied when the Doctor says, “We have the taranium, so for the moment, we do nothing. And by doing nothing, we do everything. Do I make myself clear?” Steven asks a few follow-up questions, and the Doctor dismisses them, saying, “Look at Katarina over there. She doesn’t ask questions; she just looks and learns. Now, why don’t you try the same thing?”

I get what the Doctor is trying to say here. As long as they keep the taranium away from the Daleks, they have already foiled their plans. But then, why wouldn’t they simply eject the cannister into the vacuum of space? Or better yet, scatter the taranium along their backtrail bit by bit? I understand that this would mean the rest of the serial doesn’t happen, but not addressing such an obvious solution is a major plot hole.

Then the Doctor tells the others about the tape he found in the jungle next to the skeleton, and when he plays it, we hear the beginning of the message Marc Cory recorded in Mission to the Unknown: “This is Marc Cory, Special Security Agent, reporting from the planet Kembel…The Daleks are planning the complete destruction of the galaxy. Together, with the powers of the outer galaxies, a war force is being assembled and—” The message cuts off. Bret laments the loss of a fellow agent, and the Doctor says that they must succeed where Cory failed.

In Dalek central control, the Black Dalek waits until the hijacked ship is at its closest point to the planet Desperus before activating the Neutronic Randomizer.

Back on the spaceship, the Doctor asks Bret who among the Space Security force they can trust. “Well, Karlton is the man in charge of all Space Security,” Bret muses, “but he’s very close to Chen.”

Before they can come up with an alternative, the controls of the ship suddenly go haywire, and the ship veers toward a nearby planet. “Desperus!” Bret exclaims. “We’ll never be able to get off again…[Desperus] is the penal planet of the solar system.” Like Kembel, this is yet another planet that has somehow been added to the solar system, again muddling what the term solar system is supposed to mean to the writers. And I have to call out Terry Nation’s simplistic naming conventions yet again. He made a prison planet and basically called it Desperate. Like the Desert Desert on planet Desert, and the planet Mechanus being named after robots that had only been there for fifty years, both from The Chase. How original.

In the Dalek control room, the Daleks have assumed full remote control of the spaceship, and they guide it gently down to the surface of Desperus. The Black Dalek is still suspicious of Mavic Chen, pointing out that it was his spaceship that the intruders chose for their escape. “My Spar was the last to arrive here, so consequently was in the best position to leave quickly,” Chen counters. “But to set your mind at rest, I will return to Earth now, and if I find that the intruders do come from there, they will be dealt with quickly and without arousing any suspicion.” The Daleks agree to lend him a vessel similar to his own, and he leaves the room.

The scene cuts to a dark cave, filled with dirty beds and dirty people. Three men are gathered around a wooden table, each with filthy, coarse clothing and matted manes of hair as if they haven’t shaved or washed in months. There is a brief struggle over a crude knife on the table, and one of the men emerges victorious. “It’s mine again,” he growls, “and they stay where they are.” There is a brief still of two fearful women in a corner, giving us our seventh instance of implied rape in the series.

When I began this retrospective, I figured I’d keep track of some fun little elements of the show, like anytime the Doctor gets romantically involved with someone or whenever the plot was triggered by a character wandering away from the TARDIS. For the life of me, I never would have thought I’d have to start keeping track of instances of implied rape in a children’s television show. But I guess I have to, now that it keeps cropping up all over the place. Here is every time that rape has been used as a plot device so far:

RapeyScene #1: Barbara is chased by a predatory Vasar around his hunting cabin in The Keys of Marinus.

RapeyScene #2: Barbara is chased by a predatory Nero throughout the halls of his palace for nearly ten minutes of runtime in The Romans.

RapeyScene #3: El Akir has a whole harem of unconsenting women in The Crusades—this is another one that I forgot about until now.

RapeyScene #4: A sailor threatens to rape Barbara when he thinks she is a stowaway in The Chase.

RapeyScene #5: Edith is implied to be raped by Vikings in The Time Meddler.

RapeyScene #6: Cassandra is captured for implied rape at the hands of Agamemnon in The Myth Makers.

And RapeyScene #7: Female prisoners are subjected to the whims of whichever prisoner wields the knife in The Daleks’ Master Plan.

I wish I could be optimistic and say that I hope implied rape is less common in the series going forward, but these instances have only been increasing in frequency since the middle of Season 2. I won’t hold my breath.

Anyway, the prisoner with the knife further establishes his authority by ordering one of the other three men to go outside for guard duty, and the rest of the prisoners go to sleep. Later, once the man with the knife is asleep, the third man from earlier attempts to steal the knife from the leader, but the leader suddenly rolls over and grabs the thief roughly by the wrist. “And you can build up the fire,” he sneers. “Kirksen, [you’d] like the knife, would you? Then you’d be leader. You could tell Garge what to do, like I do. You could tell me what to do!”

For the first time in a very long time, I have to applaud the naming conventions in this scene. We have three male prisoners with speaking roles, and all three of them have either a name or some identifier. The leader has his knife, and his two underlings are Kirksen and Garge. See how simple that is? This should be the baseline of not just this series, but any narrative with named characters. But if you’ve read any of my other reviews, you know that for Early Era Doctor Who, this is incredibly rare. The fact that it was done well here is probably an accident.

Suddenly, there is a loud noise, and Garge runs back into the cave, telling Kirksen and the boss about the arrival of a spaceship. “That’s not a prison ship,” he says. “It’s strange. I haven’t seen one like it before. The boss asks where it is headed, and Garge says the swamp. Thinking they can use the ship to escape Desperus, they hurry from the cave, anxious to get to the ship before any of the other tribes of prisoners.

Cut to the swamp, where the hijacked ship—the Spar, as Chen had called it—sits on its landing gear. Katarina stares out the open door, and there is what sounds like the screeching of a flock of seagulls in the background. Inside, the Doctor and Bret argue about the efficacy of the Spar, which Bret is currently repairing. “It’s the worse of these out-of-date and primitive spaceships,” the Doctor says dismissively. “One little bump and they all fall to bits.” Bret tries to say that the Spar is the most technologically advanced ship known to man, and the Doctor adds, “Oh yes, quite so. That’s why we are stranded on this pimple of a planet, whilst you foodle with that fuse box!” Such a fantastic line; a perfect Doctor-ism.

Steven brings the TARDIS into the debate, arguing that the Doctor cannot control where it will land next. “Now, you listen to me, young man,” the Doctor grouses. “Don’t you start to criticize my TARDIS. And as for space travel, you’re still we behind the ears. Oh, do get on with it, both of you.” He leaves the scene. This is the 1st Doctor at his best: arrogant and defensive. Maybe it’s that the Doctor has grown on me, or maybe it’s his elderly appearance, but this isn’t normally a characterization that I would find endearing. However, Hartnell somehow threads the needle, acting just irascible enough to be engaging without crossing the line into irritating.

At this point in the 1st Doctor’s run, I feel like we’ve fully arrived at a consistent characterization. Back in the first season, especially in An Unearthly Child, I called the Doctor distrusting of humans and often needlessly cruel. He was also relatively powerless compared to how he has been represented in Seasons 2 and 3, less likely to lead the protagonists and much more uncertain of his actions. Now, he is much more comfortable around humans and much kinder. That’s not to say he is nice, necessarily. While he did favor Susan and Vicki with a sweet disposition, he is still more liable than not to react to any disagreement with irritation and snide comments. But he is no longer the man who argued against helping injured Za in An Unearthly Child and who tried to throw Ian and Barbara off the TARDIS in The Edge of Destruction.

The Doctor’s characterization is not finished by any stretch of the imagination, not by the standards of the Doctors that will follow. But I no longer feel as if his characterization is un-Doctorly, something I suggested several times in Season 1. We have progressed from a suspicious recluse acting in his own self-interest to a worldly wanderer of the universe willing to risk his life to help others. Yes, he is curmudgeonly, and yes, he is very short with the primitive attitudes and technologies of the humans he meets during his travels. But this is a Doctor that I can reasonably accept as one of many his iterations, not an aberration that needs to be ironed out by the writers. This is a man I can see becoming someone who will accrue an almost-deific knowledge of the universe and who can open the doors of his TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. An Unearthly Child may have technically been the start of our journey with the Doctor, but the way he has been depicted for the last ten or so serials is how I prefer to remember his earliest manifestation.

Moving on, the Doctor finds Katarina at the open door of the Spar and tells her off for leaving them vulnerable to attack. Then Katarina points at lights out in the night, and the Doctor sees distant torches moving through the swamp. “Good gracious, so there are,” he says. “Two, no three. Yes, we must get on with the repairs to the ship and get away from here. Yes, those men will be vicious out there. We’re liable to come under attack.” He analyzes the ground beneath the Spar; the only way to reach the ship from the ground is via a twenty-foot latter from the planet’s surface to the belly of the ship. “That’s marshy ground. Very interesting.” Chuckling to himself he ducks back inside.

Meanwhile, the Dalek pursuit fleet has located the Spar and is preparing to land on Desperus. The Black Dalek orders the pursuit team to kill the fugitives once the taranium has been recovered.

Out in the swamp, the three prisoners are moving slowly through rough terrain. “This part of the swamp is tricky,” says Garge. “We must put out the torches.” I don’t know how putting out the torches is going to make their passage any easier. It seems like a blatant plot device so that their final approach to the Spar is hidden from the protagonists and the audience. It would make so much more sense if they had cited stealth as a reason to get rid of the light.

Anyway, Kirksen is terrified of “the screamers,” which are the shrieking birds I mentioned in the last scene. The leader tells him that they are just bats, but Kirksen is frozen with fear. The other two men move on, leaving Kirksen exposed, and the screamers use the opportunity to go after him. Flailing around in terror, Kirksen runs offscreen.

Inside the ship, the Doctor fiddles with a cable for a bit before pointing Katarina toward a switch and telling her to be ready to flip it when he gives the command. He plugs one and of the cable into a “cactic outlet” and lets the other end fall to the marshy ground below.

When Garge and the leader enter the circle of light beneath the Spar, the Doctor yells “Now!” Katarina throws the switch, there is a bright light and a whirring sound, and the prisoners fall to the ground, unconscious. The Doctor is very pleased with himself as he hauls the cable back into the ship. Katarina looks on, saying, “You show me so many strange mysteries. With you, I know I’m safe.”

Then there is the sound of another spaceship, and the Doctor looks up to see that the Dalek pursuit ship has caught up to them. Frantically, he tells Bret and Steven to hurry with their repairs, and it takes them a few seconds to finish up and prepare for takeoff. Bret pulls a lever, and the Spar heaves away from the ground once again. As they gain altitude, the Doctor looks back toward Desperus and lets out a laugh. “Look! The Daleks’ ship made a bad landing. That gives us the time we need.” The Doctor, Steven, Bret, and Katarina all rejoice.

The Doctor asks Katarina to check on the outer door to make sure it is secure. As soon as she goes offscreen, she lets out a bloodcurdling scream. She has been grabbed from behind by Kirksen, the prisoner from earlier who ran into the night. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Traitors)

Gripping a crying Katarina by an arm around the neck, Kirksen shouts at the others to stay back, then asks Bret where the Spar is headed. Bret says Earth, and Kirksen yells at him to change the destination to Kembel. I have no idea why a random prisoner would happen to pick the only other planet outside of our solar system that the audience has been introduced to. We were explicitly told in Mission to the Unknown that it is the most dangerous planet in the universe. It makes sense narratively to use a location that the audience already knows, but logistically, it feels like such a stretch. When they tell Kirksen that the Daleks are on Kembel and won’t help him, Kirksen says, “No, whoever the Daleks are, they’ll help me.” Which only adds to my confusion over why Kirksen suggested Kembel in the first place. He couldn’t have known the Daleks had built a city there. If he was looking for help, why would he name a planet that he thought would be deserted?

Then the scene cuts to Dalek central control. I hate this editing choice—never cut away from a moment of climax; it only undercuts the emotional payoff. The Dalek pursuit ship reports only slight damage and says that they are ready to follow the Spar once again. The Black Dalek asks a subordinate where the Spar is headed, and the answer is Earth. Then the Black Dalek orders the pursuit ship back to base, passing the responsibility on to Mavic Chen, who has presumably already returned to Earth. “Contact Mavic Chen through secret communication red,” he orders. “He must recapture the taranium and exterminate the creatures who took it.” And to another Dalek, he adds, “Destroy pursuit ship. They have failed their mission. We will not tolerate mistakes.”

Back on the Spar, Steven and Bret try to bluff Kirksen, pretending to flip some switches and telling him that they have changed course. Kirksen doesn’t buy it, saying that it doesn’t feel as though they have reoriented. Bret tells him to look up at the screen to see for himself, and when Kirksen does so, Steven uses the moment of distraction to launch himself at Kirksen and Katarina. But Kirksen reacts quickly, rebuffing Steven and backing himself and Katarina into the airlock, sealing them inside.

What follows is a stalemate. Kirksen can’t kill Katarina or else he loses his only leverage, and the others can’t open the interior door of the airlock or else they risk Kirksen killing Katarina. The Doctor tries to bluff, threatening to open the exterior door and sending both of them out to space, but Kirksen correctly guesses that the Doctor wouldn’t sacrifice Katarina. Frustrated, the Doctor turns to the others and says, “Take him back to Kembel! Let the Daleks deal with him.” Steven points out that the Daleks will just as easily deal with the rest of them.

We get a bit of actual footage, where the Doctor, Steven, and Bret are arguing, with Kirksen holding a screaming Katarina behind them in the airlock. It’s hard to make a definitive assessment when most of the footage has been lost, but for me, this is hands-down the best acting performance so far from Adrienne Hill, the actress who plays Katarina. She looks scared and desperate—it’s a harrowing scene.

The Doctor, Steven, and Bret grudgingly agree that the only course left to them is to go back to Kembel and take their chances with the Daleks. Suddenly, Katarina makes a beeline for the controls inside the airlock. Kirksen catches her by the arm, and she uses the other one to stretch out for the controls. “No, not that one!” Steven screams. “Katarina!” She presses a button. The exterior doors open, sucking Katarina and Kirksen out into the vacuum of space.

There is a moment of stunned silence. “She pressed the wrong button, Doctor,” Steven says sadly.

“She may have wanted to, dear boy,” the Doctor answers. “She wanted to save our lives.” This is a huge leap of logic for me. She’s from ancient Troy; it’s doubtful she new what any of the buttons did.

“It must have been quick,” Bret says resignedly.

“I hope she’s reached her place of perfection,” says the Doctor. “She didn’t understand. She wanted to save our lives and perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the solar system. I hope she’s found her perfection. Oh, how I shall always remember her as one of the daughters of the gods. Yes, as one of the daughters of the gods.” We get one last shot of Katarina’s lifeless body drifting through space, and that’s the last we ever see of her.

Katarina is not a companion. I want to get this out of the way before I talk any further about her death, because perhaps the biggest area of disagreement I have with the broad consensus of the Doctor Who fandom is what qualifies a character to be considered a proper companion. From what I have gathered, a character is generally considered to be a companion if they have traveled in the TARDIS and helped the Doctor during his travels. There are some exceptions to this definition. Liz Shaw, the first companion of the 3rd Doctor, never travels in the TARDIS—and to be fair, I also consider Liz to be an exception to my companion definition. I’ve also seen more expansive lists of companions include characters that are with the Doctor for just one narrative, often in one of the many standalone specials. These are characters like Astrid Peth from Voyage of the Damned, Lady Christina de Souza from Planet of the Dead, Adelaide Brooke from The Waters of Mars, and so on. This definition cheapens and simplifies the concept of a Doctor Who companion, and I strongly disagree with it.

In my introduction, I have a section that details a more restrictive definition for what makes a companion, and I give four specific criteria: A companion must 1) journey in the TARDIS, 2) travel with the Doctor voluntarily, 3) aid the Doctor in his adventures, and 4) be present in enough serials to show some measure of character depth and progression. The first three I think most fans can get behind, though even here there are some sticking points. For example, many consider Jackie Tyler to be a companion, though I would say she isn’t because her journey in the TARDIS is not voluntary. Similarly, I don’t consider Wilfred Mott a companion because he never travels in the TARDIS, despite him appearing in several stories and coming to the Doctor’s aid. But the fourth requirement is by far the one which knocks the most companions off the list.

First, the characters which help the Doctor in the specials have no business being considered as companions. Several of them are viewed this way because they appear during the period in the 10th Doctor’s run where he has no companion, and the audience is teased by the showrunners into thinking they may join the Doctor by the end of the episode. However, despite the obvious gaslighting, these characters never do anything more than what we might expect from any supporting character in any regular episode of Doctor Who. Jackson Lake helps the Doctor fend of the Cyberman horde in The Next Doctor, but no more so than Mrs. Moore in Rise of the Cybermen, Craig Owens in Closing Time, or Danny Pink in Dark Water, all of whom are decidedly not companions.

That’s why I specify that companions must be in enough episodes to show some measure of character depth. It’s a very subjective, you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of judgement, but it eliminates a lot of support characters who have great chemistry with the Doctor but are one-offs, or who just so happen to end up inside the TARDIS at some point during their appearance. Funny enough, one such character appears later in this very serial, Sara Kingdom, who travels in the TARDIS with the protagonists for the second half of the serial, and I see her name included on many companion lists because of it. However, Bret, whom we have already met, is every bit as helpful and important to the narrative as Sara. Why, then, should she be elevated to the status of companion and not Bret, just because she happens to step foot inside the TARDIS? And I’m not saying that Bret deserves to be viewed as a companion. Quite the opposite; I don’t think either character deserves the moniker.

This brings us to Katarina, who not only travels in the TARDIS but appears in two different narratives. Does she demonstrate any character depth or growth? The short answer is; no. The long answer is: of course she fucking doesn’t; she is such a hollow, two-dimensional, nothing of a character that the writers would have to give her something resembling a personality before they could even attempt to change it; I mean, do you really expect me to consider learning how to operate the TARDIS doors to be the equivalent of a character arc like Susan’s or Ian’s or Barbara’s or even goddamn Vicki’s?

Ahem. Anyway, no, Katarina is not a companion. But she could have been. In fact, she should have been. If the writers had given her anything to work with, any sort of personality trait, I would probably have considered dying in the service of the Doctor more than five millennia removed from her own time to be an act worthy of the title. She could have been so much better. Just look at Jamie, a companion of the 2nd Doctor, or Leela, a companion of the 4th Doctor. Both are taken from relatively primitive civilizations: Jamie from 18th century Scotland and Leela from a tribe of humans on the planet Mordee. Both of them have strong, warrior-like dispositions, quick to rush into danger and rarely stopping to ask questions before taking decisive action. Their ability to carry a scene and the repour they have with the Doctor make them so fun to watch, and I rate them very highly on my personal tier list of companions. And no, I’m not saying that Katarina had to be some sort of go-getting action hero; there is a way to make a character that is much more subdued while still being interesting to watch. Unfortunately, the writers failed in every conceivable way.

All that being said, Katarina’s death scene was wonderfully executed. The silence in the Spar immediately after she was sucked into space was devastating, and the Doctor’s monologue was a touching sendoff. I don’t know if it was in the cards all along to have her leave the show like this or if it was the writers acknowledging that Katarina was a flawed character and trying to rectify the situation. Either way, the decision to kill her off was absolutely the right play for the writers. If they had chosen to kill her in the serial’s finale, after eight more episodes of her uninteresting comments and hollow personality, I would probably view her death as far less tragic than it comes across here. Instead, I see a girl who was removed from her frame of reference, out of her depth, and taken before her time. The writers were able to maximize the emotional payoff despite her conceptual flaws, and her death sets the tone for a somber serial going forward.

Continuing on, we now return to Dalek central control, where Sharkboy, the lank-haired, sharp-toothed humanoid from earlier, is confronting the Black Dalek about their failure to retrieve the taranium core. Only, it no longer feels appropriate to call him Sharkboy, as his most prominent feature is now the inch-long stalactite-like skin tags that now hang from his temple, nose, and jawline. He looks horrendous. The Black Dalek does name him in this scene, calling him Trantis, which I guess is a silver lining to his disastrous new costume.

Trantis accuses the Daleks of showing too much trust in Mavic Chen, saying that he might fail. The Black Dalek says, “Representative Trantis, the Daleks will not fail, and neither will any of its allies. If anything tries to stop us, we will destroy it. Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of our plan to conquer the universe!”

Back on the Spar, the mood is very dire. They are approaching Earth, and Bret says that they should land at an experimental plant a little way off from Central City. “I have a friend there I think will help us,” he adds.

On Earth, Chen has indeed already arrived. He is in his office, along with a another shaven-headed man and the blonde woman from that first scene in the Central Communications hub. The woman is showing him a projection of Bret, now a wanted man, giving him background information. “Bret Vyon. Bred on Mars Colony 16. Joined Space Security Service, 3990. Gained First Rank, 3995. Gained Second Rank, 3998.” Interesting that the word bred was used instead of born. I’d prefer to see a more fleshed out futuristic society, but these little tidbits are a welcome addition.

Mavic Chen thanks the woman, saying, “You’ve done well. I want all Space Security agents called back to Earth. If the traitors are not caught at the landing zone, then Central City must be cordoned off until they are found. And Lizan, they will be killed on sight. Give out the instructions.” The woman, Lizan, leaves, and we never see her again. I find the fact that we are only given her name now to be almost insulting. It’s worse than failing to name her at all.

Once Lizan leaves, Chen turns to the bald man, naming him as Karlton. This is the man that Bret mentioned earlier as being the head of Space Security and very close to Chen. “Some of your agents are getting too good,” Chen remarks. “We don’t want to spoil things for ourselves at this stage.” This reinforces the idea that Karlton and Chen are both traitors. Karlton says that all future operations must be cleared with him ahead of time, which should prevent rogue agents like Marc Cory from carrying out missions on their own.

On the Spar, Bret says that the drive force is very weak, saying that they may be forced to crash land.

Back in Mavic Chen’s office, Chen is still ruminating about the missing taranium, angry over its loss. Karlton says that it will be returned, and Chen snaps, “It’s got to be. I want that position, right beside the Daleks. I’ll govern the universe!” When Karlton suggests that Trantis will be first in line after the Daleks, Chen laughs. “Trantis? Trantis! They don’t like him. Agreed that his is the largest galaxy, but he’s already demanding too much say in what goes on. They’ll want him out of the way now, and I have a plan which may help them to achieve just that. Then it’ll be me, Mavic Chen, who’ll be next in line.”

“And I will be there behind you,” Karlton says. There’s a moment of tension between the two men, with both of them saying, “Of course.” I would love to have seen this footage; I don’t know if the tension is really there or if I am just imagining it.

Karlton says that he has selected an agent to deal with Bret Vyon, saying that he has chosen Kingdom for the job. “Kingdom?” Chen says. “Ruthless, hard, efficient. And does exactly as ordered.” The two men are interrupted when Karlton receives a call on his communicator. After a brief exchange, he tells Chen that the traitors have crash landed at the experimental station.

I get why the showrunners chose to not actually show the crash landing. To have practical effects that look even halfway decent probably would have ballooned the budget. But I still would have liked for it to be included among the parts of the narrative that we actually get to see. If the writers weren’t planning on showing the landing, then there is no reason for it to have been anything other than an ordinary touchdown. Mentioning it and not showing it sets the audience up for disappointment.

At said experimental station, the Doctor, Steven, and Bret arrive at the office of whomever Bret was hoping to meet, only to find it empty. Bret says they will have to wait, and they exit into a corridor, narrowly avoiding being seen by a figure in black who enters the office just after they have left it.

Meanwhile, in Chen’s office, Karlton announces the arrival of Kingdom, and Chen calls her in. In walks Sara Kingdom, a tall woman with sleek, shoulder-length brown hair and a slim figure, wearing the same Space Security Services uniform as Bret: unrelieved black fatigues with a white sash slanted across the torso. Sara is strikingly beautiful, with a cold, no-nonsense attitude similar to Bret’s. Chen asks her if she has been filled in on her assignment. “Yes,” she answers. “Bret Vyon and two strangers. They look as though they could come from Earth but are oddly dressed. None of them can leave the plant.” There is an error here: how could they possibly know about the death of Katarina? They should be on the lookout for four people. “They’re in the main block,” Sara continues. “I’m going to capture them myself.”

“Before you do that, there is something you need to know,” Chen says.

Whatever else Chen says is unknown, as the scene cuts back to the protagonists in a room of the experimental station. Steven asks where Bret’s friend is, whom we learn is named Daxtar. They are all anxious; every second lost is a second that Chen and Space Security are gaining on them. Bret says that Daxtar should be there soon, adding that very few people are allowed near this place because it is a restricted area.

“But this is an experimental plant,” the Doctor points out. “There’s no scientists, no staff, nobody! We might just as well have landed ourselves on an empty planet. What on Earth is happening?…Has it occurred to you, by any chance, that we might have deliberately walked into an ambush?”

Bret insists that Daxtar is the only man who will believe their story. “What story?” says a man’s voice. The others turn to find Daxtar standing in the doorway, an older man, with graying hair and a widow’s peak, dressed in the same clothes as the man from the first scene in the Central Communications hub, with that polygonal molecular structure on his vest. I didn’t pick this up on my first watch-through, but this is the uniform of all scientists.

Cut back to Chen’s office, where Chen is telling Sara Kingdom, “…So you will understand that it’s absolutely essential that this emm of taranium is returned to me.” That’s all we get of Chen’s explanation, which is a shame. If the writers had had him tell a fake story, it could have made for great tension, with the protagonists having to poke holes in whatever Chen might have told her. But alas, Sara Kingdom leaves for the experimental station, and Karlton marvels at how credulous she was.

Meanwhile, we rejoin the Doctor and company at the end of their explanation to Daxtar of what has been happening with Mavic Chen and the Daleks. The Doctor says that he and Steven must return to Kembel to pick up something valuable, which we know to be the TARDIS. “You didn’t leave the taranium there?” Daxtar asks. The Doctor says no. “Good,” Daxtar continues. “That gives us a little time.” He goes on to say that they must get down to the Space Security buildings at once.

“No,” the Doctor says harshly, turning to Bret and saying, “Ask him! Ask him how he came to know that the core of their Time Destructor is taranium!” This is a repeat of the exchange between Steven and the monk in The Time Meddler, where Steven got the monk to describe the Doctor’s appearance without ever having mentioned it in conversation. Only here, the same idea isn’t effective at all. The audience is only privy to the last few lines of the Doctor’s explanation to Daxtar, so there is no way for the audience to know that no one had mentioned the word taranium until Daxtar says it. I don’t know if this was an editing mistake or a writing mistake, but regardless, none of this is working for me.

Bret shoots Daxtar, which enrages the Doctor. “You brainless idiot!” he screeches. “How many times have I told you about taking lives? We have other ways and means of dealing with evildoers!” To this point, I don’t think the Doctor has ever said anything to Bret about not killing. He’s repeated the sentiment here and there over the course of the series, but never anything to Bret. But I like this line for one reason: it highlights a conscious effort on the part of the showrunners to add nonviolence into the Doctor’s characterization. There was a similar line in Galaxy Four, where the Doctor tells the Drahvins, “I don’t kill anybody. Neither do my friends.” At the time, I said I would have to see more confirmation of this being an addition to the Doctor’s morality, and I’m happy to say that this is that confirmation. This finally puts the 1st Doctor in line with the sentiment of every other Doctor, which is yet another attribute to make me believe the 1st Doctor’s characterization is more or less complete at this point.

Back in Dalek central control, the Daleks receive a communiqué from Earth. A Dalek says, “Mavic Chen has almost recaptured the taranium core and will be returning with it to land here in two Earth days…It is believed that [the fugitives] come from the tenth galaxy under the leadership of Trantis.”

“That is not true!” Trantis says disdainfully. “It is a plot by Mavic Chen to discredit me. He is jealous of my power in the outer galaxies…He is trying to undermine the balance of the Galactic Council.” The Black Dalek says they shall discover the truth of the matter once Chen returns.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Steven, and Bret are still at the experimental station in Daxtar’s office, arguing about what to do next, when Sara Kingdom suddenly enters the room; they go silent. Bret recognizes her and greets her warmly. “Sara!…You’re just the person we need.”

“I doubt that,” she answers coldly. “Which of you has the taranium?” She draws her gun.

Bret tells the Doctor and Steven to run for it, and they do, leaving Bret to try to reason with Sara. Sara won’t be swayed; she demands twice more for Bret to tell her the location of the taranium, and when he doesn’t tell her, she shoots him dead. She makes a quick search of his body, and when she doesn’t find the taranium, she runs out into the corridor, where another agent is waiting. “The two fugitives have escaped,” she tells him. “All exits from the main block are to be guarded…[Bret Vyon’s] dead. The others must be killed as well. They will be shot on sight, but aim for the head.” Credits roll.

Part 5 (Counter Plot)

This is the second of three episodes which are entirely intact.

Running aimlessly through the corridors of the experimental station, the Doctor and Steven enter a strange room, so strange that they forget their haste in their bewilderment. The room is circular, with a square platform perhaps eight feet across in the exact middle. Inscribed within this square is a hexagon, containing still smaller squares of opaque glass panels which are lit from beneath. On all four sides of the platform are slanted metal panels, placed as if they are meant to reflect light or some other particle into the center of the hexagon, where there sits a glass container of mice, also hexagonal. A high-pitched beeping sound pulses regularly, and the mouse cage flashes in time to the pitches, four beeps on and two beeps off. Much of this room is themed with the number six, with six-sided shapes and the light pattern taking six beeps to repeat. It’s a cool idea, but so subtle that I didn’t catch it until I typed all of these elements out.

The Doctor suggests the odd cage of mice might be a transmitter of some kind, but he cannot fathom what for. “Perhaps it is some kind of experiment.”

Cut to two scientists, both dark-haired men wearing the clothes with the molecular structure across the chest. They are in a room packed with control panels, where they go about checking readings and turning dials. One of them mentions that the pressure seems to have risen, and the second responds, “We have to go ahead anyway. All continuum readings are perfect.”

The Space Security agent that Sara Kingdom spoke to in the last episode, named Borkar, suddenly bursts into the room, asking the scientists if they have seen two strangers who were headed in this direction. The scientists are affronted by the intrusion, and one answers, “I don’t care who you’re looking for. We’re in the middle of a highly complicated experiment. Now get out of here.” Borkar leaves, and the man turns back to his controls. “Starting dissemination countdown in ten seconds from now.”

Inside the strange room, which we now know is the room for the experiment, Steven thinks he hears something outside. A moment later, the door opens and Sara Kingdom enters, aiming her gun at them and saying, “I’ll give you five seconds to hand over that taranium.” Outside, a second agent hears this exchange and goes to fetch backup.

Suddenly, a dissonant drone fills the chamber, and we get this really awesome visual effect where the editors have cranked the contrast all the way up, to the point where the normal grayscale is reduced to all white or all black. Sara and Steven look fantastic in this sequence, writhing as if in agony; the Doctor just looks like a dentist asked him to say ah.

A few moments later, the scientists look over their readings, ecstatic over what one of them calls “perfect dissemination.” Then one of them notices that the door to the experimental chamber is open, reacting in horror. The two men rush to the room to find two security agents—the man from the hall and his backup—standing in the middle of the room, perplexed. There is no sign of the Doctor, Steven, or Sara. They demand to know what is going on in this room, and one of the scientists says, “We’ve been carrying out a molecular dissemination, and if you Space Security people would stop interfering, we’d be able to get on a lot faster.” Then an agent asks what happened to the three people who were just in the room.

Cut to more psychedelic effects, with the Doctor, Steven, and Sara appearing in turns, sometimes as dispassionate images, sometimes with faces contorted in silent screams. All the while, they are superimposed over whimsical images that vaguely suggest celestial bodies, though we never really get a definitive look at what they are. I adore this scene; these are the best visual effects we’ve seen so far in the series.

Back in the experimental room, one of the scientists delivers the bad news to the security agents. “Anyone or anything that was in this room at the time of the experiment is now being transmitted through space.”

“Yes, my friend,” the second scientist begins. “They’re many lightyears from Earth by now, moving toward a strange planet, in a strange galaxy, the nature of which we can only guess at.”

Cut to the surface of this planet, where a layer of fog swirls above the stagnant water of a swamp, with thick vegetation all around. This is the first moment where I began to think the narrative was getting a little repetitive. After the jungles of Kembel and the swamp on Desperus, it would be great to have a visually diverse alien setting. But on a positive note, in my opinion, few things add more tension in a Doctor Who narrative than when the protagonists are stranded in a location without access to the TARDIS. And while I think the writers go to this well a bit too often for my liking, there has never been an instance where the Doctor has been further away from the comfort of his time machine. At least in the Spar, there was always the vague notion of returning to Kembel eventually. But now, the protagonists are on an unknown planet with no tether of any kind back to civilization, and I find the situation to be very compelling.

Back in Dalek central control, the Black Dalek is growing impatient with the lack of updates from Mavic Chen.

Meanwhile, at the experimental station, Karlton, Mavic Chen’s righthand man, is demanding answers from the pair of scientists, asking how long it will take until they learn if their experiment has been a success. “We don’t know,” a scientist answers. “Once the instruments reform on the planet Mira, they should start transmitting immediately.” Once again, what a simplistic name. I’m sure Terry Nation thought it was extremely clever to name his planets after English words, but the words he chooses rub me the wrong way. Calling the swamp planet “mire” makes more sense then most, but in consort with names like Desperus and Mechanus, it just sours the whole concept.

Karlton hurls some insults, then leaves, telling the scientists to keep him updated if and when they receive a transmission from their instruments. Only a few seconds after he is gone, one of the scientists checks his readings and excitedly announces that something is registering on the receiver. We hear the same beeping from earlier, and the scene cuts to show the mice moving around their cage in the Mira swamp. There’s no sign of the Doctor or the humans, but the fact that the mice are alive is a good representation of their safety.

Next, we get a scene back in the experimental chamber which does a great job at highlighting the conniving nature of Karlton and Mavic Chen. Karlton enters to inform Chen that the scientists’ instruments have successfully reformed on Mira. Chen views this as inconsequential; he is consumed by the idea that his failure to recapture the taranium will automatically lead to a Dalek attack force coming to subjugate the Earth. But Karlton has an idea. Since Mira is close to Kembel—which is a ridiculous coincidence, but I’ll let it slide—Karlton suggests, “Tell the Daleks that you trapped the fugitives in the cellular projector and sent them to Mira on purpose…It was a safety measure. Unwelcome attention was being paid to the fugitives, so you sent them to Mira on purpose.”

Chen sees the brilliance of this deception, especially when Karlton notes that whether or not the taranium was destroyed in the dissemination process, the Daleks cannot get more without their cooperation. “Without me, their plan cannot completely work,” Chen muses, breaking into a monologue as he paces around the room. “Without me, they are but nothing. Nothing! When I am next to the Daleks, only they stand between me and the highest position in the universe. Then will be the time for me to take complete control!”

Like how the Daleks’ plan is never fully explained, I think the narrative should have done a lot more to tell us what Mavic Chen intends to do with this control. I get that we’re supposed to imply that the universe would suffer somehow, but other than his cooperation with the Daleks, we haven’t actually seen any evidence of humans suffering under Chen’s rule. An allusion to a bit of slavery or rioting or any other indication that all is not well in the solar system would have gone a long way.

At the end of this scene, Chen seems to realize that he may have revealed too much of his ambition to Karlton, who gives Chen an unreadable look. Chen exits the room, telling his underling, “You are a fortunate man, Karlton. You will have a high place in galactic history.”

Karlton waits until Chen is gone before saying, “The highest. Next to you.” There is an undertone of resentment to this line, setting up the potential for either party to backstab the other later on in the narrative. Unfortunately, this doesn’t go anywhere—after this episode, we never see Karlton again. This is such a missed opportunity, especially in a serial which begins to lose focus in the latter half.

Back on Mira, we find the Doctor lying unconscious, nestled between some leafy plants. He slowly awakens, sitting up and taking in the strange surroundings. He stands, still looking around, and pulls the taranium cannister from a pocket of his coat, confirming that it is undamaged. With another quizzical look around, he finally says, “The mice couldn’t have done that.”

Elsewhere, Sara Kingdom is still asleep on the forest floor. Her arms move, one after another, seemingly of their own accord, rising away from her body and falling back down. I don’t remember thinking anything of this in my first watch-through; I assumed it was just an odd, unconscious motion. With some added context later on, this scene will become more meaningful, but I don’t think the showrunners did enough to call attention to it in the first place.

Nearby, Steven comes to and sees Sara lying at the other end of the clearing. He crosses to her, removes her gun from its holster, and tries to bring her around, giving her cheek a few gentle slaps.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has come across the mice cage. He calls out for Steven. Unbeknownst to him, a creature is following him—it is invisible, leaving imposing, four-clawed imprints in the ground as it trails the Doctor. The significance of this is that it must have been one of these invisible creatures who was moving Sara’s arms. I think we’re supposed to assume from the inquisitive nature of their interaction with Sara that they aren’t hostile, but again, this wasn’t communicated very well.

The Doctor finds Steven and Sara just as Sara begins to wake up. She is groggy, much groggier than either of the men were, which is either some more blatant sexism or at the very least an annoying inconsistency. She starts to mutter something about “the traitors,” but the Doctor tells her to be quiet and follow him and Steven, saying that she’s lucky to be alive.

At Dalek central control, a Dalek reports that the fugitives have been located on Mira, and the Black Dalek orders for a pursuit ship to be sent to capture them.

Back on Mira, Sara has fully regained her faculties, and there is a mutual hostility between her and the two men. She demands to know what has happened. The Doctor says that it was cellular dissemination, explaining, “[It] means our bodies were broken up by some process or other, shot through into the fourth dimension, and at a given point, reassembled again on this planet.” Steven reminds the Doctor about the cage of mice, and the Doctor adds, “Yes, that followed along too, and I believe it’s sending messages back to Earth. Now, that would mean that Mavic Chen will know precisely where we are. Therefore, the Daleks will attack again.”

Right on cue, the scene cuts to two Daleks next to the cage of mice. One of them holds out a detector, which it says registers beings close by. In a bit of comedy, the second Dalek says, “An alien device. There are small white creatures inside. They may be hostile.” The Daleks fire at the mice cage, destroying it. The beeping from its transmitter is silenced. However, once the mice are dead, the second Dalek still registers signs of life. The first Dalek fires its laser into the bushes, and there is a roar as something dies. Correctly assuming the creatures to be invisible, they move off into the foliage in pursuit of their quarry.

Back at the experimental station, the scientists tell Karlton that they are no longer receiving a signal from the transmitter. Karlton tells them to send no more matter to Mira.

On Mira, the Doctor is now alone, and he hears the rumble of the invisible creatures moving through the undergrowth. He flails at it with a stick, striking something which gives a roar of pain and runs away. “I might have known it,” he says. “Visians. The planet Mira.” [pronounced VIH-zee-ihns]

Meanwhile, Steven and Sara are arguing, with Steven trying to convince Sara of the truth and Sara digging in her heels. Sara tries to say she was only following orders, and Steven says, “You didn’t give Bret a chance, did you. You couldn’t question Chen, and you wouldn’t question Bret.”

At this point, I began to consider whether the Space Security Service was an intentional metaphor for Nazi Germany. The Daleks are already a Nazi allegory, and the abbreviation for this military body, the SSS, would be very on the nose if it weren’t just a coincidence. Plus, the idea that those in the power structure of Nazi Germany were just following orders was a pervasive and heavily-refuted defense at the Nuremberg Trials. However, the more I think about it, the more the metaphor falls apart. The narrative humanizes two characters within the SSS, Bret and Sara, which would be a troubling decision if we are intended to see them as Nazi stand-ins. And like I said before, we never actually see any evidence of Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, mistreating his own people. If this is an intentional metaphor, it is very badly handled.

Anyway, Sara’s resolve is breaking down with every new line of Steven’s, and when the Doctor returns, Steven says something sarcastic about her role in Bret’s death. “Shut up!” Sara snaps, her anger turning to tears. “Bret Vyon was my brother.” Upset, she moves off into the swamp. There is no way any real life security force would ever force one sibling to kill another—it’s such an obvious conflict of interest. But I’ll take this shocking reveal over realism any day.

A moment later, Sara comes running back, saying that something touched her. The Doctor tells the others about the invisible Visians, and they turn to see bushes rustling all around them. “It appears we’re trapped!” he exclaims.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Mavic Chen tells Karlton that he must return to Kembel, citing the need to be there when the taranium is brought back. Then he orders Karlton to go to Venus, formulating a backup plan. “We should be able to destroy Kembel with help from the rest of the solar system,” he says.

Back on Mira, the Doctor and company are contemplating shooting their way through the Visians, when suddenly, a Dalek enters the scene, firing at several of the invisible beasts. It rolls up to the Doctor, Steven, and Sara, saying that the Daleks have the three surrounded. The Doctor says, “I’m afraid, my friends, the Daleks have won.” Credits roll.

Part 6 (Coronas of the Sun)

Back to the reconstruction.

Held at Dalek gunpoint, the Doctor tries to establish a point of leverage, telling the Daleks that they cannot fire upon them or else they risk the destruction of the taranium core. The Daleks seem able to proceed anyway. One Dalek says, “There will be no more discussion. The core is to be handed over.” To the other Daleks, it orders, “Reform line. Prepare to exterminate them.” In this scene the Daleks demonstrate a clear ability to fire their guns at the Doctor despite him carrying the taranium. This will be contradicted many times before the end of the serial.

In this instance, though, the protagonists are saved when the invisible creatures suddenly attack the Daleks. The Doctor and company use the chance to make their escape. I have a few problems with this. First, why didn’t the Visians attack the protagonists? It can’t be because they found them to be particularly friendly—the Doctor has already struck one with a stick to the point where it ran away. Second, their ferocity here completely contradicts the tone set in their very first scene, where they investigate the unconscious body of Sara. If they were hostile, why didn’t they use the opportunity to attack? I guess you could say that they only became hostile after they were attacked, but that just adds to my first issue.

And third, the whole concept of invisible creatures is a bit underwhelming to me. It feels like a money-saving tactic, rather than an intentional element included by the writers. And I understand the necessity; by all accounts, Classic Who was funded by whatever loose change the showrunners found in their couch cushions. I won’t be too hard on the Visians here—they don’t get much screentime anyway, so it isn’t a massive loss to have moving foliage stand in for creatures that I would rather see. But two serials from now, in The Ark, there will be another race of invisible creatures which have a much larger role in the narrative, and those will receive much more of my ire. Technically they are incorporeal rather than invisible, but the effect will be the same: objects moving on their own and sounds coming from nowhere. The Visians may be lackluster, but at least they are a new concept. Once they get repeated, and so soon no less, I lose all respect for invisible budget savers.

The Daleks successfully fend off the Visians, but not before the protagonists escape. The transcript says that the outline of the invisible creatures becomes visible in the light of the Dalek ray guns, and I really wish I could have seen how that was depicted.

Back in Dalek central control, the Black Dalek is made aware of the setback. “Contact [the pursuit ship] and order that the taranium is to be recovered. Failure will not be tolerated.”

On Mira, the Doctor, Steven, and Sara have made their way to the Dalek pursuit ship, where they find one Dalek on guard. They’ve already talked offscreen and have formulated a plan to take out the Dalek. The Doctor moves off into the foliage, leaving Steven and Sara onscreen. Sara is very pessimistic about their chances. She says their actions will be obvious to the Daleks, who must realize by now that their only way off the planet is by stealing the Daleks’ spaceship. “Give him time,” Steven says soothingly—and perhaps a touch out-of-character for him. “He’s got to get round there. Look, you must learn to trust him. He’s had dealings with the Daleks before.” I don’t recall a situation where Steven has chosen to deescalate a point of conflict, rather than escalate it. The plot calls for it, but it’s always better to build the plot around the characters, rather than shoehorn the characters to fit the needs of the narrative.

A moment later, the Doctor strides out of the trees right in front of the Dalek, telling it that he will surrender. The Doctor is very cordial, offering up the taranium and saying his friends will join him when he calls. As the Doctor is going on about how he won’t try to escape, Steven suddenly attacks the Dalek from behind, smearing mud over the lens of its eyestalk—a weakness discovered by Barbara way back in The Daleks. The Dalek spins around, firing blindly into the swamp, crying out to the others on patrol.

The Doctor, Steven, and Sara rush into the Dalek ship while Daleks muster up outside, preparing to attack. To Sara’s alarm, the outer door cannot be closed until the ship builds up power, but the Doctor remains calm, working the controls until the door slides closed. Then there is this bit of technobabble as he and Sara man the controls and prepare for takeoff:

“Autogiro. Giro dynamo,” says the Doctor.

“Coding nine, two. Red, blue, blue,” answers Sara.

“Discharge,” says the Doctor.

“Coding one, zero, zero,” says Sara. “All blue reading. Take off now!” The ship blasts away from the surface of Mira, leaving the Daleks behind.

I take issue with Sara being able to help the Doctor pilot the Dalek ship. The Doctor says explicitly that he is familiar with Dalek technology from his previous encounters with them, which makes it so odd when Sara suddenly jumps in as his copilot. I would have rather seen the Doctor rushing from one side of the ship to another, getting things in order, perhaps with Sara in the background grumbling some more of the pessimism she exhibited earlier in the scene.

Back in Dalek central control, Mavic Chen has returned to Kembel. The Black Dalek accuses him of failure, saying that he did not recapture the taranium as ordered. Chen continues with the bluff formulated by Karlton in the previous episode, telling the Daleks that he sent the fugitives to Mira so to bring about a situation which would allow them to easily recover the missing taranium. “If that is a failure,” he says, feigning humility, “then I have failed.”

At this moment, a Dalek underling reports the failure on Mira to the Black Dalek, saying that their pursuit forces have been stranded. Mavic Chen turns very smug. “And you had the audacity to accuse me, Mavic Chen, of incompetence?” The Dalek splutters for a moment, with Chen repeatedly talking over it, until it finally manages to say that this is not an emergency. “No,” Chen says dismissively. “More like a catastrophe.”

On the Dalek spaceship, the Doctor and the others are once again wearing protective visors, looking into the taranium cannister to make sure the core is undamaged. Which brings up the question, why don’t they just damage it? That would be even more effective than hurling the taranium cannister into space or sprinkling the mineral little by little as they go along. I’m sure opening the cannister in the fetid waters of Mira would have rendered it unusable. The fact that an emm of taranium takes five decades to produce is an incredible piece of leverage that the writers never properly utilize. Instead, the Doctor preposes they make a copy to deceive the Daleks.

Before they can further solidify a plan, the Dalek spaceship suddenly lurches, changing course. “Good gracious, we’re on the course for planet Kembel,” the Doctor exclaims. Steven notices a piece of equipment which he thinks is allowing the Daleks to control the ship remotely, and he smashes it. A moment later, the Doctor is able to rectify their flight path.

In Dalek central control, a Dalek announces that the pursuit ship has broken from their control. “I sincerely hope there’s not been any further bungling,” Mavic Chen remarks. The Black Dalek insists they can still pull them back to Kembel with a magnetized beam.

Back on the spaceship, the Doctor has created a very near replica of the taranium cannister. I don’t know where he got a container the exact size and shape of the original, but it’s a minor gripe. The only shortcoming is that the decoy material does not glow like the taranium. Steven suggests that they can make it glow by using “the gravity force from the ship’s power center,” but the Doctor and Sara laugh this off as primitive and dangerous. Steven takes offense to this; he says that using G-force as a source of energy was a common practice in his time. Sara counters with, “Oh yes, and the Romans used treadmills.”

Suddenly, the ship begins to change course again as the Daleks’ magnetization takes hold. The Doctor and Sara rush off to try to counter this, leaving Steven grumbling to himself about how G-force is a perfectly reasonable solution to their problem. Without telling the others, he takes the cannister of fake taranium and plugs it into the G-force outlet. There is a high-pitched peal, and Steven screams, falling to the ground. Rushing over, the Doctor and Sara find him unconscious but still breathing. Luckily for all of them, Steven’s ill-fated experiment actually worked, and the fake taranium glows with the intensity of the real thing.

Meanwhile, on Kembel, Mavic Chen is trying to convince the Daleks to let him take the fugitives back to Earth to be tried and sentenced as traitors to the solar system. Logistically, this wouldn’t make sense, because this would expose Mavic Chen to too many unwanted questions. But I think this is a bluff meant to get Chen off Kembel—that way he can implement his backup plan and destroy the planet. Chen cites rising human suspicion as the need for this, but the Black Dalek refuses him, ordering him to forestall any suspicion, saying that it will not be long until the Daleks begin their invasion and there is no more need for intrigue.

On the spaceship, the Doctor and Sara have resigned themselves to the fact that they are inexorably closing in on Kembel. Steven has been propped in a corner; his eyes are open, but he can’t seem to move, and the Doctor says that his body is adapting to whatever side effect he suffered from during his experiment with G-force. Little by little, Steven regains control of himself, first blinking, then twitching, then nodding. When the Doctor tries to touch Steven, the Doctor recoils as if struck, and Sara says that Steven is enclosed in a force field. This seems to give the Doctor an idea; he takes the cannister of fake taranium and starts to speak to Steven.

At the same time, the Black Dalek and Mavic Chen arrive at the landing pad, watching the Dalek ship come ever closer.

The ship lands, and the Doctor, Steven, and Sara prepare to disembark. The Doctor says that they’ve got to make their stand now; Steven leads the way, stoney faced and walking very stiffly, clearly still under the effect of the force field or whatever is restricting his movement. “But it won’t work! It can’t work!” says Sara.

Mavic Chen and the Black Dalek confront the protagonists as they descend the ramp of the ship. Chen asks Steven to hand over the taranium, which we know to be the fake, and the Doctor refuses, adding, “And remember, you cannot fire because of the taranium. You’d have another fifty years’ work.” Based on the Doctor’s prior experience, there should be nothing that leads to this conclusion—remember, at the beginning of this episode, the Daleks were very willing to fire at the protagonists despite the Doctor having the taranium at the time.

Despite this, the Daleks agree not to fire, and the Doctor continues to use the taranium as leverage. He makes another demand, saying that he will only agree to hand over the taranium outside of his TARDIS. The Black Dalek concedes, and Steven leads the contingent off into the jungles of Kembel. On her way past Mavic Chen, Sara spits, “Traitor!” which seems to take him aback.

Outside the TARDIS, we see the biggest continuity error of the serial: there is no evidence of the Daleks having burned down the jungle, which happened less than a week ago. It’s not the most consequential of mistakes, but for me, it’s the most egregious. It’s not like it was a conflict between different seasons or different serials; it was a crucial plot point in this very serial. It’s unacceptable.

The Doctor hands Sara his TARDIS key and tells Sara to open the door; they both disappear inside, leaving Steven just outside the ship. “Steven, hand the box over to Chen,” we hear the Doctor call from within. “Then come inside the TARDIS.” Steven does so, and Chen takes a peek inside the cannister, grinning when he sees the glow. Here’s another continuity error. The Doctor said that anyone who looks at the taranium will burn their eyes and go blind. The transcript says Chen shields his eyes when he does this, but that shouldn’t matter—by the rules established in the narrative, it should only take one look, however brief.

Chen announces to the Daleks that it is indeed the core of the Time Destructor and ducks out of the way as the Daleks train their guns on Steven. “Exterminate him!” the Black Dalek screams. The Daleks fire, but there is no visible effect; Steven simply turns and enters the TARDIS, the doors closing behind him. The TARDIS dematerializes. The Daleks are baffled by this, and the Black Dalek says in disbelief, “No human being can withstand [our] fire.”

Inside the TARDIS, the protagonists are gleeful at this turn of events: they still have the real taranium and they have escaped with their lives. Then the Doctor explains how Steven can be unscathed. “The Dalek guns must have destroyed that force field completely. It’s a good thing they didn’t fire a second time…You had a shield around you, you know, similar to the one that protects the TARDIS.” This might be the most contrived plot device in the entire series so far, and it’s concerning that it doesn’t crack the top two problems I have with Part 6.

Next, Sara points out that the central column of the console has started to slow, and the Doctor says that they are beginning to land. Another issue I have with this scene: there is no bigger-on-the-inside reaction from Sara. The TARDIS lands, and the Doctor tries to pull up the scanner, only to find that it isn’t working. He tells Sara he can repair it but not without exiting the ship. But then he looks at his dials and recoils in shock, saying, “Look! Look here, Sara. You see those dials. Now, you know what that means? If either of you went outside, it would be extremely dangerous. The whole atmosphere is entirely poisonous!” Credits roll.

The last five minutes of this episode was definitely a weak point in this serial. It’s so disappointing that after six episodes of driving momentum and building tension, the first of several confrontations between the Doctor and the antagonists is filled with logical holes and mistakes. Now that I’m halfway through my second watch-through, I’m disheartened to say I’m not enjoying this serial quite as much as I did on my first.

Part 7 (The Feast of Steven)

Episode seven of The Daleks’ Master Plan is the first and only Christmas special which aired in the classic series. It’s not considered canon, which also makes it unique among not just Classic Who but every full-length episode of Doctor Who, right up to the present day. It’s also ass.

Because it isn’t canon, I wasn’t sure if I was going to include this episode in my review. On one hand, I am taking an originalist approach to this retrospective, trying to take the series in its entirety, watching these episodes in the order they were broadcast. On the other hand, I feel bad letting this terrible episode drag down my opinion of the rest of the serial, because if it’s not canon, why should it affect the surrounding narrative?

So I made a compromise. I won’t factor the quality of this episode into my rating of The Daleks’ Master Plan. For all intents and purposes, I will be treating my review as if The Feast of Steven does not exist, except in one regard. Because this episode was wedged into the middle of an otherwise compelling narrative, I will be treating Part 7 as if the showrunners decided to put 25 minutes of dead air into the middle of the serial. The quality of that space will not be judged, but the fact that this chunk of airtime took me completely out of the narrative is something I feel needs to be taken into account.

Since it’s not canon, I won’t be giving a very detailed plot breakdown here. I’ll briefly summarize it, but if you want more specifics, you’ll have to seek it out and watch it for yourself. I don’t recommend it.

It turns out that the toxic atmosphere that the TARDIS registered in the last episode was actually Liverpool on Christmas Day in 1965, just outside a police station. I think this was meant to be a comment on the environment and urban air quality, but it doesn’t make much sense given that the Doctor lived in London with Susan for several months. Regardless, some police officers see an unauthorized police box outside of their station, and when the Doctor comes out of it—uncooperative as usual—they take him inside the police station to arrest him. First Sara, then Steven also exit the TARDIS. There’s a bit of comedy where Sara doesn’t understand how things work in the 20th century, and Steven steals a police uniform from a cruiser to bluff the Doctor out of the station. They all pile back into the TARDIS, and it dematerializes. Just to give you an idea of how much ground I’ve just covered, we are now 11 minutes into the serial.

Next, the TARDIS shows up in a Hollywood film studio in 1921. The three exit the TARDIS, and, not realizing that everything is fake, they are baffled by their surroundings. There’s a lot of slapstick, with the three running from film set to film set, interrupting scenes and upsetting directors. There were lots of references to old-timey actors and films, none of which I cared enough about to look into. There was also an annoying, flamboyant, stereotypically gay director that I didn’t appreciate.

After another 11 minutes of hijinks, the Doctor and company return to the TARDIS and it dematerializes, to the shock and awe of the onlooking film crews. The protagonists are thankful to get out of there, still unaware that it was Hollywood. When the Doctor reminds them that it had been Christmas when they were at the police station, they decide to have some drinks, toasting each other and wishing each other a Happy Christmas. Then the Doctor turns and looks directly into the camera, saying, “Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!” Credits roll.

Part 8 (Volcano)

Back on Kembel, one Dalek says that the taranium core has been fitted to the Time Destructor and that the device is ready for testing. We get our first look at the Time Destructor—it’s a very odd shape, but I’ll do my best to describe it. In the center is a white ball, like a fist-sized sphere of Styrofoam. Hollow black tubes protrude from this center, rigid and slightly conical in shape, with the outfacing ends a little wider than the ends touching the sphere. There are about twenty of these tubes, arrayed so that the shape they create is pleasingly symmetrical. All of this is housed within a spherical metal frame, roughly the size of a basketball, made up of six rounded struts spaced widely enough for a hand to easily reach into the center. This metal frame sits on a square base, much like the base of a trophy. I’m sure that was confusing as hell; just google it.

Next, we return to Dalek central control, where we see several of the evil ambassadors for the first time in a long while—most of these creatures haven’t had any screentime since Part 2, with the exception of Trantis, the man with the stalactite face. Unfortunately, the creature I called a knock-off Aridian—with porcelain white skin, a bald head, and dozens of black half-spheres glued to his unitard—is going to have much more screen time from this point on. He opens his mouth to speak, and I only feel my hatred of him growing. Apparently, the showrunners told him to act like a snake, with a choked speech pattern that lingers on the letter s whenever he finds one in his lines. And it pisses me off even more that, although he has a name, it is never given to the audience, not once in a 12-part serial.

Anyway, the snake man covered in balls and Trantis have clearly lost faith in Mavic Chen. They have both been briefed on his repeated failures on Earth, and they even go as far as to suspect that Chen had a hand in the loss of the core, repeatedly pointing out how the fugitives look like Earth creatures. “Only two of them,” Chen corrects, “and they are under the influence of some creature from another galaxy…The Daleks know of him. He is some kind of time and space traveler.” Chen goes on to say that whoever they are is irrelevant now that they have recovered the taranium core.

Nearby, the Black Dalek says that a subject has been chosen on which to test the Time Destructor. The transcript says the Black Dalek looks at Trantis, though this is not communicated in the reconstruction.

Meanwhile, on the TARDIS, the Doctor looks concernedly at his instruments, which tell him that they are being followed by a time machine. He points out that his time curve detector cannot identify who might be following them, but when Steven says it must be the Daleks, the Doctor says that he is probably right. “Although,” he adds, “I don’t understand how they could have tested that taranium so quickly.” This line holds a lot of significance, though I didn’t catch it on my first watch-through—I’ll touch on this again in a few scenes. Anyway, the scene comes to a close with Sara insisting they go back to Kembel, saying they need to totally incapacitate the Daleks’ invasion fleet.

In Dalek central control, snake man covered in balls and Mavic Chen look on as Trantis is placed behind a glass partition with the Time Destructor. Snakeballs wonders why the Daleks chose him as their test subject, and Chen says, “He was so eager to make a contribution to the Time Destructor that they’ve let him make one: his life.” I don’t really see the connection there. Trantis was the ambassador way back in Part 2 who asked the Daleks why nobody other than Mavic Chen was asked to acquire the taranium, but this was just a vehicle to teach the audience that the taranium can only be found in the solar system. It’s not like he insisted on helping in some fashion. Chen’s poetic irony just doesn’t work.

Nearby, the Black Dalek orders the Time Destructor to be activated. The Time Destructor starts to beep, a regular, rhythmic sound that oscillates widely in pitch. The other two ambassadors watch, surprised that they only apparent change is the look of pure terror that overcomes Trantis. “So that’s what’s supposed to happen,” Chen says. “A kind of abject insanity.” Are we really to believe that Mavic Chen, a meticulous, conniving co-conspirator, does not know the true purpose for which he has been gathering taranium for the past fifty years? That seems woefully out-of-character. [Edit: In Part 12, we will learn that once the Time Destructor is activated, it cannot be turned off. How could the Daleks even think they could test it here?]

The Black Dalek confronts Chen, saying that the failure was not with the device but with its taranium core, accusing him of deception. “It was the old man,” Mavic Chen insists. “That time traveler…He must have changed it.”

“Report to Skaro,” the Black Dalek tells an underling. “They must send a time machine to us immediately.” This is where that line about the Daleks testing the taranium so quickly comes into play. We now know that the Daleks hadn’t finished the test; neither had they used their own time machine. Therefore, it can’t be the Daleks who are following the TARDIS. It must be something else. Even though the threads of understanding are there, I didn’t pick this up on my first watch. It wasn’t until the true identity of the stalker is revealed that I connected the dots, and I’m not sure if I should chalk this up to a personal oversight or the episode being too opaque with this plot point.

Snakeballs is sent back to the conference room to wait with the other ambassadors, while Chen is told to wait in Dalek central control for the arrival of the Dalek time machine. Then the Black Dalek orders Trantis’s execution. A Dalek enters the chamber with Trantis and the Time Destructor and shoots him with its ray gun.

In both the reconstruction and the transcription, there is text which says that Chen reacted in horror to the callousness of Trantis’s killing, which is the second time this scene he has done something stupendously out-of-character. We just had a line where Chen explained to Snakeballs why it makes ironic sense for the Daleks to kill Trantis. As much as I disagree with his logic there, why should he view death by ray gun as anything different? And apropos of nothing, there is no way that Mavic Chen would see the death of a fellow ambassador as anything more than there being one less person standing between himself and universal domination. He should view it as convenient, especially considering how he was contriving with Karlton to accuse Trantis of deception in Part 5.

Something I didn’t say in my intro about Terry Nation—and another reason I don’t feel comfortable attributing the second half’s problems to his writing alone—is that he actually shares the writing credits for The Daleks’ Master Plan with another writer, Dennis Spooner. Chen’s mischaracterization in this scene feels like a function of Spooner not quite understanding the character that Nation created, which, although understandable, is something that modern series are much better at ironing out through rigorous and collaborative writing processes. Still, what may have contributed to these flaws behind the scenes does not matter, because the audience isn’t aware of the quirks of how each serial was created. All they see is the finished product on the screen. And as such, I have to judge Chen as a complete character from start to finish, not make allowances for the writers’ clashing characterizations.

Back on the TARDIS, Steven is looking at a flashing light on the time curve indicator and says that the pursuer is closing in on them. Saying he needs to do something drastic, the Doctor starts the process of landing the ship.

Cut to a cricket pitch in London, where an English commentator named Trevor and an Australian commentator named Scott are describing a match from the media booth high above the grass. With a flash and a wheeze, the TARDIS materializes on the pitch, right in the middle of the match. With a nonchalance that shattered my suspension of disbelief and completely took me out of the episode, the commentators don’t seem to think much beyond how this will affect the match, not even when it flashes and disappears a minute later. They just hop right back into their commentary as play resumes down below.

I despise this scene. I recall hearing on a podcast that this was a reference to some other piece of media—Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy unless I’m misremembering. And I get that writers often slip clever little anecdotes and allusions to other pieces of media into their writing or whatever. But it should never come at the expense of the efficacy of the worldbuilding. Humans almost always have a very strong reaction to seeing the TARDIS fade in and out of existence. Plus, I talked in my introduction about how prior to the in-universe first contact, the writers need to keep any alien interaction small enough to avoid disclosure on a grand scale. This stupid little scene goes against so many conventions by which the series has been operating, all for the self-service of a writer who thought he was being clever.

By the way, that podcast is called Who Back When, and I can’t recommend it enough. Go check it out on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor’s gambit has not worked; they are still being followed.

Back in Dalek central control, the Dalek time machine arrives, the same ship that the Doctor encountered in The Chase. The Black Dalek tells Mavic Chen that he will be accompanying the task force, adding, “If you fail or if we find that you have deceived us, you will suffer from the same fate as the time travelers. Annihilation!”

Cut to some stock footage of an explosive volcanic eruption, with white-hot lava erupting hundreds of feet into the air, flowing down mountainsides and hardening into porous, volcanic rock. The TARDIS materializes on one such rock formation. In the reconstruction, the roiling landscape is represented behind them by a jet of steam issuing from a vent in the rocks. Inside the ship, the time curve indicator has stopped flashing. “Whoever was following us has landed,” the Doctor explains. “They’ve landed out there.”

Elsewhere, a large boulder sits inconspicuously amongst many others on the uneven volcanic ground. After a moment, a door opens from the side of the boulder, and out steps the monk from The Time Meddler, still dressed in the drab brown robe. I cannot express how happy seeing him made me on my first watch-through. I had completely forgotten about his presence in the episode, and his appearance is just what this serial needs after all the recent blunders. The monk takes his binoculars out of his robes and trains them on the distant TARDIS. Delighted, the monk breaks into laughter. Back in The Time Meddler, I said that Peter Butterworth’s portrayal of the monk made him my favorite antagonist of the series, and his charisma is immediately on full display once again. I love this development.

When the Doctor, Steven, and Sara walk out of eyesight of the TARDIS in search of their mysterious pursuer, the monk makes his move, hurrying to the blue doors and looking for a way inside. When the handle won’t work, he kicks at it, hopping around for a bit at the pain this causes to his foot. Then he takes out a small laser and fires it at the lock of the TARDIS. This doesn’t grant him entry, but he looks pleased with himself—he has accomplished whatever it is he intended.

As the Doctor and company are looking for evidence of another time machine, Sara suddenly cries out, “Doctor, look!” and they follow her gaze to the monk, who stands above them on a ridge. The monk greets them cordially, as if they are old friends. The Doctor is businesslike, Steven downright hostile. Sara is confused, and Steven promises to explain later.

The monk explains how he escaped the monastery in 1066, saying that he managed to bypass the Doctor’s sabotage of his dimensional controller. When the Doctor asks the monk if he as any plans for revenge, the monk lets out a deep belly laugh. “Oh ho! Doctor, you remember you left me in 1066? Now I’ve marooned you on the planet Tigus!…Well, goodbye, Doctor! Perhaps I’ll come back one day and rescue you.” He disappears over the ridge. Alarmed, the Doctor hurries the others back to the TARDIS.

Once they arrive back at the ship, the Doctor discovers that the lock mechanism has been reset and that his key will no longer work. From a safe distance, the monk watches gleefully as the Doctor shouts in dismay, with Steven trying futilely to pick the lock. After a few moments spent wracking his brain, the Doctor then takes off his ring, the same ring that he used to exit the TARDIS in The Web Planet. Refracting the light of the sun onto the lock, the Doctor waits for a few seconds, then the mechanism clicks and the doors swing open. I don’t like how easy it was for the Doctor to solve this problem. It relates a lot to how the Doctor used his ring the first time—it was never explained, not in The Web Planet and not now. It’s okay for the ring to be a deus ex machina, as long as the audience is allowed to know how and why it worked. Not giving us the rules to the game makes the ring feel more like magic than science fiction. And like I’ve said several times, science fiction with rules that function more like fantasy is the worst kind of science fiction.

Moving on, the TARDIS crew enters the ship, and it dematerializes, leaving the monk looking on, visibly deflated. “Oh, no, no,” he says resolutely to himself. “Don’t think I’m going to leave it at this. You haven’t heard the last of me, Doctor. You haven’t heard the last of me!”

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor actually does explain a little about the ring, though when I say explain, it doesn’t do anything to differentiate what we saw from that feeling of magic and fantasy. He says, “You see, the sun in that particular galaxy has very unusual powers. I merely reflected its powers through the ring.” Needless to say, an inadequate explanation.

In Dalek central control, the Black Dalek looks on as the time machine prepares to leave. “Enemy ship located,” it says. “Space-time bearing: planet Earth, London, 1966.”

Cut to Trafalgar Square, with the banging of church bells and exploding fireworks above a massive crowd to identify the setting as just after midnight on New Year’s Day. The TARDIS materializes in the square. In my opinion, it is far more believable for the ship to go unnoticed among a sea of probably-drunken revelers than it was in the relative emptiness of the cricket grounds.

Inside the TARDIS, the trio watches the celebration on the scanner. Steven tells the Doctor that they won’t be able to make repairs to the TARDIS lock here. Sara asks what the people are celebrating, and the Doctor says he doesn’t know, telling them to watch and listen.

Back in Dalek central control, a Dalek counts down toward the time machine’s departure. “22, 21, 20, 19, 18…”

Meanwhile, still watching the scanner screen, the Doctor says that he has only seen people acting like this on one other occasion: the Relief of Mafeking. I had to google this one; this marked the end of a siege in colonial South Africa. One thing to note in this scene is that the TARDIS does not dematerialize.

In Dalek central control, the countdown finishes, and the Dalek time machine dematerializes. “Report to Skaro,” the Black Dalek commands. “Our time machine is now in pursuit. Nothing can match Dalek technology. The universe shall be ours. Conquest is assured.”

All around it, underlings shout, “Conquest! Conquest! Conquest!” Credits roll.

With this cliffhanger, the show implies that the Daleks are beelining toward a packed Trafalgar Square in 1966. Boy howdy, wouldn’t that be a shocking plot twist.

Part 9 (The Golden Death)

The TARDIS materializes in ancient Egypt at the base of one of the Pyramids of Giza, as of yet unfinished, placing this somewhere around 22,000 BC. After the implication of the last cliffhanger, this goes over like a wet fart. We heard the Daleks say that their coordinates were London in 1966, and the TARDIS did not dematerialize from there, at least not onscreen. It’s borderline nonsensical, though I hesitate to call it a continuity error. I guess technically the TARDIS could have disappeared offscreen before the Dalek time machine departed, triggering the Daleks to change their coordinates. But the way this plays out without even a reference to there having been a cliffhanger makes this one of the worst cliffhangers to date, if not the worst.

On the Dalek time machine, the Dalek in charge, who is referred to as the Red Dalek although it is very hard to tell in black-and-white footage, tells Mavic Chen that once they land, the recovery of the real taranium core is Chen’s responsibility. Mavic Chen welcomes the opportunity to prove himself. Then the Red Dalek shows the pyramids on a small screen, noting that the TARDIS is not making any attempt to take off. “That’s very strange,” says Chen. “Why should they choose to wait and face us?”

Outside the TARDIS, the Doctor has gotten to work repairing the lock of the TARDIS, with Steven assisting him, handling the Doctor’s array of futuristic tools. Steven is impressed by the imposing pyramids, noting that there doesn’t seem to be any people around. After a bit of tomfoolery where the Doctor asks for a tool and Steven hands him the wrong thing several times, Steven straightens, saying, “There’s not much cover, is there? If the monk’s TARDIS lands this side of the pyramid, we should see it easily however it disguises itself…I think I’ll take a look from up there. It’ll give me a better view.” He climbs over some stone blocks and out of sight.

The Doctor, still looking at his tools, agrees with him, telling him that he should go. When no one responds, he looks around, finds that Steven has already left, and chuckles, muttering, “Talking to myself.”

Next, the Dalek ship materializes about a quarter of a mile away from the TARDIS. Seeing this and thinking it is the arrival of the monk’s TARDIS, Steven rushes back to the Doctor to deliver the news. A moment later, Sara exits the TARDIS and lets the Doctor know that whatever was following them has “stopped registering on the time curve indicator.” The Doctor has no intention of leaving the TARDIS unguarded and unlocked, so he turns back to his work as Steven and Sara go off to confront the monk head-on.

Unbeknownst to all of them, a shirtless man with a bowl cut watches them from a distance. After a moment, he sneaks away from the TARDIS and enters a small hut, where several other shirtless men are gathered. “Master!” he calls out, which identifies this man as one of the slave workers working on the pyramids. “Strangers at the tomb!” The slave master is a tall man whose station is made apparent by the enormous necklace of gold sitting low on his bare shoulders. He turns to several of his men, who grab spears and follow the slave master out of the hut.

When Steven and Sara begin to edge closer to the Dalek time machine, they start to wonder at why the monk’s TARDIS hasn’t been able to disguise itself as usual. This is made apparent to them almost immediately, when Mavic Chen and several Daleks exit the vessel. Alarmed, the two humans turn to warn the Doctor, but they are suddenly ambushed by the group of armed Egyptians and hauled offscreen. When the slave master notices Chen and the Daleks, he orders his slaves to seize them, but the slaves are frozen in fear. The Red Dalek orders his underlings forward, and the Daleks begin to slaughter the Egyptians, killing them by the dozen.

Once it becomes apparent that the fight is unwinnable, the slave master rushes back to the first Egyptian, the one who spotted the TARDIS, identifying him as Tuthmos and saying, “A slaughter! I must fetch reinforcements.”

Standing before a pile of dead Egyptians, the Daleks say that they have sustained no damage, and one Dalek orders them to exterminate on sight any more natives they encounter.

Back at the TARDIS, the Doctor steps out of the ship, now wearing a white bowler hat and using a cane. He closes the doors behind himself, locking them with a self-satisfied hmmph! Looking around, he wonders what Steven and Sara have gotten up to. He wanders around for a bit, eventually coming to a space filled with heavily ornamented sarcophagi, statuettes, and other treasures: all the things that will fill the tombs once they are completed. One Egyptian guard is supposed to be watching over these artifacts, but he is asleep on the ground. The Doctor carefully tiptoes around the man.

He is about to leave the space when he suddenly hears the familiar sound of a TARDIS materializing. When the ship fades into existence, it has disguised itself as a block of stone, tall and narrow. Amused, the Doctor finds a hiding place and watches the scene. The monk exits the stone block a moment later. He squints, blinking a few times into the harsh sunlight, and he ducks back inside his TARDIS. When he reemerges a moment later, he is wearing a pair of sunglasses; the monk leaves the scene. The Doctor makes to follow him, but a sudden thought stops him in his tracks. “Who was it [that] landed here before, then? The Daleks!”

Back at the hut from earlier, the slave master talks with another overseer about what they will do regarding the “fire-throwing machines.” Steven and Sara look on from a corner of the room, sitting with their hands tied behind their backs, positioned against a stone slab. The first slave master says that he will go to the next encampment and fetch reinforcements, while the second says that he will have the slaves take the pharaoh’s treasure into the tomb where it can be more easily guarded. They both depart, leaving Tuthmos in charge of guarding the two prisoners.

Tuthmos thinks that Steven and Sara are graverobbers, and asks why “the old man” was so keen on inspecting the large blue box outside the tomb. Steven says that the blue box belongs to him, and Tuthmos says dismissively, “Now I know you lie. Everything the slaves hauled here across the desert belongs to the pharaoh.” He turns away from his prisoners in disgust. Sara begins to move her hands behind her back, telling Steven that she found a piece of broken pottery and hopes to break their bonds.

Elsewhere, the Doctor is trailing the monk, who comes upon Mavic Chen. He greats the man kindly, then turns to see the Dalek with him and recoils in surprise, calling out, “A Dalek!” The Dalek immediately trains his gun on the monk, but Chen interjects, saying that this man could be used to help the Dalek cause.

Chen asks how a man in ancient Egypt has knowledge of Daleks, and the monk identifies himself as “just a passing time traveler, anxious to be on his way.” The monk speaks quickly and sheepishly, which is a great way to add depth to his already three-dimensional character. We’ve seen his confident swagger when dealing with others from a position of perceived strength, not unlike how the Doctor acts when bluffing his way out of a sticky situation. But now that he is bargaining for his life, he is obsequious and oily, trying to weasel his way into the Daleks’ good graces. And just like in The Time Meddler, I find myself almost rooting for him despite knowing his ill intentions. Even when he is basically genuflecting at the altar of Dalek conquest, his overwhelming charisma still bleeds through. I adore this character.

The Daleks make an allowance for the monk, agreeing to let him stay alive but on one condition: if the monk hasn’t secured the taranium core for the Daleks in one hour, he will be exterminated. Chen, the monk, and the Daleks all leave the scene, leaving the Doctor pondering what he has just witnessed.

Elsewhere, the Egyptian slaves move all of the treasures into the tomb, including the Doctor’s TARDIS.

Back with the monk, he returns to his own TARDIS, with the Doctor still secretly following him. The monk dips back inside the stone block, reemerging with a curious device shaped like a magnifying glass which emits a shrill beeping noise. Using the device to orient himself, the monk leaves the scene.

Chuckling, the Doctor uses the monk’s absence as an opportunity to sneak into the stone block. We then see the TARDIS cycle through a series of disguises—including a tree, a stagecoach, and an igloo—before settling on a familiar shape: a blue police box. A moment later, the Doctor exits, holding some device that he has pilfered from the monk’s TARDIS. Laughing to himself, he gives the blue doors an affectionate pat before leaving the scene.

Meanwhile, in the Egyptians’ hut, Sara has finally managed to cut her way through her and Steven’s bonds. Nearby, three guards sit with their backs to the prisoners, not paying them any mind. Sneaking up behind them, Steven and Sara attack, taking them by surprise. It’s another action sequence that is lost to time, but the transcript says that Sara is clearly the trained fighter, though Steven is no slouch himself. “Not bad,” Sara says, once the three guards have been dispatched. “Remind me to show you a few tricks sometime.”

“Remind me not to pick a fight with you,” Steven remarks. Something I want to talk about a little later—maybe a few serials from now—is how much Steven flourishes away from the Doctor. When he is allowed to interact with another character who is his equal, such as this scene and throughout The Time Meddler when he was with Vicki, he becomes a very dynamic character. But since the praise I gave Peter Purves back in The Time Meddler, Steven has been mismanaged, almost minimized. Aside from when he was briefly imprisoned alongside Vicki in The Myth Makers and when he was held hostage by the Drahvins in Galaxy Four, he has spent the vast majority of his screentime with the Doctor, relegated to the role of the subservient underling. After The Time Meddler, I had hoped that Steven would have a big enough personality and enough skepticism to be something of a foil to the Doctor in these scenes, but to this point, this hasn’t materialized. I thought that Steven had the potential to exceed Ian, Barbara, and Susan as a companion, but that has not been the case.

Elsewhere, the monk’s device takes him toward the opening of a nearby pyramid. Inside, he finds the pile of Egyptian treasure, including the Doctor’s TARDIS; he tries the door but cannot get inside. “You’re wasting your time,” the Doctor calls out, finally revealing himself to the monk as he strides into the tomb. “You won’t get in.” Smiling, he adds, “You know, I don’t think I would have found my TARDIS without the help of that energy counter.”

The monk’s surprise quickly melts into a feigned cordiality—he is aware the Doctor has been following him, but he is unsure if his enemy has been watching long enough to know about his interaction with the Daleks. Though the Doctor does hint at knowledge, saying “As for your machine, well, it’s probably disguised as a, what, a sort of block of stone?” It reminds me of when the Doctor found out Nero’s plans in The Romans and laced a conversation with the tyrant with all sorts of hints and puns.

The monk tries to convince the Doctor to come with him back to his TARDIS so he can show the Doctor some tricks about jumping time tracks. Then the Doctor drops the pretense, saying, “And then you would be able to see the taranium, too.” Realizing the Doctor knows everything, the monk tries to make it seem as if he was always planning to double-cross the Daleks, insisting that he had intended to warn the Doctor. “You know,” the Doctor begins threateningly, “I think, before I go, I should put you safely out of the way.” Cackling, he closes in on the monk, pushing him back against the TARDIS.

Back in the Dalek time machine, an hour has passed without any word from the monk. “He has betrayed us,” says the Red Dalek. “Prepare a task force to attack. All the humans will be exterminated.”

Outside the pyramid, Steven and Sara return to where the TARDIS once was, only to find it gone. “The Egyptians must have taken it into the tomb,” Steven guesses. They enter the tomb to find all the treasure and the Doctor’s TARDIS. Relieved, Sara knocks on the door to see if the Doctor is inside. Suddenly, the lid comes off of an ornate sarcophagus. A bandaged hand reaches out toward the humans, who are frozen in fear. Credits roll.

Part 10 (Escape Switch)

This is the last of three recovered episodes.

The lid of the sarcophagus opens all the way, and a moaning, slightly overweight mummy rises to its feet, trying and failing to speak through its linen wrappings. Finding the situation much less terrifying than a moment ago, Steven unwinds the linen around the mummy’s head to reveal the monk, who snaps, “Well, thank goodness for that!” I cannot imagine elderly Hartnell successfully managing to bundle Peter Butterworth in linen and shoving him into the sarcophagus, but the mental image is so funny that I’m more than willing to let it slide.

Back in the Dalek time machine, Mavic Chen tries to convince the Daleks to give the monk more time to fetch the taranium, but the Daleks refuse. Reminding them that he was given the responsibility of recovering the taranium, Chen mutters, “If you insist on this approach, I fail to see how I can be made to answer for the consequences.” He angrily pushes the Red Dalek’s eyestalk to the side and strides out of the ship.

Inside the pharaoh’s tomb, the monk tells Steven and Sara that the Doctor attacked him unprovoked. “There I was, trying to warn him of the Daleks, and suddenly, there I was in the sarcophagus!”

“Oh, well I’m sure he’ll apologize when he hears your story,” Sara says very sweetly. The monk fails to hear the mockery in her tone. She and Steven have a brief conversation about whether they should stay inside the tomb and wait for the Doctor or go looking or him. All the while, the monk babbles on about how he has developed such an awful headache, and that he really ought to go inside the TARDIS and lay down, and if only one of them would be so kind as to give him the TARDIS key.

In the end, Steven and Sara agree to go find the Doctor, noting that he will need help if he runs into the Daleks. Steven rounds on the monk, giving short shrift to the idea of letting him inside the TARDIS, saying that they will all go outside together—that way, Steven and Sara can keep an eye on the man. “We’ll find [the Doctor],” Steven says resolutely.

To himself, the monk murmurs, “That’s what I’m worried about.” I love this version of the monk. He’s far from his comfort zone, but he is very good at thinking quickly and using his wit, trying to convince everyone that he’s on their side. Even if it didn’t work in this case, it gives some lovely consistency to his interactions, and the audience can suspect that it’ll keep happening until the monk exits the narrative. In a serial with 12 parts and more than a dozen different settings, it’s always a positive to add in elements of consistency.

Across the pyramids, Mavic Chen hears Steven calling out the Doctor’s name. Cut to Steven and Sara, who both shout for the Doctor. The monk pretends to shout as well, though it comes out a barely a whisper, and insists that the others are wasting their time. I love the whisper; it’s just like how Paris whispered for Achilles on the plains of Troy in The Myth Makers, when the last thing he wanted was to actually meet the man.

The monk goes around a corner and runs right into two Daleks. He immediately switches to what he now sees as the winning side. “Ah, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Around the corner, Steven and Sara are suddenly surrounded by Daleks, and Mavic Chen struts confidently into the scene. The first Daleks herd the monk back around the corner with the others, and the Daleks prepare to exterminate the monk and the protagonists. “Exterminate?” the monk says. “What? When I’ve fulfilled our part of the bargain?…I haven’t actually got the [taranium], but I’ve brought you hostages.”

This outrages Steven, but Chen is pleased. “Hostages. Yes, that could work. The Doctor’s loyalty to his friends is beyond question…In exchange for their lives, the Doctor would hand us the core of the Time Destructor.” The Daleks agree to try this new tactic, and Steven and Sara are taken prisoner and led back to the Dalek time machine.

“Well,” the monk begins, “now that that little problem’s settled, I think I’d better—”

“You will return with us!” a Dalek interrupts.

“Return with you,” the monk finishes quickly. “That’s what I was going to say.” Have I mentioned how much I love this goober?

Meanwhile, Tuthmos informs the second slave masters of the escape of his two prisoners. The slave master says they must do nothing until Hyksos returns—Hyksos was the original slave master that Tuthmos informed about the intruders in his first scene. Aside from just how they limit viewer engagement and comprehension, I hate how these bad naming conventions make me contort myself to try to keep these characters straight in this review. Just name your characters in their first scene and be done with it.

Inside the Dalek time machine, the Daleks are setting up some sort of communications relay that will allow Mavic Chen to broadcast his voice across the Egyptian desert. Steven, Sara, and the monk are all being kept under guard in the center of the ship. Now that he has found himself captured with the other two, the monk switches sides yet again. “It was very quick thinking on my part,” he insists. When Steven scoffs at this, he continues, “Do you mean to say you actually think I meant what I said to the Daleks? My dear fellow, this was a desperate gamble, risking my own life to save yours.”

“We can trust him about as much as we can trust the Daleks,” Steven says with disdain.

“You mean my performance that good?” the monk says. “I knew I had to fool the Daleks, but I thought you would see right through it…You don’t think I’d take the side of these creatures against you, do you?…Honestly, this baffles me, destroys my faith in human nature.”

The three are interrupted when Mavic Chen walks into the room. The Daleks have rigged the communications relay to broadcast everywhere within a 7-mile radius. “Doctor? Doctor, you should be able to hear me now, wherever you are.” Out in the desert, the Doctor does hear. So do the Egyptians, who fling themselves to the ground in awe as if hearing the voice of a god. “Doctor, listen carefully to what I have to say. It is useless to try to fight us anymore. Your two young friends are held prisoners by the Daleks. You know why we have pursued you through time and space. We want the taranium that you stole. You are to proceed to the Dalek time machine, south of the Great Pyramid, and receive your instructions. The vital core will be returned to us. Failure will mean the death of your friends.”

The slave master turns to Tuthmos, ensuring him that it is not the wrath of the gods. “[It is] the same mortals who would build war machines that throw fire. When Hyksos returns, you will see the end of your…gods.”

Back on the Dalek time machine, the Daleks and Chen exit the ship, but not before Chen leans close to the prisoners and says cruelly, “For your sake, I hope the Doctor does not keep us waiting long.” Sara thinks they should try to warn the Doctor somehow, but Steven says that it wouldn’t stop the Doctor from coming. A moment later, their faces turn grave as they hear the Doctor outside, asking the Daleks what they want him to do.

The Daleks ask for the taranium, but the Doctor is the one that makes the demands. Despite his friends being held hostage, he still uses the perplexing idea that the Daleks are unwilling to fire at him and risk damaging the taranium, perplexing because the Daleks were about to do just that in Part 6 when they were attacked by the invisible Visians. Still, the Daleks once again stick to this new paradigm, allowing the Doctor to set the terms. He demands that the taranium will be exchanged for Steven, Sara, and the monk at the west angle of the Great Pyramid and that only Mavic Chen and one Dalek may be present for the swap. The Daleks agree, and the Doctor leaves.

Meanwhile, Hyksos returns with dozens of fighters, pledging that the war machines will soon be destroyed.

The Doctor retrieves the taranium core from the TARDIS.

As the time for the rendezvous approaches, Mavic Chen and three Daleks escort Steven, Sara, and the monk out of the ship.

Hyksos and his men position themselves at strategic points around the pyramid complex.

At the meeting place, the Doctor is angry that the Red Dalek has disregarded their terms and brought two additional Daleks. He rounds on Mavic Chen, who shrugs, saying, “I am not their master.” Before the Doctor agrees to hand over the taranium core, he demands the return of the hostages; the Daleks release Steven, Sara, and the monk. The three quickly run offscreen at the Doctor’s command. Then the Doctor slowly places the taranium cannister into Mavic Chen’s hands before bolting as well.

Before the Daleks can pursue them, the concealed Egyptians attack, forcing the Daleks to move into an attack position, disregarding the protagonists. One Dalek is killed by the sheer numbers of the Egyptians, but the rest successfully retreat, killing scores of Egyptians along the way.

The Doctor meets up with Steven and Sara outside of his TARDIS, and they have a bittersweet reunion. They are happy to see each other once again, but the Doctor informs them that he had to give the real taranium core over to Mavic Chen. I’m not sure why this comes as a shock to Steven and Sara—I thought they knew that was what was going to happen. Though there is a silver lining: the Doctor reveals that the device he stole from the monk’s TARDIS was its directional unit. Excitedly, Steven suggests they can use it to get back to Kembel. They all head inside the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, the monk returns to his TARDIS as well. He is a bit confused as to why it looks like a police box, but he doesn’t have time to wonder at this—Daleks are on his tail, and he quickly ducks inside. The Daleks fire their ray guns at the ship, but just like with the Doctor’s TARDIS, they have no effect. The monk’s TARDIS dematerializes. Mavic Chen smugly shows the Daleks the cannister of taranium, and they all head back to the Dalek time machine, assured that their victory is well in hand.

In the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Doctor says that they have a dilemma. Because the monk’s ship is a different model than his, there is a chance that his directional unit would destroy the console’s center column.

On the Dalek time machine, the Daleks have computed the course back to Kembel.

Meanwhile, on a frozen world, with icy winds howling and everything covered in snow, a chunk of ice and snow suddenly materializes. The monk steps outside, his face going from self-satisfied to stunned in the blink of an eye. “A planet of ice? I didn’t set course for this.” His face hardens. “The Doctor again. The Doctor. He’s stolen my directional unit. Now I’ll have to wander through time and space as lost as he is.” He shouts his anger and dismay into the uncaring wind. “I’ll get you for this, Doctor! I’ll get you one day!” But that day never comes, at least, not in the main series. This is the last we see of the monk on television.

Back in the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Doctor has finished rigging up the monk’s directional unit. Steeling himself for potential calamity, he tells Steven to pull the main switch. Steven does so, throwing the TARDIS into chaos; the console room fills with smoke. Credits roll.

Part 11 (The Abandoned Planet)

Once again, back to the retrospective.

Aside from Part 7, whose quality will not be factored into this review, Part 11 is far and away the worst episode in The Daleks’ Master Plan. If I were to rate individual episodes, I’d give Part 11 a 0.5, while no other episode would fall below a 5.0. And there is really only one reason for this: the Doctor is absent. I don’t know if it was time for Hartnell to take a vacation or if he was sick or what happened, but aside from one scene in the beginning, he randomly disappears. There will never be a reason given for his disappearance, and although that’s not great, it’s not the worst thing in the world. No, the worst thing is that absolutely nothing happens while he is gone.

This isn’t the first time that the Doctor has been out of an episode. He was gone for part of both Marco Polo and The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But while those serials featured many different threads and could be reasonably carried by the other protagonists, this one definitively cannot. There are so many elements of science fiction, and Steven and Sara are both so out of their depth, that the only way the story can even progress is if the Doctor does something to push the narrative forward. Without him, the momentum of the serial completely dies.

Having returned to Dalek central control on Kembel, the Black Dalek orders the taranium to be fitted to the Time Destructor. Then he tells Mavic Chen it is time to attend the final conference of the Galactic Council. Once Chen leaves, the Red Dalek asks the Black if it is time to eliminate Mavic Chen. “No,” the Black Dalek replies, “his arrogance and greed have a further use for us.”

In the TARDIS, the Doctor says that they have landed. Fortunately, the console is undamaged, though the directional unit has been destroyed beyond repair. The Doctor says that any excess energy must have been forced back into the directional unit. However, he says that this means their gambit has failed—they cannot return to Kembel, leaving the Daleks free to conquer the world. But when he looks on the scanner, he is amazed to discover that their surroundings look nothing like the Egyptian desert from the last episode. They have, in fact, returned to Kembel. He tells Steven to grab the impulse compass from the corner and they all go outside. The impulse compass is the tool that the monk used to find the TARDIS in Part 9. Like the TARDIS compass that the Doctor gave Ian in The Chase, the very existence of the impulse compass constitutes a plot hole for the rest of the series. That was another Terry Nation serial, and while I’m unwilling to lay the blame on him this time, it is suspicious that this specific plot hole has appeared in serials where he is credited and nowhere else.

Back in the conference room, the remaining ambassadors are complaining about the amount of time wasted on the folly of Mavic Chen and his taranium. The complaints are spearheaded by Snakeballs, who calls for a motion for Chen to be censured. At this moment, the Black Dalek and Chen enter the room; the Black Dalek demands silence, saying that Chen will address the meeting.

“Fellow delegates,” Chen begins. “Even as you sit here, the great war force assembled under the Daleks is awaiting the final order to set out and conquer the universe!”

“Why is Mavic Chen speaking for the Dalek Supreme?” asks the fissure-faced ambassador, Malpha, gesturing toward the Black Dalek. This moment, eleven episodes into a 12-part serial, is the first time that the narrative makes it clear to the audience that the Black Dalek and the Dalek Supreme are one and the same. Better late than never, I guess.

“Though we are all equal partners with the Daleks on this great conquest,” Chen retorts, “some of us are more equal than others.” The others are insulted, and they begin to shout for his arrest, banging on the table. One of the ambassadors, a creature in a white spacesuit with black straps across its torso, moves to strike Chen, but Chen pulls out a gun and shoots the creature dead. The ambassadors are stunned into silence, more appalled by the Dalek Supreme’s acceptance of this than the actual violence. “Before this conference began, the Dalek Supreme and I spoke together,” Chen says pompously. “This council now is under my power. I will give the orders. You will obey them.”

Out in the jungle, Steven and Sara are surprised to find that there are no more Varga plants in the jungle. They begin to question whether or not they are actually on Kembel. For no fucking reason at all, they turn around to find that the Doctor has disappeared.

Back in the conference room, the other ambassador’s make meek protestations over Chen’s rising power. But after a few moments, they all realize that the Dalek Supreme is no longer in the room with them. Chen tries the exit, but he finds that the doorway has been barred from the outside. However, his self-importance seems to override any concern he might have. “It is clear that he knows that I can run this council without his aid,” Chen says. “Now, gentlemen, we come to the main discussion before this meeting. The apportioning of the government of the universe after the conquest. All of you will be allowed to oversee your own galaxies, but all of you will be responsible to the Dalek Supreme and me.”

Suddenly, a contingent of Daleks enters the room. One of them declares that the meeting is over and demands that the ambassadors exit into the hall.

Out in the jungle, Steven and Sara are worried when they find no trace of the Doctor. Yet they know they must get to the Dalek city no matter what. Sara supposes that the Doctor has already gone to the city—though doing so in this manner would be entirely out of his character—suggesting that if they go there, they can stop the Daleks and find the Doctor. According to what the Doctor told him offscreen, Steven says that as long as they head toward bearing 242 on the impulse compass, they can find the Dalek city.

In Dalek central control, one Dalek reports to the Dalek Supreme that the ambassadors have all been detained. The Dalek Supreme announces, “They will be destroyed at the same time as the headquarters, at the start of the conquest of planet Earth. Commence invasion countdown.” I want you to keep in mind that at this point in the serial, we still don’t know anything specific about the Daleks’ invasion plans other than a grand allusion to conquest and power.

Outside, Steven and Sara have arrived at the spaceport with the ambassadors’ ships. They have an argument about how to proceed. In the previous scene, they already said they have to enter the city—this seems like a blatant attempt to eat up some runtime.

Once they enter the city proper, they are surprised to find no signs of life in the corridors, neither the Daleks and the ambassadors, nor the Doctor. They wander around the empty city for three whole minutes of nothing. Then, in Dalek central control, they find some sort of communicator. Sara speaks into it and is shocked to hear Mavic Chen on the other end of the line. Steven assumes that he has the Doctor, but Chen says he has no idea where the man is. Chen says that he and the rest of the ambassadors have been put in a detention cell.

For some reason, Steven chooses to believe Chen about the ambassadors being imprisoned but not about the Doctor not being with them. He tells Sara they must find the imprisoned council if they want to find the Doctor, and he and Sara rush out of the room. This makes zero sense. We know that Chen would have done anything to lure the two protagonists to come and free the ambassadors, and if the Doctor were there with them, there would be no better bait for the hook. The only reason Steven is being so uncharacteristically stupid here is, again, to pad the runtime.

Anyway, in the ambassadors’ cell, we get another incredibly out-of-character moment, this time coming from Mavic Chen. “It is clear they have lost their leader, the one they call the Doctor,” he says slowly. “The girl has brought the young man here to look for him, but really, she has come back out of loyalty to me! To ensure my safety as the Guardian of the Solar System.” What is going on here? The fabric of this serial is unwinding right before my eyes. Chen is deluded, but he’s not this stupid.

Next, Steven and Sara arrive at the cell. The ambassadors all say that because of their recent mistreatment, they have turned on the Daleks. They convince the protagonists that if they are let out, they can roust their respective galaxies and raise their armies to fight back against the Dalek invasion. Steven opens the cage.

Steven and Sara return to the spaceport to watch all the ambassadorial ships takeoff, all except Chen’s, which sits on the landing pad long after the others have left. After a long moment, Chen’s ship suddenly explodes in a ball of flame. “Now he won’t be able to get back to Earth and warn them,” Sara says in disbelief. They return to the jungle to look for the Doctor.

After another minute or so of creeping through the underbrush, they spy a distant Dalek. Following it, they discover a tunnel that leads deep underground, right into the heart of a mountain. Steven says that it is probable that all of the Daleks have gone down there and that that their only way to stop the Daleks is by entering the tunnel. “We’ve got to,” he implores. “Earth will still be invaded.”

“Certainly,” says a voice behind them. “Thanks to you.” They turn to see Chen standing behind them, holding them at gunpoint. He laughs about the exploded ship, calling it a pyrotechnical display. Then he points the protagonists toward the subterranean tunnel, ordering them to march. “I’m certain the Daleks will be delighted to see you,” he says. Credits roll.

Goddamn this episode was empty. Luckily, the conclusion is epic enough to save the narrative.

Part 12 (The Destruction of Time)

As the unlikely trio make their way into the tunnel, we get a bit of recovered footage, with Daleks in a control room making final adjustments. Now that we see the Time Destructor in actual footage, it’s a lot bigger than I thought it was. I had said it was the size of a basketball, but it’s closer to three feet in diameter.

Still at gunpoint, Steven and Sara try to reason with Mavic Chen, but he cannot be swayed away from aiding the Daleks, even after being imprisoned by them. A tinge of madness enters his voice. “I know [the Doctor] is trying to usurp my position among the Daleks…I find you at the entrance to the Daleks’ secret headquarters. I know the Doctor’s here and that he’s trying to take my place. But I’ll soon change that!…The Daleks need me. And now, I’ll be able to show them the Doctor would betray them.” Steven tries to lunge for Chen’s gun, but Chen rebuffs the attack. “Lead on,” he says.

Now I get what the showrunners were going for here, trying to show Mavic Chen drunk with power, grasping at anything to rationalize how he can still attain control over the universe, acting erratically. But it doesn’t work for me. The change came on too quickly, too out-of-the-blue. Without being properly set up, it doesn’t add another dimension to his character; it only weakens his character.

In this new underground control room, the Dalek Supreme orders the Time Destructor to be loaded into the lead ship of the invasion fleet. Then a Dalek makes a report, saying that Mavic Chen and two of the time travelers have been taken prisoner. “Have them brought here to main central control,” the Dalek Supreme commands.

Back in the corridors, Mavic Chen tries to convince a Dalek to let him escort the fugitives to central control himself, still convinced that the Daleks are still on his side. Once the Dalek receives an order from the Supreme, it allows Chen to do just that. Smugly, Chen turns to Steven and Sara, gesturing ahead of himself. “After you.” Yet the Daleks follow the humans closely, still clearly holding all three of them under guard.

When they arrive at Dalek central control, Mavic Chen begins to speak, his voice dripping with self-importance. “Once again, I, Mavic Chen, Guardian of the Solar System, have helped the Daleks with their conquest plan.”

“Our alliance has ended,” the Dalek Supreme says simply.

Chen is flabbergasted. “What? But I have helped you time and time again with your absurd incompetence! I, Mavic Chen, will decide when the alliance is at an end. You, Dalek Supreme, tell them they’re to take their orders from me.” The Daleks do not move or speak; they watch impassively. In a milder tone, Chen continues, “I assume this silence means that the orders have been passed. Good.” He turns to one of the Daleks. “You, bring me the invasion reports.” It doesn’t move. “It is essential that I know what stage that countdown has reached. Now, move!” Again, nothing. Chen rounds on the Dalek Supreme. “You did not pass on my order. Why?” Chen draws his gun. “Failure to obey the orders of your ruler brings only one reward.” He fires at the Dalek Supreme, but there is no effect.

The Daleks finally move, surrounding Chen to protect their leader. Chen drops his gun in dismay. “Take him away and exterminate him,” orders the Dalek Supreme, “but do not fire in here. You will damage us and some of the controls.”

“You cannot turn against me!” Chen splutters. “I, Mavic Chen, first ruler of the universe, am immortal!” He makes a break for it, running out into the hall. The Dalek Supreme orders the others to pursue and exterminate Chen, and they all roll out into the hallway.

Amidst the confusion, the Doctor is suddenly seen in the shadows near Steven and Sara. I don’t know why he left or why he is suddenly back, and although that still bugs me, I’m just happy to see him again so the plot can move forward. The Doctor quietly gives the two humans instructions, saying that once he gives the order, they are to follow bearing 627 on the impulse compass back to the TARDIS. As for what the Doctor plans to do, he says, “I am going to activate the Time Destructor.”

Out in the corridors, Chen is running away from a group of Daleks. “You will pay for your crimes against your ruler! You cannot kill me!” The Daleks shoot him, and he is dead before his body hits the ground.

Meanwhile, the Doctor activates the Time Destructor; it begins to beep like it did in Part 8. When the Daleks return, they find him standing in front of the exit, holding the activated Time Destructor out in front of himself, with Steven and Sara behind him. “No, you cannot fire, can you?” he says knowingly. “You dare not. If you were to, yes you could kill us, but you would totally destroy your equipment. I think it is checkmate. Send one of your Daleks over here. Remember, the time destructor is working. Working slowly, but if you disobey me, I can accelerate it!”

The Dalek Supreme orders a Dalek to do as the Doctor says, and the Doctor has Steven and Sara use it as a shield, wheeling it with them and using the Doctor’s cane to keep the Dalek’s gun pointed at the ground. As a group, they slowly back out into the hall. Once there, the Doctor tells Steven and Sara to get back to the TARDIS. They do, leaving the Doctor behind, but Sara regrets this almost immediately. She tells Steven that if the Doctor fails without them, then they will have doomed the Earth forever. Despite Sara’s reservations, Steven convinces her to keep going, and they flee into the jungle, following the impulse compass.

Meanwhile, as he is backing through a doorway, the Doctor give the Dalek hostage a hard shove, sending it flying toward the others. He presses the mechanism of the door, shoving his cloak into the mechanism to jam it shut. As he hurries through the corridors, the Doctor suddenly runs into Sara, who has come back to help. The Doctor seems very worried about this, saying, “You must remember, my child, this machine is working. It’s working slowly because its range is rather small at the moment, but it’s working. Now, if you start to feel strange, you must let me know at once.” They continue on.

Out in the jungle, Steven realizes that Sara has left him. He calls out for her a few times, then grumbles his frustration and continues on toward the TARDIS.

Some ways behind him, the Doctor and Sara exit the subterranean tunnels. Sara notices a wind gusting through the trees, saying that she’s never heard wind like that on Kembel before. “Perhaps it’s this Time Destructor having an effect on the elements,” the Doctor says. Sara tells him to destroy it, and he continues, “No, that’s impossible, my dear. There’s one thing I do know about this machine. It will continue until the taranium has finally burnt itself out. Our only chance is to get back to the TARDIS. Then I can neutralize it.” They keep moving.

Meanwhile, the Daleks finally manage to bypass the stuck door.

Elsewhere, Steven arrives at the TARDIS and stumbles inside.

Cut back to the Doctor and Sara, where suddenly, Sara is aging rapidly. In a very short time, she has gone well into her 70s, with a heavily wrinkled face and hair now completely gray. “Keep going,” she yells over the wind, her voice as aged as her face. “The Daleks must be after us by now.

A little behind them, the Daleks exit the tunnels.

The pace of the Doctor and Sara’s escape becomes increasingly slow, as the Doctor tries to help Sara along. She is becoming very infirm, losing her ability to walk.

Inside the TARDIS, Steven paces, frustrated that he can do nothing to help. He turns on the scanner.

The Daleks maintain their dogged pursuit. All around them the jungle is changing, plants withering and dying, lush foliage shriveling up and turning to dust. Apparently unmoved and unaffected by the vast power of the Time Destructor, the Daleks continue to close in on their quarry. Yet the effects are taking a heavy toll on both Sara and the Doctor, the latter of which is now also beginning to succumb to the effects of the Time Destructor. Frail and weak, the aging man stumbles onward, all too aware that time is quite literally running out for himself and his friend. At last they see the TARDIS ahead, but the Doctor can barely manage to stagger a few more steps before he falls to his knees, unable to go on. With a final desperate effort, Sara shoves the Doctor to his feet, and they stumble a few short paces further before the Doctor falls again. The time destructor slips from his fingers, rolling away to lie just inches from his hand. Beside him, Sara pitches forward in the dust, unable to remain upright. She barely has the strength to open her eyes, but she somehow finds the will. She attempts to claw her way over to the Time Destructor. “Doctor…” she says weakly. She falls again and is still.

Inside the TARDIS, Steven sees his friends enter the field of view of the scanner. His delight turns to horror as he realizes what is happening to them. He rushes outside to find a landscape vastly altered. There are no more trees or bushes; everything is an endless desert of dust. Frantically, he looks around for his friends until he finds an indistinct shape in the dust. It is Sara. A gust of wind seems to tug at her lifeless body; her skin withers away to the bones beneath, which crumble to dust and blow away with the wind.

Steven calls out her name in dismay, then staggers over to where the Doctor lies nearby. The Doctor has progressed to an extremely advanced age, but he is still clinging to life. Seeing the Time Destructor lying next to him, Steven falls to his knees, attempting to smash it. When this does nothing, he turns the device over in his hands, finding a switch on the side, which he flips. Nothing seems to happen, and Steven abandons the Time Destructor, turning his attention back to the Doctor. Amazingly, the Doctor seems to have regained a bit of his strength; he scrabbles across the ground toward the TARDIS.

Helping the Doctor to his feet, Steven leads the way back to the TARDIS through the screaming wind. With each step, they appear to gain a measure of their former vitality. Then they reach the TARDIS and stumble inside its sanctuary, the doors closing behind them.

Inside, the Doctor has been restored to his former visage and vitality. “Thank you, Steven,” the Doctor says gratefully. “By chance, you reversed the Time Destructor. Instead of rushing forward, it’s now racing back!” They don’t have time to mourn Sara just yet; as they watch the scanner, several Daleks appear.

Outside the doors, one of the Daleks fires at the Time Destructor in a last-ditch attempt to stop its terrible power, but the device is unharmed. The Daleks begin to spin out of control. Their exoskeletons start to decay, the casings splitting away to briefly reveal the tentacled creatures inside. The Daleks scream, slowly reducing in size until they regress into embryos, eventually fading away into nothing. I thought this was extremely profound. Time is an awesome force, and regardless of the direction it flows, it always destroys.

After a time, the Doctor and Steven step out of the TARDIS. “Oh, dust. Nothing but dust,” says the Doctor mournfully. On the ground, they find a twisted chunk of metal, all that remains of the Time Destructor. “Mavic Chen’s taranium core has finally burnt itself out.”

“I wish Sara could have seen the end,” Steven says.

“Yes, my boy. So do I. You know, Steven, the one thing that Sara lived for was to see the total destruction of the Daleks. Well, now it’s all over. Without her help, this could never have been achieved.” Then the Doctor bends down and scoops something out of the dust. He holds his hand out to Steven, revealing a tiny, round piece of organic matter. “Millions of years of progress reversed back. That’s all that remains of a Dalek.”

Steven is distraught by the whole turn of events. “Let’s go, Doctor. I’ve seen enough of this place.”

“Well, my boy, we finally rid this planet of Daleks.” Although the Doctor is trying to put a positive spin on things, his heart isn’t in it.

They begin the walk back to the TARDIS. Steven reads out the list of the dead. “Bret. Katarina. Steven.”

“What a waste,” says the Doctor. “What a terrible waste.”

They enter the TARDIS. It dematerializes. Credits roll.

Takeaways

I obviously have to start with the ending, because holy crap was it haunting. Even in the form of a reconstruction, which are legitimately difficult to watch even at their best, I was glued to my screen for the last fifteen minutes of Part 12. The idea of how the Time Destructor functions is brilliant, high-concept science fiction, only outdone by its incredible execution. The flight through the disintegrating forest was harrowing, and when Steven game out of the TARDIS to witness Sara become dust in the wind, I was devastated. I mentioned back in The Chase that the most mind-blowing moment of the series so far was when the fake Doctor in revealed himself by relying on outdated information and calling Vicki “Susan.” But that was just a thirty-second sequence. The ending of The Daleks’ Master Plan was an even better experience, and it lasted for almost two-thirds of the episode. I’m always hoping to be amazed whenever I dive into a new serial, but I think it will be a while before I encounter anything that tops this.

Unfortunately, when you take a step back and look at the Time Destructor in terms of what it was supposed to do for the Daleks, it starts to fall apart. The Daleks’ plan was one of universal domination. How was what the Time Destructor did supposed to help them accomplish that? It took fifty years to acquire the taranium that powered it, and it lasted, what, thirty minutes? Maybe an hour if there were some time skips? And unless the affected area was a lot larger than the serial made it seem, the Time Destructor only destroyed one planet, perhaps even just a part of it. The Dalek Supreme had ordered the device to be loaded onto the lead spaceship of their attack fleet, but then what? If they used it to destroy the Earth, it would have been a major blow to human civilization, but we’ve already established that humans have spread throughout the solar system, if not the galaxy. The Time Destructor wouldn’t have won the Daleks control of the solar system, not on its own—its effect on the entire universe would be infinitesimal.

And then there is Mavic Chen. For the most part, he was a serviceable antagonist. He was occasionally fun to watch, and I really enjoyed the contention between him and Karlton, even if it was dropped almost immediately. However, his motivations were opaque at best and downright confusing at worst. The concept of personal ambition can only take a character so far. We needed to see more of what he would actually do with that power. A few examples of how he currently misused his powers as Guardian would have been enough—from that information, the audience could have extrapolated what his universal rule might have looked like. But aside from a few instances of corruption, we got nothing. Additionally, I found his quick descent into madness in Part 12 to be extremely unsatisfying and a poor way to close out his character.

I can’t go without mentioning the star of the second half, Peter Butterworth’s monk. He was a delight, a much needed pick-me-up in an otherwise flagging narrative. It never failed to amuse me whenever he tried to switch teams, often right in front of the opposing party. He didn’t play a major role in this serial, but he was a welcome distraction. It’s a shame he never comes back to television.

Then there were the supporting characters. The not-companion Katarina, a holdover from The Myth Makers, was a hollow shell who never felt like she belonged—and not just because she was plucked out of her time. Her sole personality trait was being from ancient Troy, which as I’ve already mentioned, is not a personality trait. Nothing about her worked. Still, it was sad moment when she died, and it set a somber tone that would be reinforced with future deaths. It’s just a shame that the only value of her character was in being killed off.

Bret Vyon was a great addition to the supporting cast. He started out as a hardnosed soldier trapped behind enemy lines, lashing out at anything and everything to get back to Earth. But as he progressed from a grudging ally of the Doctor’s to a valuable member of the team, I found myself liking him very quickly. I enjoyed his often harsh back-and-forths with the Doctor, and I can’t wait to revisit Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to get more of Nicholas Courtney’s acting.

Last but not least, I thought Sara Kingdom was a decent character. I didn’t like her quite as much as Bret, but I think that has a lot to do with her being in some of the weaker episodes of the serial. I thought she should have been much more affected by killing her own brother—she got over that trauma way too quickly for my liking. It was nice to see a woman take the role of badass action hero in Part 9, and although Part 11 was by far the worst canon episode of the serial, there was some okay banter between her and Steven, reminiscent of the dynamic between Steven and Vicki in The Time Meddler. By far her best moment was when she used the last bit of strength in her aging body to push the Doctor to his feet, struggling through her own demise so that he might live.

Overall, I stick by what I said at the end of my previous review—I remembered The Daleks’ Master Plan as a narrative that was hindered by its extreme length, and I that opinion has only been strengthened by another two viewings. Honestly, if the story were rewritten so that the conclusion happened in Part 4 instead of Part 12, with Bret or Katarina being the one to die to the Time Destructor instead of Sara, I think this serial would have been firmly established among my top five serials to this point. However, aside from the climax, the second half of this serial was nothing to write home about, and the momentum completely died after the Doctor was taken from the narrative in Part 11.

Looking forward, I thought that such a lengthy review would take a lot out of me, but it ended up doing the opposite. I feel invigorated, like I really accomplished something. Next up is The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve, which I remember absolutely nothing about, except that it’s another historical and that it introduces the dreaded Dodo into the pantheon of companions. I’m so not looking forward to having her in my life for the next few weeks. However, she doesn’t feature at all in the next serial until the final few minutes, and I’m excited to be going into a serial without any expectations. I really hope Steven is given more of a chance to shine away from the Doctor, and I’m curious to see how he and the Doctor reckon with the trauma induced by the events on the planet Kembel.

Rating: 6.6/10

Chapter Text

3.5 – The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve

Thesis: We’ve Seen This Already

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A Doctor Who serial set in a Paris beset by civil unrest. Two factions driven by staunch fundamentalism who are propagating atrocities throughout France. William Hartnell playing the role of the authoritative administrator with close ties to power. And a ruthless tyrant harnessing the unchecked power of the mob to brutalize and murder their political opponents. If you think this describes The Reign of Terror, a serial from Season 1, then you would be correct. Though not without marginal differences, The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve also matches this description. However, all of the things that made The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve different were worse in every conceivable way.

This review will be a bit different from the others I have written. Because this serial is so derivative of The Reign of Terror, it is impossible to look at this story without making the primary focus how the two serials compare. However, I do suspect that this won’t be the last serial to do something like this. With forty-and-counting seasons of Doctor Who narratives, there is bound to be a good measure of rehashing as old ideas are brought back for a fresh take. I just hope they aren’t all as crappy as this.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial. I am experiencing it in the format of a telesnap reconstruction, which is essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (War of God)

This serial opens on a city street, narrow and dirty. At the far end is a small, garage-like enclosure behind a small wooden gate. The wheeze of the materializing TARDIS begins, and the flash of the light on top of the police box is just visible over the slats of the gate. A moment later, the Doctor and Steven emerge from the enclosure. I know that this was probably some budgetary or spatial constraint that didn’t allow for the actual TARDIS to be used in this scene, but I like how it has appeared in a hidden location for a change. It’s been nearly a full season since we’ve had a historical where the appearance of the TARDIS wasn’t a point of curiosity for the local populace, not since The Crusade where it was hidden in a forest.

The Doctor says that they have landed in France, pointing out the sign that identifies the street as the Rue de Bethisy. When Steven asks the Doctor about the date, the Doctor looks at the architecture and says, “Medieval. Although I suppose it might be as late as the 17th century.” The two then duck into the shadows when Steven sees a man approaching. Like so many Doctor Who supporting characters that have come before, he has short dark hair and a neatly cropped goatee, and he wears a crisp velvet coat that bespeaks wealth. He knocks on a door of a house, asks for Nicholas Muss, and is admitted inside.

After this exchange, the Doctor has somehow narrowed the time of their arrival to the middle of the 16th century. You could assume that he bases this on the manner of the man’s clothing—I looked up the name Nicholas Muss, and from a quick Google search, he doesn’t appear to have been a real historical figure. However, when the Doctor or any other character figures out a piece of information, it is always better to let the audience in on how they got to that conclusion. Even though this would be telling instead of showing, it is better than an unexplained leap of logic.

In bit of exposition, the Doctor tells Steven that this time period was ripe with men of science who were making important discoveries, one of which, a man named Preslin, lives in Paris. “The most advanced man of them all,” the Doctor remarks. “I must try to get to see him.” The Doctor and Steven have landed in Paris, but at no point has the narrative made that fact known to the audience. It’s likely that the viewers made that assumption, and their location is reinforced in the very next scene. But this serial is setting a concerning precedent of glossing over the details.

Inside the house, the man in the velvet coat, named Gaston—the Frenchest of names—has a conversation with the aforementioned Nicholas Muss. Nicholas is another man in a fine coat with dark hair, though his face is clean-shaven. He looks perhaps ten years younger than Gaston. “You’re too cautious, Nicholas,” says Gaston. “The Catholics know of only one way to settle our differences.” Nicholas urges tact, saying that they must keep the peace, not provoke fights.

Back outside, the Doctor suggests they go back into the TARDIS and change into period-appropriate clothing. “Well, have you got the right clothes?” Steven says doubtfully. I don’t get this line. Steven’s been familiar with the TARDIS wardrobe for a while, enough so that in The Myth Makers, he found ancient Greek garb without the Doctor’s aid. He should not be skeptical of the wardrobe here. Regardless, the Doctor and Steven return to the ship.

Meanwhile, Gaston and Nicholas have arrived at a tavern, where Gaston is about to make a toast. “Now, is everybody’s mug filled?” he asks. “Then drink to Henri of Navarre, our Protestant prince!” All of the men shout Henri’s name and take a sip of their drink.

As they do so, a new character makes his voice heard. “And to his bride, our Catholic princess.” He is yet another man with short dark hair, though his hair is curly and he wears an Elizabethan collar above his fine coat. We’re starting to slip into the territory where it’s hard to keep these character’s straight. Not as bad as the Thals in The Daleks or the Sensorites, but it’s not great. Just one blonde man would go a long way.

At the mention of the Catholic princess, Gaston makes a show of gagging and spluttering his sip of wine back into his cup. Then he swaggers up to the landlord of the tavern, and in a bombastic cadence meant to be heard by the whole room, he insults the quality of the landlord’s wine, calling it “A thin Catholic brew.” In this exchange, we learn that the landlord has the most obnoxious peasant accent ever crafted in entertainment media. It’s a cringing, lispy cockney spat through pursed lips, almost unintelligible at times. This awful artistic choice yanks me out of the story whenever the landlord speaks.

Nicholas yells for Gaston to stop antagonizing the unknown man, but the deed has already been done. The man calls Gaston out for insulting the princess, using Gaston’s proper title, viscount, but making it sound like an insult. Gaston looks the man up and down, identifying him as Simon Duvall, adding, “No doubt you visit this tavern because the air is clearer of rigid Catholic dogma.”

Nicholas tries to deescalate the situation, stepping in for his friend and telling Duvall that Gaston meant no insult to the princess, and that he merely choked. Perhaps it was the reconstruction not communicating this scene properly, but I was under the impression that the perceived insult was the very direct, explicit referral to subpar wine as a “weak Catholic brew,” not the spluttering of wine that occurred almost a minute ago. It seems like the type of opacity that wouldn’t be any clearer even if I had access to the original footage.

Regardless, Duvall gives Gaston another chance, once again raising his glass and announcing a toast to the princess. Nicholas shoots a glare at Gaston, but Gaston ignores the warning, waiting until Duvall has turned his back and spitting the wine back into his cup again, to the uproarious laughter of the other patrons.

Disgusted, Duvall goes over to the landlord, who tells him that most of the men in the tavern are in the service of the Admiral de Coligny. “I have to serve them, sir,” he says in that ridiculous simper. “I hate these Huguenots as much as the next man, but I have to live.” Duvall tosses the landlord a few coins, asking him to keep a close watch on the men and report to Duvall anything important that he might hear. Then Duvall leaves, giving one last slight to Gaston on his way out the door.

At this point, the crux of the serial’s conflict is obvious: Huguenots vs Catholics and the religious turmoil of the Protestant Reformation. Now, I’ve already drawn conclusions about how repetitive this serial is, and how much it is derived from The Reign of Terror, but I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how it didn’t have to be that way. It might seem counterintuitive, but the fact that this serial draws so many parallels isn’t in itself what makes it bad. In fact, I think that this serial could benefit from being much more explicit about how it relates to the Doctor’s time in revolutionary France. No, the problem is in how The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve uses all the right parallels to draw all the wrong conclusions.

First, I need to address the obvious religious critique of the serial, which I find to be complete nonsense. Think back to how The Reign of Terror was structured. The Doctor’s companions end up embedded with a group of wealthy centrists who make many attempts to stay neutral between the revolutionaries and the royalists. In the end, they are forced to flee Paris, a distinct representation of the death of normalcy at the hands of rabid fundamentalism and unchecked fascism. Although a very complex topic, the humanization of the centrists and the scenes with the Doctor and manic Robespierre made the moral of the story easy to digest.

The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve is based on a real historical event in which the attempted assassination of a Protestant figure in Paris led to the murder of thousands of Protestants throughout France at the hands of the Catholics. Instead of a group of centrists, Steven ends up spending a lot of time with the Protestant cohort. Although there is the obvious bigotry of Protestant characters like Gaston, more of them are like Nicholas Muss: down-to-earth realists looking to establish safety in a hostile territory. Compare that with the Catholics, who will conspire to murder Protestant Admiral de Coligny in order to reinflame religious tensions in the French capital. When this doesn’t work, they will callously murder their own leader, blame it on the Protestants, and trigger a massacre of Protestant civilians that sweeps through the nation over the coming weeks. And yes, I agree with the decision to paint this atrocity in a very negative light; I’m not trying to say otherwise. But over the next few centuries, there will be myriad atrocities perpetrated by both sides, as heads of state switch from Catholic to Protestant and vice versa.

Instead of The Reign of Terror, which called attention to the dangers of fundamentalism, this comes across as pointed anti-Catholic rhetoric. Consider that this was written in the mid-1960s, right in the middle of a movement among the world’s Catholics to modernize and distance themselves from the Catholicism of the Industrial Age and before. With this context, The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve feels like an attempt by the writers to paint this modernization as nothing but a rebranding exercise meant to attract an increasingly globally oriented populace. And if this was where the critique ended, I would have no problem with it. I fully endorse the idea that the Roman Catholic Church as an institution has not been made to properly reckon with the harm it caused as a corrupt power center in the Middle Ages, and that it continues to make similar mistakes in the modern era because of its failure to address its past. If you find this to be controversial, I suggest you look into just how systemic the cover-ups were when it came to Catholic Church figures sexually abusing children. This stuff gets very dark.

But the critique of The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve doesn’t stop at redressing the grievances perpetuated by the Catholic Church. It also minimizes the atrocities of the Protestants by portraying Catholics as the uniquely prejudiced killers of the narrative, when we know there have been many instances of Protestant rulers acting in the exact same manner, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Catholics up and down Europe. Instead of holding up a mirror to the history of Roman Catholicism and pointing out its flaws, this serial holds up Protestants as better and more noble actors than the Catholics, which is just blatant historical revisionism.

As I sat through my first watch-through of this serial, I wasn’t sure if the way I perceived its religious critique was deliberately malicious on the part of the writers or if it was an unintended byproduct of careless writing. After all, there are instances of characters like Gaston, Protestants who show an almost gleeful bloodlust for Catholics—it is possible that there was meant to be a critique of both sides that just wildly missed the mark. However, there is one historical discrepancy in this story that really gives me pause. After the Doctor and Steven have fled back to the TARDIS, they argue about the safety of a supporting character they left behind. “Most of them [died],” the Doctor says. “About ten thousand in Paris alone.” As far as I can tell, this is a straight-up fabrication. For most historians, ten thousand is comfortably within the estimated death total of Protestants in the entire country. Estimates in Paris are between two and three thousand, making the Doctor’s line an overestimate by as much as 500%.

And again, you could argue that this is another consequence of careless writing. But this is a situation where either the writers have accidentally depicted Protestants as the moral paragons of medieval Europe, or it was done on purpose. Neither option is good. Plus, at a certain point, intentionality ceases to matter. Regardless of whether or not the writers meant to take this stance with their critique, that is how I have perceived it. And if enough of the audience perceives it in the same way, that then becomes the critique.

But it didn’t have to be this way. Imagine a scenario where the Doctor lands in Paris, takes a look around at the religious turmoil, and immediately says a few lines about how he’s experienced something similar before. He tells Steven about the fascistic fundamentalism of the French revolutionaries, of innocent people led to the guillotine on the suspicions of a neighbor or a friend. Only this is worse, not because one side or the other is a paragon of nobility and morality, but because this religious fighting will persist for centuries and swallow entire continents. Steven doesn’t necessarily have to fall in with a neutral party, but it could be made abundantly clear that there are rabid fundamentalists on both sides of the conflict—that this is, in fact, the defining characteristic of all religious conflict. And when the Doctor gives his anecdote about how many Protestants were murdered, he should draw comparisons to Protestant atrocities, showing how violence begets violence and how difficult it can be to break that cycle.

That’s what this serial needed. Make the parallels between this serial and The Reign of Terror stronger and much more deliberate. Demonstrate the fascist tendencies of fundamentalism, regardless of whether the ideology is secular or religious. And let the audience reckon with the real violence perpetuated by both sides. It’s certainly not an easy topic to get right. It requires a deft touch and an ability to thread the needle between being historically accurate and not offending a viewer’s deeply held religious convictions. But then, if the writers weren’t willing to approach such a topic with a high level of delicacy and understanding, they should have written about something else.

Moving on, after Duvall leaves the tavern, Steven and the Doctor enter the scene, ordering some drinks from the landlord. The Doctor is still very excited about the prospect of meeting the scientist Preslin, but when Steven doesn’t share this interest, the Doctor gives it up, doubting that Steven could make it in medieval Paris on his own. Steven insists that the Doctor go off in search of Preslin, saying that he is quite capable of spending a few hours alone in Paris. The Doctor then gives Steven a few gold coins and says they will meet back in the tavern this evening and return to the TARDIS. I wasn’t sure if the Doctor going off on his own should count as someone wandering off, as Steven technically agrees to the departure. However, it is such a contrived way of splitting up the protagonists that I feel compelled to add it to my list, giving us SomeoneWandersOff #7.

As the Doctor leaves, he bumps into a man we have not yet met—yet another man with dark hair wearing finery. The Doctor apologies and slides out the door, but the man seems to recognize the Doctor. He follows him outside.

Seeing this transpire, Steven rises from the bar and makes to go after the Doctor to ensure his safety, but as he turns to the door, the cringing landlord makes a snarky remark about people usually paying for their drinks before leaving. Steven tries to give the landlord a gold coin and exit quickly, but the landlord makes a fuss about not being able to make change for gold. This forces Steven to argue with the landlord about making change, which I don’t understand. It’s not Steven’s money in the first place, and if he really thinks the Doctor is in danger, I don’t know why he doesn’t just tell the man to keep the change and leave.

At any rate, Nicholas Muss hears the commotion and comes over to mediate, and he ends up covering Steven’s tab. By now, a minute has passed since the mysterious man followed the Doctor outside, and Steven realizes that it would be futile to go after them without knowing Paris. He asks Nicholas if he knows how to get to Port Saint Martin, which is the neighborhood where the Doctor said he was headed. Nicholas tells him that he knows the neighborhood but that it is a very difficult place to find. Steven then tells Nicholas, “The friend who was with me has gone there. When he left here, it looked as though he was followed.”

Nicholas asks, “The old man?” Keep this line in mind—Nicholas has seen the Doctor before.

Steven tells Nicholas that he went to talk to a scientist about some idea, which Nicholas says is a dangerous thing to do. Nicholas doesn’t make it explicit, but the implication is that it isn’t safe to be a man of science in a city consumed by religious fanaticism. This is a really interesting dynamic to explore, but aside from an extraneous and confusing mystery later on, it goes nowhere. Just before the scene ends, Nicholas invites Steven to his table, telling Steven that he and his friends will personally take him to Port Saint Martin later in the day. “Allow us to be your guides,” he says genially.

Elsewhere in Paris, the Doctor has arrived at a white door with a small sign identifying the establishment as the shop of Charles Preslin. The scene cuts to the inside of the shop, where an old man with thinning white hair and a harried look is frantically shoving items into a large bag. When the Doctor knocks on the door, the man freezes, making no move for the door. After several more knocks, the Doctor tries the handle, and finding it unlocked, he lets himself inside.

The man grumpily asks the Doctor what he wants, saying that Preslin no longer lives here and that he has left Paris. Once the Doctor makes it clear that he is interested in praising Preslin’s work and not haranguing him for it, the man identifies himself as Preslin—which was obvious from the jump—and the two begin a conversation about microscopic organisms until the end of the scene.

Two things bother me about this scene. First, the man clearly identifies himself as Charles Preslin, backing this up with his scientific knowledge. Keep this in mind, too—it doesn’t bother me now, but it will piss me off in a few scenes. And second, when the Doctor finds out that Preslin is considering retiring from his profession in light of the religious persecution he faces, the Doctor says this: “There’s a man in Germany at the moment who’s working on optics, trying to make a machine which will enable [you] to see these small creatures. He calls them germs.” Now, the Doctor has explicitly spoken several times about how important it is not to mess with the course of history. After the Doctor’s experiences in The Romans and The Time Meddler, I figured the Doctor’s sentiment more likely means that one ought not mess with the course of history.

But this directive has been totally contradicted by the Doctor in the last two historicals, first when he gave Odysseus the key to flying machines in The Myth Makers and here when he gives Preslin scientific information that persuades him to continue his research. How is this not changing the course of history? We don’t know if Preslin would have otherwise discovered this information on his own. The Doctor spoke highly of Preslin’s brilliance, but it is very possible that the Doctor himself has just planted that seed of brilliance in Preslin’s future.

This is a dynamic that always confused me about how time travel in this universe is supposed to work. Instead of the traditional Butterfly Effect, where tiny changes in the past can result in massive changes later on in the timeline, I have conceptualized what I referred to in my review of The Time Meddler as the Reverse Butterfly Effect. Instead of a series of cascading alterations that spiral outward into the timeline, time will in essence heal itself, provided the change is small enough for the timeline to course correct on its own. I don’t know exactly how inconsequential a change to the past has to be for this to occur, but that’s a topic for another rant. My point is: the rules of the world are unclear, and lots of external justifications are necessary for its contradictions to make sense. The modern series tries to square this circle by adding in the concept of fixed points, where certain things must always happen and everything else is in a state of temporal flux. And while this does a lot to clarify the rules, there are still plenty of contradictions after we learn about them.

But regardless of what is to come, I don’t like when the Doctor completely disregards the rules that he has set up for his companions to follow. It’s not that he does this—I see a way this could be done to demonstrate a hypocrisy with how he comports himself in history and how he expects others to act. No, it’s how he does this. There is no self-reflection by the Doctor in these instances, not even a hint of a suggestion that he might be contradicting his own rules. It’s like the writers don’t take these rules seriously, or that one writer doesn’t know what has been established by another in a prior serial. This points to something that I suggested in The Myth Makers: that at this point in Doctor Who’s history, the writers do not have a worldbuilding bible to keep track of how the universe functions. Even in spite of that, it is still the job of the showrunners to ensure that the universe is internally consistent; a worldbuilding bible is just one tool that can be used to support this endeavor. Regardless of how the writers interacted or how the script editors and executives kept things in line, such massive discrepancies in the Doctor’s characterization are unacceptable.

Cut back to the tavern, where Gaston is questioning Steven about his background and motivations. Nicholas tells Steven that Gaston means no offense and that he is just suspicious by nature. Gaston responds with this clunky bit of exposition: “Don’t mock me, Nicholas. I’m in France to protect my master, Henri of Navarre, just as you are to protect [Admiral] de Coligny.” Steven says that he is English and has been travelling abroad, adding that he has no idea what’s been happening in France. When Gaston asks Steven where he has been, Steven stutters for a moment before saying Egypt, which is a fun little throwback to The Daleks’ Master Plan. Made a bit uneasy by Gaston’s suspicion, Steven tells the others that he must leave for Port Saint Martin if he is to find his friend, and Nicholas gets up from the table to show him the way.

In another part of Paris, a young girl runs out of a wooden door into the city streets, looking over her shoulder as if pursued. She looks to be about fifteen, with long brown hair, a white blouse, and a gray, ankle-length skirt. Compared to the finery of the characters we have seen thus far, her clothes are decidedly plain, and her face is smudged as if she has been doing some dirty work. Moments after she exits the establishment, several armed men burst from the door, looking around the street. The girl ducks behind a cart and dashes around a corner, but the guards spot her, chasing her offscreen.

Outside the tavern, we rejoin Steven and Nicholas just as Nicholas has finished giving Steven directions to Port Saint Martin. At this moment, the brown-haired girl comes running down the street; she bumps into Steven and dashes inside the tavern, with the guards still on her heels.

Cut to the inside of the tavern, where the guards are stopped just inside the door by a hostile Gaston. A guard asks where the girl has gone, but Gaston looks the guards up and down, none too quick about answering the question. “My Lord Cardinal’s guard, aren’t you?” he sneers. “What does he want with a wench?” I missed this the first time, but the implication is that the cardinal, a man who professes piety and abstinence, sleeps with prostitutes. Like I mentioned before, this is another example of what I believe to be anti-Catholic rhetoric. This was a practice that was commonplace among some corrupt clergymen of the medieval Catholic Church. But when this point is made immediately after the writers have humanized the Protestants in the narrative, even militant Protestants like Gaston, it comes across as more deflection and historical revisionism.

Anyway, a guard tells Gaston that the girl is a servant who ran away and that they have orders to bring her back. Gaston makes no move to let them pass, and the guards look around the tavern, realizing that they are outnumbered by armed Protestants. A guard tells the room that his master, the Abbot of Amboise, will hear about this, and he and his compatriots leave. Gaston is disappointed, telling Steven that he was hoping to goad the Catholics into a fight—apparently, Steven entered just after the Catholic guards, though this doesn’t come across in the reconstruction. Steven asks about the girl, but Gaston dismisses her as just a servant. Telling Steven that it is too dangerous to be alone in the streets, Gaston convinces Steven to rejoin their table.

Back in Preslin’s shop, we rejoin the Doctor and Preslin in the middle of conversation, where the Doctor asks, “But who is this abbot?” This is something that has come up a few times before, where a question or idea brought up by characters in one scene are answered by characters in another. I love the way this moves multiple subplots forward while maintaining the momentum of the narrative. Preslin says that the Abbot of Amboise is a religious leader in the Catholic Church who hates scientists and wants to see men like himself arrested for heresy. “We shall be hunted down,” Preslin says emphatically, trying to make the Doctor see the severity of the situation.

When the Doctor suggests going to see the abbot, Preslin makes it very clear that doing so is a surefire way for him to end up in prison. We get a closeup still of the Doctor looking pensive, muttering, “Hmm, I wonder.” This is the setup to a very unsatisfying and unrealistic plot point that will carry the next three episodes.

Meanwhile, in the tavern, Steven is still concerned about the girl, wondering what could have frightened her so much. Gaston continues to be dismissive about her, though when he spies her lurking toward the door, he roughly grabs her and shoves her over to Steven, saying, “My friend here…wants to know why you’re frightened.” By this point, I had already written Gaston off as a bad person, but the way he is so willing to torment a young girl, as if she is only there for his amusement, cements this impression.

Steven tells Gaston to lay off before turning to the girl and gently asking what scared her. Still uneasy but responding to Steven’s kindness, the girl tells the men that she has come from Vassy, a town which we learn in this scene has recently seen hundreds of Protestants slaughtered by Catholics. The girl, who identifies herself as Anne Chaplet, says that her father died in Vassy and that she heard tell in the house of the abbot that something similar was to happen in Paris before the week was out. This gets the attention of the Protestants in the room, and Nicholas asks Anne to tell them everything she remembers about what she heard.

Next, we see the residence of the Abbot of Amboise, where the emptyhanded guards return to report their failure to Duvall, the Catholic man from earlier in the tavern. Duvall lambasts them, asking what they could have said to make the girl run off in the first place. “I think we mentioned Vassy and the celebrations in Paris,” one answers, “but nothing that anyone could’ve made head or tail of.”

“She made something of it!” Duvall snaps. He orders one of the guards to go out and continue the search, then tells the captain to report his failure directly to the abbot. To a third guard, he says, “Find out if she has any relations in Paris. If she has, seek them out and find if she’s fled there. That girl must be found.” I like the way this scene establishes the urgency the Catholics feel about the information Anne may have overheard, but I don’t understand why none of the guards mentioned that she has holed up in a tavern. It seems like a massive oversight, an artificial way for the writers to make the search for Anne last longer than necessary.

Back in the tavern, Anne has finished her story. Nicholas and Gaston agree that she must be protected, so Nicholas tells Anne to go to the house of Admiral de Coligny, where she can work in the kitchens. When Anne has left the tavern, Nicholas turns grimly to Steven, telling him that he has arrived in Paris at a bad time. “My English friend, it’s really quite simple. Henri of Navarre is a Huguenot, a Protestant prince. Yesterday, he married Marguerite of France, a Catholic. The marriage was arranged by the Queen Mother in the hope that it would heal the religious wound that’s tearing France in two. But in the light of what that girl overheard, it looks as if the Catholics are plotting against Navarre’s life.” With this, Nicholas and the rest of the men leave to ensure the safety of Navarre and de Coligny, leaving Steven alone in the tavern to await the Doctor’s return.

Meanwhile, at Preslin’s shop, a young boy enters the door and is given a coin by Preslin. The Doctor is no longer present, and Preslin soon makes it clear why. “You showed the old man the way?” he asks the boy. “Good. I only hope he succeeds. You were not seen?” The boy shakes his head. “Let’s hope not. You’ve done well.” The boy leaves, and Preslin looks on wistfully. “Good luck, old man. Good luck.” The implication here is that the Doctor has gone to see the Abbot of Amboise about his anti-science views.

Later that evening, Duvall returns to the tavern to ask the landlord about what he has seen and heard regarding the Protestants. The landlord talks about Anne, saying that he saw her being questioned by Nicholas, Gaston, and an unknown Englishman, pointing toward the table where Steven still waits for the Doctor. The landlord adds that Anne has been sent to work in the house of Admiral de Coligny, and Duvall thanks him before crossing the room to Steven.

Next, Duvall makes some small talk with Steven, who tries to make it clear that he is uninvolved with the religious schism in Paris. There is something very similar between Steven’s dialogue and the position of the supporting characters in The Reign of Terror, but much like the idea of science being heresy, this is hardly touched upon in the rest of the serial. Like I said, the parallels between the two serials are a constant undertone of The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, but without properly acknowledging them, this serial comes off as way more derivative than it would if the writers had given a few simple nods toward The Reign of Terror.

Once Duvall learns that Steven is waiting for a friend, he goes back to the landlord and tells the man to keep an eye out for whomever that might be. As the two men talk, Nicholas reenters the scene and spots Steven still sitting at a table. Nicholas tells Steven that the curfew is about to begin, much to the dismay of Steven, who was unaware there was a curfew. Luckily, Nicholas offers him a place to sleep at the residence of the Admiral de Coligny, and the two men leave. As the scene comes to a close, Duvall wonders aloud about what the Protestants are up to and why the English are getting involved.

Back at the house of the abbot, the guard finally has his audience with the Abbot of Amboise, to whom he speaks apologetically about letting the serving girl escape. “I’m sure she couldn’t have made any sense of what we said,” he explains. “Simon Duvall has gone to the inn where she escaped, and the captain has gone to find an aunt of hers. I’m certain that it’s only a matter of time. In fact, one of them may be bringing her back here now.” Throughout this exchange, we only see the back of the abbot’s white-haired head.

Before the abbot can respond, Duvall enters the room, saying, “The missing girl is at the house of Admiral de Coligny.”

The Abbot of Amboise turns, and we see that he has the exact same appearance as the Doctor. “Fetch her tomorrow. Bring her to me.” Credits roll.

Is this the Doctor? Is this someone who just looks uncannily like the Doctor? This is such an intriguing setup, but by the end of the serial, this plot line will be so badly bungled that I couldn’t care less. Let’s see if that opinion persists after a closer watch.

Part 2 (The Sea Beggar)

At the house of Admiral de Coligny, it is now morning. Gaston is complaining to Nicholas Muss, saying, “I tell you, Nicholas, he refuses to take any precautions. Our noble lord, Henri of Navarre, will not believe that the Catholics are plotting to kill him.” It seems like Gaston’s primary role thus far has been to angrily deliver some clunky exposition to the audience. Nicholas says that Navarre must be seen to be especially trusting of Catholics because of his marriage to the king’s sister, the Catholic princess.

When Gaston asks Nicholas if he told Navarre about what the servant girl, Anne, overheard, Nicholas tells him that Navarre refuses to pay attention to the story of a servant. “I’ve done what I can,” Nicholas says resignedly. “Now, we must wait until we find out something more, or for the Catholics to make a move.” Gaston asks Nicholas where Steven has gone, and Nicholas tells him that he’s returned to the tavern to find his friend.

At the tavern, Steven knocks on the door, which is answered by the landlord. Steven asks the landlord if he has seen the Doctor, becoming increasingly aggressive at the landlord’s obstinance. It’s clear that the landlord dislikes Steven, perceiving him as a Huguenot for the company he kept last night. “We’re closed,” the landlord declares in that stupid simpering accent. “I’ve got work to do. If you need help, go and ask it of your Huguenot friends.” He shuts the door in Steven’s face.

Back at the house of de Coligny, Gaston and Nicholas argue about how to interpret Anne’s story, with Nicholas suggesting that the girl drew the wrong conclusion from hearing the word “Vassey” and Gaston insisting that they view this as a serious Catholic threat. The argument is interrupted when Steven is escorted in by a servant, apologizing for being a bother, telling them that there wasn’t any sign of the Doctor at the tavern. Nicholas says that he will take Steven to Port Saint Martin personally.

But before they can leave, Gaston looks out a window and says that they have a visitor: Roger Colbert, secretary to the Abbot of Amboise during his stay in Paris. A moment later, Roger enters, addressing Nicholas. “Forgive me for calling on you like this,” he begins, “but I believe that yesterday you were put to some inconvenience by a servant from the household of the Abbot of Amboise…I understand she overheard someone say something and was frightened by it. She ran away, and I hear that you kindly gave her refuge in the Admiral’s kitchens.” He goes on to explain that someone in the abbot’s house mentioned the name of the town of Vassy, unrelated to the massacre of Protestants that took place there.

After his long explanation, Anne enters the scene, noticing Roger’s presence with a panicked look on her face. Gaston quickly shoes her from the room, but Roger saw exactly who it was and points her out as Anne Chaplet. Gaston tells Roger that he must be mistaken, saying that the girl is named Genevieve and has been working in the admiral’s service for a while. Roger doesn’t look convinced, but he apologizes for his intrusion and takes his leave.

Peering back out the window, Gaston notes with amusement that the abbot himself has come with Roger’s entourage. When we get a shot of the street below, we clearly see William Hartnell standing next to a carriage, speaking with Roger. This isn’t Hartnell as a character who looks vaguely like the Doctor. This is Hartnell as the Doctor. The most reasonable assumption is that the Doctor is pretending to be the Abbot of Amboise for some reason—after all, when he left Preslin’s shop, the assumption was that he was off to see the abbot. If it turns out that this is just a person who looks uncannily like the Doctor, it would shatter my suspension of disbelief. You don’t just walk into a city and find someone with the exact same features as yourself. It is estimated that the odds of the odds of a single person having a doppelganger anywhere else on the planet is 1 in 135 billion, meaning it is unlikely there is even a single matching pair currently on Earth.

This is a trope that will crop up a few times in Classic Who, and I hate it almost every time. In this serial, it makes no sense logistically or thematically. The only reason it is in this narrative is to be a subversion of what happened to the Doctor in The Reign of Terror. There, we saw him bluff his way into the position of regional officer of the French revolutionary government. Here, we don’t get to see how the Doctor interacted with the abbot, if he even met the man at all. We are left guessing whether or not this is actually the Doctor, except that one of the options is so ridiculously unlikely that it feels like an insult to my intelligence.

I’m sure you can tell by my tone that the Abbot of Amboise does end up being a happenstance doppelganger. We will see this again with the 2nd Doctor in The Enemy of the World and again with the companion Nyssa in Black Orchid, a serial from the 5th Doctor’s run. Aside from the thrill of seeing Patrick Troughton play the role of the villain, I always have difficulty buying into a premise so unlikely. It doesn’t help that the stories with these lookalikes are bad in a lot of other ways—there is not enough good to distract from the irrationality of the premise. Regardless, I can’t help but knock a point or two off my serial rating based on the lookalikes alone.

Moving on, when Steven looks out of the window and thinks that the man down on the street is the Doctor, Gaston and Nicholas immediately become suspicious, with Gaston accusing Steven of being a Catholic spy. Steven denies this, saying that once Nicholas takes him to Port Saint Martin, they will know the Doctor bears an uncanny resemblance to the abbot. Gaston writes this off as an obvious trap, but Nicholas is willing to hear him out. Remember back in the first tavern scene, when I told you to keep in mind that Nicholas has definitively seen the Doctor? It makes no sense why he wouldn’t be able to connect the appearance of that man with the man on the street below. I guess it’s possible that Nicholas has forgotten what the Doctor looks like; he was just a stranger in a bar at the time. But if this is the case, why did the writers go out of their way to make it clear that Nicholas saw him?

Anyway, Nicholas agrees to still take Steven to Port Saint Martin to meet the Doctor—much to the frustration of Gaston—making an implicit threat to Steven if he is proven incorrect.

Cut to the Louvre, the royal seat of King Charles IX, where we begin to meet some of the serial’s major power players. The first is Marshall Gaspar Tavannes, a man with light brown hair (oh look, diversity!) and a beard that comes to a rounded point. The Catholic advisor to the king, Tavannes currently speaks quietly with Duvall, who reports that the abbot was unable to recover the servant girl at the house of Admiral de Coligny. Tavannes calls the abbot a fool, but Duvall defends his boss, saying, “He’s an astute man in some ways. After all, without him, we wouldn’t have got the help of Monsieur Bondeaux.”

“Bondeaux has yet to prove himself,” Tavannes says doubtfully. “Other assassins might do as well.” I love the way this conversation is framed, in a small corner of an ornate room, as if the audience members are listening in on the secret meeting. And it’s a great way to slip some exposition naturally into the dialogue, introducing the idea of an assassin without being too explicit about it.

Tavannes goes on to say that he’s not sure if he trusts the abbot, adding, “There’s something odd about all this. Watch him closely, Simon. Make a note of everything he says or does, and report it to me.” At this point, the writers are really trying to hammer home the idea that the Doctor is pretending to be the abbot. And there’s no reason for a viewer to think otherwise—I sure didn’t in my first watch-through—which is why it feels so baffling when it turns out to be a lookalike. The narrative isn’t setting up an is-he-or-isn’t-he dynamic. There are no clues pointing to the abbot as being an independent character.

Duvall gives Tavannes one more piece of information: the presence of an Englishman at Admiral de Coligny’s residence. Tavannes assumes de Coligny must be making some sort of play with the English and tells Duvall to find out as much as he can about this mysterious man. “And stay close to the abbot,” he adds. “Tell him I shall bring word later concerning the Sea Beggar.”

At this moment, Admiral de Coligny strolls across the room from where he has entered, having heard Tavannes’s last line. “I hope you are looking into the plight of the unfortunate Dutch,” he says with the cadence of a man feigning decorum. “The sea beggars, as you call them. My fight with Spain is a just one.” De Coligny is the Protestant councilor to the king, and with his appearance, the serial starts a brand new streak of men in finery with short dark hair and facial hair. “Your only quarrel with the Dutch is that they are Protestant and not Catholic,” de Coligny chides.

“That could also be the reason why you support them,” Tavannes counters. “But rest assured, Admiral; we are examining their claim for France’s aid…Tell me, have you any news from that other ally of yours, England?…I’d heard that you have an Englishman staying with you.”

De Coligny is indifferent to what Tavannes thinks is a dramatic reveal, indifference that the audience knows to be genuine. “You are an extraordinary man, Tavannes. You see shadows where there is no sun.” Tavannes then says he has an audience with the Queen Mother, and he leaves.

Meanwhile, Nicholas and Steven are wandering around Port Saint Martin, frustrated at being unable to find Preslin’s shop. As they bumble around, Steven bumps into a woman walking down the street, nearly knocking her down. Once she regains her footing, she tells the men that Preslin doesn’t live here, and that he hasn’t for about two years. “He was arrested for heresy,” she says. “Burnt, I expect.”

I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Is the woman misinformed? Is she lying? I hope the writers aren’t trying to imply that the man from the first episode wasn’t actually Preslin, because there was no doubt about his veracity at the time. He was too knowledgeable of science to be anyone else. This is what I meant when I said the identity of Preslin would annoy me later on. I don’t know how else to read this other than as a misguided attempt to inject another element of mystery into a narrative that really doesn’t have room for it. And it’s unnecessary; after this scene, the identity of Preslin will only be touched upon one more time.

Increasingly, Nicholas believes that Steven is setting him up, or at least giving him the run-around. “Your story is thinner than before,” he grumbles. “You say the Doctor is with Preslin, who is, by all accounts, dead…Your friend is the Abbot of Amboise.”

Trying to reconcile what he has seen with what he knows to be true, Steven verbalizes what has long been the most likely outcome: “It is just possible that the Doctor is pretending to be the abbot.” Like I said before, it is virtually impossible that this is not the case, and even knowing that the abbot is indeed a Doctor lookalike, I continue to struggle with buying into the idea. Steven suggests going to meet with the abbot to get to the bottom of things, but Nicholas justifiably denies this, grabbing Steven by the arm and starting to herd him offscreen. But with a quick twist, Steven wrestles free and dashes down the street, Nicholas hot on his heels.

Cut to the house of the Abbot of Amboise, where Duvall voices his suspicions about the abbot to Roger Colbert. He asks Roger where the abbot is, and Roger answers, “He may be with Maurevert.”

“Will you never learn?” Duvall snaps. “Call the assassin ‘Bondeaux.’ If the Sea Beggar should find out Maurevert is in Paris, he’d be put on his guard at once. Why do you think we’ve chosen code names so very carefully?” This might be the most obtrusive piece of exposition that I’ve seen so far in the series. The writers make the Catholic power structure look utterly incompetent in a way that I don’t think is intentional, just to give the audience the real identity of the assassin—a piece of information that doesn’t come up again for the rest of the serial. It’s not as exposition dump-y as the Governor of the Morok’s introductory monologue from Part 2 of The Space Museum, but I think the sheer irrelevance of the information, coupled with how much it diminishes Roger’s character, makes this one worse.

Duvall asks how long Roger has known the abbot, and Roger says that he has only just met the abbot yesterday. Let me state this plainly: in order for the lookalike plot to make sense, you have to accept the absurd unlikeliness of there being a lookalike in the first place and that the Catholic contingent just so happened to never have met the abbot until the very day the Doctor and Steven arrived. It’s complete nonsense. Duvall then asks Roger about his meeting with Nicholas Muss, and when Roger mentions a third man who never spoke, Duvall tells him to find out all he can about this mysterious man and whether he is English.

Back at the house of de Coligny, Nicholas is questioning Anne about Steven, asking if he had been present when she still served in the abbot’s residence. Anne says no, and that she is sure Steven was not involved with the Catholics “because he’s kind, monsieur, and gentle.” Which implies that a Catholic cannot possibly be kind or gentle. I missed this line on my first watch; it makes the anti-Catholic messaging I talked about earlier feel very deliberate.

Gaston enters the scene, and Nicholas lets him know that Steven has escaped his custody. “He must’ve been sent here by the Catholics,” he concludes. Anne shouts that it can’t be true, and Gaston orders her out of the room, telling Nicholas that he’s “too kind to these nothings.” I don’t like Gaston, but contrary to everything else I don’t like about this serial, I get the feeling that this is intentional. I still don’t appreciate how Gaston is set up as the only fly in the proverbial Protestant honey, but in this instance, I am feeling an emotion that the writers want me to feel. At the close of the scene, Nicholas and Gaston agree that the most likely place to find Steven is with the Abbot of Amboise.

Later that night, we see Steven lurking in the shadows outside of the abbot’s residence, watching the patrol of the guards. Establishing a pattern, he sneaks behind them and conceals himself beneath a lit window.

Inside the room, Tavannes, Roger, and Duvall discuss the abbot, still unsure of the man’s whereabouts. Apparently, the abbot has been acting very strangely, which is just the writers trying to hammer home that the abbot is really the Doctor in disguise. Once it is revealed that he is actually a lookalike, there is no attempt by the narrative to justify these idiosyncrasies, which is another reason why I can’t accept the lookalikes as a reasonable possibility. The whole dynamic of this serial feels so contrived.

Roger goes to close the shutters of the window, and Steven narrowly avoids being seen. Tavannes then delivers some important news: “Tell [the abbot] that the Sea Beggar dies tomorrow…He will attend an early council meeting at the Louvre. On his return, Bondeaux will be waiting for him.”

Tavannes leaves, and Duvall says to Roger, “So, the royal command has been given.” When Roger asks him to clarify, Duvall adds, “That order didn’t come from Marshall Tavannes. It came from the Queen Mother.” At the end of the scene, Steven flees into the night with the information he has overheard.

Cut to the house of de Coligny, where a servant lets Steven into Nicholas’s office, telling Steven, “He won’t be long.” Once the servant leaves, Steven rifles through Nicholas’s desk, looking for a scrap of paper so he can leave a note. I don’t know why he is doing this instead of waiting for Nicholas as he obviously told the servant. The only reason seems to be so that he looks extremely suspicious for what happens next: Gaston enters and immediately assumes that Steven is snooping around as a spy for the Catholics. He draws his sword, and Steven reluctantly copies him, though he makes it clear that he will not fight Gaston. After a few seconds of Gaston backing Steven around the office, he yells at Steven to get out. Steven does so, and Gaston kicks over some furniture in frustration.

Nicholas enters the scene immediately after this, and once he finds out that Steven was just here, he tells Gaston off for chasing him away. Gaston insists that Steven was spying, incredulous that Nicholas would even consider hearing Steven out. Nicholas scoffs, “Oh, for pity’s sake, go back to the Louvre. Go back and protect your Lord of Navarre. It’s almost time for the curfew.”

What follows is a conflict between the reconstruction and the transcript. Steven is moving along the streets of Paris when he suspects that someone unseen is following him—that much is consistent between both versions. But the reconstruction clearly shows Anne trailing after Steven, whereas the transcript leaves the follower ambiguous until Steven hurries down a flight of stairs, sets a trap for the follower, and leaps out to discover Anne. I tend to think the transcript is accurate here, if only because I hope that even an incompetent writer would realize how to properly execute on a moment of tension like this.

Steven asks why Anne isn’t at the house of de Coligny, and she tells him that she is worried about the Catholics coming to get her now that they know where she is. The bells for the curfew are ringing, but she refuses to go back to de Coligny’s, insisting on going with Steven. Abruptly, Steven asks Anne if she knows who the Sea Beggar is; she says no. Then he realizes the perfect place to bunk down for the night: Preslin’s shop. After all, if he is really gone, it will be deserted. He asks Anne to lead them to Port Saint Martin, and they head offscreen.

Back in Nicholas’s office, Admiral de Coligny arrives after a long time spent in council with the king. De Coligny thinks he may have made some headway in convincing the king to side with the Dutch and begin a war with Spain. He adds, “Do you know, Nicholas, after I’d explained the situation to him, he turned to me, and he said, ‘if we do ally ourselves with the Dutch, you, de Coligny, will go down to history as the Sea Beggar.’ The Sea Beggar. It’s a title I’d be proud of.” Credits roll.

Part 3 (Priest of Death)

Before I move on, I want to address one question: was this a good reveal? The narrative has been teasing the Sea Beggar monicker since Part 1, with the implication that this is some power player on the Protestant side. But who else could it have been? The beginning of Part 2 had Gaston insisting that the Catholics are out to kill Henri of Navarre, and this would have made narrative sense if not for the fact that he is not a character we ever see onscreen. Despite the attempt at a head fake, it never felt likely that the Sea Beggar could be anyone other than Admiral de Coligny.

Additionally, the writers don’t do much to get you to actually care about the assassination attempt. I don’t have much of an opinion about de Coligny himself. He has no personality, and his role in the narrative has been entirely expositionary. I guess he is a foil to Tavannes and the Catholics, but it’s more of an implication than an explicit comparison. We know that Tavannes’s morality is warped and destructive, but we don’t know what de Coligny actually stands for. And to the extent that de Coligny’s death would impact other characters, I don’t care about Gaston and I barely care about Nicholas. The viewers have not yet been introduced to the idea of murderous Catholics killing innocents in Paris and beyond, so at the time of the reveal, the stakes couldn’t be any lower.

This episode opens on Preslin’s shop, where Anne nudges Steven awake, telling him that it is dawn and the curfew is over. I like how each cliffhanger in this serial has been followed by a cut to the following morning. It would have been better to have genuine moments of tension that require immediate resolution, but absent that, this provides a structure to the serial that naturally moves the narrative forward.

Steven tells Anne that he must go back to the abbot’s house, saying, “My friend should be there by now. He may know who the Sea Beggar is.” He rummages through Preslin’s things and throws on a different shirt and a newsboy cap, saying, “I don’t think the captain’ll recognize me in this.” Why not? People change clothes all the time, and it’s not like his face is covered. It’s barely a disguise at all.

At this point, I want to discuss a character who has been entirely absent from the narrative for the last 40 minutes of runtime: the Doctor. I understand that at this point, we are supposed to assume that the Doctor is pretending to be the abbot—this is to set up the doppelganger twist for later. I’ve said my peace about how I don’t like this as a plot device, and I don’t want to beat it to death. Instead, I want to talk about what is lost when the Doctor as an independent character is removed from the story.

Back at the beginning of the series, I made the argument that the Doctor wasn’t that much different from the companions with whom he traveled. Think about Ian and Barbara, two schoolteachers yanked from their comfortable life and whisked off to the uncertainty of prehistoric times in An Unearthly Child, or the petrified planet of Skaro in The Daleks, or their arrest in Marco Polo. In all of these cases, the Doctor was just as feckless, just as deprived of control. He may have contributed some bit of scientific knowledge from time to time, but it was always a toss-up whether the Doctor would take control over a situation or whether it would be Ian or Barbara who led.

But since, ironically, The Reign of Terror, the Doctor has been recharacterized in a way that gives him a mystique and an air of command above and beyond that of his companions. He has been a confident rogue, as willing to don a disguise and wheedle his way into his enemy’s confidence as he is to pick up a sword and fight them head-on. More times than not, he has demonstrated some critical piece of knowledge about the places the TARDIS has landed—such as in The Reign of Terror, The Rescue, The Web Planet, and The Time Meddler—something that was very rare in Season 1. Put simply, the Doctor has become the undisputed leader of the TARDIS crew, and everything runs through him.

So what happens when you take the leader out of the narrative? You get characters who have no idea what is going on. Steven has virtually no agency, being harried from one corner of Paris to the other. The Protestants are in the dark about an impending assassination of their counselor to the king. And even the Catholics, who have the most control, are uncertain, combing the streets of Paris for Anne and a mysterious Englishman, and unsure of their own leader, the Abbot of Amboise. Normally, the Doctor would be the character to fill this power vacuum, taking control of the situation, rallying the Protestants or dismantling the Catholic power structure or taking the fight directly to the Queen Mother herself.

I have spoken a lot about how the framing of the Protestants as the morally superior paragon to the murderous Catholics is something I find to be repellently ahistorical, and much of my disdain from this serial stems from this dynamic. But I don’t think the experience would be quite so miserable if it didn’t feel like the plot was so stagnant. No one is doing anything. You can boil this serial down to just three major plot points: the Catholics have planned an assassination of a Protestant figure, Steven overhears this plan, and the Doctor may or may not have gone to see the Abbot of Amboise. And I’m not even sure I should count the last one, as we still don’t know what’s going on there. To the extent there is any momentum at all, it feels more like characters are running in place than actually going anywhere. We’ve spent the most time in the company of the Protestant supporting characters, but what have they actually done? The Catholics have been just as stagnant. Yes they are executing on an assassination attempt, but that was set in motion before the events of the serial. All we have actually seen them do is fail to track down a servant girl and an Englishman.

At the end of my review of The Daleks’ Master Plan, I said that the 12-part serial left me feeling invigorated and excited to see what the future of the series had in store. The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve has single-handedly killed that momentum. As I am writing this paragraph, I have been a day’s work away from finishing this review for over a week now. This serial is such a goddamn slog, and I feel a malaise that I haven’t felt since I went through The Web Planet. Right now, my rating for this serial is hovering at 1.2 out of 10, placing it below Galaxy Four and above The Keys of Marinus. But at least with those serials, they were bad in ways that were interesting to write about. With every word I type about this serial, I feel my soul leave my body a little bit more. It’s depressing. And for the rest of the serial, I’ve decided to give the bare minimum in terms of plot summary. If I don’t reach the takeaways section of my review in less than 2,000 words, I’ll consider that a personal failing.

Elsewhere, we find Tavannes, the Catholic counselor, and de Coligny, the Protestant councilor, at a meeting with King Charles IX, another dark-haired shmuck in the finest garb we’ve seen so far. The Queen Mother watches the meeting from a high-backed chair, a corpulent woman in an ornate black dress.

The crux of the meeting involves de Coligny trying to convince King Charles to ally with the Protestant Dutch by attacking Catholic Spain. The King is more inclined to heed Tavannes, who wants the exact opposite. This whole conversation is a proxy that allows the Catholics and Protestants to tangentially criticize each other without having a direct confrontation. Two other dynamics are made clear at this meeting: the king acts like a bored child, and he constantly looks to his mother for approval. It is clear that the Queen Mother holds the real power in France, but I dislike how she doesn’t have a single line in this scene. Maybe there was some body language she exhibited in the original footage, but there is nothing particularly notable about her in the stills, and her silence makes her seem weak and marginalized.

Anyway, discussion over the potential war ends when the king gets too bored to continue, which frustrates de Coligny.

Cut to Preslin’s shop, where Steven convinces Anne to come with him to the abbot’s house, saying that if anything happens and they get separated, they will meet back at the shop.

Back at the Louvre, the meeting has turned to domestic discussion of the Huguenots and the Catholics, and here, the conversation does devolve into personal slights. De Coligny calls the king out for being a feckless ruler who has ceded all power to his mother, and the king calls an abrupt end to the council. The Queen Mother and Tavannes leave the council chambers. Instead of being angry with de Coligny, the king is quite pleased, telling him that the direction of the conversation probably angered the Queen Mother enough so that King Charles wouldn’t have to speak with her for the rest of the day. Taking de Coligny’s arm, King Charles leads his counselor off to play tennis.

At the abbot’s residence, Steven and Anne wait to be seen by the abbot. When the Abbot of Amboise appears, Steven cries out, “Doctor!” The abbot doesn’t acknowledge the name, and Steven is left fumbling, unsure if this is the Doctor upholding a ruse or someone else entirely. Steven gestures to Anne, saying, “I’ve brought back the servant who ran away.” Which is just entirely out of character—I have no idea why Steven would even think to betray Anne’s confidence, or what purpose it could possibly serve him.

Anyway, Tavannes enters the scene, and neither he nor the abbot care about Anne anymore. Tavannes takes the abbot to the other side of the room, but he still speaks loud enough for Steven to hear “The Place Saint Germain…Bondeaux has been prepared for the last two hours.” Steven tells Anne that they must warn Nicholas, and they scurry out of the room. Hold on a second; wasn’t this Steven’s plan yesterday? I get that he now has the added context that the assassination attempt is now imminent, but wouldn’t it have been more logical for Steven to go directly to Nicholas’s house upon waking and try again to reach him?

After Steven and Anne leave, the other Catholics learn from Tavannes that de Coligny’s return home was delayed by the king. Roger rushes in, saying he just spotted Steven and Anne running away from the abbot’s residence and that he has sent the guards after them. Tavannes rounds on the abbot, asking him what he has done. “He could not hear what was being said,” the abbot insists. “In any case, it is too late for him to warn the admiral.”

Cut to the house of de Coligny, where Steven yells up to a window, telling Nicholas that the admiral is about to be assassinated at the Place Saint Germain.

At the Place Saint Germain, there is a long wind-up where we watch Bondeaux, the assassin, prepping his musket and waiting for Admiral de Coligny to come down the street. When de Coligny eventually arrives, he bends down to pick something off the street just as Bondeaux squeezes the trigger, and de Coligny is struck in a way that wounds but does not kill him. Immediately after this, Nicholas rushes into the scene, helping the admiral to his feet and sending guards into the building from where the shot came.

Back at the house of the abbot, the Catholics learn that the attempt was a failure, with the silver lining that the Protestant guards were unable to track down Bondeaux. Turning on his leader, Tavannes says, “It is strange, Father Abbot, that since you came, everything which had been so carefully planned has gone wrong.” He calls in several guards. “This man is a traitor to the queen. Kill him.” The guards advance toward the abbot.

At the Louvre, the Queen Mother and King Charles are given the news by a guard that de Coligny was shot but not killed. This guard’s name is de Toligny, which is deplorably bad writing. I don’t care if it was an actual historical figure. Change it; it’s too confusing. Anyway, the king is devastated, while the Queen Mother has to pretend like she didn’t organize the attempt.

At the house of de Coligny, the admiral waits for a surgeon while Nicholas questions Steven about who perpetrated the assassination attempt. Steven says that it was the abbot and his men. Then de Toligny, the guard from the last scene, runs in, telling the Protestants that the abbot is dead and that the Catholics are blaming it on the Huguenots. Still thinking that this is the Doctor, Steven rushes out of the house.

At the Louvre, King Charles confronts his mother, who reveals that she was the one behind the assassination attempt. She goes further, throwing a list of names featuring prominent Protestant figures that also need to be killed. She tells him that if they don’t strike now, the Protestants will be coming for them, especially now that a Protestant, Henri of Navarre, has married into the royal family and is in line for the throne.

Outside the house of the abbot, the Abbot of Amboise lies dead in the street. Onlookers whip themselves into a fervor over the injustice of this, saying that something needs to be done about the Huguenots. Steven arrives at the scene and is anguished over the apparently dead Doctor. Roger, one of the Catholics from earlier, points Steven out to the crowd as the abbot’s murderer, and Steven is chased by a mob offscreen. Credits roll.

At this point, I knew that the abbot wasn’t the Doctor on my first watch-through, and it destroyed whatever potential I thought the serial had for a satisfying resolution.

Part 4 (Bell of Doom)

The next morning, Steven arrives back at Preslin’s shop, alone, dirty, and despondent over the Doctor’s death. Anne is there waiting for him. He tells Anne that his friend is dead, and that he must find the Doctor’s key to the TARDIS. Thinking that the Doctor may have changed clothes in Preslin’s shop and that the key may have been left with the Doctor’s clothes, they begin to search the shop, even though they have already searched the shop before. This seems like a pointless activity just to keep these characters occupied until another outside force can act upon them, similar to how Steven has functioned this entire episode.

At the house that was once the abbot’s, Tavannes and Duvall kill runtime by saying stuff that doesn’t matter to the plot, like their desire to find Steven. The only point of the scene is to provide the bare minimum for a cutaway so that the narrative can progress to nighttime.

That night, back at Preslin’s shop, Steven and Anne have turned the entire place over and haven’t found any sign of the Doctor’s clothing or the TARDIS key. Anne says that maybe he went off somewhere with the apothecarist who lived here before he went to see the abbot. Steven says that this is impossible, because Preslin is either dead or in prison. Then the Doctor strides into the scene, saying, “He is not.”

We will never learn what the Doctor was doing for the last three days. I can’t stress enough how antithetical this is to good writing. Even adequate writing would have a throwaway line or two about gallivanting through the French countryside or some such. This shit sucks ass. We also don’t ever find out what the woman from Part 2 meant when she told Steven that Preslin hasn’t lived here for two years. It was obvious this was untrue at the time, but if there was any doubt, the Doctor has just eliminated it. So many loose ends just left to dangle.

At the house of de Coligny, we learn that King Charles has placed a heavy Catholic guard around the residence. This all but guarantees the king has caved to the whims of his mother and is planning the elimination of the Huguenots. This scene is the last we see any of the Protestant supporting characters, aside from Anne.

Speaking of which, as she, the Doctor, and Steven prepare to leave Preslin’s shop—the Doctor refusing to answer any questions about what he has been doing—the Doctor says that Anne must go find refuge with her aunts, who were mentioned earlier in the serial. It takes some convincing, but in the end, she agrees, and they go their separate ways, Anne to her aunts’ and Steven and the Doctor to the TARDIS.

Back at the Louvre, the Queen Mother meets with Tavannes. Her plans have changed; instead of her list of people to be assassinated, she wants to unleash the Catholic mob on the Protestants of Paris.

When dawn breaks, the Catholic guards begin to bang on the door to de Coligny’s house, demanding entry in the name of the king.

Finally back in the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Steven that there was nothing he could have done. “I cannot change the course of history, you know that. The massacre continued for several days in Paris and then spread itself to other parts of France. Oh, what a senseless waste…Most of [the Protestants] died. About ten thousand in Paris alone.” I’ve spoken about how this is a dramatic overinflation of the actual figures.

Steven becomes irate that the Doctor would leave Anne to die in a place with such turmoil, but the Doctor argues that it was right to leave her, once again asserting that taking her from even certain death would be an unacceptable rewrite of history. And I just want to point out that this is exactly what the Doctor did at the end of The Myth Makers when he pulled Katarina out of Troy instead of leaving her to die with the rest of the Trojans. In almost any other serial, this would be the most egregious mistake of the narrative, but I don’t think it even cracks the top five of this one.

Anyway, Steven becomes so angry that he says he will leave the TARDIS and the Doctor wherever they land next, saying, “If your researches have so little regard for human life, then I want no part of it.”

The TARDIS materializes, and the Doctor tries to reason with Steven, saying, “History sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don’t quite fully understand. Why should we? After all, we’re all too small to realize its final pattern. Therefore, don’t try and judge it from where you stand. I was right to do as I did. Yes, that I firmly believe.” I hate this monologue. Steven isn’t judging history; he is judging the Doctor. And the Doctor’s words do nothing to address any of Steven’s concerns, or address the hypocrisy the Doctor has demonstrated time and time again about this supposedly staunchly held belief.

Steven leaves without another word.

Once Steven has gone, the Doctor says to himself, “Even after all this time, he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history. Well, at least I taught him to take some precautions. He did remember to look at the scanner before he opened the doors. Now they’re all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton—Chesterton. They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet.” He pauses. “But I can’t. I can’t.”

That last bit, the part about going back to his home planet, is the only redeeming part of this awfully written dialogue. Susan didn’t choose to leave the TARDIS—the Doctor left her behind. The reality isn’t that no one understands the Doctor; it’s that the Doctor doesn’t understand anyone else’s perspective. And this would be okay if the writers weren’t trying to make it seem as if the Doctor is a genuinely misunderstood character. But at least the line about his home is intriguing—it hints at an eventual return.

Cut to the outside of the TARDIS, where we discover that the TARDIS has landed in Wimbledon Common, outside of London. A girl runs toward the TARDIS, with short black hair and a wool overcoat. She runs through the open doors, and, without any reaction to the ship being bigger on the inside, she asks the Doctor, “Where’s the telephone?”

After a back-and-forth, we learn that this girl is maybe the dumbest character we have met in the series. Like seriously stupid; she demonstrates no ability to recognize context clues. The Doctor tells her, “I’m a doctor of science, and this machine is for travelling through time and relative dimensions in space.” Yet again, the girl has no reaction to this.

Steven suddenly rushes back into the TARDIS, telling the Doctor that two policemen are headed toward the TARDIS and he must take off. Considering how furious he was with the Doctor just a few moments ago, this seems like a pretty hollow reason to get him back inside the TARDIS. He shouldn’t care one way or the other what happens to the Doctor or the TARDIS.

Anyway, the TARDIS dematerializes, and Steven realizes that they are not alone on the ship. Steven is rightfully aghast that the Doctor has apparently abducted another companion, but the girl is unconcerned. She doesn’t believe that they are in a time and space machine, and even if she was, she insists that she has no home to go back to. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but she has an awful cockney. “I live with me great aunt,” she says, “and she won’t care if she never sees me again.”

The Doctor asks Steven if the girl looks like Susan, and Steven reminds him that he never met Susan. Then the girl introduces herself as Dodo Chaplet, and the Doctor and Steven go nuts about this. Despite the name being rather common, despite finding Dodo in a different country almost 400 years after the Paris they just left, and despite that last names were not passed maternally in France in the middle ages, they assume that Dodo could be a descendant of Anne Chaplet—meaning that Anne must have survived the massacre. Yadda, yadda, yadda…the Doctor welcomes Dodo onto the TARDIS. Credits roll.

Takeaways

This serial was atrocious. When I write these takeaway segments, I try to call attention to what the serial does well and what it does poorly, and I’m really struggling to come up with something The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve does well. Starting the last three episodes with a jump to the following morning was satisfying, and I guess the interactions between Steven and the Protestants in the tavern in Part 1 were okay. But that’s pretty much it.

So much went wrong with this serial. Practically nothing happens until midway through Part 3. I don’t think it would be difficult to lop off the first two episodes of this serial and turn this into a two-parter, and it probably would have cut out a lot of the idealizing of the Protestants. Speaking of which, I can’t get over how maliciously anti-Catholic this serial comes across, rightly calling attention to a historical atrocity but minimizing Protestant atrocities in the process. Like I said back in Part 1, there is a way to handle this topic with tact, threading the needle between being historically accurate and not offending anyone’s religious beliefs. But these writers were nowhere near up to the task.

I also loathe the fact that the Abbot of Amboise was just a happenstance doppelganger of the Doctor. Aside from being incredibly unlikely, it is a plot device that removes the de facto leader from the narrative, creating the aimless, stagnant plot. Because of this, Steven looked particularly ineffective as a companion. I’m really starting to dislike Steven, which is a shame, because I think Peter Purves is probably the strongest actor of any companion so far. He went from someone I thought could be my new favorite companion in The Time Meddler to a character I think needs to leave the show.

Looking forward, I feel like Doctor Who needs a serious reset. Since the third serial of Season 2, my ratings have an average of 4.1, which includes my highest rated serial, The Time Meddler. Something needs to provide a spark. Theoretically, the newest companion, Dodo, could provide that spark, but I distinctly remember her as the worst companion of the entire series. Steven leaves the show soon, though I don’t remember exactly which serial. At the very least, the 1st Doctor’s run comes to an end in seven serials, and the arrival of Troughton will definitely provide a new direction for the character. I just hope that the series does more than limp toward the end of Hartnell. Judging by the list of upcoming serials, nothing sticks out to me as particularly memorable. But like always, I’m open to being proven wrong.

Rating: 0.3/10

Chapter Text

3.6 – The Ark

Thesis: The Marginalization of Steven

After watching the last serial of Season 2, The Time Meddler, I came away from it thinking Steven had the potential to be my new favorite companion, better than any of the original trio of Ian, Barbara, and Susan. Peter Purves showed himself to be a strong, dynamic actor, providing a much needed dimension of skepticism to the TARDIS crew and elevating Maureen O’Brian’s Vicki into someone I actually wanted to watch. Steven was a funny, charismatic, confident risk-taker who quickly became the only non-Doctor character who continually pushed the narrative forward. Since then, he has been an utter disappointment. I want to be clear: this is not the fault of Peter Purves; his acting has been consistently good. No, it is the absolute slop he has been given to work with.

Considering all of the strengths Steven demonstrated when he was allowed to take the initiative in The Time Meddler, the writers have criminally mismanaged his character by shoving him into the background in almost every serial since. Here are the roles Steven has filled in each narrative:

3.1 – Galaxy Four: Steven spends the first half of the serial following the Doctor around, and the second half in the custody of the Drahvins. I’m not sure he had an independent thought in the entire serial.

3.2 – Mission to the Unknown: Steven is not present.

3.3 – The Myth Makers: Steven spends most of the time imprisoned by either the Greeks or the Trojans, occasionally being allowed to take part in a few swordfights. His best moment is the fight with Paris on the plain outside Troy, but most of the serial is spent with him in a powerless position.

3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan: Steven spends the vast majority of this 12-part serial like the rest of the protagonists: toiling in the Doctor’s shadow. The only exception is a brief period in Parts 10 and 11, where he is alone with Sara Kingdom, and there are some flashes of brilliance there. However, a lot of this is overshadowed in Part 11 by the Doctor’s random disappearance and the resulting stagnation of the narrative.

3.5 – The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve: Steven doesn’t have a clue what is going on for most of the serial. He runs around, occasionally gleaning an important piece of information but never really doing much with it. By the time he tells the Protestants about the impending assassination of Admiral de Coligny, it is too late to do anything about it.

In all of these narratives, it doesn’t often feel like there is enough room for Steven to express himself as an independent character. In some ways, Season 3 feels like a bit of a throwback to the way stories were typically structured at the beginning of Season 1, where the Doctor and his companions often stayed together and spoke with one voice. However, in Season 1, the Doctor wasn’t automatically the presumed leader of the group, leaving Ian and Barbara to occasionally fill the power vacuum and demonstrate their unique personalities and opinions.

Now, the Doctor is always the leader, to the extent where when he is absent from the narrative like in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, the writers don’t know how to fill the void he leaves behind. And where the Doctor leads, his companions are expected to be subservient and defer to his judgment. I had hoped after The Time Meddler that the writers would allow Steven’s strong personality to change this dynamic, that he might introduce some friction into the Doctor-companion relationship. But this has not been the case at all. Instead, Steven has only been allowed to demonstrate his adversarial nature when paired with lesser characters, like Vicki, Bret Vyon, and Sara Kingdom. In almost all other cases, he is with the Doctor and fades into the background.

It also doesn’t help that the quality of Season 3 serials has been extremely poor. Aside from Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks’ Master Plan—the two stories featuring the Daleks—I haven’t given any serial a rating above 2.5. I think this is a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, where it’s hard to tell if Steven is marginalized by the poor writing, or if the writing is poor because Steven is marginalized. Regardless, if I were ranking the companions at this point in Steven’s run, I’m not sure if I would place him above or below Vicki, which is saying a lot. With a few exceptions, I didn’t like Vicki for much of her run, often viewing her as a knockoff Susan. Whether I end up putting Steven above her or not depends entirely on the role he is given in his final few serials. If he is shown as the Steven we met in The Time Meddler, then I have no doubt I’ll view him as the better companion. But if he continues on his current trajectory, Steven will be relegated to the bottom of the barrel.

Part 1 (The Steel Sky)

This is the first serial of Season 3 to have all of its episodes intact, and it is such a pleasure to have actual footage to look at, rather than a reconstruction. As much as I appreciate all the work that went into the Loose Cannon productions, nothing beats the real thing.

The serial opens on a jungle, which is something that annoys me right off the bat. I mentioned in The Daleks’ Master Plan how, of all of the extraterrestrial settings we have been given, so many of them have featured jungles or swamps. Visually, it all blends together, and although the jungle in The Ark is something that will be subverted almost immediately, it sets the scene as something the audience has seen time and time again.

Despite my instant reservations, this jungle features some live animals, which is a definite improvement over the jungles of The Chase and The Daleks’ Master Plan. Specifically, we see a monitor lizard and a toucan fighting in a small clearing. Then the camera pans slowly to the left, revealing the bottom half of a humanoid figure covered wearing a scaly robe. The camera raises just as slowly, giving us the backside of the creature all the way up to its head, showing very humanlike hair falling just above the shoulders. Then the creature turns, revealing that the hair in the front of its head falls down below where the nose would be on a human, ending above a single large eye that lolls around between the lips of the actor portraying the creature.

Conceptually, this is a very interesting design, perfect for something that lurks offscreen, revealing itself to the protagonists only rarely, perhaps not at all until some dramatic confrontation. Unfortunately, that is not what the writers have chosen to do with these creatures. They are foregrounded far too much to be the mysterious threat they are portrayed as in the opening scene, and they are written so badly that I cannot take them seriously. But we’ll get to that. For now, this is a very effective way to imply a potential threat to the protagonists. The camera follows this creature as it moves through the misty jungle. We only see its backside once again, consigning the appearance of its face and single eye to the minds of the audience, which is a great way to let the viewer’s memory add to the creepiness of the creature, rather than overexposing us to its actual appearance.

As the familiar sound of the TARDIS materializing fades in, the camera pans away from the mysterious creature, coming to rest on another small clearing. So far, the cinematography of this opening scene is superb. From the reveal of the creature to the appearance of the TARDIS was one long shot, almost a minute in length, following the creature through the dense jungle foliage. It makes the setting feel very expansive and the boundaries of the set difficult to parse. Of all the jungle settings we’ve had so far in the series, this one has the best set design, and the cinematography is well suited to maximize its effectiveness.

The TARDIS has barely landed when Dodo comes tearing out of the open doors, blissfully unconcerned with where they might be. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, she sneezes into her hands. She still doesn’t believe the TARDIS can travel through time and space, because when Steven comes bounding after her, asking what would happen to her if she got lost, Dodo says, “I catch a bus back.” She thinks they are in Whipsnade, a zoo just outside London, an assumption that is reinforced as she points out several animals native to Earth, including a chameleon, a monitor lizard, a toucan, and a praying mantis.

Look, I really want to give Dodo a fair shake in this retrospective. When I went through Classic Who for the first time, I came to the conclusion that Dodo is the worst companion in the long and storied history of Doctor Who. But I don’t want that opinion to color how I judge her on this go-around. I’m not opposed to arriving at that same conclusion again, but I’m going to try to be as neutral as possible going into her run and let her portrayal take me wherever it will.

When I first saw Dodo at the end of The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, my gut reaction is that we are about to see another Susan clone. Played by Jackie Lane, Dodo looks exactly like Susan: a short stature, dark hair in a bob, and in her late teens. But halfway into her second scene, it is already hard for me to associate Dodo with Susan at all. They are complete opposites: Susan was intelligent, reserved, and obedient, whereas Dodo is unintelligent, outgoing, and headstrong. Already, this puts her in a better starting position than Vicki, who was so similar to Susan that she fell into the same narrative roles throughout her run.

However, Dodo is so unintelligent that it breaks my suspension of disbelief. She got into the TARDIS in Wimbledon, and even if she believes they are in a zoo in the London suburbs, she never makes any comment about the TARDIS being bigger on the inside or that they have moved. She demonstrates no ability to think beyond her personal frame of reference. She’s been to a nearby zoo, so they must be at that zoo. And although we all do this to one extent or another, there are an overwhelming amount of details that should have already convinced Dodo otherwise—not just the size of the inside of the ship and the change of locale, but the fact that the other two protagonists have done everything but taken her by the shoulders and shaken her silly, telling her the truth explicitly and repeatedly.

Dodo is belligerently stupid, the type of character who doesn’t figure things out until long after the other characters and/or the audience has already done so. The best case scenario for her is that the writers reign her stupidity in, making her somewhat able to think and exist independently of the other protagonists. But the worst case scenario is that she will need to be spoon-fed every little detail for the entirety of her run, annoying me every step of the way.

Moving on, Dodo hears the howl of an animal from deeper in the jungle, and she looks fearfully to Steven, who smugly asks her if she is having second thoughts. “No,” she says, “I just don’t remember Whipsnade being so rowdy, that’s all.” Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that Dodo has changed into very outlandish clothes, an outfit seen back in The Crusades, with a coat of arms across the chest of her two-toned shirt.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS, telling Steven that he thinks Dodo is probably right, not about being in the Whipsnade Zoo, but that they are somewhere on Earth. Though the Doctor does add that his instruments are giving some very odd readings. Dodo stays close to the TARDIS, looking at the fauna, while the two men go back inside the ship. As the scene comes to a close, the camera pans over to reveal a gloved hand pushing back the wide leaves of a nearby bush—the mysterious creature is watching.

Cut to a closeup of a printer. One of the one-eyed creatures waits for a piece of paper to come out of the printer, then takes the page and hands it to an old human man. This exchange, these five seconds of a 4-part serial, is definitively the worst part of the serial. I cannot image a more effective way to destroy the mystique of the creatures set up by the previous scene. They went from menacing—if cheaply designed—creatures, a palpable threat, to dumb secretaries. For the next two episodes, we will see these creatures, called Monoids, as beings that coexist alongside humans, doing menial tasks like sweeping and driving a small cart. The whiplash from a horrific creature in one scene to Pam Beesly in the next is ridiculous, and I will not be taking them seriously. I just can’t. It’s impossible. They are forever ruined.

Anyway, this room looks very official, a wide space with the sterile white décor that so often plagues classic sci-fi settings. The old human man sits at a dais, with the secretary Monoid on a slightly lower tier to his right and another Monoid standing behind him to his left. He wears a sort of tunic made of long, thin strips like a grass skirt, only the strips begin at the wide collar around the shoulders and end at the knees, with a belt above the waist to hold the strips in place. The collar looks to be dark velvet embroidered with spindly white shapes that remind me of snowflakes. Below the dais and off to the side of the chamber are more humans of all ages, both men and women wearing the same garb as the old man. In the center of the chamber, a sad-faced man with fair hair stands flanked by two Monoids. Seen in a proper light, the scaly robes worn by the Monoids go all the way to the tops of their feet, but they are narrow, forcing them to waddle around when they want to move. They really are a massive letdown.

Taking the piece of paper from the secretary Monoid, the old man makes it obvious that he is presiding over a legal proceeding with this monologue: “Prisoner, you’ve been found guilty of extreme carelessness in carrying out your duties. By leaving open a wide valve in the heat exchange unit, you could have caused an explosion that would have been fatal not only to the human race, but also to our friends, the Monoids.” He gestures to a Monoid below the dais, who bows. “As your commander, Galactic Law gives me wide powers in such cases. The safety of our people must be preserved at all costs. In these grave circumstances, the lightest sentence I can pass is one of miniaturization. Prepare the Minifier. Sentence will be carried out immediately. The prisoner will be retained at microcell size, to be reconstituted in approximately 700 years’ time, when he can no longer be a danger to us.”

A blonde woman, the daughter of the commander, rushes up to the dais, begging her father to reconsider. The commander apologizes, saying that the only other option left to him would be expulsion, which from his tone of voice sounds like it would kill the man. The lawyer for the defense then addresses the commander, telling him that the defendant has accepted the verdict. The commander orders the Monoids to escort the defendant into the Minifier, which is a box the size of a vending machine. The blonde woman gives him a very sad goodbye, and the machine is turned on. The man glows white and shrinks, becoming smaller and smaller until he can no longer be seen. Once the machine is turned off, another man picks up a Petri dish presumably containing the defendant and walks offscreen. I want to talk more about this punishment after a few more scenes, because with what we will soon find out, I don’t understand how this is a punishment.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo are out in the jungle exploring when they come across a baby elephant. “Hey, look at him then,” Dodo says, pointing at it. This further confuses the TARDIS crew, and Dodo points out that they have seen flowers from America, birds from Africa, a snake from Brazil, and now an elephant from India.

“Yes,” says the Doctor, “and on top of everything else, it’s a jungle without a sky.” The scene cuts to show a roof of enormous metal panels, with large lights to simulate the sun.

The two companions react as if they are only noticing this just now, which is unbelievable to me. How do you go this long without realizing that there isn’t a sky? Additionally, when Dodo looks up, she says, “Hey, look at that then,” which is exactly how she reacted to the elephant. Oh boy, just what an already annoying character needed: a stupid catchphrase.

The Doctor goes on to point out yet another oddity, stooping down to brush his hand along the ground. “The earth, this ground we’re standing on, it appears to be trembling.” Dodo wonders if it could mean more elephants are coming, and Steven suggests it could be an earthquake. “No, it’s too regular for that,” the Doctor replies. “No, it’s more of a mechanical vibration.” Trying to grapple with what all of these things could mean, he supposes they could be inside some sort of indoor nature park, though its sheer size makes it unlikely.

Dodo sneezes again, and the Doctor turns toward her disapprovingly, asking why she isn’t using a handkerchief. He says, “We must do something about that cold of yours. That reminds me, why are you dressed in these stupid clothes? Have you been footling about in my wardrobe?…What do you think you’re playing at, crusades?” The Doctor grudgingly agrees to let her wear the clothes, adding, “Now, I suggest we take a last look ‘round, and we’ll get you off to bed.”

Following the Doctor offscreen, Dodo says, “I think I’m beginning to enjoy this space travel, or whatever it is.” Steven sighs before following the other two. Steven, I felt that in my bones.

As the scene draws to a close, the camera pulls out to reveal that a Monoid has been watching the protagonists the whole time. It leaves the jungle, following a tall corridor to a room with a similar utilitarian vibe as the room with the dais. This is some sort of control room, with a large pane of glass providing an overlook into the jungle. Two humans sit at a bank of controls and a Monoid drives a cart offscreen, with several other humans and Monoids looking on.

The Monoid who was watching the protagonists goes to a dark-haired human in the same stripped tunic, telling him about the intruders in the jungle. In this exchange, we learn that the Monoids cannot speak; they sign. The man, who we learn is named Zentos [pronounced ZEN-toss], goes to the commander and relays the Monoid’s message. The commander is skeptical at first, but he soon finds a video feed showing the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo moving about the jungle. “They look like human beings,” he notes. The commander’s daughter is also in this scene—she points out the TARDIS, which she correctly identifies as the intruders’ spaceship. “They must be questioned,” the commander says. “But Zentos, not arrested. Invited.”

Back in the jungle, Dodo calls out to the other two, saying, “Doctor, Steven, get a look at these fab pictures!”

The Doctor comes over, grumping about Dodo using the word ‘fab’ and saying, “That English of yours…It’s terrible, child. Oh, it’s most irritating.” One thing that I have just realized on my second watch-through is that Dodo has completely dropped the grating accent she had at the end of The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve. I don’t know why the change was made; perhaps the showrunners thought it was too annoying, even for Dodo. Regardless, I always argue that once such a crucial aspect of a character’s traits has been established, it should never be changed. Annoying or not, I value consistency over most things.

Anyway, the pictures that Dodo has found look like cave paintings, drawings of zebras on solid rock, only these zebras have too heads. The Doctor takes this in stride, saying, “Yes, we’ve already established this place as illogical. Why shouldn’t there be animals with two heads?”

“No reason at all,” Steven answers, “except that the more we see of it, the less like Earth it becomes.”

Suddenly, an alarm goes off. This sounded very familiar to me, and when I looked it up, this was the same sound of the alarm that went off when Barbara, Ian, and Susan arrived in the city of Morphoton in The Keys of Marinus. The Doctor and Dodo wait a few seconds while Steven doubles back to check on the TARDIS. When he returns, he says that they’ve definitely been spotted. “They’ve found the TARDIS,” he says gravely. “I can’t say I like the look of them.” He goes on to describe the Monoids. This was a huge missed opportunity to show the reaction Steven had when he actually saw the creatures for the first time. Why go through the rigmarole of showing the Monoids as creeping through the jungle if not for that payoff when the protagonists finally encounter them?

Dodo finds some kind of cave nearby, and they go inside to hide. Dodo begins to sneeze again, and Steven presses her against the wall of the cave, squeezing a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. We’ve seen this exact scene before, with Ian and Vicki in The Space Museum, and I do not appreciate the recycled content. Once the coast is clear, Steven leads them out of the cave.

Outside, they come across a break in the trees, and we see a matte painting of a city skyline built into the wall at the far end of the jungle. Smiling Doctor says, “Why yes, of course. Yes! I know where I am now…All this is a spaceship!”

Dodo is the only one of the three who isn’t looking at the nearby city; she looks nervously around the jungle floor. “Hey, Doctor,” she says, “if this is a spaceship, what are they?” Several Monoids stand from where they had concealed themselves in the foliage.

Cut back to the damn printer, where Monoid Pam Beesly takes another piece of printed paper. Every single time the Monoids look the slightest bit threatening, the writers undercut the feeling with a stupid printer. I’m not kidding when I say an inkjet printer does more damage to the image of the Monoids than any of the nonsense that happens in the last two episodes—and trust me; there’s a lot of nonsense.

The camera pans out to show the commander of the spaceship talking cordially with the Doctor and his companions, much to the disappointment of Zentos, who seems determined to maintain a more hostile posture. Several other humans and Monoids look on. When Steven says that the TARDIS appeared in the jungle because it can travel through space and time, the commander gives us this very illuminative bit of exposition: “I don’t understand. Experiments to pass through the fourth dimension were undertaken in the 27th segment of time. They were unsuccessful.” Later in this scene, we will discover that the spaceship is currently in the 57th segment of time, which approximates to the year 10,000,000. As the series is currently constructed, ten million years into the future, humans have not yet discovered time travel. There are many instances in which this gets contradicted later on in the series, making this is one of those things that must be discarded in order for the series canon to make sense.

Steven is amazed that all they have seen could fit on a single spaceship, and the commander takes him to the bank of controls and shows him the schematics of the ship. The resolution and grayscale of the footage makes this difficult for the audience to read, but I can just about make out a teardrop-shaped city tucked against the wall of a large circular area, with the jungle comprising the rest of the space.

Then Steven asks who the creatures are that serve the humans, and the commander names them as Monoids, saying, “They came to Earth many years ago, apparently from their own planet which was dying. They offered us their invaluable services for being allowed to come on this joint voyage.” Normally, the backstory of most Doctor Who narratives is so blasé that a few lines like this will suffice. But I wish there was more about how the Monoids came to serve humans rather than function as a species on equal terms, and about how the humans and Monoids established contact considering the Monoids cannot speak.

Next we learn that the spaceship is headed for a planet called Refusis II [pronounced reh-FYOO-siss], and that the Earth is dying. “In just a short time, it will burn and be swallowed by the sun.” Which is another thing that is retconned later in the series. The End of the World, an episode in the 10th Doctor’s run, pushes the Earth’s death to the year 5 billion and makes a much grander spectacle of the event.

Zentos remains suspicious of the Doctor and his companions throughout this scene, eyeing them all with a sort of mild irritation. In fact, for the entirety of this episode, I don’t think Zentos ever has a different expression, even toward the end of the episode where he gets very shouty. Inigo Jackson, the actor who plays Zentos, gives a very underwhelming performance in the first two episodes of the serial, seemingly unable to translate the emotions of his character into realistic facial expressions. On my first watch-through of The Ark, I was struck by how bad the acting is at multiple points in the serial, more so than any other serial thus far. Most of these instances occur in the final two episodes, however, with actors we haven’t met yet. In the first half of the serial, Zentos stands alone as the worst-acted character.

After the commander mentions the planet Refusis, Zentos speaks out against the newcomers, accusing them of being Refusians in disguise. “We only know of them as intelligences that inhabit the planet,” he says, turning to the other humans on the ship. “They might have a way of assuming human bodies, or of using them to pass, to mingle, amongst us!” He gets pretty animated here, and none of it comes across on his face.

Instead of Steven or Dodo defending themselves as human, we get the Doctor saying, “Oh, rubbish, rubbish. With all our imperfections, I can assure you, sir, if you were to cut my skin, I would bleed, the same as you would.” At this point in the series, I seriously doubt that the showrunners have conceptualized Time Lords or even the idea that the Doctor’s physiology would be any different from that of a human. So this piece of dialogue is either indicative of this lack of distinction, or the writers have once again used the word human to mean sentient and humanoid, as they have done with several nonhuman humanoids to this point in the series.

At this moment, Dodo sneezes. The Doctor points this out as his proof-of-concept; after all, could something mimicking humanity be able to contract a human illness? The commander is fascinated by the idea of a virus, saying that the common cold had been “cured so long ago that we’ve forgotten what it was like.”

As the commander pulls the Doctor and his companions aside to hear all about the places and times they’ve visited, the camera pans off to the side where Zentos is signing to a Monoid. The Monoid nods and goes offscreen. Having witnessed this transpire, the commander’s daughter, who we learn is named Mellium, asks him what he is up to. Zentos says that he wants the Monoids to discover all they can about the TARDIS, saying that unlike the commander, he doesn’t just take strange people at their word. “Machines tell fewer lies than men,” he insists.

The scene refocuses on the others, where the commander is laughing about Nero, the Trojan wars, and the Daleks. This is where we learn about the 57th segment of time, which the Doctor translates into 10 million years in the future. Then the commander tells them that it will take 700 years for the spaceship to reach Refusis. When the Doctor asks why Refusis, the commander answers, “Only Refusis has the same conditions that we had on Earth: atmosphere, water, the right temperature.” He goes on to say that no human has ever actually been to Refusis, admitting that all they know about it is based on what he calls “audio-space research.”

Steven calls attention to the jungle and the animal life that the humans brought with them. Dodo chimes in with, “Like the ark?…Noah’s ark. You know, two by two. The flood.” Good job, Dodo; that’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said in the series. Like I said, I don’t want to be too harsh on Dodo unless/until she gives me more of a reason to hate her, but I’m very tempted to make a new list to keep track of things and call it “Dodo has an independent thought.”

The commander doesn’t understand Dodo’s reference, but he understands the core of what she means. He shows the Doctor and his companions a nook in the rear of the control room where there are file cabinet-shaped compartments full of rectangular containers. “We do have the Earth’s full population, human and animal,” he says. “We are the Guardians. The rest have been reduced to microcell size.” He adds the rest of the Monoid population has been miniaturized as well.

This is one of my absolute favorite sci-fi tropes: the generation ship. Hundreds of sci-fi universes—if not thousands—have used some iteration of a generation ship as a plot device, each with its own take on the idea, but the broader trope boils always boils down to a few core concepts:

A generation ship is a vessel, almost always a spaceship, wherein the duration of the voyage is greater than the lifespan of the beings traveling inside it. To account for this, the crew of the ship is usually much larger than your typical minimally sized, zero-redundancy crew of field specialists. Instead, the crew is structured much like a small town: a multi-generational society, each generation teaching the next how to pilot the spaceship, with the ultimate goal of their distant descendants arriving safely at their destination. The power structure of these ships is often very democratic, with a primary focus on maintaining community morale and sense of purpose. Sometimes there is a depository of embryos or preserved lifeforms, like what we have in The Ark, capable of seeding the destination with a ready-made civilization.

I adore this conception. There are a lot of logical assumptions that make the practicality of generation ships almost impossible—it assumes a humanity that is incomprehensibly collectivist, anti-sectarian, and free of corruption. But I’ve always been a romantic at heart, and the idea of a humanity that grows out of the nihilistic division that plagues modern civilization is an optimistic vision of the future I can happily get behind. I have many problems with the way the generation ship in The Ark is executed, chief among them the way the mismanaged Monoids completely destroy the realism of the last two episodes. However, I much prefer a narrative that takes risks and goes for high-concept science fiction over a paint-by-numbers historical like The Crusade or The Myth Makers. And for that, I’ll probably reward The Ark with an extra point or two in my rating.

Before I move on, I want to touch briefly on the trial which introduced the Guardians and the Monoids, which resulted in the defendant being miniaturized. How is this a punishment? I understand that he will be removed from everyone he knows and loves and frozen for 700 years, but he has been given an opportunity to live on Refusis and enjoy a planetary existence with millions of other currently frozen humans. Plus, I don’t think the defendant will experience any of the intervening years, so it’s not even as if this is meant to be a prison sentence. It would have been much better if he were sentenced to live and serve alongside the Monoids. Not only would this be a tangible depravation of rights, but it would demonstrate the disparity of living conditions between the humans and the Monoids, something which is not communicated very well in the first two episodes of the serial.

After showing the Doctor and company the stacks of miniaturized humans, the commander tells Mellium, his daughter, to show “the young people” the statue, and Steven and Dodo follow her offscreen. Then he points the Doctor toward the chief controller of the ship, Manyak, to talk about the more technical aspects of the ship.

Mellium takes Steven and Dodo to a large gallery where a massive statue is under construction; all that has been completed is a pair of massive feet. She shows them the design, which is a large human man holding an orb, saying that it was started on Earth and isn’t due to be completed until just before they arrive at Refusis in 700 years’ time. Even though Mellium makes it clear that they are using “the ancient methods” and building this statue by hand, I find it dubious that a statue that is three stories high could take so long to build, even going as slowly as possible. Based on a rough estimate, they would have to progress no more than .72 inches a year to finish on that timeframe.

Regardless, Dodo looks at the design of the finished statue and says, “Hey, that’s gear!” If this line becomes another annoying catchphrase, I’m gonna start pulling my hair out.

Suddenly, the alarm goes off again, and the scene cuts back to the control room, where an ill Monoid is carried into the room on the back of the cart. “Commander, the strange disease,” says Zentos, “the fever is spreading among the Monoids.” The commander is similarly afflicted all of a sudden, with a massive fever, barely able to hear Zentos. Angrily, Zentos calls out the strangers, saying that they are all in danger from the disease they have brought. This is where Zentos’s anger begins to outgrow the unchanging expression on his face.

I’m not a virologist, but even without any antibodies, would Dodo’s illness be able to spread so quickly? They’ve only been in contact with the people on the ark for maybe 30 minutes, and it seems unrealistic for the commander to already be so badly afflicted. Also, this plot device opens up a massive can of worms for what it means for the Doctor to take companions into his TARDIS. Sure, Dodo is sick now, but this could just as easily have been a problem when the TARDIS landed amongst the Aztecs or in ancient China or in the year 4,000. Diseases should be running rampant through the TARDIS crew, either the latent diseases that we all carry being transferred to the unimmunized natives or vice versa. To my recollection, the series doesn’t revisit this kind of plot device ever again, for which I am very grateful. I don’t like this precedent, and I’m glad the showrunners seem to agree.

Anyway, as Steven and Dodo return to the control room, the Doctor very gravely explains the situation. “These people, this generation, have never experienced the common cold for the simple reason it was wiped out many generations ago, before they were born. They have no resistance to it…It might be fatal, and we shall be to blame. Yes, it’s all our fault, and I should have foreseen it.”

The chief controller, Manyak, an unremarkable man with dark hair, steps back from the Monoid on the cart, declaring it dead. At this news, Zentos orders the Monoids to seize the Doctor and his companions, turning to address the other humans in the room. “All of you, listen! The success of all we stand for, everything aboard this spaceship, is suddenly endangered by the strange fever. A fever brought by these strangers in our midst!…I invoke the Special Galactic Law against them. Hold them. Hold them, take them into custody, and later they will be made to suffer for the crime that they have committed!…Take them away!” This fit of rage is not at all matched by the expression on Inigo Jackson’s face, which is still something so mild I’m not even sure I would call it anger. Irritation, maybe.

The Doctor and his companions are shunted out of the room by Monoids. Mellium anxiously turns to Zentos and asks what will happen to her father. “He may well die,” Zentos says. “but then again, so might all of us. In which case, it was pointless leaving.” Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Plague)

At this point in the serial, I’d say my experience is slightly above average. Yes, the Monoids are impossible to take seriously, and it’s always a problem when you actively have to try to enjoy a new companion. But a generation ship is like sci-fi catnip to me, and the premise feels like a very real threat to the protagonists. This is the high point of the narrative; it’s all downhill from here.

After being taken from the control room, the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo find themselves in a single cell with a bench and a table. Dodo sits at the table, while the Doctor and Steven anxiously discuss their situation. Steven asks the Doctor, “Do you think this has happened before? That we’ve carried an infection from one age to another, or even one planet to another?”

The Doctor answers, “I don’t want to think about it, dear boy. It’s too horrifying.” Which is just a massive cop-out, one that is probably out-of-character even for the self-absorbed 1st Doctor. I would rather this discussion be entirely absent from the narrative. The worst thing the writers could do is call attention to the fact that this is something that the showrunners overlooked or ignored in previous serials. Sometimes, trying to give more context to the audience can actually diminish the efficacy of a narrative, and this is definitely one of those cases. Some things are better left to the imagination.

The Doctor and Steven agree that, if left unchecked, this virus could spread through the entire spaceship. Dodo begins to cry into her hands—very unconvincingly—and the Doctor tries to console her, saying that he might be able to help if he can convince the Guardians to let them out.

Meanwhile, Zentos and Manyak look at CCTV footage of Monoids falling ill and dying all over the ship. Zentos says that if this epidemic persists, “it’ll be a disaster. Each man has his allotted task. No one had reckoned on this eventuality.” This type of organization, where each person has exactly one task that can be performed by no other, is very anomalous for a typical generation ship. Most such command structures allow for a lot of redundancy; after all, the original architects of the ship must allow for variances in the size and capabilities of each individual generation. This is the sort of thoughtless worldbuilding that worked against the cohesiveness of stories like The Sensorites, where a careless, throwaway line has enormous implications if you stop and think about it.

Cut to the commander’s quarters, where two people referred to as microvirologists stand over the commander, who lies unconscious on his bed. Two things irk me about this setup. First, microvirology is redundant, as virology already implies studying things at a microscopic level. And second, instead of cloth masks, the microvirologists wear these stupid mouth-visors made of hard plastic which do nothing to restrict or filter airflow. Both of these things seem like very superficial answers to the question that gets asked way too often in early Doctor Who serials, namely, “How do we make this scene more space-y?”

Anyway, the microvirologists tell Mellium that all data on this type of disease was lost millions of years ago. Then the commander wakens, turning weakly to Mellium and telling her that at all costs, she must center her focus on maintaining the voyage and the eventual landing of their descendants on Refusis.

What follows is a massive narrative blunder. The scene cuts to the protagonists’ cell, where they hear the steady, dirge-like beat of a drum. In the control room, several Monoids bear a shrouded, deceased figure, carrying it to the launching bay. With all the humans and Monoids looking on, and after a somber moment of silence, the body is launched into space.

Coming directly on the heels of the commander delivering what sound like post-mortem commands for his daughter, the obvious implication is that the commander has died. Zentos even goes on about how it is his duty as second-in-command to initiate a trial for the Doctor and his companions for the crimes they have committed, with Mellium volunteering to speak in the strangers’ defense, saying, “My father would wish it.”

But then the scene cuts back to the commander’s quarters, and we find him watching all of this transpire on a small television, nodding along with his daughter’s words, still bedridden but very much alive. Who, then, was wrapped in the shroud? Was it just one of the Monoids who died? If so, we’ve seen at least three different Monoids die. Why was there only one body ejected from the ship? I don’t feel anything at all for these Monoids. They are a joke that I can’t take seriously. If they are trying to set a mournful tone for the rest of the episode, using the death of a Monoid makes the attempt fall incredibly flat. Instead of enhancing the threat, the “space burial” as Zentos calls it comes across as wasted runtime that could have gone to anything else.

Back in the cell, a television turns on to show Zentos pronouncing the beginning of the protagonists’ trial. Mellium announces that one of them must speak in their defense. Steven turns to the Doctor and says that he must speak, highlighting the need “to show them how stupid they are, wasting time with trials and speeches.” Somehow finding this to be convincing, the Doctor lets Steven be escorted from the cell by two Monoids. I don’t see a universe where the Doctor lets anyone other than himself speak in their defense. This isn’t just a 1st Doctor characterization; it’s all of the Doctors. The Doctor is the best equipped protagonist to do this, and he knows it. Allowing Steven to speak instead, especially after hearing that it is his intention to tell the Guardians how stupid they are, feels incredibly out-of-character. Even on my first watch-through, when I didn’t yet know what was going to happen, this felt like a very contrived way to advance the plot, which is exactly what it ends up being.

In the courtroom, which I’ve just realized is one half of the control room, Steven is in a wooden cage that has been wrapped in plastic. I know that this is to keep the disease from potentially spreading into the control room, but all I can think of is how there can’t be much air for Steven in a wrapped box the size of a closet.

As expected, this scene goes badly for hotheaded Steven, though as I watch, it becomes very obvious that these lines were originally intended for the Doctor. Look what he says: “If your medical records are anything to go by, this segment of time, far from being one of the most advanced in knowledge, is one of the worst!…The nature of man, even in this day and age, hasn’t altered at all. You still fear the unknown, like everyone else before you!” That’s not something Steven would ever say. It only suits the Doctor. The writers must have originally had the Doctor speaking in the protagonists’ defense, which makes sense because it would be the most logical thing to happen. But for some reason, this was changed to Steven, and instead of adapting the dialogue to suit the new character, they just had Steven say the Doctor’s lines. This is all just speculation, but it would make sense as the reason why both of these characters are acting so out-of-character: the Doctor for letting Steven defend them in the first place and Steven for saying Doctor-esque lines.

Throughout this scene, the commander is watching the trial on his television, talking to himself about how Steven is right and wondering why the others can’t see in the protagonists what his daughter sees. Every time the scene cuts to the commander’s quarters, I’m left wondering why he doesn’t intervene in the proceedings himself. Even though Zentos began the trial, the commander is still the highest ranking officer among the Guardians. He’s not completely incapacitated, just sick; there’s no reason why he couldn’t issue commands from his sickbed.

The Doctor and Dodo also watch the trial from the cell. Dodo notices a sheen of sweat on Steven’s face, and they fear that Steven may have also contracted the virus.

In the end, the Guardians in the audience all vote for a guilty verdict, and the Zentos declares that the Doctor and his companions will be expelled from the spaceship. He still thinks they are agents from Refusis for some reason. Even if Zentos were right, the generation ship is eventually going to land on Refusis, which to Zentos’s knowledge, is full of hostile creatures trying to sabotage their grand voyage. Why aren’t there any allusions to what that could mean for humanity? We know that the protagonists aren’t Refusian agents, so this isn’t a legitimate concern. But none of the Guardians are acting on what they believe to be true. Combine this with the out-of-character protagonists, and the 8-minute trial sequence does not feel grounded in reality. Everything feels forced and fake.

Despite Mellium’s pleas, Zentos is unwilling to let the Doctor try to find a cure for the sickness, not even when Steven passes out, clearly overcome by the sickness himself. Instead, Steven’s body is taken by two Guardians and unceremoniously shoved back into the protagonists’ cell, much to the protestations of the Doctor and Dodo. At this point, the Doctor demands to speak in their defense, citing Steven’s illness as a reason why he could not properly represent them. Zentos denies this, and I’m left thinking that if the Doctor hadn’t acted so out-of-character by allowing Steven to speak for them in the first place, none of this would have happened.

Suddenly, the commander’s voice is heard over the comms system, ordering Zentos to allow the Doctor the chance to find a cure for the illness. So he has had the ability to interject this whole time? In order for this plot to make sense, we’ve had two protagonists acting wildly out-of-character, Zentos failing to have a reasonable response to information he believes to be true, and the commander arbitrarily deciding not to intervene until after a trial that takes up half the runtime. This episode is ridiculously contrived, and none of this is working for me.

At the commander’s orders, the Doctor is given access to a laboratory, where he tells Mellium that he can create a vaccine for the illness with implements from his TARDIS and a few materials collected from animals in the jungle. There is a brief montage of Monoids out in the jungle capturing an elephant a few other creatures—with the narrative making it very clear that the animals are not hurt in the process. Then the Doctor combines liquids in various test tubes with the help of a Monoid lab assistant whom he calls “far more knowledgeable than most people realize.” He applies a patch laced with the cure to the inside of Steven’s forearm, and after a short time, his fever breaks.

Cut to the Doctor rejoicing with the Guardians in the control room, knowing that the sick will soon be cured. The resolution of this episode is so fast that it doesn’t feel like anything is realistic. Zentos finally shows an emotion other than irritation on his face, though his joy feels forced and unnatural because of the frantic pace of the narrative. They all say their goodbyes in front of the unfinished statue, where in a bit of stilted exposition, Steven and Mellium remind the audience that it will be finished in 700 years. Everybody is happy; the Doctor and company are escorted back to the TARDIS; the ship dematerializes.

The scene fades to black, then fades back in on the exact same jungle. The flash and wheeze of the TARDIS begins, and the ship rematerializes in the same place. There’s a funny bit where Dodo once again tries to be the first one out the doors, but the Doctor insists on exiting the ship before her, backing out of the TARDIS. When he turns and finds himself in the same jungle clearing, he assumes something must have gone wrong. All three protagonists go offscreen, calling out the names of the Guardians they have met.

When they arrive in the control room, they find the place deserted. This confounds Dodo, who is sure they couldn’t have gotten very far in the time they were in transit. “I don’t know,” Steven says. “It depends on how long ago it was.”

Then Dodo runs offscreen, quickly calling for the others to follow. “The statue,” she says in disbelief. “They’ve finished the statue.” The camera slowly pans up from the feet to the hips to the torso. Instead of a human head, the statue is capped by the head of a Monoid. Credits roll.

Everything after the 4-minute mark of this episode was a trainwreck. Normally, a protracted comedy of errors so early in a serial would be a death knell for the story, but as we can see, the final two episodes comprise a clean, 700-year break from what came before. Like The Chase, I view the two halves of this serial to be two distinct acts, and although there are definite throughlines, Parts 3 and 4 are relatively detached from the narrative failings of Act 1. So when the final episodes do end up failing spectacularly, they do so on their own merit.

Part 3 (The Return)

Steven asks the Doctor why the statue is now a Monoid, and the Doctor answers, “I’m not sure, dear boy. However, the statue’s finished. That means 700 years must have passed since we last stood here.” Dodo has difficulty believing this, pointing out that they were only gone for a few seconds. It’s the sort of line that would typify a new companion in their first serial, but this is already the third time Dodo has travelled through time. Having her be the one to express disbelief only reinforces her stupidity, and we don’t need any more of that. The writers could have gotten a much better effect from having Steven be doubtful of the TARDIS’s ability to return to the same place—something that has never happened before now.

Anyway, the control room is strewn with dead leaves and refuse, and the Doctor takes a cursory look at the bank of controls before declaring that the generation ship is now being operated by some kind of automatic guidance system. Then the Doctor flips through the ship’s CCTV cameras, seeing a shot of a human serving a Monoid a beverage. Next, they find a group of humans hard at work inside a large kitchen, with a pair of Monoids overseeing the activity. “They’re sort of slaves, aren’t they?” Dodo remarks.

A human accidentally drops a bowl of food. Without hesitation, a Monoid fires a gun at the man which emits a jet of smoke; the man recoils in pain. “Yes,” the Doctor says gravely. “It appears the Monoids have become overlords.” Right on cue, two male humans enter the control room, flanked by three Monoids. The Monoids wear white collars around their shoulders, each with a two-digit number to designate their rank.

If you were to take a snapshot of this moment in the episode, this is a legitimately intriguing setup for the second act of the serial. Despite all that the writers have done to delegitimize the Monoids as a threat by showing them as secretaries and gardeners, despite the floundering narrative throughout much of the previous episode, this unexpected twist was very effective at roping me back into the story. It presents a plot much more grounded in reality, and it is a natural breaking point to shed badly written characters like the commander and poorly acted characters like Zentos. For a very brief point in time, I thought that The Ark was about to follow in the footsteps of The Chase by treating me to a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise underwhelming serial.

Then the Monoids start to speak.

“Who are you?” asks the Monoid with the number 2 on its collar. The voice is a low, slow, gravelly monotone, which is already grating enough without the added effect of the modulator. There is a technical term for the effect, but I don’t know enough about sound engineering to look up what it’s actually called. Basically, the modulator is muting and unmuting the audio track very quickly, several times a second, giving the Monoid’s voice a harsh edge. A similar effect is used to produce the Dalek cadence, but additional distortions are added to make the Daleks sound much less human than the Monoids. Instead, the Monoids come across as a blend of alien and human, not alien enough to be eerie and otherworldly, but not human enough to be uncanny. In this way, the Monoid voice exists in this weird middle ground that is hard to take seriously, which is a shame for a species that was already shafted by its unserious portrayal in the first two episodes.

And if you recall, these things did not speak at all in the first act. They couldn’t; they had to communicate with the Guardians and with each other by signing. In Act 2, they have a device built into their numbered collars which enables them to have a voice, but unfortunately, this device only further delegitimizes Monoids as a concept. It’s a small circular window the size of a thumbprint, with a sliding panel behind it. Every time a Monoid wants to talk, they have to physically manipulate the panel behind the window, manually sliding it open. Not only is this ridiculously inefficient for technology in the year 10,000,000, but it is impractical for the poor actors playing these roles, already burdened with manipulating the ping pong balls in their mouths which have been painted to look like eyes. There are so many instances in Act 2 where a Monoid either speaks before the device is fully opened or the actor forgets to close the device after they are done speaking.

Altogether, the Monoids have gone from a mismanaged creature in the first act to an insult to my intelligence in the second. They are one of the most poorly conceived species that I’ve encountered so far in the series, worse than the Drahvins of Galaxy Four, the Sensorites of their titular serial, and the Voords of The Keys of Marinus. The only creatures I dislike more are the Zarbi from The Web Planet, and those things were basically walking smoke detectors with low batteries. This serial has a lot going for it: I love the concept of the generation ship, and the jump 700 years into the future makes for a great plot device. However, the Monoids are a massive drag on the narrative. If they were replaced by a more palatable creature or even a subjugated faction of humans, The Ark would go from a bottom-five serial to something much more tolerable.

Moving on, the Doctor and his companions try to impress upon the Monoids that they are friends that have visited the spaceship long before, the Doctor making it clear that this friendship was to all who travel on the ship. “You speak of the distant past,” Monoid #2 says dismissively. “Following the recent revolution, we are now the masters.” The Monoid turns to one of the humans, a man named Yendom, making him confirm that #2 has spoken the truth. Another pet peeve of mine: I don’t like these outwardly-genderless alien species only being represented by male voices. I know it’s a product of the times, and I don’t hold it much against the early showrunners, but even from a practical standpoint, the endless procession of male-voiced aliens is terrible way to create something that stands out. So far, the only nonhuman aliens voiced by women are the Animus and a few of the Menoptra, both from The Web Planet. And while I have a litany of problems with both of these creatures, uniqueness isn’t one of them.

Anyway, this scene ends when Monoid #2 orders the humans to march offscreen, headed for the Monoid leader.

Cut to a room where a Monoid with the number 1 on his collar sits in a throne-like chair. As Monoid #2 enters and begins to shepherd in the intruders, #1 waves #2 to silence, gesturing toward a screen. On that screen, we see some of the footage from the end of Part 2, with the Doctor and his companions being led back to the TARDIS after the Doctor had cured the spaceship of Dodo’s illness. #1 asks the intruders why they have come back, and Steven answers, “The TARDIS made the decision.”

I’ve never touched on it before, but why does the TARDIS go where it goes? In NuWho, there is a brilliant line in The Doctor’s Wife, an 11th Doctor episode, which succinctly explains away decades of seemingly random wanderings into pivotal moments in time. And to be honest, that one explanation is so good that I am willing to handwave away all of the unlikely and incredible ways that the TARDIS seems to operate on a regular basis. But to a viewer in the 60s, it must have seemed like an incredible coincidence that the Doctor would arrive in Rome on the cusp of the Great Fire, or in Paris the very week Robespierre was killed, or in future London just in time to thwart the Dalek invasion of Earth.

I don’t plan on calling attention to the TARDIS every time it does something contrived—I just don’t think that’s a productive use of my time. If there is something that is especially convenient even by Doctor Who standards, than I’ll probably spend some time on it. But for now, when time travel is most often used as a means to set up narrative rather than as something that continually drives the narrative forward, I’m happy to accept at face value the fact that the TARDIS always arrives at crucial moments without putting too much thought into it.

Continuing on, Monoid #1 gives some exposition about what has happened in the 700 years since the TARDIS dematerialized. Apparently, the disease that the Doctor thought was cured was instead something that laid dormant for years after the vaccine was developed. It mutated, returning later on to “sap the will of the humans.” It is unclear whether this means a second wave of illness robbed the humans of their will to continue or if the mutation caused symptoms which killed human motivation. Regardless, it is never explained why the illness didn’t similarly affect the Monoids, considering that the humans and Monoids were identically affected the first time.

#1 goes on to give another reason for the revolution: “[The Guardians] were a simple people. They actually encouraged the research from which we developed our voice boxes and heat prods.” The Monoid gestures to the device around his collar and another Monoid’s gun respectively. “They were totally unprepared for the conflict when it came…Many [Guardians] were killed. The rest are prisoners, a fact that you will shortly see for yourselves.” #1 turns to #2 and says, “Take them away to the security kitchen and then call a Grand Council.”

If you want the audience to take a threat seriously, please don’t name a place the “security kitchen.” This location will be mentioned several times over the next two episodes, and I found myself close to laughing every time. It’s such a stupid concept. I get that it’s the place the slaves live and that it houses a kitchen for them to make food for the Monoids. But call it the slave quarters or the prison wing, anything besides the security kitchen. It just calls attention to the fact that there wasn’t enough money to make two separate sets, and that the producers were forced to make the place where the slaves sleep the same location as the place where they work.

After #2 escorts the Doctor and company from the room, #1 turns to a human left behind, yet another man with short dark hair. “I trust that their return won’t give you any ideas, Maharis?” Maharis shakes his head, assuring #1 that he will obey.

Inside the security kitchen—I will never get over how stupid that name is—we find several humans working around a long table in the center of the room. Cot-like spaces ring the room, comprising the places where the humans rest and sleep. In one corner of the room, two humans discuss the rumor that strangers have arrived. One is a very expressive woman named Venussa with a smiling face and charismatic air about her. The other is a man named Dassuk [pronounced DAH-sook (rhymes with book)], a tall man with short dark hair and an even worse actor than Zentos. The actor’s name is Brian Wright, and he has nothing going for him. At least Inigo Jackson’s portrayal of Zentos had an emotion, even if it was just the one: irritation. There is no life behind Dassuk’s eyes, and I don’t mean this in a beaten-down, hopeless sort of way. A brick wall has more emotional range than this man. Throughout this exchange, Eileen Helsby as Venussa is acting her heart out, and she is getting absolutely nothing in return.

Venussa is very optimistic about the word of new arrivals, but Dassuk very dispassionately shoots her down, saying, “It’s only a rumor, just like all the other rumors we’ve been hearing. Look, Venussa, you know how far the Ark has travelled and the Earth itself no longer exists. So where could these so-called humans come from?” Venussa says that the visitors can travel through time, but Dassuk assures her that it’s impossible.

Adamantly, Venussa says, “Don’t you remember the story? Hundreds of years ago, a doctor and a young couple came and then went away again. Well, they were the first people to call this ship the Ark!” I really like how time travel has been incorporated into the story, not only as a way of jumping to the end of the ship’s journey, but also how the Doctor and his companions visited the ship so long ago that they have become a fable.

Dassuk tries to tell her that it’s just a legend, but before he can say anything else, Monoids enter the room, and the two have to rush to the central table and pretend they have been working all along. Monoid #2 ushers the Doctor and company into the security kitchen, and when he refers to the Doctor by his title, a look of recognition comes over Venussa’s face. Then #2 says, “You will stay in this place and help with the task of preparing our food. You will sleep here like the others of your kind. Above all else, you must always be obedient prisoners.” #2 and the other Monoids leave.

Venussa and Dassuk are among the humans who immediately crowd around the three newcomers. When Steven says that they have been on the spaceship before, Dassuk says, “But that’s incredible!” without any expression on his face. “How in space could you do it?” That last bit is clearly in place of how on Earth, and I hate it.

The Doctor says that no one would believe him if he tried to explain it. Ordinarily I would agree with this, but the Monoids have already confirmed that the protagonists have traveled through time, and there are even legends about the last time they were there. If anyone in the universe were primed to believe in time travel, it’s the humans in the security kitchen. At any rate, Steven says there isn’t time for an explanation and that they have to find a way out of the security kitchen.

Next, we see the control room, where six Monoids have gathered for the Grand Council. There are no humans in this scene, and the limitations of the Monoids’ creature design become magnified a thousandfold. I’ll start with my smallest complaint and work my way up. First are the numbers on the Monoids’ collars. One Monoid wears the number 68, even though it is abundantly clear throughout Act 2 that there are no more Monoid costumes than these six. It’s a funny design choice, because if I didn’t see such a high number, I probably wouldn’t have stopped to consider how many Monoids there are on the ship. In an effort to disguise the small amount of Monoid actors, the showrunners have only called attention to that small number.

Second, these actors clearly have no idea how they are supposed to act without having access to their face. And to be fair to these actors, it’s not their fault; it’s the fault of whatever asshat decided that theses things should speak. When they were mute and signing, the Monoids were appropriately enigmatic. Now that the Monoids have lines, the actors have to do something to make it clear to the audience which Monoid is speaking. To accomplish this, the director has clearly told these actors to be very bombastic with their body language, and the result is a bunch of Monoids wildly gesticulating like they are costumed mascots in a stage production for toddlers.

Well, not all of them. Because the third and most egregious aspect of the Monoids in this scene is how the speaking devices in their collars are supposed to function. In the first Monoid scene, I described them as little round windows which need to be manually opened and closed to allow the Monoids to speak. And although this seems needlessly archaic for such a futuristic setting, I thought their issues ended there. But another problem arises once the Monoid actors must also be overly expressive with their body language. In this scene, there are two types of Monoid. The first are Monoids #2 and #3, who are very rigid with their arms while they speak, dutifully opening and closing the communication device when they have to say a line. The second is Monoid #1, who is flapping his arms around so wildly it’s a wonder he doesn’t fly away, disregarding the communication device altogether.

I’ve mentioned several times now that one of my biggest pet peeves in science fiction is when the rules of the universe are opaque or inconsistent. It probably seems like a nitpick to most people, but these communicators really piss me off. It’s obviously supposed to make a difference whether or not the small window is open, but when the director gives contradicting directions, the rules of the device become inconsistent. All of this shows a flagrant lack of attention to worldbuilding and creature design, which are both extremely important in creating cohesive science fiction. From the outside looking in, it seems like there may have been some wires crossed between the writers who worked on the scripts, the artists who designed the costumes, and the showrunners who directed the action on set. But regardless of who propagated a terrible outcome, it’s still a terrible outcome. The Monoids are an embarrassment.

The whole point of this scene is for Monoid #1 to tell the others about his plans for a Monoid-only world once they land on Refusis. They will soon be sending a landing party to the surface of the planet. Monoid #3 objects to this, saying that it will only forewarn the Refusians to their imminent arrival—at this point in the narrative, none of the characters actually know what Refusians are or what they look like. “I have thought of that,” #1 answers, gathering the rest of the Monoids close.

Cut back to the security kitchen, where we see how future food is made. Dassuk drops what looks like a piece of gum into a pot full of milk, and it instantly becomes boiled potatoes. If all that these slaves are supposed to do is make food and drink for the Monoids—and I don’t know what else they are supposed to do in a security kitchen—how do they spend the vast majority of their time if making food is this easy? Throughout the last two episodes, humans can be seen toiling away at the center table, but at the rate it takes to cook things, they should have entire rooms filled with baked ziti and cheesy biscuits.

In this scene, we learn that the humans in the security kitchen are only kept alive to serve the Monoids, and that they haven’t fought back because the Monoids are armed and they are not. All of this exposition is delivered by the charisma void himself, Dassuk, who looks so bored with his own dialogue that he might fall asleep at any moment.

Meanwhile, Monoid #1 tells #2 to go and get the Doctor and Dodo from the security kitchen.

Back in the security kitchen, some time has passed and the protagonists have come up with a plan—though neither of these things are very clear from the dialogue we get. It almost sounds as if it is a direct continuation of the scene from before. Regardless, Venussa suddenly warns that a Monoid is coming, and when #2 enters, Steven and Dassuk tackle him, trying to take his gun. But a moment later, #3 enters, shoots a male bystander, and tells the others that more death will come if they continue to defy the Monoids.

#2 tells the Doctor and Dodo to come with him, and when Steven tries to follow, he points the gun at him until he stops in his tracks. When Steven asks where his friends are being taken, #2 says, “They will make the first landing on the planet Refusis. You will be held as a security for their conduct.”

Cut to a launching bay, where a cylindrical pod carrying the Doctor, Dodo, Yendom, and Monoid #2 is fired from the ship. We get a cool miniature of the cylinder gliding across a black matte painting of stars and a planet shrouded with clouds.

As the pod lands on Refusis, we see its interior, which is a circular white room ringed with padded white seats. The pod stops, and a section of the pod retracts to form an open door. No one is there to greet them, and I don’t know why the characters are so surprised by this. They are certain that there are Refusians, but if you compare this to Earth, the odds of any person being within 10 miles of wherever an alien craft lands are very slim. #2 tells the others to go and look for the Refusians, reminding them that he is still armed.

Once all of the beings have left the craft, something strange happens. Something invisible enters the empty craft and sits on a seat, causing a depression to appear in the padding. It fiddles with some switches, closes and opens the door, and exits the craft. As a concept, I have nothing wrong with invisible creatures. However, so soon after The Daleks’ Master Plan where there were invisible Visians, having the Refusians also be invisible feels like a shameless budget-saver. The fact that the 1st Doctor encounters two invisible species in his entire run is too many invisible creatures, much less two in three serials. I don’t really care if the writers of these scripts independently wanted their creatures to be invisible; either shelve one for a couple of seasons or make a change.

Out in the wilds of Refusis—yet another planet with jungle foliage—#2 is unable to find any evidence of the Refusians. The Doctor suggests that they all return to the pod so that they can send a message to the Ark, letting the others know they can start the landing on Refusis. Then the Doctor moves off, and Dodo adds that it’ll take a long time to get everyone down to the planet, so they had better get started. #2 turns to Dodo and smugly says, “Don’t worry. It may not take as long as you think.”

Normally, this would be the kind of line that would go over another character’s head, the sort of thing that rewards the audience for knowing information that the protagonists don’t. However, this plot dictates that this is where the protagonists must discover the Monoids’ plans, so the line instantly puts Dodo on edge. “What do you mean?” she says, uncharacteristically sharp. “Are you up to something?” If I were keeping a list of every time Dodo has an independent thought, this would be #2.

The Monoid does a very exaggerated stutter before answering, “No,” very unconvincingly. The cinematography in this scene made me laugh out loud, cutting from a bumbling, idiotic Monoid to Yendom looking deadly serious at the exchange, poised in the background like a Greek statue.

“But you gave yourself away, didn’t you?” Dodo continues. “I’ve got a feeling when the time comes, you’re not going to bring the Guardians down here at all. Is that it?” Before they can wheedle a confession out of #2, the Doctor returns, saying that there is a castle down in the valley: evidence of the Refusians. The four humanoids head offscreen to investigate, followed by bushes that rustle independently in their wake.

The four arrive in a carpeted foyer, with a few doors leading further into a building and two vases on a wooden table. Beyond the gate through which they have entered, a curtained door suddenly slams with no visible creature in sight. #2 goes to investigate before determining that whatever they are, the Refusians must be scared creatures. He starts throwing the vases, one after another, until the Doctor yells for him to stop, saying, “That is no way to establish friendship!”

Suddenly, a booming male voice echoes throughout the room with no apparent source. “Your friend is right! Put it down.” When the Monoid makes no effort to do so, his arm is suddenly gripped as if by an invisible force, and he is made to put the vase back on the table. The Refusian announces that he is in the room with them. When #2 frantically points his gun around at empty air, the Doctor chuckles and tells him that with nothing to shoot at, he won’t be needing the gun.

Back on the spaceship, Monoids #1 and #3 speak in the alcove with the giant statue. #3 leans close to #1, and in the most exposition dump-y way possible, he asks, “What was the plan you had for destroying the Guardians and this spaceship?” #1 explains that he has placed a fission device somewhere on the ship. When #3 asks where the bomb is, #1 points up at the statue.

Cut to another room, where Maharis, one of the humans from earlier, is watching this transpire on a screen. #1 says, “The last place they would think of looking. That is, if they even suspect its presence before it goes off.”

#3 replies, “Why should they? Then that will be the end of all human existence.” Panicking, Maharis turns from the screen and hurries from the room.

At the security kitchen, we see people working once again—dropping a piece of gum into milk to make chicken wings this time. Maharis runs in, saying he has news. Initially, the Guardians in the security kitchen don’t want to listen to Maharis—“He’s one of the subject Guardians,” explains Venussa, “what you’d call a collaborator”—but he eventually gets out that the Monoids have hidden a bomb on the ship.

But when the others ask him where it is hidden, he says—and I can’t stress enough how angry this makes me—“I only heard them talking. I couldn’t see where #1 pointed.” First of all, it’s just incorrect. Maharis could hear and see the Monoids talking. He still couldn’t see where #1 was pointing, but he definitely saw him point. And that brings me to the most infuriating part of this plot device. If you were shown a picture of a place you have been to hundreds of times, your bedroom for instance, and you see someone pointing out of frame, do you think you could approximate what they were pointing at? At the very least, do you think you could put yourself in that location and figure it out for yourself? Apparently, Maharis can’t. Instead of going to the place where the Monoids were standing and looking up at the only thing in the general direction of the gesture—a giant fucking statue—the humans will eventually begin a ship-wide search for the Monoids’ bomb. Because the writers needed something to occupy the humans’ time for the next 20 minutes of runtime, they deprived Maharis of object permanence.

Also, Terence Woodfield, the actor playing Maharis, is just as wooden and deprived of emotion as Dassuk, and when the two interact in this scene, it’s about as interesting as watching a game of Pong. At least Steven and Venussa are also present to provide the scene with a bit of actual acting. I just find it very odd that The Ark has such a dearth of acting talent. If I try, I can think of some other lackluster performances in the previous serials, but most of them are characters with one line or literal children. This serial has three terrible actors, and they all have a substantial amount of lines to deliver.

Meanwhile, back on Refusis, the Doctor and Dodo are sitting at a table with an invisible Refusian, who is occupying one of the chairs. The Doctor has just finished telling the Refusian about the Guardians and Monoids’ original plan to make a new home on Refusis, and the Refusian answers, “Yes. We’ve known for some time of the journey of the vessel you call the Ark, and we welcomed it. That is why we built places like this.” Which is incredibly convenient. Nine times out of ten—no, 999 times out of 1000—a species in a sci-fi narrative which tries to colonize another planet is met with hostility and violence. And the Refusians are not only open to cohabitation, but they have built humanlike settlements, complete with ornate rugs and crystal doorknobs? Everything about the Refusians is a narrative cop-out, from their lack of physical appearance to their motivations.

The Refusian goes on to explain, “Once we had a shape and a form something like you. Then there was a galaxy accident. A giant solar flare. Now, we no longer have a being that you can see or recognize…That is why it would have been good for Refusis to be inhabited again by life and the signs of life, provided that the beings that come to take our place are peaceful.” Again, way too convenient. And here, we see another usage of the word galaxy that just refers to space in a general sense rather than a specific location. The showrunners have not yet shown an interest in actually learning about the terms they are using onscreen.

Elsewhere, Monoid #2 and Yendom are returning to the pod so that #2 can warn the other Monoids about the invisible creatures. Yendom confronts #2 about their plans for a Monoid-only Refusis, refusing to let #2 make contact with the Ark. There is a brief, very unathletic struggle where Yendom lunges for #2’s gun, but #2 throws him to the ground and shoots him dead.

A short time later, the Doctor, Dodo, and the Refusian discover Yendom’s body, and they make for the pod.

At the pod, #2 begins a communication to the Ark, where #1 waits for a report. #2 begins, “The planet offers everything we need, but I must warn you. Listen to this carefully,”—the bushes outside the pod rustle frantically—“when we first arrived, we exited—”

The pod bursts into flames. In the control room of the Ark, the comms suddenly go dead. In the jungle, the Doctor and Dodo stare at the charred wreck of the pod. The Doctor says they can do nothing but wait for the next party to land. When Dodo asks what they will do if no one ever comes, the Doctor says, “Well, in that case, we shall just have to stay here.” Credits roll.

That was the weakest cliffhanger we’ve had in a long time. There is no tension there—obviously there will be some attempt by someone on the Ark to get to the surface of Refusis, if not the Monoids then Steven and the Guardians. Even the Doctor’s tone suggests that what he says is not a serious concern.

Part 4 (The Bomb)

Looking at my page count, I’ve gotten a little carried away with this breakdown. I’ve gone onto page 24 of the review, which is around what I want for a completed 4-part serial. Most of what I want to say about this serial has already been said, so I’ll try to keep this episode brief.

This episode begins with another all-Monoid scene in the control room of the Ark. These really are far and away the worst scenes in the serial, replete with overacted dialogue and inconsistent use of the communicators. Monoid #1 declares that their plans will continue, and he orders the others to get trays of miniaturized Monoids ready for the journey to the planet.

Monoid #4 takes #6 aside, doubting #1’s leadership. “The leader has said that we must go,” #4 says quietly, “but supposing he is wrong? We still don’t know what Refusis is like.” Across the room, #3 sees this transpire and warns #1 of possible dissent among the ranks.

“Don’t worry,” #1 says unconcernedly. “At the slightest sign of opposition, we can easily get rid of him. As easily as we will this spaceship, once we have left it. Remember the final answer, which is locked in the head of that statue.” The camera zooms in on the Monoid statue as dramatic music plays.

Back in the Refusian castle, the Refusian is still talking to the Doctor and Dodo. “Doctor,” he says, “we are, as you know, concerned about the arrival of the Ark and what it will mean to this planet.”

“That is why you destroyed the launcher?” the Doctor asks.

“Here, we’ve always known peace,” the Refusian continues. “Never war or conflict.” This is the last thing that we will learn about Refusian society, which is a shame. They are hollow nothings, literally and figuratively. Back in The Space Museum, I spoke a little about how the Xerons were an example of what I call the virtuous victim trope. A virtuous victim is some persecuted party that is portrayed as being completely perfect, either at an individual or societal level. As a society, this will generally manifest in lines like “We know nothing of violence,” or “Our people only care for the happiness of others.” These victims are virtuous definitionally; the Refusians are another example of this trope.

I find this dynamic to be incredibly boring. In The Space Museum, I called the virtuous victim the yin to the unambiguously evil antagonist’s yang. There is no depth there, nothing interesting behind the surface-level virtue. Looking back at the serials where we’ve seen this trope, it tends to crop up in places where there wasn’t enough space in the narrative to give these characters a richer backstory, like what we see here with the Refusians—though there are notable exceptions like the Thals in The Daleks or the Menoptra in The Web Planet. I hesitate to say that The Ark could use an additional episode or two to flesh out some of its core concepts—because it seems very likely that the writers would have filled the space with more problems—but it does feel that both acts of the serial could use some space to breathe and some extra depth.

The Doctor and Dodo tell the Refusian that the Guardians have made mistakes, but that there are some left on the Ark who would do better if given time to rise up against the Monoids. The Refusian says that the Guardians have one day until the Refusians begin to employ defensive measures against the spaceship. Which, for a society that supposedly has never had cause for war, seems very out of place.

Back on the Ark, Steven, Venussa, and Dassuk have noticed an increased activity among the Monoids. Venussa suggests that they are preparing to leave the Ark. When Steven asks how they could get out of the security kitchen, Venussa says that the doors only open from the outside. The Monoids are usually the ones to do this, but occasionally, a subject Guardian like Maharis will open the door, though Venussa says that Maharis would be far too frightened to help them. “Alright,” says Steven. “Then we’ll have to use his help without his knowing it.”

Meanwhile, Maharis is in the control room, still serving the Monoids. After Maharis takes an empty tray of food from Monoid #1’s table, #1 leans close to #3 and says, “Stupid, trusting creature. He and all the other subject Guardians are still under the illusion that they will be coming with us to Refusis.” In the background, the other subject guardians have begun to load the trays of miniaturized Monoids into the launcher pods.

Back in the security kitchen, Maharis enters with the empty tray. Steven and Venussa distract the man while Dassuk sneaks into the corridor outside the door. When Maharis looks around and doesn’t see Dassuk anywhere, Venussa points to a pile of blankets in the corner that have been arranged to look like a sleeping man.

In the corridor, Dassuk hides around a corner from the door as Maharis leaves, then again as two armed Monoids pass by. Once the coast is clear, he opens the door to the security kitchen, and the humans hurry into the corridor. “First we’ve got to find that bomb that the Monoids left behind,” says Steven.

In the control room, Monoid #4 still conspires with #6, saying that he doesn’t trust Refusis. “The moment we land,” he says, “then we decide whether #1 is to stay our leader. If Refusis is dangerous, we must return to the Ark before it is destroyed.” Shortly after, #1 tells #3 that the bomb is set to explode in 12 hours. Then all the Monoids pile into the pods and leave for the planet.

Some time later, all the humans left on the Ark have gathered in the control room. Steven tells everyone to look for the bomb, and they all scatter except for Venussa. To her, Steven says that they have to find a way to get to Refusis.

On the planet, the three launchers have landed next to the burnt wreck of the one blown up by the Refusian. #1 leads the Monoids offscreen, saying they must destroy whomever destroyed the pod—all of this is seen by the Doctor and Dodo, who watch from the bushes. #4 and #6 hang back for a moment so #4 can repeat his conspiratorial planning. Here is a very clunky line: “There is still time before [the Ark] is destroyed by that bomb that has been left behind.” There is no reason for any Monoid to say it that explicitly except as a means to give this information to the two protagonists lurking in the bushes. Another example of poor writing.

Up in the Ark, the searching Guardians are having no luck finding the bomb. Like I said before, this is only possible because Maharis conveniently lacks all ability for human reasoning and deduction. Suddenly, Venussa says they are receiving a communication from the planet below, and the Doctor’s voice is heard, warning Steven and the others about the bomb. Steven tells him that they already know and that they can’t find it. The Doctor assures him that he will find out from the Monoids and report back, and that in the meantime, he will send a launcher back to the Ark.

On Refusis, the Doctor and Dodo are still inside a pod—and a Refusian, who must make himself heard for the audience to know that he is there. The Doctor tells the Refusian to fly the pod back to the Ark. “The Monoids won’t know who’s taking them,” he says.

The Doctor and Dodo step out of the pod, coming face to face with two Monoids, #3 and #63. Seemingly unprompted, the pod takes off by itself. “Who is it that travels in that launcher?” asks #3. “We have seen no one since we have been here.”

Holding back laughter, the Doctor says, “Well, to tell the truth, neither have we.” Ugh.

Standing next to the statue, Steven asks Maharis if he has checked it for the bomb. Maharis answers, “What’s the use? There’s nothing there,” proving again just how incredibly useless he is in all facets of his existence. He can’t even say it with an ounce of emotion on his face. Dassuk rushes into the scene—also without emotion—and says that a launcher has returned from the planet. As they look on, a launcher returns to the launching bay and opens, apparently empty. The sound of the Refusian laughing fills the chamber.

Back on Refusis, the Doctor and Dodo have been taken to the Refusian castle and are being interrogated by #1. We get more terrible lines from the Doctor, like “I don’t know, I haven’t seen one.” This has devolved into pure slop.

In this scene, Monoid #4 takes the opportunity to declare his intent to return to the Ark, taking three Monoids with him and leaving the room. #1 takes a gun from #77 and heads after them, saying they will deal with the Doctor and the Refusians later. Also notable in this scene: the Doctor and Dodo hear the Monoids reference the bomb being in the statue.

Back on the Ark, Steven suggests they send a party of humans to Refusis to help the Doctor and Dodo. Dassuk, Maharis, and a third unnamed man enter the pod and leave. I really hope they die so I don’t have to see them act anymore.

On Refusis, #1 ambushes and kills #4. A skirmish begins, but it is broken up prematurely by the arrival of the launcher pod.

Dassuk, Maharis, and the third man exit the pod. At the sight of #1, Maharis smiles and says, “Master!” #1 shoots Maharis, who falls to the ground, screaming and dying. The Monoid civil war resumes, and Dassuk and the man use the distraction to run past them. One out of two ain’t bad.

When Dassuk arrives at the Refusian castle, the Doctor tells him that they know where the bomb is and that they must return to the Ark.

In the jungle, there are many Monoid corpses on the ground. Only #4 is left standing. When the Doctor, Dodo, and Dassuk burst into the clearing, #4 throws his gun to the ground, showing his unwillingness to fight. The Doctor says, “To the launcher!” and he and the humans clamber onto the pod.

On the Ark, Steven and the others have been warned by the Doctor that the bomb is in the statue. The humans all look forlornly at the Monoid figure, unsure how they will ever move it. Then the Refusian speaks up, saying he can take care of it. Suddenly, the statue moves as if levitating. The Refusian carries it to the launching bay, and the statue is shot out into the vacuum of space, where it harmlessly explodes.

The next scene on the spaceship features the prototypical resolution we always get at the end of a serial like this, with the Guardians, the surviving Monoids, the Refusian, and the protagonists all tittering on about peace and tranquility and all that bullshit. The Doctor and his companions return to the jungle and dematerialize in the TARDIS.

In transit, Dodo has finally changed out of the anachronistic crusader costume. She now wears a sleeveless tank top and a knee-length skirt, both accoutered with what look like large olives. It’s better than the crusader outfit, but I really wish the writers would stop calling attention to Dodo at every possible moment. She’s outgoing enough that an over-the-top outfit pushes her into the realm of obnoxious—if she wasn’t there already.

Suddenly, the Doctor sneezes and disappears. And it’s not that he vanishes; he literally turns invisible, setting us up for our third bout of invisibility in four serials. “We’re in grave danger,” we hear the Doctor say. “This is some form of attack!” Credits roll.

Takeaways

The Ark is a perfect example of why I wanted to write this retrospective. It’s a terrible story and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a fan of the series, but when you stop and look at exactly where and why it breaks down, this serial is absolutely fascinating. I mentioned in Part 3 how it feels like there was some sort of communications breakdown between the people tasked with writing, directing, and producing this story, but after finishing my second viewing, it feels worse than that. It’s like an argument where everyone is screaming past each other, no one even attempting to listen to anyone else.

And of course, the main crux of that argument is the Monoids. I’ll be honest, if I was given these creatures as a director and told that they have to speak, I don’t really know what I would have done to make them more appealing. I probably would have insisted that the actors don’t have to physically manipulate the communicators for them to speak, but with their awful voices and inexpressive creature design, they are basically a lost cause. It didn’t have to be this way. The very first scene of the serial demonstrated how the Monoids could be used as creatures that lurk offscreen for most of the narrative, things that are rarely seen and never really understood. But then there was a harsh cut to an inkjet printer, and the Monoids were forever ruined. It takes a lot for me to think of a creature as anywhere near the infamy of the Zarbi and the Menoptra, but the showrunners of The Ark really put in the work laying that groundwork for the Monoids.

I know I had other issues with this serial, but they all seem so inconsequential next to the fifty-car pileup that was the Monoids. The trial in Part 2 was built on several characters acting irrationally or out-of-character, and none of it felt grounded in reality. The Refusians were a missed opportunity, relegated to the growing pile of unsatisfying, virtuous victims that the series continues to throw at its audience.

Something I haven’t touched on yet is the dynamic between the humans and the Monoids in the first act of the serial. If you just watch the last two episodes, you might think that the Guardians in Act 1 were ruthless slavedrivers who worked the Monoids against their will and kept them at the losing end of a rigid social hierarchy. But nothing in Act 1 really communicated this to the audience. Yes they were clearly servants to the Guardians, performing much more menial tasks. But the commander told us that the Monoids volunteered their services in exchange for being included on the Ark, and there is nothing in the narrative to point to the Monoids being unsatisfied with this arrangement.

In fact, there are elements which point to them being almost coequal inhabitants of the generation ship. There are some things that I didn’t mention in my breakdown of the first episode—I just didn’t think they were important at the time—but the plaintiff in the trial that introduces us to the Guardians in Part 1 was actually a Monoid. The commander was using established law to uphold the rights of a Monoid and punish a fellow human. Additionally, throughout this trial, a Monoid was present on the dais next to the commander, whom I took to be the leader of the Monoids and having a similar rank to that of the commander. If the showrunners wanted to give the Monoids a stronger case for revolution, they shouldn’t have had the commander being amiable toward the Monoids. He could have been indifferent to other humans treating them poorly, or perhaps he could have been cruel to the Monoids himself.

Like with the Refusians, it doesn’t feel like there was any space in the narrative to turn the Monoids into sympathetic creatures. All we got is a brief moment at the end of Part 2 where the Doctor recognizes the intelligence of the Monoid assigned to him as a lab assistant. Again, and I hesitate to say this because it could definitely lead to more disappointment, but this serial really could have used an extra episode or two to flesh out the characters and the plot points. It would have provided runtime for a more realistic timeframe for the spread of the disease in Part 1, more exposition and empathizing with the Monoids in the first act, a more realistic resolution at the end of Part 2, and a more cohesive backstory for the Refusians in Part 3, all of which fell incredibly flat.

On the bright side, I thought that conceptually, everything about The Ark was very intriguing. I love the idea of a generation ship, and even if it wasn’t executed well, it’s a good sign that the showrunners will be tackling more high-concept science fiction in the future. And I hate to say it, but Dodo isn’t as bad as I remember. I was prepared to come into this serial and trash every piece of dialogue that comes out of her mouth, but most of her performance was tolerable. Her stupidity still has the potential to make her irredeemably annoying, but at least she is a marked departure from the Susan-clone that was Vicki. I don’t think I would put Dodo above Vicki on my tear list of companions quite yet, but it’s clear that Dodo at her best is better than Vicki at her worst, which is a level of palatability I did not expect from her at all.

Lastly, yet again, we had Steven as a largely irrelevant figure throughout the serial. Aside from the monologue he gave while the protagonists were on trial—a monologue which was incredibly out-of-character—Steven was practically absent from the narrative. He spent most of the time in the first act following the Doctor around, and much of Act 2 trapped in the security kitchen. While he hasn’t sunk to the level of Vicki quite yet, it is clear that Steven does not have what it takes to be a companion at the level of the original three, which is very disappointing. I still love Peter Purves’s acting; he just has nothing to work with.

Looking forward, I had a viscerally negative reaction to discovering that the next serial is The Celestial Toymaker, a story I distinctly remember being on par with the travesty that was The Web Planet. I want to see if Dodo can maintain her status as a replacement-level companion or if she becomes the negative force I remember her being from my first go through Classic Who. Like always, I want to be pleasantly surprised, but I don’t think it is very likely. The next serial has a setting that reminds me a lot of The Edge of Destruction in that instead of existing in a specific time and place, the TARDIS lands in a sort of null space ruled by a mysterious entity. Normally this would be something I can’t wait to delve into, but I’m honestly dreading what I remember to be a pathetic excuse for a serial. Season 3 is really churning out the clunkers, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m gonna try to blast through the end of Hartnell’s run, as I’m much more excited to get to Troughton than I am about anything in the immediate future.

Rating: 2.2/10

Chapter Text

3.7 – The Celestial Toymaker

Thesis: Racism

The N word appears in this serial; full-voiced, with the hard R.

When I went into my review of this serial, I expected to talk about the term “celestial,” and how it is a very archaic slur for people from Asia. The antagonist, the titular Celestial Toymaker, is a white man wearing traditional Chinese clothes, with flowing, brocaded robes and a wide-brimmed Qing Dynasty hat. Thankfully, he is not made up in yellowface like Mavic Chen in The Daleks’ Master Plan or several other white actors from Marco Polo and The Crusades. Still, choosing celestial as the descriptor for this man adds a flavor of casual racism to an otherwise inobtrusive stylistic choice. And it seems to be intentional; using celestial in this way fell out of fashion in the 40s and 50s, several years before The Celestial Toymaker was produced.

What I did not expect was for one of the supporting characters, an old man known as the King of Hearts, to say, completely unprompted: “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a n***** by the toe.” If you don’t know the history of the nursery rhyme, this is its racist original text. The next few lines used to be “If he hollers, make him pay. Twenty dollars every day.”

At the time of its original broadcast, this would have been another instance of casual racism—casual in the sense that the nursery rhyme, though monstrous, was a part of the public lexicon, and the line is not directed as an insult toward any specific person. Though the times have changed, I’m not trying to argue that this was acceptable in 1966, because it absolutely wasn’t. But the decades since have transformed this piece of casual racism into a brutally racist overtone that comes across like punch to the gut. It sucks to see this in any piece of media, much less my favorite TV show, but it is important to reckon with the animosity and disdain that Western white culture had for black people in the mid-1900s—a disdain that, though diminished, is still prevalent today.

And it feels hollow, as a reviewer, to sit here and say that I’ll be looking out for instances of racism going forward. That’s what I do with things like the Doctor’s characterization and the roles Steven fills in these narratives. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m reducing racism to another plot device that I want to keep track of. But I am very interested to see how the series grew as our culture grew and reckoned with its racist history, to see if and when we stop finding instances of yellowface and blackface and casual utterances of racial slurs. I want to see progress, and to the extent that this retrospective means anything, I’ll do my best to hold the series accountable to any injustices I come across.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another mostly-missing serial, with only Part 4 available as recovered footage. I am experiencing Parts 1 through 3 in the format of telesnap reconstructions, which are essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1 (The Celestial Toyroom)

After suddenly turning invisible at the end of The Ark, the Doctor opens this serial by gravely telling Steven and Dodo that they are no longer safe inside the TARDIS. “Whatever it is,” he says, “it has great power and can penetrate our safety barrier.”

Then there is an exterior shot of the TARDIS, showing the ship in a large, dimly lit room, with no furnishings except for an oversized child’s wardrobe against the rear wall. A lot of set pieces in The Celestial Toymaker are oversized, and I get the sense that this is a deliberate framing to make the protagonists look like children. Infantilization is a theme that I will be coming back to throughout this serial.

Back inside the ship, the Doctor asks Steven to turn on the scanner, but nothing appears on the screen. Steven thinks it is broken, but the Doctor isn’t so sure, telling him that the scanner is on, and that something is inhibiting the picture. “This is part of the same trick,” he says. Dodo wants them to dematerialize, but the Doctor doesn’t think this is a good idea. “That might be worse, my dear. Besides, I’m not only invisible. I’m intangible, which means that I can’t pull the switches.”

Steven says, “I’ll do it, if you tell me what to do.” Keep this in mind: at this point in the serial, Steven cannot dematerialize the TARDIS without explicit instructions from the Doctor. This will be contradicted in the final episode.

The Doctor says that they must face the problem head-on, and they all step outside the ship.

The scene cuts to another room, where a man in his late-20s stands in front of a massive dollhouse, a structure nearly two stories tall. This is the Celestial Toymaker, and as I mentioned in my thesis, he wears traditional Chinese robes of brocaded fabric and a Qing Dynasty hat. He has short brown hair and a wry smile on his face. Elsewhere in the room is a triangular gaming table and a large bank of controls, suggesting that this place is more technologically advanced than present-day Earth.

The Toymaker walks over to an open room of the dollhouse where two large clown dolls, a man and a woman about a foot tall, sit in a plastic living room. “You’ll serve my purpose admirably,” he says, taking each of them in hand. “You’re very good at games. Clowns always are. You can show Steven and Dodo some of your tricks into the bargain.” The Toymaker places the dolls in the center of the room, and they grow in size until they are life-sized people, moving of their own volition. The man wears sad clown makeup and the woman wears happy makeup.

Back outside the TARDIS, the Doctor is suddenly visible again, much to the delight of Steven and Dodo. Dodo posits that his brief bout of invisibility may have had something to do with the Refusians, the invisible creatures from the last serial. “I don’t think it was the Refusians’ influence that made me become intangible,” the Doctor says. “No, I think it was something here, and I don’t like the feel of the place any more than you do. But we have to face up to it. You know, I think I was meant to come here.”

Then we see another prop in this otherwise empty room. It’s one of those wind-up mechanical robot toys that walks on its own, though it’s the size of a person, nearly as tall as Steven, But when Steven looks at it, the robot’s otherwise nondescript torso has become a television, where Steven can see footage of himself, first on the planet Kembel from The Daleks’ Master Plan and then in Paris from The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve. However, when Dodo looks at the she sees nothing but its regular torso.

When the Doctor sees Steven enamored by the robot, he yanks Steven away from the it, insisting that he has been tricked and that there is nothing there. “We’re now in the world of the Celestial Toymaker,” he says, “and that screen is hypnotic. He’s trying to dominate your mind…He’s a power for evil. He manipulates people and makes them into his playthings. Whatever you do, neither of you must look at that screen. It’s a trap.”

Suddenly, the TARDIS is gone; in its place stands the Celestial Toymaker. “What a spoilsport you are, Doctor,” he says, feigning offense. “They like my memory window.” Then Dodo looks at the Robot, and this time she actually sees the screen, showing her the day that her mother died. Steven pulls Dodo away, and the Doctor says they have to fight the Toymaker. Again, Dodo suggests they leave in the TARDIS, and the Toymaker says, “There are many of them. Take your choice.” Out of nowhere, there are suddenly dozens of TARDISes swirling around the protagonists, moving as if on conveyor belts.

As Steven and Dodo are distracted by the display, the Toymaker says, “Come, Doctor,” and the two men suddenly vanish. Steven and Dodo are alone in an empty room—no TARDISes, no Toymaker, no Doctor. Before they have time to think about what has happened, the doors to the wardrobe open, and out stride the two clowns. They cross over to Steven and Dodo, neither of them speaking, the male clown communicating by honking his nose. We get about a minute of the most banal comic relief, where the male clown goes to shake Steven’s hand and a fake hand comes free when Steven grabs it, and where the same clown offers Dodo a bouquet of flowers that shoots a jet of water in her face. Both companions laugh at the other companion’s expense.

This comic relief will be much of the tone for the rest of the serial. Back in my review of The Romans in Season 2, I said that about once a season, the showrunners go out of their way to put a story on television that really makes it obvious that Doctor Who is a children’s show—which frankly never seems to balance out all the rape insinuations they like to throw in every third serial, but I digress. The Celestial Toymaker is Season 3’s example of this phenomenon, but in this case, the showrunners overshoot the target. This serial is so childish, and the companions are so infantilized, that I imagine there were a lot of ten-year-olds in the UK who watched this at the time and thought they were probably too old for this. It is an irreconcilable tonal shift, completely incongruous from the rest of the series, where—aside from The Edge of Destruction, which featured no supporting cast—there has been at least one character death in every serial thus far.

The Celestial Toymaker does not feel like a Doctor Who story. I wish it wasn’t a Doctor Who story. And over the rest of this review, I want to demonstrate how the childishness of this serial makes it an insufferable watch.

As Steven and Dodo become frustrated with the clowns, the female clown finally speaks in the most irritating, high-pitched squeak you can imagine. Steven asks her what the clowns want with him and Dodo, but before she can answer, the Toymaker suddenly appears back in the room, saying, “They’re here to entertain you. Play a game with you…The Doctor and I are going to play a little game together…But you must win all your games before he does…After each game, if you win, you will find a TARDIS, which may or may not be the real one…[If you lose,] then you both stay here as my guests.”

The Toymaker vanishes again, and Steven turns back to the female clown, asking her what game they have to play. “Blind Man’s Bluff!” she squeaks.

Back in the room with the giant dollhouse—which the transcript calls the Toymaker’s office—the Doctor and the Toymaker eye each other from opposite sides of the triangular game table. We get a very interesting piece of dialogue from the Toymaker: “It’s so nice to see you again…The last time you were here, I hoped you’d stay long enough for a game, but you had hardly time to turn around.”

“And I was very wise, too,” the Doctor says distastefully. “You and your games are quite notorious. You draw people here like a spider does to flies…And should they lose the game they play, you condemn them to become your toy forever.”

In Season 2, I noticed a marked change in the Doctor’s characterization, where more often than not, the Doctor had prior experience or knowledge about the places the TARDIS landed. But The Celestial Toymaker marks only the second time this has happened in Season 3, the first being when he and Steven visited Paris in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve.

To me, this is a definite regression in the Doctor’s character, as much of his bombast and his mystique in Season 2 was derived from his prior knowledge, such as his confident portrayal of a musician in The Romans or when he saw through Bennett’s deception in The Rescue because of his understanding of the culture of the people of Dido. In my review of The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, I noted that the absence of the Doctor resulted in a feckless and meandering plot that was a throwback to Season 1, when the Doctor was portrayed as little more than the companions with whom he traveled. But the more I think about it, we’ve seen a lot of the Doctor’s Season 1 characterization so far in Season 3. In Galaxy Four, The Myth Makers, and The Ark, we’ve seen a Doctor rarely in control of his surroundings, and he was as likely as Steven, Vicki, or Dodo to be confused or imprisoned.

I’ve spoken on multiple occasions about how Season 3 has little to offer in terms of narrative quality. At this point in the season, including The Celestial Toymaker, five of my seven worst-rated serials are from Season 3, and the only two serials I rated as above average are Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks’ Master Plan, which are functionally the same story. And it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why. I’ve brought up the devolution of Vicki into a Susan-clone and the marginalization of Steven as an independent character. But I’m now realizing that a major factor in Season 3’s failings is that the Doctor just isn’t as in control as he was in the previous season. And unlike Season 1 where this was also the case, the writing of the Doctor’s companions here isn’t nearly as strong as what was given to Ian, Barbara, and Susan.

I think I want a few more Season 3 serials to wrap my mind around how each of these factors play into the diminishing quality of the series at this point and time. Stuff like this is why I wait to write up my season overviews until the very end of the season.

Moving on, the Toymaker proceeds to tell the Doctor that he will also be playing a game. The only way the Doctor and his companions will be able to leave intact is if they all win their games. The triangle game table then becomes the board for what the Toymaker refers to as the Trilogic Game. You have probably played this game at some point in your schooling. There are three spaces, and one space begins with a pyramid of numbered pieces, with a 1 on the smallest piece and a 2 on the piece below it, etc. The goal of the game is to transplant the entire pyramid from one space to another by only moving one piece at a time. The only legal way to move a piece is by moving it from one space to another, and you can never have a larger piece on top of a smaller. If it sounds confusing, just google the Trilogic Game; the TARDIS wiki does a more thorough job of explaining it than I have the patience for.

The Doctor’s version of the game has a pyramid consisting of 10 pieces, and the Toymaker tells him that he must finish the game without making a mistake, taking exactly 1023 moves. Now, this might sound like a tall order, but if you’ve played the game before, you’ll know that as long as you pay attention to what you’re doing, there’s only ever one correct move to make at any given time. It’s a very algorithmic game, so algorithmic that the minimum amount of moves can be expressed in a simple mathematical formula. For a pyramid that is x pieces tall, the minimum amount of moves to finish the game is 2^x-1.

But for the Doctor, there is an additional catch. If he completes his game before his companions finish their series of games—which the Toymaker refers to as The Hunt for the TARDIS—then they all lose. Additionally, the Doctor learns that the two clowns will be playing against Steven and Dodo on the side of the Toymaker.

At this point, I want to talk about the setting of this serial, because it is wonderfully imaginative. The story takes place entirely within the domain of the Celestial Toymaker, a place where the immortal Toymaker has complete control. He can alter the shape and details of every room, essentially making him a god within his realm. It is unclear whether this place is somewhere inside the universe or if it exists somewhere beyond, but because it clearly does not operate under the same constraints of the regular universe, I will be referring to the Toymaker’s domain as an extra-universal setting, or a null space.

This type of setting makes The Celestial Toymaker unique at this point in the series, and puts it in rare company when you look at Doctor Who as a whole, in the same category as the 12th Doctor’s Heaven Sent, the 10th Doctor’s Rise of the Cybermen, and the 5th Doctor’s adventures in an alternate universe known as E-Space. Like I said multiple times in my review of The Ark, I’m a sucker for high-concept sci-fi, and extra-universal settings are no exception. I love this idea. I just wish it weren’t so horribly executed.

Back in the room with Steven, Dodo, and the clowns, the female clown identifies herself as Clara; the male clown, who still refuses to communicate in any way other than honking his nose, is named as Joey. Joey has set up an obstacle course where one team member must hop across a series of blocks, cross a narrow bridge, and crawl through a long tube. However, they must do it blindfolded. The other team member must go to a soundproof box and communicate where the blindfolded person must move by pressing on a button which makes a beeping noise. One beep for right, two for left, three for stop, and four for start. Clara blindfolds Joey, and the clown makes his way through the course seemingly effortlessly. Trepidatiously, Steven steps up to the start of the course, where he is blindfolded by Clara.

Meanwhile, the Doctor watches all of this transpire from a monitor in the Toymaker’s office. He makes a break for a communicator, and he is able to get part of a message across to his companions: “Dodo? Steven? This is the Doctor. The game you’re going to play is not so innocent as it looks. Be on your guard. If you lose this game, we shall be here forever. So watch out for—”

The Toymaker flips a switch, cutting the Doctor off. As a punishment for his impudence, the Toymaker uses a voice command to progress the Trilogic Game to move 152. He also makes the Doctor immaterial once again, dematerializing everything but his hand, saying that will stop him from interfering with the other game. However, the Doctor can still speak, so I don’t know how this would stop him from flipping the switch on the communicator and warning his companions anyway. But the Doctor goes back to his game, now a disembodied hand moving pieces of the pyramid from space to space.

Now it is Steven’s turn for the obstacle course. For a 4-minute, entirely-too-long sequence, we watch Dodo guide him from the soundproof box, unable to do anything except beep as Joey kicks pieces of the obstacle course from one place to another, doing everything he can to defamiliarize Steven with what he saw before he put on the blindfold. It’s not fun to watch, and I don’t mean in a stressful, tense sort of way. It’s boring, and the clowns are excessively annoying.

In the end, the clown spins the long tube around while Steven is crawling through, so he exits in the wrong place and takes the blindfold off before actually finishing the course. Clara squeaks out that the clowns won, but Dodo emerges from the soundproof box and rips Joey’s blindfold out of his pocket, discovering that it is see-through. Steven and Dodo demand that Joey and Clara do the obstacle course again, this time with Joey wearing Steven’s blindfold.

Joey starts, and for another two minutes of boredom, the clown moves from obstacle to obstacle, much less sure of himself this time. He gets to the narrow bridge and teeters, as if about to fall. Worried, Dodo says, “Steven, you’d better stop him. He’ll fall.” Dodo, you dumbass, that’s the whole point of the game. Throughout this serial, both Dodo and Steven will exhibit an extremely childish conception of the world, both in how they relate to those trying to do them harm and in how they are unable to grasp very simple concepts. In my opinion, this story is the nail in the coffin for both of their characters.

Anyway, the clown falls, and Steven and Dodo rush to the end of the room, where there is a TARDIS waiting for them. I don’t understand why the Toymaker allows them to do this. Nobody won the game; both teams lost. Based on the rules established only ten minutes ago, Steven and Dodo should already be the property of the Toymaker, or at the very least be made to complete the obstacle course again. At any rate, they open the TARDIS doors but find it to be an empty wooden box.

The companions are very surprised about this, acting distraught, as if this is an impossibility that nobody could possibly have foreseen. But the Toymaker told them explicitly that the TARDIS at the end of the game may or may not be the real TARDIS, and he already told the Doctor that his companions would be going through a series of games. The overwrought reaction Steven and Dodo have to discovering it’s a fake feels totally out-of-place, as if the narrative expects me not to have picked up on these obvious clues. It treats the audience and the characters like children, like I’m about to see Dora the Explorer stroll onto the screen and break the fourth wall with some call-and-response exercise for babies.

And in a way, the serial follows through with this. There is a slip of paper on the floor of the fake TARDIS, and Dodo picks it up and reads aloud: “Four legs, no feet, of arms no lack. It carries no burden on its back. Six deadly sisters, seven for choice. Call the servants without voice.” A panel opens in the back of the TARDIS, and the words of the riddle appear onscreen, as if I’m supposed to try and figure it out before the next episode. But as we will soon discover, the riddle is literally impossible without the added context of the next episode, so what is the point if not just an exercise in frustration? Credits roll.

Part 2 (The Hall of Dolls)

The rear panel of the fake TARDIS leads to a small hallway that ends in a large door. A counter set into the wall next to the door shows Steven and Dodo that the Doctor is 416 moves into his allotted 1023. Together, they pull the door open.

Back in the Toymaker’s office, the Toymaker taunts the Doctor, who is still just a floating hand. Watching the companions on the monitor, the Toymaker says, “They will lose one game, and then, like the clowns, they’ll become my toys, and we shall be able to amuse ourselves through all eternity.”

On the monitor, the two men watch as Steven and Dodo enter a room containing three chairs, numbered one through three. Just like I suggested in the previous episode, the Doctor has no problem working the communicator as just a hand. He flips a switch and shouts, “Steven! Dodo! Take care. It’s chair number—”

The Toymaker cuts the Doctor of again, this time robbing him of his ability to speak. Again, I’m not sure why he didn’t do this after the Doctor’s first attempt, but whatever. Also, I’m not sure how the Doctor knows what the correct chair would be. As we have already established, the Doctor never lingered in the Toymaker’s realm before this serial, not staying longer than the time it took to turn around and go back inside his TARDIS. How does he know what this game even is, much less how to solve it? And even if he thought he knew some solution, who is to say that the Toymaker didn’t change it in the umpteen years since then?

Continuing on, the Toymaker punishes the Doctor further by ordering the Trilogic Game to advance to move 444, and the pieces of the game move on their own until that position. As the Doctor, now mute and just a hand, settles back into his game, the Toymaker picks up a deck of playing cards and talks about introducing “the Heart family” into the fray.

Back in the room with the chairs, the Toymaker suddenly appears in front of Steven and Dodo, saying that he has stolen the Doctor’s voice and warning the companions against breaking any rules. Steven accuses the clowns of breaking them, but the Toymaker pays no mind to Steven’s protests; he vanishes.

A moment later, a middle-aged man and a woman who looks to be in her 30s enter the scene, the King and Queen of Hearts. They both wear regal gowns; the king carries a scepter tipped with a large heart and the queen has a headdress with five hearts. All of these hearts look to be made of construction paper, making them seem like decorations one might find in an elementary school on Valentine’s Day. Altogether, their costumes leave a lot to be desired.

Then there is the way these characters are directed, which isn’t much better. Just like with the clowns in the first episode, these are extremely campy, over-the-top characters. The king reminds me a bit of the Richard Harris version of Albus Dumbledore, though with all of the bumbling idiosyncrasies and none of the intelligence. He spends the episode constantly muttering to himself and becoming sidetracked. The queen is only marginally better, a stereotype of the prim and proper disciplinarian, criticizing her husband and keeping him on task—they, too, are trying to solve the riddle of the Toymaker.

The rest of this episode takes place in this room and one other: an adjoining room with four more numbered chairs, bringing the total to seven. Also in the adjoining room are cupboards made to look like TARDISes; one contains three dolls and another contains four. Steven and Dodo cross to this second room—leaving the king and queen quibbling in the first—where the companions open the cupboards and find the dolls. This is where they figure out the riddle, realizing that it refers to chairs, six of which are deadly and only one of which will lead them to what may or may not be the TARDIS.

They realize they can use the dolls to test the chairs, but when they turn their backs on the cupboard with three dolls inside, the door shuts and locks itself, leaving them with only four. As the Doctor reaches move 526 in the Trilogic Game, they get to work.

Before they can test the first chair, the King and Queen of Hearts enter. There are two more members of the Heart family that I haven’t yet mentioned. The first is the joker, which is just a man in jester’s clothes, clearly a royal fool. He doesn’t have much to do in this episode other than interject a quip now and again, always at the Heart family’s expense, though none of them ever catch on. Very Shakespearian, though uninteresting. And the other character is the Knave, a “boy” called Cyril.

I put boy in quotes, because throughout the episode, he is referred to as a boy. This is one of those serials which I first experienced by only reading the transcripts, and based on the narrative, I pictured a boy of around ten years old. No. This is a full-grown man in his 40s, dressed like what a wealthy child would wear in the middle ages, in striped bloomers and a shirt with ridiculously puffy sleeves. Throughout the story, he acts like a child, and he is by far the most annoying character I have encountered to this point in the series, especially in Part 4. But we’ll get to that later. For now, he is about as unimportant as the fool, in the background, occasionally complaining about being hungry or bored.

Narratively, we are nearly at the end of the episode, which seems incredible given that we’re only about seven minutes in. For the rest of the runtime, we are dragged through painstakingly long, unnecessary back-and-forths between the king and queen, as they quibble over what chairs to try and how. Every time they speak, it feels like I’m watching a video at half speed—it takes forever to get anywhere. And interjected between these dialogues are Steven and Dodo, who have taken two of the four dolls into the first chair room. They take turns throwing the dolls into the numbered chairs. True to the riddle, these dolls are subjected to lethal force in a number of ways: being crushed, shaken to death, etc.

Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that the reason Steven and Dodo now only have two dolls is because after Steven had the forethought to hide the four they have access to from the Heart family, Dodo says very loudly and within their earshot, “Steven, the cupboard with the other three dolls. It’s locked. I can’t open it.” The king and queen are rightfully angered, and so is Steven. Dodo is blithely unaware of how she negatively changed the dynamics of the game, even when Steven tries to explain it to her.

Then, once Steven and Dodo exhaust their two dolls and are left with an untested chair, Dodo does something incredibly stupid by sitting in it herself. She is immediately frozen to the chair, frozen altogether, too cold to move. Even though this should be lethal, her stupidity is rewarded when Steven is able to wrench her free from the chair, and she quickly returns to normal.

I really don’t know what the writers are trying to do with Dodo. A couple times in this episode, she makes a point to say how human the living playing cards seem, adamantly telling Steven that they are real people. This much I understand—her role here is to humanize these supporting characters, even if it falls incredibly flat because of how unlikable they are. But if you take her several blunders at face value, it seems like she doesn’t appreciate the real dangers of the game or that she doesn’t understand the importance of viewing their opponents as working against their interests. However, there are several pieces of her dialogue which show that she does understand what is happening. She often frets about being stuck in the Toymaker’s realm if they lose the games, and she is just as likely to remind Steven about their tasks as he is to remind her.

The most charitable read of her character is one that values fairness: playing by the rules, helping the Heart family even to her own detriment, and caring for characters like Joey the clown when it looks like they might be hurt, even though the character is meanspirited or cruel. But Dodo doesn’t come across as an idealistic do-gooder. Instead, she seems like someone who knows the rules of the game, but who is too stupid to work toward her own interests. Dodo is a broken character, thoroughly destroyed by the writers of this serial. Her unintelligence is so overwhelming that anything she does going forward will seem like a mistake or a lucky guess.

I’m glad that I made the effort to give her a fair shake in this retrospective, and I was pleasantly surprised when she was more or less tolerable in The Ark. But this is the mean to which I always expected her to fall. Again, I’m open to changing my mind as I progress through this retrospective, but with only three serials left in Dodo’s run, this is where my opinion of her is likely to stay. She is the worst companion so far in the series, and she will probably hold that position for a long, long time.

When they return to the room with four chairs, they find that the king and queen have used the other two dolls, and like Dodo, they tested one of the two remaining chairs themselves, both sitting in the same chair at the same time. As a result, the chair became a two-dimensional object, flattening the two characters in the process. This was shown in the final interaction between the king and queen, and it is supposed to be a touching moment where they reaffirm their love for one another before risking their lives. But these characters are so irritating that I found myself hoping they would die, just so I wouldn’t have to see them onscreen anymore. There was also a bit where the king and queen tried to trick the fool and Cyril into sitting in the chairs themselves, a heartlessness which really undercuts any sympathy we’re supposed to feel for them. Refusing to do so, Cyril and the fool fled offscreen, though where they are supposed to have gone is unclear.

One last thing about the king and queen: in one of their exchanges, the king utters that racist nursery rhyme using the N word with a hard R. It is a throwaway line that is completely meaningless to the plot, and I wasn’t sure where to fit it into this review. It’s not even audible in the reconstruction; the line has been edited out, leaving the transcript as the only evidence of the racist original text. Still, the moment is so jarring and unnecessary that it’s almost surreal. It’s such thoughtless cruelty by the showrunners, and it makes an already insufferable serial that much more irredeemable.

Anyway, Steven sits on chair number five, the only remaining untested chair. A TARDIS appears, and Dodo says, “We’ve won! There’s the TARDIS! As soon as the Doctor wins his game, we can go! We’re safe!” Dodo just went through this charade. I know that she is the dullest companion we’ve seen so far, but this is uncharacteristically stupid, even for her. This is what I mean when I say that the narrative infantilizes her and Steven; it turns them into the most gullible, naïve versions of themselves, to the point where I want to take them by the shoulders and shake an ounce of common sense into them. And as I go through the serial for a second time, it’s clear that Dodo is way more irritating in this regard than Steven, though there will be occasions later when Steven is similarly childish.

Of course the TARDIS is a fake, and instead of a piece of paper, there is a ringing black phone inside the wooden box. This is the first time that there has actually been a phone in the police box, and it would have been so funny if—after her initial experience with the TARDIS was a search for a phone—Dodo did anything to reference this. Instead, no one makes a remark as Steven answers the phone and the Toymaker’s voice reads out the next riddle to the companions: “Hunt the key to fit the door that leads out on the dancing floor. Then escape the rhythmic beat, or you’ll forever tap your feet.”

One last look around, and the two companions see that the King and Queen of Hearts have reverted back into two playing cards. Like at the end of the last episode, they exit the TARDIS through a rear panel. But as soon as they are gone, the door to the second cupboard flies open, and the three remaining dolls rise of their own volition and follow Steven and Dodo—these are the “servants without voice” from the first riddle. Credits roll.

Part 3 (The Dancing Floor)

This episode is my favorite one of the serial. And by favorite, I mean that it is below average instead of offensively bad.

Back in the Toymaker’s office, the mute Doctor’s hand still moves pieces across the triangular board of the Trilogic Game. The Toymaker speaks to him about the success of his companions before wandering back over to the giant dollhouse and plucking two dolls from a plastic kitchen—thankfully not a security kitchen. “Ah, Sergeant Rugg and Mrs. Wiggs,” he says fondly. “These, then, are who Steven will find behind the door.” I’m not sure why he leaves Dodo out here. It’s probably just a line flub that the director didn’t think was worthy of a retake.

Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo have once again exited the fake TARDIS through a rear panel, encountering another hallway, this one with a wooden door. As soon as they stop in front of this door, the three dolls from the previous room enter the hall behind them, dressed and poised like ballerinas. Both Dodo and Steven find the dolls to be unnerving, but after a moment, the dolls stop paying any attention to them, waltzing past the companions and entering through the wooden door.

Steven and Dodo follow them in and find themselves in a large kitchen, where a female cook in a bonnet, Mrs. Wiggs, labors at an oven. A tall man with dark hair and sideburns is dressed like an army officer, and this must be Sgt. Rugg. He watches Mrs. Wiggs work. Lastly, there is a character sitting at the kitchen table, the fat 40-something man who played the irritating knave in the previous episode, this time wearing suspenders and a bonnet like a young child. Again, he will have hardly any presence in this kitchen scene, but he will cement himself as my least favorite character to this point in the series once we get to know him at the end of this episode.

The ballerina dolls go straight through the kitchen and disappear through another wooden door, which shuts behind them and features a comically large keyhole. Dodo reminds us of the clue from the end of Part 2: “Hunt the key to fit the door that leads out on the dancing floor. Then escape the rhythmic beat, or you’ll forever tap your feet. When she poses the clue to Sgt. Rugg, he gestures toward the door with the keyhole, saying that the only dancing he knows of is through there.

This sets the parameters of the scene, with Steven and Dodo searching the kitchen for the key, while Mrs. Wiggs makes frequent remarks about not messing about in her kitchen and Sgt. Rugg titters on about how a military man acts and things that are beneath his station, such as apologizing and dancing. At one point, Dodo points out that the kitchen “boy” sleeping at the table was also the knave from the Heart family, and I realized that we have also seen Rugg and Wiggs before, as the clowns and the king and queen.

As the scene progresses, Sgt. Rugg and Mrs. Wiggs get into an argument that blows up into the two characters chucking baked goods and pieces of fruit at each other from across the kitchen, smashing fine China in the process. At some point during the scuffle, the kitchen boy wakes up and points to a cake on the table. Dodo finds the key baked into the cake, and she and Steven use it to unlock the door and hurry out of the room.

I don’t know why I like this scene, but I do. It’s just as slowly paced as the chair sequence from the last episode, which I thought was lethargic, and it has lots of hammy slapstick, the likes of which I usually find unappealing. But there is something endearing about Mrs. Wiggs and Sgt. Rugg that was absent from their appearances as the irritating clowns and the Heart family. Nothing about them is particularly well-written or clever, and they are just as prone to rambling back-and-forths as the king and queen. However, it’s a breath of fresh air to be watching characters who are just mediocre instead of ones that actively piss me off with every line. Even that might be giving these characters too much credit, but I can’t help thinking that Mrs. Wiggs and Sgt. Rugg are perhaps the only redeeming quality of this entire serial.

Once Steven and Dodo are gone, the Toymaker appears to the Wiggs and Rugg, berating them for allowing the companions to escape with the key. “Clean yourselves up, and get out onto that dance floor,” he says roughly. “At the far end, you will find a TARDIS. Steven and Dodo must be prevented from getting to it at all costs…If you fail me, I will break you in pieces like this.” He smashes one of the few remaining plates. I don’t know why the Toymaker casually throws around the term TARDIS as if it is a common household item that any old doll would recognize, but Wiggs and Rugg don’t react as if he said anything out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile, Steven and Dodo have arrived at what might be the laziest set design since the abysmal conference room in Mission to the Unknown. It’s a black room with a raised triangular platform that is the dance floor. A box that may or may not be the TARDIS—let’s face it; everyone but Steven and Dodo already know that it is a fake—sits at the far corner of the plain white dance floor. That’s it. I don’t think there has been a set in Doctor Who so devoid of visual elements. At least in the conference room, there were things to look at; they were just poorly conceived and constructed. Here, we get nothing.

The three ballerina dolls stand on the dance floor between the companions in the TARDIS, standing with their hands on their hips as if to confront them. Then both Steven and Dodo devolve into the dumbest children you can imagine. Dodo explicitly repeats the riddle, focusing on the final line: “Then escape the rhythmic beat, or you’ll forever tap your feet.” Turning to Steven, she asks, “What does it mean?”

Neither of them seems to have a clue, but instead of trying to figure out the riddle, they totally disregard it. Wiggs and Rugg enter the empty room behind them, muttering something about dancing. Then Steven makes a break for the TARDIS, and in the most predictable plot twist, the moment he steps on the dance floor, music starts playing out of nowhere, the dolls start to dance, and Steven is compelled by some mysterious force to join in the dancing. “Steven!” Dodo calls out. “This is what the riddle meant!” Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

In the Toymakers office, the Doctor has progressed to move 881 of the Trilogic Game.

Back in the dancing hall, we get a sequence that is mind-numbingly bad, even for this serial. Dodo says to Steven, “Get away from it. You must! The riddle warned us it would be forever.” Then, within a span of maybe 20 seconds, Dodo says, “I’m going to try and reach the TARDIS,” and she steps onto the dance floor herself, immediately pulled into the dance. What utter garbage. She even has the audacity to act surprised as she partners up with one of the ballerinas for a dance. What did she expect to happen?

Wiggs and Rugg join them on the dance floor, seemingly for no reason whatsoever. Then, inexplicably, Steven is freed from the influence of the dance floor just enough to catch Dodo in his arms and dance their way over to the TARDIS. The doors fly open and they jump inside, leaving Wiggs and Rugg dancing on in their wake. For a serial with dozens of low points, this is definitely the deepest chasm for me. It may even be worse than the worst moment from The Web Planet, a serial I rated at 0.0 out of 10.

Once inside the TARDIS, the two companions realize it is yet another fake. At least they react more depressed than surprised. I don’t think I could take another instance of Dodo being shocked by the obvious progression of the narrative.

Back in the Toymaker’s office, the Toymaker is frustrated by the turn of events, flinging various dolls into a large chest, saying, “I must find a more deadly character.” Taking a doll in hand, he smiles. “The most deadly character of them all, because he looks so innocent. A fat, jolly schoolboy.” Prepare yourself. We are about to be subjected to pure, unfiltered Cyril.

After exiting from the panel in the rear of their third fake TARDIS, Steven finds a note taped to the cupboard. To this point in the story, there have been two riddles, which arguably haven’t even been riddles at all. The first was unsolvable without the context of what the companions encountered in Part 2, and the second was more a set of instructions than a riddle. The third doesn’t even try: “Lady Luck will show the way. Win the game, or here you’ll stay.” That could refer to literally any game that is an ounce less algorithmic than the Trilogic Game.

At the end of a short passageway, the two companions go down and around a small flight of stairs, where Dodo suddenly screams at an incredibly fake spider attached to a long string. Cyril, the boy from the Heart family and the boy who was sleeping at Wiggs’s kitchen table, yanks on the string, pulling the fake spider into his hand. Cyril, the 40-something fat man with a receding hairline, wears the dumbest schoolboy outfit, with checkered pants, a black velvet coat whose button is straining against his beer gut, a pair of small round glasses, and a knit cap that is way too small for his fat head.

The first we see of Cyril is a still of him smiling smugly at the fake spider in his hand, and in my first watch-through, my immediate impression was that this is the most punchable man I have ever seen. I’m not a violent person; I’ve never even thrown a punch in my life. If Cyril were an actual snot-nosed kid—as I imagined him to be when I read the transcripts—perhaps his character would be more acceptable. But as an adult who acts like a third grade class clown, with all the unearned arrogance of a rich failson, I wholeheartedly believe that Cyril deserves to be thrashed within an inch of his life.

When Steven and Dodo cross the room to Cyril, we get a repeat of the sequence where they met the clowns in Part 1. Steven shakes Cyril’s hand but is shocked by a device hidden in his palm. Then Cyril gives Dodo a pack of sweets smiling maliciously. Stupid Dodo doesn’t understand the obvious implication, but Steven convinces her not to pop one into her mouth. Instead of dropping them, she pockets them for later.

Steven asks where the next game is, and with a smug smile, Cyril says. “Yaroo! It’s right over here. You won’t find it so easy this time, you know. Because you see, you’ll be playing against me!” The Doctor’s move tracker shows that he has reached move 905 of his allotted 1023. Credits roll.

Part 4 (The Final Test)

This is the only episode of The Celestial Toymaker that exists in its original format. It does not make this episode any easier to watch; in fact, it’s the worst episode of the serial. I’m gonna go through this one as quickly as I can.

The final game is called TARDIS hopscotch. If you think the games up to this point have been infantile, you haven’t seen anything yet. There are 15 spaces to reach the TARDIS. The goal of the game is to roll a six-sided die and move the appropriate number of spaces. There is a “move tracker” at the far end of the room, an inane machine that shows whatever number came up on the die, occasionally spitting out a random secondary effect like “move back to 7” or “lose a turn.” If you land on a space already occupied by another player, that player has to go back to the start. The ground between the spaces is electrified. If anyone leaves their space out of turn, they go back to the start. Other than the fact that there are spaces on the ground, this game doesn’t bare any relation to hopscotch.

As the Doctor reaches move 930 of the Trilogic Game, Steven, Dodo, and Cyril begin their game. The whole thing is a gigantic waste of time. You know that Steven and Dodo are going to reach the TARDIS; the only thing in doubt are the specifics. And boy are those specifics insufferable. Cyril oozes smugness throughout, and he comes across like the villain in a live show for toddlers. A handful of times, the companions wobble when jumping from space to space, but you know there is no actual danger of them falling. At some point in this farce, the Toymaker gives the Doctor his voice back.

The worst part of TARDIS hopscotch is when Cyril pretends to hurt his ankle, and Dodo wants to go make sure he is okay. This is after Cyril has already performed several other schoolyard pranks, ranging from using a slingshot to throw rocks at Steven to jumping behind Dodo to scare her. Despite this, Dodo takes Cyril’s obvious crocodile tears completely seriously, leaving her space. As soon as she does this, Cyril straightens arrogantly, laughing at Dodo for breaking the rules and having to go back to the start.

Eventually Cyril just straight-up dies. He leaps to a spot that he himself had covered with some kind of oil, slipping off onto the electrified floor and frying to death. Steven and Dodo treat this as a tragic event. I let out an audible sigh of relief at knowing I’d never have to hear him speak again. I guess I was wrong when I said that nobody died in this serial—I completely forgot about this. It still doesn’t fit the mold of a typical Doctor Who death, though, because you don’t get the sense that Cyril was a real person, even with Dodo’s repeated insistence that they are humans with feelings. Then the companions cross the remaining spaces and reach the TARDIS. They know this one is real because they can hear it humming.

In the Toymaker’s office, we discover that the companions have won their game with only one move left for the Doctor to make. The Toymaker gives the Doctor his visible body back, and the Doctor returns to the TARDIS, reuniting with his companions. But there is a catch; the ship will not dematerialize. We hear the Toymaker’s voice, telling the Doctor smugly that their victory will be bittersweet. Then the Doctor lets Steven and Dodo know what has happened: they are trapped until the Doctor makes the last move of his game. However, if the Doctor does so, the whole realm of the Celestial Toymaker will disappear and reform somewhere new, destroying everything but the Toymaker in the process.

The Doctor, Steven, and Dodo spend the next six minutes agonizing over what to do, and literally nothing of note occurs during this time. Then the Doctor tells Steven, “Preset for dematerialization,” and Steven throws some levers and presses some buttons, preparing the TARDIS for takeoff without actually finishing the process. Remember, in Part 1, Steven was unable to operate the TARDIS, but suddenly he has the skills to do so without any input from the Doctor.

Remembering that the Trilogic Game could be controlled by the Toymaker’s voice, the Doctor calls out, “Go from move 1023!” mimicking the Toymaker’s cadence. He turns away from the camera as he says this to spare the audience what would be an obvious voiceover. The piece moves on the game board, Steven throws the master switch, and the TARDIS dematerializes as the realm of the Celestial Toymaker and everything in it fades to white.

In transit, Dodo digs around in her pockets until she unearths the bag of sweets given to her by Cyril. The Doctor pops one into his mouth and breaks a tooth—not in a comedic way; in a manner that we are supposed to think is very serious. Credits roll.

Takeaways

This serial is dreadful. I’ll start with the positives, because there aren’t many of them. Despite the archaic racism of his character, the Celestial Toymaker is a fairly average antagonist that doesn’t detract very much from the narrative. The concept of a world he creates just to amuse himself is an interesting idea that had a lot of potential. The idea of dolls coming to life is also fantastic, and I wish the dolls weren’t consistently irritating enough to destroy their efficacy. Lastly, Mrs. Wiggs and Sgt. Rugg were an oasis of mediocrity in a desert of boredom and missed opportunity.

Though there are a lot of elements to choose from, I think the worst part of The Celestial Toymaker is its structure. Just think about what happens in each episode. In Part 1, Steven and Dodo play a game against some clowns and win, reaching a fake TARDIS. In Part 2, Steven and Dodo play a game against some playing cards and win, reaching a fake TARDIS. In Part 3, Steven and Dodo play a game against Mrs. Wiggs and Sgt. Rugg and win, reaching a fake TARDIS. In Part 4, Steven and Dodo play a game against Cyril and win, reaching the real TARDIS—with a bit of resolution tacked onto the end. The serial is way too structurally repetitive, and it would have taken much more than the capabilities of these writers for it to be something remotely compelling.

The pacing is almost as bad as the structure, turning a repetitive narrative into a slow repetitive narrative. After we are introduced to the premise of the serial in Part 1, there is not a single plot device that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Even the scene with Wiggs and Rugg, which I argue is not altogether as useless as everything else, is decidedly boring by the 7-minute mark. If the structure is as tedious as a daily commute, the pacing adds some rush hour traffic to the drive.

And I can’t wrap up my critique without again bringing up the infantilization of Steven and Dodo. With the way that they are characterized in this serial, if someone suggested that the sky was lime green, they would believe it. Dodo was the most credulous, gullible, unintelligent version of herself, and that is really saying something. This is the belligerently stupid Dodo that I remembered at the introduction of her character, the Dodo that I cannot wait to leave the show in a couple of serials. And though I spent a lot of attention on Dodo throughout this review, I don’t want you to get the impression that Steven is much better. Dodo sets a very low bar, and although Steven clears it, he is still much worse than any version of Steven that we have encountered thus far. In my ranking of 1st Doctor companions, this performance places Steven firmly below Vicki, and I didn’t think Vicki was anything to write home about.

Looking forward, I am not very enthused for the next serial, The Gunfighters. I remember it as a very gimmicky serial that tries too much to be an American western to feel like a Doctor Who story. Honestly, I’ve never been less enthused to progress with this retrospective. I really hope the enthusiasm deficit isn’t coming across in my writing. Season 3 has just been pummeling me with flop after flop, with the last three serials failing to meet my already lowered expectations. However, I have the next seven days off from work, and it is my intention to power through the remaining five 1st Doctor serials in that span. I’m quickly reaching the point where I feel like I need to reach Troughton for my own sanity, and if I take a break from the project at this low point, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the motivation to pick it up again. As always, I’m open to being pleasantly surprised by the next serial, but my hopes are not very high. Hopefully, a week from now, I’ll be settling into the first Troughton serial with a cold beer and a smile.

Rating: 0.3/10

Chapter Text

3.8 – The Gunfighters

Thesis: The Demise of the Pure Historical

For once, I was actually pleasantly surprised by a serial. I always say I’m open to being pleasantly surprised, but when I remember a serial as being bad, it has consistently met my expectations. Not so with The Gunfighters. The first episode is not just good, but great. It features successful stabs at comedy, good pacing, and the funniest cliffhanger in Hartnell’s era, if not all of Classic Who. The rest of the serial does taper off quite a bit, but it never falls into the category of unwatchable serials like The Keys of Marinus or The Celestial Toymaker. However, there are several reasons why this serial is not as good as it could be, elements that have plagued the more recent Doctor Who historicals, rendering them obsolete as storytelling devices.

In Season 1, I came to the conclusion that the writers were much more comfortable writing historical fiction than they were science fiction, and there was much more to like in stories like Marco Polo and The Aztecs than there was in stories like The Sensorites. Yes there were outliers, most notably The Daleks, but at the time, historicals were giving the Doctor Who audience far more narrative cohesion than serials set in futuristic settings. Now, the dynamic has flipped. I wouldn’t characterize the futuristic settings of Season 3 as cohesive, but there are elements which hint at the brilliance to come: the ambitious generation ship in The Ark and the mostly-successful The Daleks’ Master Plan just to name a few. But the historicals have become dry, stagnant, and prone to tedium. And as the quality of the final three episodes of The Gunfighters fell back toward this recent trend, I was left scratching my head as to why the trend even exists in the first place.

When I look at futuristic stories like The Space Museum or The Daleks’ Master Plan, there is a very important element of the hero’s journey that is largely absent from most historicals: something to be beaten, an enemy which can be overcome by the protagonists. The Moroks and the Daleks present a threat that is supposed to be disarmed, and there is a satisfaction in seeing the Doctor and his companions win the day. But in the historicals, there is rarely anything which provides the same sense of victory. There are still tangible threats to drive the plot, but they are backed by the weight of history and cannot be beaten. Instead, the goal for the protagonists is to escape with their lives and make it back to the TARDIS, which has far less potential for that satisfying ending.

Consider The Romans. The Doctor and Vicki don’t defeat Nero, and neither do Ian and Barbara win in any meaningful way against the slaveowners that hold them captive. The closest we get is Ian escaping from the slave ship, but this has more to do with a bad storm than anything he does of his own volition. There is the Great Fire of Rome in the final episode, and the protagonists escape back to the TARDIS. Or take The Crusade, where the protagonists have to navigate a quagmire of a war and escape back to the TARDIS. Or The Myth Makers, where the protagonists are captured by Greeks and Trojans, and the Doctor must manufacture their escape back to the TARDIS. Or The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, where the Doctor and Steven are threatened by a mob of Catholics and must escape back to the TARDIS. I think you can see the similarities here.

But then there is The Time Meddler, featuring the monk, an extraterrestrial threat who does not belong in 11th century England. Instead of fighting for a safe return to the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions have an actual enemy against whom they must win. Instead of fighting against the crushing tide of history, the protagonists find themselves fighting to save history. Yes, there is still the historical reality of the Northumbrians versus the Vikings, but this history serves as the backdrop for a smaller but much more important battle, one in which the Doctor and his companions can actually affect the outcome—thereby preventing the endless waffling and contradiction we’ve seen over whether or not time travelers can alter historical events.

At this point in the series, there are only three more pure historicals, The Gunfighters and two others. As much as I think the introduction of Troughton as the next Doctor will provide a breath of fresh air for Doctor Who, so will shedding these repetitive stories from the writers’ lexicon. The more I think about where this series will go, the more excited I get about the prospect of the 2nd Doctor’s run. I just have to make it through the slog of Season 3 to get there.

Part 1 (A Holiday for the Doctor)

There’s another aspect of this serial that I almost turned into a thesis, but I don’t have much to definitively say about it. The Gunfighters is a Western. It’s obvious that this serial is meant to reference a whole host of the genre’s tropes and conventions. But is this an homage or a satire? If it were an homage, the story would treat the Western genre with reverence, possibly with a bit of humor around the edges to make it a story suitable for Doctor Who. If it was a satire, the story would be criticizing the genre conventions and taking the tropes to their absolute extremes to show how ridiculous they can be.

From what I gathered on my first watch-through, The Gunfighters seems to do both, and by doing both, it does neither particularly well. However, this opinion is not set in stone. Most of the time, I feel like my thoughts on a serial are solidified by the time I go into it for the second time, which is why I write these reviews during my second viewing. There are times that I pick up on things that I missed the first time, and I like to focus more on what the showrunners want me to get out of the various plot devices on my second watch-through. But generally, my mind is pretty much made up.

But with this serial, I don’t have a good feel for what the writers were going for after just one watch. Instead of making an argument at the top about whether this is a satire or an homage, I’m going to use this review to discuss the elements of both throughout this serial and come up with a conclusion toward the end.

Part 1 of The Gunfighters begins with a sequence that immediately establishes the serial as a dyed-in-the-wool Western. Instead of the typical shot of the interior of the TARDIS or an establishing shot of the TARDIS materializing in some new location, we get the opening credits rolling over a long still of a wild western town, with about a hundred feet of dusty town road ending in a sign reading “Tombstone, OK Corral.” Rickety wooden buildings line the street, and the camera is positioned beneath the bed of a wooden cart to hide the nonexistent sky.

Right off the bat, we get a taste of one of the things which leads me to believe that this serial might be an homage: The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. Coming on the heels of the silent film era, the golden age of Westerns formalized a similarly theater-like structure for movies in the genre, using musical interludes to transition from scene to scene. The Gunfighters employs this convention, giving us a dreadfully repetitious song featuring singer Lynda Baron accompanied by a lone honkytonk piano. The lyrics change frequently to highlight the plot at various points in the serial, but the base song features these eight lines:

So fill up your glasses,
And join in the song.
The law’s right behind you,
And it won’t take long.
So come, you coyotes,
And howl at the moon
Till there’s blood upon the sawdust
In the Last Chance Saloon.

If you haven’t seen the serial, go give the song a listen. Then do it again. And again. And about 20 more times until you’re ready to bash your head in. That’s how it comes across in this serial. And the reason I think this falls into the homage category is because if it were satire, it would be the perfect opportunity to be self-deprecating. But the song is not critical of itself; it is played completely earnestly, which is the main reason why it comes across as insufferable. And the singer gives a worse performance in the studio than one of the protagonists who does it live at the end of this episode, but I’ll get to that later.

One more thing I want to touch on before I get to the plot is the cinematography. This serial is set in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, one of the most mythologized settings of the American Wild West. Picture the most stereotypical Western setting: the long dusty road leading through the center of town, the endless desert landscape, the high blue sky. Then consider the weakest element of Early Era Doctor Who set design: large, open spaces. The studio utilized to make these Doctor Who stories is simply not equipped to portray a frontier town, not in any way that is pleasing to look at. Sure, the producers have managed to cobble together a set for the center of town which includes a wide stretch of road, but this set has to be lit up somehow. Throughout this serial, the director must employ cheap tricks to disguise the fact that just above frame is a series of studio lights, like the opening shot where the camera is under a wooden cart. There is no sky here, no tangible atmosphere, and shots with objects obstructing the skyline or low angle shots which cut off actors’ heads out of necessity only serve to reduce the efficacy of the set design.

As the credits fade, three men ride into town on horses. These characters are completely indistinguishable from one another, all of them dressed like stereotypical cowboys with dark hair. It doesn’t help that they immediately start flinging names around, only one of which being one of theirs. Billy, the man who appears to be the leader of the group, shoots the sign of the OK Corral with his six-shooter. One of the other men, whom we learn are Billy’s brothers, tells Billy to save his bullets for Holliday. Apparently, Holliday killed a fourth brother, Reuben, and “Pa” wants the three boys to meet up with a hired gun named Seth Harper to take Holliday out. All of this occurs within the span of 20 seconds or so, making for a chaotic and ineffective way to introduce so many concepts at once. The scene comes to a close with the second playing of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, with slightly different lyrics. I’ll include it in the plot summary whenever it appears in the narrative, so you can get a sense of how incessant it is.

On your way then, you cowboys.
The time will be soon
When there’s blood upon the sawdust
In the Last Chance Saloon.

As the three brothers head off down the street, the camera pans slowly across a wooden gate with the words “Livery and Feed Store” as we hear the sound of the materializing TARDIS. Cut to the interior of the store, which is a mostly empty warehouse with a few sacks of feed and several spare wagon wheels. Against the wall to the left is the TARDIS.

The Doctor comes tearing out of the TARDIS, clutching his jaw in pain—at the end of the last serial, he made the ill-advised decision to eat a fake piece of candy given to Dodo by a fat, balding, 40-year-old schoolboy. Steven and Dodo follow him out, and the Doctor sits on a barrel, saying that he must find a dentist to have his tooth pulled. The two companions peer between the doors of the wooden gate and are delighted to discover that they are in the Wild West, with Steven talking about how he has always wanted to see what it was like to be a cowboy.

I find it funny how forced this feels in the year 2024. I am an American, and except for maybe a few states in the western third of the country, the Wild West as a lifestyle isn’t nearly as mythologized as it used to be. We’re never told precisely what time period Steven is supposed to be from, but it’s a time with interstellar travel and extraterrestrial colonization. I can’t imagine the Wild West is a concept that is even remembered by anyone except for historians, much less idealized by a man like Steven.

Anyway, after a bit of rooting and tooting from Dodo, the scene cuts to the interior of a saloon, the Last Chance Saloon. A pair of saloon doors lead from the street into a room large enough for a handful of tables and a bar. The barman, the only man so far not be wearing a cowboy hat, runs a rag across a table while a cowboy lounges against the bar. And if you thought we were going to get a new scene without a bit of song, you’re out of your mind.

It’s your last chance of cussin’
At a gunfighter’s doom.
It’s your last chance of nothin’
At the Last Chance Saloon.

Something I haven’t mention yet about the song is that its mood and tempo vary depending on what the scene calls for. What we’ve been given so far is an upbeat, jaunty tune that I consider to be the standard song.

The three brothers enter the saloon, and the man leaning against the bar looks up, saying, “You took your sweet time getting here, Clanton. Doc Holliday arrived before noon.”

“Rode out as soon as ever I got your wire,” says one of the brothers that isn’t Billy. “Anyways, Holliday’ll keep for a drink or three, I’d say.”

Another thing notable about this serial is that there are exactly three characters with adequate American accents, and none of them are in this room. It’s really quite stunning to hear just how bad some of these lines are, ranging from completely British inflections to poor attempts at drawls with mispronounced vowels and R’s. Was there not a single vocal coach in the greater London area who could lasso some of these cowboys?

Anyway, one of the brothers whose name we still don’t know identifies this man as the same Seth Harper they were looking to meet. Billy takes a bottle of alcohol from the barman, and the four men settle down at a table to talk very cavalierly about their plans to murder Doc Holliday.

Like I said earlier, as an American who grew up in suburban Pennsylvania, I was never attracted to stories of cowboys and roughriders out on the Western frontier. As an adult, I don’t find anything about them to be all that interesting. I’ve never actually seen an old Western—pure action is definitely my least favorite genre, and I’ve always perceived Westerns as sequences of action set pieces with a few character moments sprinkled in from time to time. Plus, the rugged individualism of the romanticized frontiersman is something that doesn’t jive with my worldview. I don’t idolize the outlaw lifestyle, and I see nothing romantic about living a hard-luck life and dying in my late-40s.

I bring this up to say that I don’t have any previous experience with the genre, aside from some broad-strokes conventions that I have picked up over the years—which also may be why I am having a difficult time discerning the serial’s tone. I also don’t know much about the real-life events in the late 1800s that The Gunfighters is based on, though from the little I do know, historical accuracy is clearly not a priority of the showrunners.

In my introduction, I talked about how I would be looking at Doctor Who through the lens of reader-response theory, which heavily prioritizes the viewer’s personal preferences and history. In fact, the theory goes so far as to say that no two people will ever experience a piece of media in the exact same manner, and that we all have a transactional relationship with the media we consume based on the quirks of who we are as individuals. That’s why in my review of The Planet of Giants, I talked a little about my politics, and why I thought some of the falsehoods I learned in my Catholic school upbringing were relevant in my review of The Crusade. Similarly, I don’t feel compelled to ignore my disinterest of Westerns for the sake of this review. This is not like when a food critic has to offer fair criticism of an onion-laden dish despite not liking onions. I’m not interested in the culture of the mythologized Wild West, and I won’t pull punches for the sake of a reader that is.

With all that being said, the Western elements of this serial are largely inoffensive. The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon is annoying, but you get used to it after a while. And while there are some rugged Wild West shenanigans throughout the serial, the narrative generally moves past these elements quickly, focusing more on how the posh Doctor reacts to the rough-and-tumble lifestyle than the lifestyle itself. All in all, The Gunfighters presents a welcome change of pace to the Early Era historical. If it were six episodes instead of four or if it were something that occurred more than once, I would probably be much harsher in my criticism. Still, the change of pace is only enough to elevate this historical to a mediocre Doctor Who story. With everything I discussed in my thesis about the downfall of the pure historical, this is probably the high-water mark for what a historical can do at this point in the series. This is as good as it gets for a series that has turned its biggest strength in Season 1 into one of its biggest weaknesses by Season 3.

Back in the livery shop, Steven and Dodo reemerge from the TARDIS, wearing clothes that look like they could have been bought at a costume shop. Dodo wears a frilly skirt and a collared shirt beneath a frilly vest. Steven wears tight black pants, a white cowboy hat, and a terrible frilled white shirt with stars embroidered across the chest and the upper back. Together, they look comically ill-suited to step into a frontier town. The Doctor comments on this, saying, “You’re asking for trouble. Why can’t you wear inconspicuous clothes like I do?” Dodo laughs this off, handing the Doctor a black cowboy hat which he grudgingly puts on.

Steven and Dodo both adopt western accents—mediocre and overblown, but fantastic compared to the quality of the accents we have been given so far. Steven pulls a revolver from a holster around his waist, drawling, “I was just practicing my quickdraw!…Now see here, stranger. I reckon you don’t know who I is!” He brandishes the gun toward the Doctor. “Deadeye Steve: the fastest, meanest gun in the West!”

Suddenly, there is a gunshot, and Steven’s revolver flies out of his hand. All three turn to see a man with a gun standing just inside the wooden gate of the shop with a mustache and black hat. The man wears a black wool suit, a wrinkled white shirt and a skinny black tie made into a looping bow that hangs halfway to his waist, and he glares intimidatingly at the protagonists. The Doctor asks who he is, and the man grouses, “You wanna find out, try moving fast. Now get over!” He gestures with his gun, and the Doctor and company move to one side of the room.

When the man introduces himself as Wyatt Earp, the Marshall of Tombstone, Dodo goes doughy-eyed, saying that she’s always wanted to meet him. Both she and Steven drop their American accents, and Steven tells Wyatt Earp that he isn’t actually a gunman. With his patience wearing thin, Wyatt Earp says, “You did make that look kind of obvious, didn’t ya, boy? That’s why I’m doing a favor taking you on in.” When Steven asks why they have to go to the sheriff’s office, Earp says, “The Clantons are in town, and boy, that’s mighty unhealthy for a stranger that calls himself the fastest gun in town. Now pick up your pea shooter, and let’s get moving.” They all exit the scene, Wyatt Earp and his gun bringing up the rear. Wyatt Earp is one of the three supporting characters who actually have a good American accent.

Till there’s blood upon the sawdust
At the Last Chance Saloon.

Cut back to the saloon, where a woman enters the room through a door next to the bar. Her long blonde hair has been worked into a massive bun, and she wears an elaborate dress with a three-tiered skirt and a low neckline meant to emphasize her breasts. Her blouse is striped, almost skin tight, tied in the back with a large white bow. It’s not a corset, but it’s obviously meant to evoke the idea of a corset or form-fitting lingerie. Her name is Kate, and I take issue with how she is written in this serial. Later, we will learn that she is employed as a singer at the saloon, and for the time period, her titillating attire makes sense for a tavern performer.

However, Kate is quite literally the only female supporting character with lines in the entire serial, compared to more than ten men with lines. If there were a few other women in the narrative, simple townsfolk who provide some sense of representation, then I would have no problem with Kate’s character. But as the only woman, Kate comes across not just as eye-candy for the in-universe saloon, but as a sexist caricature for the male viewers in the audience. This is only made more apparent when an upcoming scene involves her being the most overtly sexual character to this point in the serial. And later, we will learn that the only pertinent part of her backstory is that she has slept with practically every outlaw in the American southwest. She doesn’t seem like a real person, just an object to be ogled.

Anyway, Kate leans against the bar, listening to Seth Harper and the three brothers we met in the opening scene. She hears them openly discussing their plans to kill Doc Holliday. When Billy asks how Harper plans to find Holliday, Harper says, “We don’t have to find him. Ain’t you heard of Holliday’s gambling and drinking? Now, where’s the one place in town he’s liable to get both?…We just sit here and wait for him, and that’s all we gotta do.”

Kate turns to the barman, who she names as Charlie, saying that she has to go out and run an errand. In The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, there was a cringing, mealymouthed bartender that I said was one of the most annoying characters in the whole series. Well, it seems the showrunners have a very narrow idea of the type of person who worked in bars before the turn of the 20th century. Charlie has the same simpering way of speaking, with a constant look on his face as if he has just been slapped, stuttering over his words as he tells Kate that she better get back soon if she wants to keep her job. He is such a whiny lickspittle, and I can’t stand him.

There’s one more important element of this scene. During his exchange with the three brothers, Seth Harper says that he has never seen Doc Holliday, but that he has had the man described to him: “Dapper little fellow with a black buck’s coat [and a] gambler’s fancy vest.” This description matches what the Doctor is wearing to a tee, and it was at this moment that I realized that I was in for yet another case of mistaken identity. Unlike in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, at least there is no incredibly unlikely doppelganger.

Outside the saloon, Kate strides down the dusty road, holding the hem of her dress off the ground and swaying her hips, with two men doing a double-take as they pass in the opposite direction. And lest you thought we get a reprieve from the never-ending ragtime, the piano kicks in once again:

With rings on their fingers
And bells on their toes,
The girls come to Tombstone
In their high silk hose.
They’ll dance on the tables
Or sing you a tune
For whatever’s in your wallet
At the Last Chance Saloon.

I wasn’t thinking of these lyrics when I wrote the paragraph about Kate being a sexist caricature, but the song makes it really explicit. Girls in Tombstone are only good for getting men excited.

Kate arrives at a corner shop where there is a lot of activity; a man with long gray hair oversees several other men moving chests, chairs, and crates into the shop. This man is Doc Holliday, and he does indeed look a lot like the Doctor: in his late-50s and wearing a black suit. The supplies being hauled inside the building are implements for his new “dental saloon,” which he has recently purchased.

Striding up to Holliday with her hands on her hips, Kate lambasts him for going back on his promise to give up gunplay. When he denies this, she pulls him inside the building and tells him that four men are waiting for him at the Last Chance Saloon, one named Seth Harper and three brothers named Clanton—these are the Clantons that Wyatt Earp warned Steven about a few scenes ago. “Clanton!” Holliday spits. “You kill a guy out of sheer professional ethics, and then you’ve got three of his brothers chasing after you to leave at once. That makes me real angry!” Doc Holliday’s accent is the second of three in this serial which sound halfway decent. In fact, his is the best of the bunch.

Kate tells Holliday that he has to leave town, but he won’t have any of it. “The day I can’t walk down Main Street in any city in the West on account of it ain’t safe,” he says, “then I’ll be dead.” Curmudgeonly, he marches back into the street, but he only gets a few steps out of his shop when Kate catches up to him. Turning around, he adopts a much gentler posture and says, “Kate Fisher, are you gonna be my lady wife?” Kate relents with a smile, saying that of course she is.

Suddenly, someone calls out Holliday’s name, and Holliday turns to see the sheriff of Tombstone approaching, Bat Masterson. Masterson looks much like Wyatt Earp, with the same black hat and suit, only shorter and a bit older. Holliday greets Masterson warmly, but Masterson eyes him like a stern schoolteacher. “Just you stay out of trouble,” Masterson says. “I won’t be giving you know second warning.” Masterson is the third and final supporting character with a quality American accent. Holliday tells him that he has settled down and that he just wants to be a respectable citizen like everybody else. Masterson is unmoved, saying, “Here on in, you ain’t running no game at all. Stay out of saloons, Holliday, and stay away from the poker table.” With the conversation at an end, Holliday bids Masterson farewell, saying that he hopes to see him at his dental saloon. Joining arms with Kate, they go back inside.

A little way down the street, Masterson encounters Wyatt Earp, who is headed the other direction with the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo. Masterson asks who they are, and the Doctor cuts in with, “Allow me, sir, to introduce Miss Dodo Dupont, wizard of the ivory keys.” He gestures at Dodo, who curtsies. “And—er—Steven Regret, tenor.” He gestures at Steven who doesn’t look so sure of himself now that he has been named a singer. “And lastly, sir, [I am] your humble servant, Doctor Caligari.”

Masterson quirks his head. “Doctor who?”

“Quite right,” says the Doctor. I love this gag, where some supporting character inadvertently says the name of the show. I can’t remember if it’s happened once before or if this is the first time, but it will happen dozens of times over the course of the series.

Masterson says that the trio should probably keep traveling, as there is no theater in Tombstone, and the Doctor says that they are only in town because he needs to see a dentist. Wyatt Earp suggests Doc Holliday, who has just opened a surgery in town, and Masterson points them down the street. The Doctor thanks Masterson, before adding, “No doubt I shall be very glad to meet you later on, Mister—uh—Mister Werp.” He and his companions leave the scene. I’m not sure why Dodo would so easily recognize a name like Wyatt Earp and not say anything about Doc Holliday. Surely, one of the three should have recognized Holliday right away.

Wyatt Earp puts an arm around Masterson’s shoulder and guides him off down the street, saying, “Well, Bat, with the Clantons and Holliday in town, you and me’s headed for a load of trouble, boy.” Then we get a much slower chorus of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, the first instance of the song without its characteristic jauntiness:

On your way then, you lawmen.
The time will be soon
When there’s blood upon the sawdust
At the Last Chance Saloon.

If this song were an ounce less annoying, I’d say that this is a good way to show a shift in the tone of the narrative and to add an element of foreboding. But with as irritating as this music is, putting any narrative development within the context of the song is an awful idea.

Down the street, Steven is complaining about having been named a singer by the Doctor. Dodo seems unconcerned, and when he turns to her and asks her if she can even play the piano, she smiles up at him and says, “I’ll have a bash.” The Doctor grumbles that she won’t do any such thing, and that they will be out of Tombstone the following morning and back in the TARDIS by lunchtime.

When he sees the sign on the outside of Holliday’s dental saloon—a crude plaster molar—he has second thoughts about dentistry in such a primitive era. Steven and Dodo don’t let him renege though, steering him toward the door and promising him that he’ll feel much better afterwards. Distracted, the Doctor says, “I’ll meet you both back in the hotel lounge,” before disappearing inside the shop.

“The hotel lounge?” Steven says incredulously. “Where does he think he is?” Dodo laughs and says that she hopes the Doctor isn’t expecting an injection.

Inside the main room of the dental saloon, the Doctor finds the place empty; he looks trepidatiously at the archaic dentist’s chair in the middle of the wooden floor. After a moment, he crosses the room to a door and opens it, where he finds Kate and Holliday canoodling in the next room. Like full-on, Kate sitting in Holliday’s lap, kiss-and-cuddle canoodling. It’s not as egregious as rape in a children’s show, but it’s still not acceptable. Oh, and about those rape insinuations, just wait for Part 3.

Anyway, Holliday and Kate stand up quickly, with Holliday asking what the Doctor is doing there in a hostile tone. Once the Doctor mutters something about a toothache, Holliday and Kate look at each other and laugh, with Kate saying, “D’you know, you’re our very first customer!” This makes the Doctor even more nervous, and he stammers about leaving. But Holliday smirks, drawing his gun and casually pointing it at the Doctor and the dentist’s chair. Kate leaves the room at Holliday’s insistence—when Holliday reminds her that she can’t stand the sight of blood, the Doctor groans.

Then Holliday pulls out a pair of pliers and tells the Doctor he is ready to operate. As Holliday moves toward his mouth, the Doctor staves him off, asking Holliday if he has anything to numb the pain. Holliday looks down at his gun and suggests knocking the Doctor over the head with it, which the Doctor declines. Then Holliday hefts a bottle of whisky, to which the Doctor says he never touches alcohol. “Well, I do,” Holliday says, taking a swig. Seeing his dentist drinking seconds before an operation, the Doctor sighs, resigned to his fate. “Open wide,” Holliday says, closing in once again with the pliers. The sheer look of helplessness on the Doctor’s face as he leans back against the headrest, his mouth open as wide as it can go, is the most expressive I can remember Hartnell being to this point in the series. As the scene cuts away from the Doctor’s pain, we get another round of the slow ballad:

It's your last chance of boozin’,
Where there’s no one to mind.
It’s your last chance of losin’
And the first place you’ll find.

This scene is almost perfect. Everyone is acting their hearts out, from the banter between Kate and Holliday to the utter despair of the Doctor. There is no tension here—the scene is rightfully played for comedy, and as a viewer, you know it’s just a tooth. It’s the perfect amount of camp that will come to typify Doctor Who in future serials. The only reason I don’t think this scene is perfect is because the comedy comes at the expense of the Doctor’s character. He seems really stupid in this scene. Not quite Dodo-stupid, but nonetheless, the Doctor should know what he’s in for based on the technology of the time period. Still, the comedy is so successful that I’m willing to overlook a bit of mischaracterization.

Back at the Last Chance Saloon, Charlie apologizes to Seth Harper and the Clantons about the lack of a singer, saying that she should be back any time. Billy stands imposingly, a head taller than the bartender, saying that if it’s too quiet for the man, perhaps they could liven it up with a bit of fancy shooting. Charlie quickly moves away, but Billy pulls out his revolver and shoots a bottle anyway. Several patrons scurry out of the saloon, and one of his brothers, whom we learn is named Ike, tells him to sit down and act straight.

A moment later, Steven and Dodo enter the saloon and go to the bar, their bombastic clothes earning them some snide comments from the brothers at the table. They go to the bar and book some rooms with Charlie, who hands them three keys and makes them write their names and occupations in the guest book. When he sees that they have written Dodo Dupont the pianist and Steven Regret the singer, Charlie is overjoyed, saying that he may be able to offer them a job as entertainers. Dodo wants to do this, but Steven pulls her away from the bar, saying, “It’s no good, Dodo. The Doctor would never forgive me if anything happened to you.”

The brothers and Seth Harper overhear this and are instantly on guard, even more so when Dodo returns to the bar with their extra key, saying, “Give this to our friend the Doctor with my compliments.” She and Steven once again have American accents in this scene. They slip in and out of them for the duration of this serial, with seemingly no consideration for who might notice or care.

Once the two companions have disappeared up a flight of wooden stairs, Billy doubts Steven’s authenticity as a singer, pointing out the gun in the holster around his waist and theorizing that he must be a partner of Doc Holliday. With this and the way that Holliday’s garb has been described as being similar to the Doctor’s, I think you can see where the plot is headed. Ike names the third brother, Phineas, telling him to go upstairs and fetch Steven down, adding that he should “keep it friendly.” Then he tells Seth Harper to walk around town and see if he can find Doc Holliday.

Cut to Holliday’s shop, where the first thing we see is a close-up of a bloody tooth. Even in black and white, it’s pretty grisly—I doubt it would have been allowed on the air in color. The Doctor holds a towel to his face, presumably staunching the bleeding, looking disgustedly at the offending tooth. Holliday says that as his first customer, the Doctor owes nothing. He excitedly leaves the main room to show Kate the tooth he has pulled.

Outside the dental saloon, Seth Harper slinks down the street. When he sees the Doctor through the window, a man who fits his description from earlier, he enters the building. “Doc!” he says.

“What? Yes, yes, what is it?” the Doctor says irritably; knowing him, it’s more over having been called “Doc” than the pain in his mouth.

“Holliday!” Harper says excitedly, assuming he has found his man.

“Holiday?” the Doctor says. “Yes, I suppose so. Yes, you could call it that.”

“My name’s Harper, Seth Harper.”

“Oh, well, I’m very glad to know you, Mister Harper. Yes, I suppose you’ve brought a message from my friends.”

“Well, a kind of message, Doc. The boys are waiting for you at the saloon. They’d sure like to buy you a drink.”

The Doctor goes on to agree to meet at the saloon, though he makes it clear to Harper that he never touches alcohol. The camera work also makes it clear that the real Doc Holliday and Kate are listening in on the conversation from just inside the doorway to the back room. Overall, I find the way this mix-up is orchestrated to be more clunky than funny, but it gets the job done.

Harper leaves, and Holliday and Kate emerge from the back room. The Doctor is blissfully unaware of what has happened, asking Holliday if he heard what that “charming man” said. Holliday says that the Doctor isn’t properly dressed for the occasion, and despite the Doctor’s protests, he loops his holster around his waist into which he places his gun—a revolver engraved with Holliday’s name. It is abundantly clear to the audience that Holliday means for the Doctor to die in his place, though this muddles the narrative of the next episode to no end. Anyway, Holliday pats the Doctor on his back and sends him off to his doom, saying to Kate, “It sure seems a pity he bothered to have that tooth out.”

A quick note on the tooth: with how the Doctor’s species will eventually be retconned, what are the implications of this? I know this is one of those things that just needs to be ignored in order for cannon to make sense, but in the modern series, the 10th Doctor insists to Martha that a simple vile of his blood could alter the course of the human race. I like the headcanon that something just as consequential could be lying abandoned in an Arizona desert, waiting to be plucked out of the sand.

Back at the saloon, Harper returns to the Clanton brothers, telling them that Doc Holliday will be there in a few minutes. Phineas is in the process of pressing Steven and Dodo menacingly toward the piano, asking them to perform in a way that won’t take no for an answer. When Steven says they are a little out of practice, Ike draws his gun and says, “You’ll sing now and fast…On account of we’re all music lovers.” Someone fires a warning shot, and Dodo screams.

When there’s blood upon the sawdust
At the Last Chance Saloon.

Out in the town, the Doctor ambles his way along the street.

In the saloon, Billy takes the guns out of Steven’s holster, saying that he doesn’t need them to sing. Increasingly nervous, he and Dodo fret over a stack of sheet music on top of a piano in the corner of the room until Dodo finds a song titled The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. “Let’s hope the piano knows it,” Steven growls at Dodo, half a warning and half a prayer. I know I am editorializing with descriptions like this, but that’s the depth I took from how Steven’s lines are delivered here. It just goes to show how the acting ability of Peter Purves has been wasted by the malaise of these Season 3 narratives.

When Dodo starts to play, she has a prodigious ability on the piano. Remember, when she was asked earlier if she could even play, her answer was “I’ll have a bash.” And I suppose she could have been being facetious, but I have some experience with the piano specifically, having gone to college for it for a few years before changing my major. The speed and difficulty of the song which she is flawlessly sightreading is something my seasoned piano professor could not pull off, much less a girl who is having a bash.

The sudden transition into Dodo’s piano playing is one of those things that smashes one’s suspension of disbelief, I expect even for viewers who have no musical experience. Dodo hasn’t shown an aptitude for literally anything to this point, and her musical talent is absolutely character-breaking. But I don’t care; it makes for fantastic satire. In fact, for the entire first episode, I thought this serial was explicitly satirical, and I saw this scene as the pinnacle of that framing. Very little about Part 1 is meant to be taken seriously, which is why I find the serial’s turn toward a more serious narrative after this to be perplexing.

And it’s not just Dodo who shows a measure of musical talent. When Steven picks up a copy of the sheet music and begins to sing, he delivers a performance that is unequivocally better than what Lynda Baron gives us in the interludes for the rest of the serial. His tone is more consistent and he is far less pitchy, all with the disadvantage of singing live on set and in one take. Plus, he is acting throughout, flitting his eyes nervously between the guns in the hands of the Clantons, Dodo at the piano, and the music clutched in his hands. He gives us the longest uninterrupted rendition of the song so far:

With rings on their fingers
And bells on their toes,
The girls come to Tombstone
In their high silk hose.
They’ll dance on the tables
Or give you a tune
For whatever’s in your wallet
At the Last Chance Saloon.

It’s your last chance of givin’.
It’s your last chance of rye.
It’s your last chance at livin’
And your last chance to die.

It’s your last chance of boozing
When there’s no one to mind.
It’s your last chance of losing
And the first place you find.
Four days’ ride from the station,
And you’re leaving at noon.
And your one consolation
Is the Last Chance Saloon.

Credits roll.

I love this episode. It’s such a refreshing tone shift, not just for the trajectory of Season 3 historicals but for the entire Early Era of Doctor Who. And there’s just something undeniably funny about Steven belting out a tune and Dodo bashing away on the keys at gunpoint. I wish the serial was able to maintain this tone and momentum, because it drops off rather quickly.

Part 2 (Don’t Shoot the Pianist)

This episode starts with Doc Holliday in the main room of his dental saloon. He looks around for Kate, but all he finds is a note that reads, “Gone back to the Last Chance Saloon.”

With a beleaguered look on his face, he says, “Why must women meddle?” It comes off like the writers are trying to point out what they consider to be unacceptable sexism, even in the 60s, but the message is lost among the actual sexism that has plagued the series and the way that Kate is made to be the only female representation of an entire town.

Back at the saloon, a decidedly disgruntled Steven is still singing as Dodo plays. After a few lines, he cuts himself off and starts bargaining with the gunmen, saying that he’s already done the song four times. But he doesn’t have to sing for much longer. Kate strides into the saloon and immediately tells Charlie off for letting another singer take her place. She shoos Dodo upstairs—Steven telling Dodo to lock her door—and orders Steven to play the piano, this time accompanying Kate. Once again, this is ludicrous, even more so when later in the episode, Steven tells the Doctor that he’s never played before. Nonetheless, he picks up where Dodo left off, and Kate sings:

So fill up your glasses
And join in the song.
The law’s right behind you,
And it won’t take long.
So come, you coyotes,
And howl at the moon,
Till there’s blood upon the sawdust
In the Last Chance Saloon.

You’ve a good chance at swingin’.
It’s your last chance to hide.
It’s your last chance at singin’
Till your long last ride.
It’s your last chance of cussin’
At your hard-earned doom.
It’s your last chance of nothin’.
It’s the Last Chance Saloon.

Throughout this performance, Kate is up on the bar, twirling her skirts and entrancing the men around the tables. For the viewers, the quality of the performance is severely undercut by the fact that it’s an obvious voiceover, with the same Lynda Baron vocals that we’ve been given in the interludes. Not only do her vocals not meet the quality of Peter Purves’s, but the American accent and timber of Baron’s voice is at odds with Kate’s. It’s a very poor dub, though not inconsistent with the quality of the times. Also of note: both Kate and Steven’s rendition of the ballad are in the third distinct mood of the song that we get throughout the serial: a fast, almost manic pace, meant to reflect the chaos of the scene. Aside from the poor quality of the voiceover, this is the song at its least irritating, though I still wouldn’t call it pleasing.

As Harper, the Clanton brothers, and Charlie all applaud, the Doctor enters unseen through the saloon door and adds his clapping to the applause, marveling at Steven’s piano skills. This is when we get a line from Steven about not knowing he could play. At this point, the Doctor is slowly surrounded by Harper and the Clantons, and he is still blissfully unaware of their menacing tones and postures. There’s some pithy back-and-forths that are more annoying than clever, filled with insinuations from the Clantons over what the real Holliday has done and the Doctor slowly catching onto the fact that these men mean him harm.

Up on the second floor landing, the real Doc Holliday stands unnoticed, quietly readying a gun. It’s not clear how he is supposed to have gotten into the building, and even more muddled as to why he is supposedly gearing up to help the Doctor. All Kate said was that she was going back to the saloon. Isn’t that her place of employment? Why should Holliday assume that she is trying to help the man that she so callously helped him frame in the previous episode? At any rate, it’s clear that this is how the audience is supposed to think the story is supposed to progress, but it’s incredibly opaque if you stop and think about it.

On the floor, the Doctor is getting increasingly flustered, unable to explain away why he fits Doc Holliday’s description, is wearing his branded gun, or was discovered at his place of business. Then Kate says, “Aw, for Pete’s sake, Doc, tell them you’re Holliday! You can take on all four of them any time.” Look at this line in isolation for a moment. Doesn’t it look like Kate is still trying to get the Doctor killed in Holliday’s place? She isn’t to know that Holliday is waiting up above, so if she really is trying to get the Doctor out of this situation, what is her plan supposed to be? It seems like one of those plot points that is only resolved because the plot needs it to resolve in a certain way, which is, again, very weak writing.

The scene gets more and more hostile until, as Seth Harper goes for the Doctor’s gun, a shot rings out and Harper’s gun flies out of his hand, much like how Wyatt Earp shot the gun out of Steven’s hand in his first scene. I don’t like repeated plot devices unless they are meant to call attention to something, and this doesn’t appear to be the case here. Regardless, it was not the Doctor who shot the gun out of Harper’s hand; it was Holliday on the landing.

Referring to the Doctor—it’s still not clear if she knows the real Holliday is in the room—Kate steps into the fray again, saying, “Okay, don’t try it, fellas. Nice shooting, Doc, but you should have got him between the eyes…Kill the next one that moves!” Harper and the Clantons are fearful of the Doctor, seemingly enough afraid of Holliday’s reputation for their fear to overcome the reality of the frail man they see before them. The Doctor tells Steven to take their guns and has the gunmen line up in front of the piano.

When the Doctor implies that he will shoot them even though they are unarmed, the Clantons and Harper are taken aback by this. We are supposed to imply some sort of moral code here, an honor-amongst-thieves mentality that should prevent someone from shooting an unarmed man in cold blood. However, this idea is not repeated enough in the rest of the serial to be ingrained in the minds of the audience, even though it’s meant to be a clear contrast to a character we will meet later.

Up on the landing, Dodo, who heard the gunshot and is coming to investigate, runs into Holliday, who orders her back into her room before turning his attention back to the scene below.

Before the scene can escalate any further, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson enter the saloon, ordering everyone to calm down and for the Doctor and Steven to hand over their guns. When Earp asks what happened, the Clantons and Harper point toward the Doctor. There’s a lot of crosstalk here, but one word comes across very clearly: Holliday. Shockingly, Earp goes along with the ruse, referring to the Doctor as Holliday and telling him that he has to go to the station to be arrested. This seems very contrived. On my first watch-through, I was still operating on the goodwill that the serial earned from the stellar first episode; now, I’m not feeling so generous.

Anyway, the Doctor is escorted from the saloon by Earp and Masterson, and the thwarted gunmen turn their ire on Steven. The scene ends with them backing him threateningly into a corner.

There is one more thing that I want to mention about this scene, but I wasn’t sure where to fit it in. The Doctor never speaks in anything other than a British accent. At no point in the serial does he even attempt to use an American accent. Do the Clantons and Harper not see this as a giant red flag? Throughout this serial, every character other than the protagonists seems to have accent-blindness, not registering any inconsistencies, but even in such a lax environment, this feels like a massive plot hole.

In a small hotel room, Doc Holliday is keeping Dodo confined. She sits on a bed angrily, with her arms crossed, demanding to know when she will be allowed to leave. Holliday tells her to relax, and they are interrupted when Kate enters the room. Kate asks what Dodo is doing there, and Holliday says that she saw him with the gun. “Yeah, I guessed that was you,” Kate says, confirming that she really had no idea that Holliday was in the room and was just executing the dumbest plan of all time to get the Doctor free, still for some unknown reason.

The purpose of this scene is just for these characters to get up to speed on what is going on. Dodo learns that the man is Doc Holliday and that he pulled the Doctor’s tooth. Holliday learns that Wyatt Earp let the Clantons and Harper continue to think that the Doctor was actually Holliday. Dodo wants to see the Doctor, but Holliday refuses, saying, “If he’s in the hands of Wyatt Earp, he could not be safer.” Holliday pulls out a deck of cards and lounges on a bed, laughing at the two peeved women and telling them settle down and play a game of chance.

It just occurred to me that the title of Part 1, A Holiday for the Doctor, is a pun.

At the sheriff’s office, Earp and Masterson question the Doctor, wondering why he has Holliday’s gun. The Doctor is clueless to Holliday’s ulterior motive, but the two lawmen eventually piece things together, telling the Doctor that he was being framed. Earp wants to go have a talk with Holliday, and when the Doctor says he wants to go with him, Earp laughs and says, “Now, you’ll stay right where you are. Why, you’ve got four of the meanest characters in the territory believing you’re Doc Holliday.” As the camera pans across the Doctor’s worried face, we get a slow chorus of the ballad:

You’ve a good chance of dyin’.
It’s your last chance to hide.
There won’t be no flyin’.
Till your last, long ride.

At this point, I think it’s been over eight minutes since the last time I had to listen to this tune. That marks the high-water mark for the serial.

In the saloon, Steven is trying and failing to convince the Clantons and Harper that the Doctor isn’t Doc Holliday. He says that he has to get the Doctor out of jail, to which the others laugh at the prospect of Steven gunning down Earp and Masterson. Nonetheless, Steven insists that if he can get the Doctor out of jail, he can prove who he really is. Ike says, “Now wouldn’t that be something. Boys, what do you say we give Mister Regret here a hand?” Early on, I assumed that Billy called the shots among the brothers, but now it’s fairly clear that role is played by Ike.

Cut back to the hotel room, where Dodo, Kate, and Holliday are playing cards.

There’s gamblers from Denver,
There’s guns from the South,
And many a cowboy
With a dry, dry mouth.
There’s a ragtime piano
And a small back room
For to sleep off your troubles
At the Last Chance Saloon.

Finishing their game, Holliday is growing restless and snippy. He growls at Kate to go check the main room to see if the Clantons and Harper are still there—if not, he wants to go out for a drink. But they are, and Holliday still insists on leaving the room. “Now, you wouldn’t want me to die of thirst, would you?” A touch hostile, Kate tells him that there is a bottle of booze back in the dental saloon, and that if he’s really careful, he can go back there and get it. Matching her hostility, Holliday says, “Now that’s all a man needs. A real gentle, understanding woman. I’ll be back just as soon as you’ve finished breaking up my character.” I get that Holliday is angry at being caged up in the room; he explicitly says this to Dodo. But I don’t understand Kate’s anger here. She’s been irascible ever since she entered the room and found him with Dodo, and despite there being absolutely no sexual undertones, it feels like that’s what the narrative wants me to attribute to her mood.

The next scene is Holliday’s shop; he moves through the main room in the dark, looking for his bottle of whisky. A man’s voice says loudly, “Right behind you, Doc.” Holliday turns suddenly and finds Wyatt Earp staring him down. Earp tells Holliday that he needs to get out of town until this business with the Clantons blows over. He intends to tell everyone about the mistaken identity in the morning when he lets the Doctor out of jail, and if Holliday leaves now, he’ll have a head start. It has been established that Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are friends, but we never see them being particularly friendly toward one another. I guess you could say that Earp giving Holliday a heads-up is an act of friendliness unusual for a lawman toward an outlaw, but then Holliday hasn’t been party to any real outlaw behavior to reinforce the idea that he is one. This serial relies too much on reputation and pop culture for my liking.

We learn a few more things in this scene. Earp says, “Old Pa Clanton and his boys are running the biggest rustling operation this territory’s ever seen. Pretty soon, they’ll be taking over the whole of Tombstone unless something’s done about them…Bat [Masterson] and me can’t handle it alone. We’ll stop them, soon as my brothers get here.” Holliday grudgingly agrees to ride out of town, and Earp leaves.

Back at the saloon, the Clantons and Harper tell Steven how he can break the Doctor out of jail, claiming that they just want to rectify a miscarriage of justice. “You take this gun over to the jailhouse,” Ike begins, “and slip it through the cell window to Holliday.”

“And he says, ‘open the door, or I’ll shoot’,” Billy pipes in.

Steven agrees to this, and I think we are supposed to think that he doesn’t really believe what he’s being told. He says some of his lines through gritted teeth, occasionally sounding doubtful. But he doesn’t really sell doubt in this scene. Regardless, he leaves with the gun, and Ike sends Phineas off after him to make sure Steven and the Doctor don’t just run away. Then Ike turns to his other brother and says, “And Billy, you get the rope,” implying a lynching.

One more thing about this scene: it is revealed that Phineas has a stutter. This serves no purpose for the plot and is only meant to get laughs at his expense, adding a little ableism into the series’ blend of sexism and racism.

Cut back to the hotel room, where Dodo is fixing Kate’s hair in front of a mirror.

With rings on their fingers
And bells on their toes,
The girls come to Tombstone
In their high silk hose.

Dodo asks Kate why she wants to marry Holliday if he’s an outlaw. Kate turns to her and says, “Aw honey, I’ve known them all in my time. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Johnny Ringo. And I’m telling you, the Doc’s the best of the bunch. He’s a real gentleman. Just been a mite unlucky, is all…[He] was on the run, leastways till he met up with Wyatt Earp. Since then, he’s usually managed to keep right side of the law. That’s why for the first time, I guess he’s gonna settle down.”

At this moment, Holliday bursts in the room, telling the two women that Wyatt Earp is gunning for him and that they need to leave town. He tells Kate that he has agreed to this because in his whole life, he has never killed a friend, to which Kate smiles and calls him a gentleman. Is Holliday likable? At this point in the serial, I really don’t know. He has been funny at times, and he has done the audience a service by keeping Dodo out of the way of the larger narrative, but I don’t think I really care if he lives or dies. We are supposed to be rooting for him by the end of the serial, and I’ll have to see if I ever get there.

The scene changes to the Doctor’s jail cell, which is exactly what you’d expect: a tiny stone room with bars on one side and a small bed against the back wall. The Doctor sits on this bed, looking over a stack of wanted posters. The ballad swells in with a slow, melancholic chorus:

You’ve a good chance of dyin’.
It’s your last chance to hide.
There won’t be no flyin’
Till your last, long ride.

Steven appears at the small barred window, interrupting the Doctor’s musing. He very quickly tells the Doctor that Dodo is safe, having locked herself in her room—which is a big assumption, given that the last he saw of Dodo was when she started up the stairs at the beginning of this episode. Upon reflection, not much time has actually passed, but the elapsed runtime makes it feel like a stretch for Steven to be so sure about Dodo’s safety.

With no time to stay and explain, Steven passes the Doctor a gun through the bars, saying that he must bluff his way out of jail. “The Clanton gang still think that you’re Doc Holliday,” Steven says. “I’ll be waiting for you outside. We must get back to the TARDIS.”

Steven disappears without another word, leaving the Doctor confounded. He starts twirling the gun clumsily around a finger, calling out for “Mister Werp.” He turns to see Wyatt Earp standing at the bars to the cage, hands on his hips and frowning. “Oh, Mister Werp. I say, can you do that?” He looks at the gun he’s trying and failing to twirl.

“Nope,” Earp says curtly. “And I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”

“I have no intention of trying anything, only people keep giving me guns, and I do wish they wouldn’t. I wonder, would you mind looking after it for me?” He passes the revolver through the bars to Earp. I like this scene because it gives us another glimmer of what might be satire in a narrative that has had a more serious bend ever since the Doctor was arrested in the saloon. I’m not even sure it should be considered satire—it’s a subversion of what would typically happen in a Western, but this is more the result of the uppity Doctor being unresponsive to Western tropes than of anything the narrative is doing to criticize the typical formula. Whatever it is, the serial has begun to take itself too seriously, which makes its flaws harder to digest.

The Doctor tells Earp that the gun was given to him by Steven, adding that he is supposed to meet him outside in ten minutes’ time. “Oh, did he?” Earp grouses. “Well, I must go and have a word with him.” As Earp leaves, the Doctor calls after him, telling him to let Steven know that he is content to stay in the sheriff’s office where he cannot be harmed.

Meanwhile, Clanton has gathered what appears to be a whole town’s worth of extras in the common room of the saloon, somewhere around 20 people. It is in this scene, 55 minutes into the serial, that we finally get to see women other than Kate—there are a handful of townswomen peppered amongst the crowd, but none of them ever have any dialogue. Anyway, Ike Clanton is whipping the town into a murderous fervor, calling for the townspeople to “go over to the jailhouse, get [Holliday] out, and string him up from the nearest tree!”

I have several problems with this. First, the producers have never bothered to make Tombstone look the least bit populated. Aside from the named characters, there have never been more than two extras in the background of any scene, and I can only remember three scenes with extras at all. All three times, these extras were two generic men dressed as cowboys. I’m not saying that there can’t be more people than what we’ve seen on screen, but to go from practically nothing to a room bursting at the seams is very jarring. It also gives the sense that these people are unimportant and won’t be in the narrative for long.

Second, Ike is able to convince the townspeople to follow him by painting Holliday as an outlaw whose mere presence will bring trouble and bloodshed. But in this universe, the Clantons have practically the same reputation, with Earp already telling us how Pa Clanton is trying to consolidate power in the territory. Why would they be disposed to listen to Ike at all, and how did he convince them to hear him out in the first place?

And third, I really don’t like lynching as a plot device coming from a show in the 60s, especially given that it is set in America. Even without people of color on screen, it draws on too many unintended parallels—racism, mob-rule, and sundown towns in the American South just to name a few. It feels very culturally unaware.

The mob streams out of the saloon doors, presumably to light torches and practice their angry yelling. As they leave, Phineas enters, holding Steven tightly by the arm. He tells Ike that Steven gave the Doctor the gun, adding, “Mister Regret didn’t seem too keen on seeing us again. Caught him going away from the saloon.” This is confusing; wasn’t he supposed to wait for the Doctor outside the jail? And wasn’t Earp supposed to be headed outside to talk to him?

Then Ike tells his brothers to tie a rope around his neck, saying to Steven, “Our idea is, friend, that if Holliday don’t bust out of jail, we got us a hostage. He’s gotta get out to stop you swinging in his place.” The Clantons drag Steven out into the street, while Seth Harper remains behind, swigging from a bottle of liquor. Charlie the bartender looks at Harper with the dumbest openmouthed, buck-toothed, blank stare you can imagine. It means nothing to the story; I just wanted to highlight what a stupid character Charlie is and how it makes me angry whenever I have to see him on my screen.

Up in Dodo’s hotel room, Holliday and Kate are packed and ready to go when Kate hears the commotion of the mob outside the window. I’m not sure why she hears the mob now and not when they were screaming in the common room, but I’ll let it slide. They watch the mob parade down the street with their torches, including Steven tied and bound in the saddle of a horse and a man who—for some unknown reason—shoves Holliday’s operating along the dirt road.

There is absolutely no reason for Holliday’s operating chair to be among the fray, except as a means of getting him to yell, “They got my operating chair!” and run out onto the landing. It makes no sense. Anyway, now Kate follows him out onto the stairs, calling for him to get back here.

Still in the common room, Seth Harper sees the two and finally understands what is going on. He asks Holliday if he is who he thinks he is, and Holliday confirms his identity. They both reach for their guns, but Holliday’s draw is quicker. Harper is shot dead. Dodo screams, and Harper’s body slumps against the bar.

On the advice of Charlie the bartender, Holliday once again agrees that getting out of town is the best way to avoid the ire of the mob. He tells Kate to saddle three horses, turning to Dodo and saying, “You’ll have to come with us, Missy…[Your friends] are safe with Wyatt. I can’t take on the whole town on my own…Our only hope is to get out of here alive.” I have no idea why this necessitates Dodo joining them. It’s not like her safety is in jeopardy; none of the gunmen have shown malice toward her personally, and it’s doubtful any of them even remember her. She could just go back up to her room and lock the door like Steven told her to at the beginning of the episode. Still, Holliday shoves her out of the saloon doors in front of him before disappearing into the night.

Outside the jailhouse, the mob has gathered. Wyatt Earp lets the Doctor out of his cell, showing him the open jailhouse door and the people waiting for him outside. Ike Clanton demands that Earp release Holliday, to which Earp refuses. “Well that’s too bad,” Ike says mockingly, “’cause if he’s ain’t out of there in two minutes, his friend Regret here is gonna swing in his place.” The crowd cheers approvingly at this. So not only is the mob okay with the “righteous” lynching of Doc Holliday, but if that’s no longer on the table, any old schlub will do. I get that this mythologized version of the Wild West is supposed to care less for the rule of law, but that seems unrealistically amoral.

The scene cuts to a close-up of the Doctor’s worried face. The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon begins again, this time with its normal tone and tempo. It’s incongruously happy, undercutting the mood.

You’ve a good chance of swingin’.
It’s your last chance to hide.
And your last chance at singin’
Till your last long ride.

Credits roll.

Part 3 (Johnny Ringo)

After being announced as a hostage, Steven yells into the sheriff’s office, “Stay where you are, Doctor. They’re bluffing.”

Phineas Clanton follows this up with what I think is the funniest line in the whole serial: “If you believe that, boy, you’re gonna be powerful surprised in a few minutes.”

Seeing that Steven’s life is genuinely threatened, the Doctor wants to go outside to try and convince them one more time that he’s not the real Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson both refuse, as this is obviously the dumbest thing the Doctor could do in the situation. Instead, Earp exits the sheriff’s office by the back door, planning to sneak around the mob and surprise the Clantons.

After a moment, Earp appears behind Phineas and knocks him out with the butt of his revolver. Maintaining the grand tradition of Classic Who action set pieces being both unathletic and dumb as hell, this is accomplished by Earp taking Phineas’s hat off of his head, whipping him with the gun, and placing the hat back on just in time for the man to fall to the ground. As the mob sees the momentum of their movement slipping away, Masterson regains control, successfully dispersing the townspeople and reclaiming the street.

Wyatt Earp removes the noose from Steven’s neck and unties the rope around his arms; Steven is very grateful. Billy insists that the Clantons won’t leave without Phineas, but Earp stands purposefully over Phineas’s unconscious body, saying that he is under arrest. Billy begins to argue with Earp, but they are interrupted when the cringing, useless sack of flesh that is Charlie the bartender enters the scene, insisting that the Doctor is not Doc Holliday. He says that the man they really want is in the bar, adding that he has killed Seth Harper.

Billy is enraged at Earp and Masterson for knowing that the Doctor wasn’t really the man they were looking for. With what little dignity they have left to them, Ike and Billy make overtures about what their Pa will do once he hears about this, and they leave the scene. Earp and Masterson scoop up Phineas and make for the jailhouse. The scene closes with this awful, awful musical interlude, the worst of the serial:

So pick him up gentle
And carry him slow.
He’s gone kinda mental
Under Earp’s heavy blow.

Not only have the lyrics progressed to lazily summarizing what we’ve already seen, but they are some of the dumbest lyrics ever strung together and inflicted on the general public.

Once Phineas is settled in the jail cell, the Doctor and Steven take their leave of the sheriff’s office, saying they’ll be out of town come morning. “Goodbye, uh, Mister Werp,” the Doctor says on his way out the door. He never does get Earp’s name right, something I find endlessly amusing.

Back at the saloon, the two free Clanton brothers have recounted the day’s events to their father, a man in his middle years with short gray hair and a black bowler hat. Pa Clanton is a very generic antagonist in the vein of a mafia boss. His goals are never really flushed out beyond vague allusions to amassing power in the Arizona territory. The Clantons are real historical figures like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday, and I suppose the writers are relying on the public’s prior knowledge of folklore. However, although the latter three are names that I have encountered at some point or another, I have never heard of the Clantons, and therefore their motivations are never known to me. This is what writers risk when they include pop culture references in a narrative. Throwaway lines are generally fine, but in my opinion, it’s never a good idea to base a significant part of the plot on information not shared explicitly on screen.

Pa Clanton is angry, though it is an arrogant, upper-class anger that assumes the perpetrator will get their comeuppance. He orders his sons to offer $500 to outlaw Johnny Ringo to help them take out Holliday, then he and his sons depart the saloon.

The Doctor and Steven enter just as the Clantons are leaving the scene. They ask Charlie the bartender about Dodo, and like the wretched little snitch he is, he tells them right away that Doc Holliday and Kate have taken her and vamoosed. “You wanna find her,” he says, “you find Doc Holliday.” Realizing they can do nothing until morning, the Doctor and Steven go upstairs to their rooms.

Cut to another town, where Holliday, Kate, and Dodo have arrived at an inn. We get a slow chorus of the ballad. At this point in the serial, I have gone from hating the interludes, to tolerating them, to wrapping back around to hatred.

It’s your last chance of boozin’
Where there’s no one to mind.
It’s your last chance of losin’
And the first place you find.

As they climb the steps toward their second floor room, Holliday points out why they have stopped so close to Tombstone: his vices. “There’s a bar right across the street and a gambling saloon real close.” Kate protests that they could have ridden forty miles by morning, but Holliday won’t hear any of it. He says that he promised Earp he’d stay close to Tombstone, adding, “There’s only him and Masterson to handle things if old man Clanton decides to throw anything against them, and I gotta get back.”

He leaves Dodo and Kate by the room, saying he’s going to get some food for them all. Kate muses about finally finding a man who keeps his word—it’s really amazing how the only woman we meet in Arizona is portrayed as being both promiscuous and extremely dumb. Then five gunshots ring out, and Holliday returns holding a tray of food, saying, “It’s alright, ladies…I just ran into an old friend and he—er—he kinda lost his appetite.”

Back at the Last Chance Saloon, a man in black with dark hair and back hat enters the building.

It’s your last chance of earnin’
Your gunfighter’s fee.
The pay is in dollars,
But the bullets are free.
It’s your last chance of cussin’
At a gunfighter’s doom.
It’s your last chance of nothin’
At the Last Chance Saloon.

The man steps up to the bar. Charlie tells him the bar is closed, but he sits on a stool anyway, lighting a cigar by a lit lantern on the bar. When Charlie recognizes the man as Johnny Ringo, his eyes light up like a moonstruck fanboy. I don’t get Charlie. Don’t get me wrong; he is conceptually dumb and a very irritating character, but how can he tattle on outlaw Doc Holliday twice and then be over the moon to meet outlaw Johnny Ringo? I understand that humans are complex individuals, but Early Era Doctor Who characters generally are not. If there is a dichotomy like this, ninety-nine percent of the time, it is either explained outright or just unintentional. And if it comes across as unintentional, it also strikes me as poor writing.

Ringo asks Charlie how he knows his name, and Charlie begins to answer him before deciding that it might not be best to blab about an outlaw’s reputation to his face; he goes stony-faced and says that he has heard nothing at all. Ringo doesn’t say much, but his sheer aura is getting everything he wants out of Charlie. The bartender blurts out about how the Clantons were asking around about Johnny Ringo, saying that they would pay $500 if he’d “throw in with them against Wyatt Earp.”

When Ringo says that he has some business to take care of with Doc Holliday first, Charlie gets an ecstatic look on his face and says, “I reckon that’ll suit them just fine, ‘cause they’re a-laying for Holliday too!”

Ringo seems to have made the decision that he’ll have to kill Charlie for being the vicious gossip that he is, lest he go blabbing to someone else. He slips in a few more allusions to Charlie talking too much, and the audience can obviously see that Charlie is a dead man walking. When Ringo turns toward the stairs, Charlie insists that he won’t say anything to anybody. Ringo grins and says, “Now ain’t that just the truth. Hey, Charlie?” He spins around and shoots the bartender, whose body slumps onto the bar.

As Ringo leaves the room, we get another slow chorus of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. In this interlude, we get a bit of Chopin’s funeral march, directly alluding to the death that has just occurred. Remember this; it will come back later.

So, it’s curtains for Charlie,
That barman of fame.
He met Johnny Ringo,
And he knew Johnny’s name.
He knew Johnny’s name,
And he spoke it out loud.
Now Charlie the barman
Has gotten a shroud.

I feel a sense of relief that I don’t have to be annoyed by Charlie’s mere presence anymore. It reminds me of The Ark, where I found myself wishing for Maharis and Dassuk’s death despite them being ostensibly characters that I was supposed to root for. Well, maybe not Maharis, but his acting was so awful that I just wanted his character to suffer a fate worse than what he probably deserved.

Another note: Johnny Ringo has the least convincing American accent of any character in the serial, even worse than some of the one-line duffs that chime in in some of these scenes. I can never take Ringo as a serious threat—mostly because it’s a Doctor Who story and it’s rare for anything truly bad to happen to a protagonist, but also because he sounds ridiculous.

Next there is a scene which makes very little sense to me. Morning has arrived. In their hotel room, Holliday is telling Dodo that he won’t be taking her back to Tombstone today, even though Dodo reminds him that he promised. “I promised to take you back safe home, and I will do so in my own time,” Holliday says dismissively. Then Dodo grabs a gun from the table and levels it at Holliday, saying that they must leave immediately. It’s clear that Dodo is not a real threat, and Holliday never treats her like one. But for some unknown reason, he humors her, saying that he will take her back to Tombstone right away. Dodo smiles, lowering the gun with a sigh, before handing the firearm over to Holliday, thinking she has actually accomplished something.

When Kate enters the room, she is dismayed to hear that they are going back and angered when Holliday tells her to stay here in the meantime. Kate accuses him of running out on her, and Holliday gestures at Dodo, saying that for once in his life, he was beaten to the draw. He produces his own gun, and, finally realizing the danger she was in the whole time, Dodo faints into Kate’s arms. The whole point of this scene was just for the gag of Dodo pointing a gun at Holliday, but it doesn’t make any narrative sense. The reason Holliday leaving left was to stay out of the way until the Clantons are dealt with. Holliday is supposed to be this decisive, take-charge outlaw. He had to be convinced by Earp to leave down in the first place, and seeing him reverse course again for the sake of a gag really undermines the cohesion of his character.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Steven have woken at the Last Chance Saloon, and they make their way down the stairs into the common room. Charlie is still dead and slumped over the bar.

He knew Johnny’s name,
And he spoke it out loud.
Now Charlie the barman
Has gotten a shroud.

We get a clear overhead shot of his body in broad daylight, and there is no chance that both the Doctor and Steven fail see the man as they come downstairs. His positioning is too obvious. Nonetheless, Steven gets all the way to the bar and slaps the bell for service before he discovers Charlie, only coming to the realization when he accidentally grazes the man’s arm. Ringo stands up from a table—apparently, he’s been sitting in the common room all night. He makes to leave, but the Doctor tells him that he should probably stick around until Wyatt Earp can be summoned. With a threatening nonchalance, Ringo asks the Doctor if he plans to make him stay, and the Doctor quickly backs off. Ringo turns to leave, saying, “The only man in the territory low enough to kill an unarmed barman is Doc Holliday.”

Again, there is that unspoken moral code that was touched on in Part 2 when the Doctor insinuated he may shoot the unarmed Clantons. We are supposed to take from this that Ringo has much lower morals than the Clantons, but this idea is never emphasized enough to feel properly executed. It’s also unnecessary. The murder of Charlie—as much as I appreciated it—already comes off as a bad thing to do. We don’t need some halfhearted attempt at establishing some cowboy code to piece that together.

When he hears Ringo use Holliday’s name, Steven grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back inside, much to Ringo’s displeasure. Steven says that they are also after him, explaining that a friend of theirs is with him and they need her back. Ringo grins at Steven, thinking he also means to gun him down, but the Doctor clarifies, “Oh, certainly not, sir, certainly not. I mean, we’re just going to…well, reason with him.” Ringo laughs at the notion, during which the Doctor quietly pulls Steven aside and tells him that they are parlaying with Johnny Ringo. How he can know who Ringo is and not Mister Werp, I have no idea. Anyway, Ringo says that Steven is free to tag along with him, provided that he doesn’t get in between Holliday and Ringo’s gun.

At the sheriff’s office, Masterson and Wyatt Earp are speaking with Wyatt’s brother, Warren, who has just arrived in town. Earlier, Wyatt Earp mentioned his brothers coming to help out with this Clanton problem, and that is beginning to come to fruition. Of Wyatt’s other two brothers, Virgil hasn’t arrived yet, and Morgan can’t come because he has to handle some other business. Wyatt makes it clear that he is unwilling to actually let Warren, his baby brother, get involved. With the way Warren is talked about, I think he is supposed to be around 18, but the actor looks to be closer to 30. Not a good fit for the character.

Phineas is still the cell, tittering now and again about what his brothers will do, or about what a judge will say when they find out the sheriff is protecting Doc Holliday. At the mention of Holliday’s name, the Doctor enters the scene and tells them about Holliday leaving town, adding, “Miss Dupont has gone off with him, and young Steven is following up, and I’ve got to wait…He’s gone with a young man by the name of Ringo.”

The Earps and Masterson are dismayed by the news, and the Doctor says, “You’ve got a photograph of him here, look,” pointing to a wanted poster. I guess it does make sense that the Doctor knows who Ringo is, given that he was holding several wanted posters in his jail cell in Part 2. I think it’s my fault for not making the connection, rather than a failing of the serial.

Masterson explains that Ringo is a lone wolf gunman, selling his services to the highest bidder, to which Wyatt Earp says will definitely be the Clantons. “Yes,” the Doctor continues, “there’s one more thing. I have to report a murder.” He tells the lawmen about Charlie, and they all groan about Ringo moving quickly. Wyatt leaves his kid brother Warren in charge after all, and everyone but Warren leaves the sheriff’s office. Phineas cackles at Warren, and the camera fades to black.

Later, night as fallen, and Johnny Ringo and Steven have reached the town where Holliday, Kate, and Dodo stayed the night before. I have a quick note on the passage of time. The way time progresses is entirely up to the writer, and as long as time skips are properly explained, the narrative will make sense. However, when Part 2 takes place over the course of an hour and Part 3 has already had a sunrise and a sunset, it can be a bit disorienting. This is usually an issue of structure, but it can come from poor pacing as well. If Part 2 covered more ground or Part 3 covered less, there wouldn’t be as much dissonance.

Ringo and Steven split up to search the town for Holliday, and Ringo immediately sees Kate coming toward him down the street. We don’t actually get to see Kate approaching. Instead, we get about 40 seconds of Ringo smiling, while an inordinately slow musical interlude gives us:

Johnny Ringo has found her.
Johnny Ringo’s found Kate.
The gunslinger’s got her.
Now what is her fate?
Johnny Ringo has seen her.
She’s coming his way.
Johnny Ringo and Katie
Were lovers, they say.

There is so much to hate about this musical interlude in particular. Lyrically, just look how clipped and stunted it is. Almost every line ends with punctuation, whereas the lyrics of other interludes tend to have sentences flowing across two, three, or even four lines. And it’s the definition of showing instead of telling. I’m being told exactly what is about to happen, and then I’m still made to wait more than half a minute for the story to progress. I’ve changed my mind; this interlude is the worst of the serial, worse than when Phineas went “kinda mental.”

Ringo sees Kate and asks where Holliday is—after all, he’s heard that they are to be married. Kate plays coy, saying that Holliday has run out on her with another girl—Steven Regret’s girl—and that they are headed for New Mexico. It’s pretty obvious that she is lying, not from the scene, but from the fact that there less than 30 minutes of runtime to go. I try not to let my foreknowledge of how many parts are in a serial sway my opinion of the plot while I am watching, but I couldn’t ignore that there just wasn’t enough time to set up an entirely new setting and also return Dodo to the other protagonists.

Then Ringo says Holliday will just have to wait until he finishes a job in Tombstone. I think this is meant to signify that Ringo doesn’t believe Kate and that he thinks he’ll find Holliday in Tombstone, but Charlie had told Ringo that the job the Clantons wanted was primarily to go against Earp and Masterson. Like many things in this serial, what I am meant to get out of this scene is extremely muddled.

One thing is clear, though. Ringo tells Kate that she will be accompanying him back to Tombstone, saying, “Kate, I’ve followed you for nigh on two years, figuring out what I should do to you when I caught up. Holliday was gonna be first, but according to you, he’s in New Mexico. But you’re right here.” He draws his gun. “You’re coming back to me, Kate.”

“Oh, well, thank you kindly, Johnny,” Kate says acidly. “But just supposing I don’t wish to come back?”

“You’d better, that’s all.” He raises the gun toward her head. “I could maybe change my mind…Don’t push your luck, Kate. Just go get your things, while I tell Regret that there’s been a change of plan.” He gestures with the gun toward the inn, and like he’s speaking to a dog, he shouts, “Git!” This exchange gives us RapeyScene #8. I don’t have much to say about it beyond the general this shouldn’t be in a children’s show take that I’ve had the other seven times this has happened. It’s unnecessary and completely lacking in self-awareness.

Back at the sheriff’s office, Phineas is taunting Warren Earp about his inexperience when suddenly, the other two Clanton brothers enter the building, their guns raised at Warren. Billy Clanton asks where the keys to the cell are, and when Warren reaches for them, Billy shoots Warren in the chest. Warren falls to the floor. Then the Clantons free their brother, and they all run offscreen. As the camera slowly zooms in on Warren, we get another slow musical interlude, again referencing Chopin’s funeral march:

It's curtains for Warren.
They’ve gunned the kid down.
And them bad, cruel outlaws
Are heading for town.
On your way then, you cowboys.
The time will be soon
When there’s blood on the sawdust
In the Last Chance Saloon.

Credits roll.

Keep in mind that the death of the bartender was framed in exactly the same way. Based on all the rules we have been given: funeral march = is dead.

Part 4 (The OK Corral)

This episode opens in the Last Chance Saloon. As Wyatt Earp covers Charlie’s body with a sheet, we get:

He knew Johnny’s name,
And he spoke it out loud.
Now Charlie the barman
Has gotten a shroud.

Masterson and the Doctor are also in the room, and Earp begins to muse about the Doctor being a useful man to have around when the trouble starts. After all, even though the Doctor didn’t actually shoot the gun out of Seth Harper’s hand in Part 2, the Clantons think he did, which can be used as a point of leverage. Earp pins a star to the Doctor’s lapel, saying, “I’m deputizing you right now…Maybe you won’t have to [shoot a gun], but I mean, with just Bat and me and Warren against the Clantons, you could sure shorten the odds some.”

“And I’ll help shorten them some more,” says a man entering the room, yet another dark haired man with a mustache and cowboy getup. This is Virgil Earp, the Earp brother who was on his way in the last episode. Wyatt tells his brother about the murder of Charlie, saying that he’ll explain more about what’s going on on the way to the sheriff’s office. He, Virgil, and Masterson all depart, leaving the Doctor staying next to a dead body with a star on his breast and a puzzled expression.

Next we get our first glimpse of the Clanton ranch, which we see as a large but rather generic living room. Pa Clanton, Ringo, Steven, and Kate are sitting in chairs when Ike, Billy, and Phineas all enter the room, smug smiles on their faces, gloating about taking out Warren Earp. Pa Clanton sees the situation much more levelly, barking sarcastically, “Well, glory be! Now you really have declared war!” and slamming the butt of his shotgun angrily on the wooden floor.

Cut back to the sheriff’s office, where we are once again subjected to:

It's curtains for Warren.
They’ve gunned the kid down.
And them bad, cruel outlaws
Are heading for town.
On your way then, you cowboys.
The time will be soon
When there’s blood on the sawdust
In the Last Chance Saloon.

Only Warren Earp is not dead. The camera slowly pans to show him in very bad shape, but alive, with his head cradled in the arms of his brother, Wyatt. However, he only stays alive long enough to mumble that the Clantons did it before actually dying. I hate the way this was executed. It would be one thing for Warren to actually be alive and stay alive—that would be a genuine subversion of what the music has led us to expect. But it just feels like the writers forgot to include some way of telling the remaining lawmen who fired the kill shot, leaving them to resurrect Warren just to make the narrative make sense. I don’t know if it’s shoddy writing, producing, or editing, but it’s definitely shoddy something.

The surviving Earps are enraged. For once, they are considering acting outside of the law to declare a feud with the Clantons. Masterson is wholeheartedly against this, but Wyatt says, “The law can’t bring my kid brother back. Virgil and me’s gonna step outside of the law.” Virgil leaves to tell the Clantons to meet at the OK Corral.

Cut back to the Clanton ranch, where Pa Clanton is preparing for a shootout, loading several guns. His sons aren’t taking the situation nearly as seriously, eating and reveling at a long table.

So the Earps and the Clantons
Are aiming to meet
At the OK Corral
Near Calamity Street.
It’s the OK Corral boys
Of gunfighting fame,
Where the Earps and the Clantons,
They played out the game.

So now, not only does is the interlude once again repeating what we already know to be true, but it is actively spoiling the rest of the serial. I get that the narrative is currently pointing to a showdown at the OK Corral, but stating it outright leaves no room for doubt or subversion, nothing but the most straightforward writing.

Also, I don’t have a really great place to put this, so I’ll just put it here. It’s been a while since I talked about the satire vs. homage dynamic, and I’ve finally come to a conclusion. I think it’s just poorly written satire. Throughout the last three episodes of the serial, there are bits which call to mind satire, like Dodo pulling a gun on Holliday and Phineas’s Clanton’s ableist stutter. However, they are scattered amongst longer, much more serious sequences, like the prospective hanging of Steven and the murders of Charlie and Warren. It seems like the showrunners were fine with going all in on satire in Part 1, which thrived because of its consistent approach and tone. But when they had to actually execute on a suitable Doctor Who narrative, the tone became very confused. I won’t put the blame entirely on the writers, as it could very well have been the producers and executives who stepped in and pushed the narrative in a more typical Doctor Who direction. Nonetheless, if the showrunners had persisted with true satire throughout the serial, I feel it would have been a much more rewarding watch.

In a corner of the room, Steven tells Kate that he wants to sneak away, but Kate talks him out of it, saying he’d be shot in the back before he got ten feet out the door. Outside, Virgil Earp shouts into the house, saying he’s got a message. Pa Clanton waves at Ringo to hide himself somewhere, then lets Virgil in. Virgil says they will be waiting for the Clantons at the OK Corral at sunup, then leaves.

Ringo enters the room, telling the others his plan: the Clanton brothers will be waiting in the corral, while Ringo sneaks behind the Earps and shoots them in the back. The Clantons initially object to such an underhanded tactic, but Ringo gets them to grudgingly agree.

Back at the sheriff’s office, the Doctor asks Masterson what role he is meant to play in this feud, looking at his badge and saying that he is supposed to uphold the law. Masterson looks to Wyatt Earp and say that, since the Doctor has been deputized, he cannot be asked to take any part in this duel.

At this moment Virgil returns, saying that he saw Steven Regret at the Clanton ranch. The Doctor points out that he last saw Steven when he rode out with Johnny Ringo, and that if Steven is there, Ringo probably is too. Virgil says that he didn’t see Ringo, but he saw his horse, adding that Kate was also in the house. “Oh this is sheer madness,” the Doctor says to the Earps. “You can’t take on the Clantons and Ringo.”

“They won’t have to,” says Holliday, striding into the room, Dodo trailing behind him. The Doctor and Dodo reunite happily before returning to the matter at hand. There’s a bit of back-and-forth as Virgil Earp resists fighting alongside an outlaw, but he eventually agrees. Seeing that his services are no longer necessary, the Doctor yanks the sheriff’s badge off his coat and passes it to Masterson. Then Holliday starts to discuss tactics before the scene cuts away. You know the archetype: the “here’s what we’re gonna do” right before the camera pans away. It’s campy, but at least it hints that we’re in the endgame. I’m starting to lose patience with this serial.

Later that night, the Doctor, and Dodo are sitting in the last chance saloon. They have cups of milk; I don’t know who poured them, but I’m so glad it’s not Charlie. Masterson enters the room, and the Doctor offers to go to the Clantons to give them one last chance to call off this duel. This is so blatantly an excuse to pad the runtime, and it’s barely worth mentioning at all except that when the Doctor goes to the Clantons, he tells them outright that they will be facing Doc Holliday. This is an objectively stupid thing to do, even for a Doctor who’s been uncharacteristically oblivious this entire episode.

Cut to the main street the following morning. As the Clantons and Johnny Ringo ride into Tombstone, we get a fast chorus of the ballad:

So the cards, they are drawn
And the chips, they are down.
Them outlaws and lawmen
Are heading for town.
And the Earps and the Clantons
Are aiming to meet
At the OK Corral
Near Calamity Street.

The Clanton brothers take their position in the OK Corral, still going with Ringo’s plan to shoot their enemies in the back.

So them bad, cruel outlaws
Are meeting up soon,
And they've drunk their last drink
In the Last-Chance Saloon.

Elsewhere, Masterson tries one last time to talk Wyatt Earp out of meeting the Clantons, and Earp refuses. He, Virgil, and Holliday confirm their plans, with Holliday saying, “It’s like I said, Wyatt, I’ll be strolling along real easy behind you, on the shady side of the street.” They all leave for the duel, leaving Masterson alone.

It's the OK Corral boys
Of gun fighting fame,
Where the Earps and the Clantons,
They played out their game.

Ike sees the Earps coming, and the Clantons open fire. The Earps duck for cover. What follows is what I consider to be the absolute worst kind of action. If you’ve seen aby low-budget action movie, you know the type: quick cuts, so you never quite know who is where or who is facing whom. Characters will fire their guns, but you never know where the bullet ends up or who they were even aiming for. The low angle camera shots, necessary to hide the lights just out of frame, very clearly hinder the action as well, often preventing us from seeing above a character’s chest even when they are onscreen for more than a second or two. Plus, this all goes on for about four minutes. Everyone is constantly firing their guns, and no one ever stops to reload despite the fact that they are all wielding six-shooters—which, if you couldn’t tell from the name, can only hold six bullets. It’s comically underwhelming, especially as the grand finale of a 4-part serial. Eventually Holliday shoots Ringo and the Clantons.

They paid their sins,
And they lost on the draw,
For the Earps, they was faster,
And they was the law.
So beware all you cowboys
Who's yearning to sin.
If the Earps is the lawmen,
You ain't gonna win.

Finally, we return to the livery store where the TARDIS landed in Part 1, where we find the protagonists, Holliday, and Kate. We learn that Wyatt Earp is no longer a lawman, having to resign his office for the extrajudicial killings. Kate unfurls a large wanted poster, showing that a reward of $2,000 has been announced for the capture of Holliday as well. They say their goodbyes, Holliday and Kate leave, and the protagonists climb inside the TARDIS, which dematerializes.

A little while later, the TARDIS has landed. We get an interior shot of the Doctor and company looking at the scanner, and the Doctor says, “[We are] in the future. Very much in the future. We’ve now reached the distant horizon of an age—an age of peace and prosperity.” They all turn away from the scanner, just as what looks like a barbarian wearing animal skins and carrying a club appears on the screen. Credits roll.

Takeaways

Let’s start with the obvious. 29 musical interludes. I’ve been working on reviewing this serial for the last five days, and there is not a moment that The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon was not stuck in my head. It’s catchy; I’ll give it that. But at its best, it functions as a brief respite, postponing the next scene just enough to give the viewer a chance to breathe. At its worst—which is most of the time—it is a relentless, simplistic tune that needlessly recaps plot points and sometimes even spoils what is to come. If everything else about this serial were perfect, the interludes alone would make it impossible for me to rate this serial above a 7.5 out of 10. And if you’ve read the rest of this review, you know that The Gunfighters is far from perfect.

With that being said, it’s not bad. When the writers really lean into satire, the story works well—this is most evident in the opening episode, which had a lighthearted tone and continual nods to comedy which made it a delight to watch. However, these satirical elements lessen over time until the intent of the writers becomes muddled and ineffective. Part 4 is where the serial really begins to fall apart, when the interludes are at their peak annoyance and the serious elements of the narrative start to feel nonsensical. The gunfight at the OK Corral was the weakest moment of the serial, which is a problem for what should be a narrative climax.

The protagonists were all strangely powerless, with the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo all spending a significant amount of time under the direct control of one entity or another. However, this never seemed to hinder the progression of the story. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday were all acted and written well enough to carry the plot when they were required to, and the protagonists’ secondary roles allowed them to react to the idiosyncrasies of the Wild West without that becoming the focal point of the serial. The conflict between lawman and outlaw was interesting enough, and I did like the contrast between Wyatt Earp, a man pushed to the brink, and Bat Masterson, a man who upholds the law in all cases. I never did get quite so far as to like Holliday, but if I were held at gunpoint, I’d say I enjoyed him a bit more than I found him to be a loathsome sonofabitch.

The antagonists were mediocre at best. For a patriarch, Pa Clanton was far too much of a nonentity, and his sons were forgettable characters with regrettable accents. Johnny Ringo was a joke, but at least for my sanity he took care of Charlie. Lastly, Kate was a sexist caricature, but she was rarely annoying, and her interactions with Dodo were quite charming at times.

Looking forward, I remember the next serial, The Savages, as the last serial with Steven as a companion. Normally, this is the kind of thing I would make a big reveal out of for those who haven’t seen it, and though I plan on treating his departure with the reverence I gave the previous three, I’m honestly so excited to see him go. The show needs to head in a new direction, and the departure of Steven marks the beginning of a quick but transformative transition into the Troughton era. I had ended my last review saying that I was going to attempt to blast through the end of the Hartnell era in the following week. This obviously has not been the case, as that was almost two weeks ago, but I do intend to pick up the pace a bit. I’m excited to get into The Savages—it is a sci-fi heavy adventure on an alien planet, and we haven’t had a self-contained off-world story since Galaxy Four. Then it’s the last serial of Season 3, The War Machines, and I can finally put this slog of a season in the rear-view mirror.

Rating: 4.4/10

Chapter Text

3.9 – The Savages

Thesis: A Clear Enemy

The Doctor turns to Dodo. “You know, my dear, there's something very satisfying in destroying something that's evil, don't you think?”

This is a piece of dialogue from the climax of this serial, and I take this as a sign that Doctor Who is self-aware. Aware of its tendencies and its flaws, aware of how the series should change and what it needs to become. I have argued in the last few historicals about how static they feel, largely as a byproduct of not having a clear enemy to fight. The protagonists don’t face a threat that can be defeated; they must simply avoid the crushing weight of history and escape with their lives.

The Savages is not a historical. It takes place on a far-distant planet in a far-distant time. More than that; it is perhaps a counter to the typical historical in every conceivable way, especially in its ability to set the protagonists against an antagonist who deserves their wrath, thereby giving them the means and the motivation to be warriors for justice. I want to make it clear: The Savages is not perfect. But in a season that has given us intermittent signs of the brilliance that is to come, this serial is the best indicator thus far of an actual change in direction. In three serials, we will be saying goodbye to William Hartnell. In four, we will see the last pure historical for more than a decade. We are rapidly approaching a period of drastic change, wherein we must discover the mannerisms of a completely new doctor and relearn what it means to watch a Doctor Who serial set in the past. And I cannot wait.

On an unrelated note, from this point on, we will never again see individual episode titles in Classic Who—apart from the 20th anniversary special, which is in itself one long episode. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, so many of these titles have been uninteresting nonsense, with descriptors like The Ordeal from The Daleks, Hidden Danger from The Sensorites, Crisis from Planet of Giants, The Search from The Space Museum, and so on. On the other hand, Season 3 episode titles have largely been stellar, with very compelling descriptors like Small Prophet, Quick Return from The Myth Makers, The Destruction of Time from The Daleks’ Master Plan, and A Holiday for the Doctor from The Gunfighters. I don’t mind the disappearance of the titles because I never cared for them much in the first place, but it would have been interesting to see what the writers could have come up with over the following decades.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial, with all of its episodes lost to time. I am experiencing it in the format of telesnap reconstructions, which are essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1

This serial starts where The Gunfighters left off, with the TARDIS landing against a cliff face in some lightly forested scrubland. Standing at the console and looking at the scanner, the Doctor declares that they have landed in an age of peace and prosperity far into the future. How he knows this is a mystery to me. To this point in the series, there has never been any indication that the Doctor has known anything about their whereabouts prior to exiting the TARDIS. In fact, way back in The Daleks, he couldn’t even take off without first using the Thals’ historical records to figure out where and when they were. Regardless, as soon as the Doctor and his companions turn away from the scanner and toward the door, a man appears on the scanner screen, wearing rough clothes and holding a spear, hinting that it may not be as futuristic as the Doctor thinks.

Cut to the forest, where the Doctor moves carefully through the trees, holding some sort of scientific gizmo that looks like an old fashioned camera with a car headlight where the lens would be.

Back outside the TARDIS, Steven complains that the Doctor said he would only be gone for five minutes. This is a disorienting time skip, clumsily executed. Nonetheless, the Doctor’s random, unwarranted excursion gives us SomeoneWandersOff #8, the first such occurrence since The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve.

Steven and Dodo prattle on for a while, with Dodo telling Steven that he shouldn’t be complaining. “You should have gone with him,” she says. When Steven tries to tell her he’s just doing what the Doctor told him, she quips, “You don’t have to do everything he tells you. You’re a grown man. Or are you?” Which is both a funny line and an unwitting commentary on the ineptness of Steven’s character since the start of Season 3.

Throughout this casual exchange, the sound design does a wonderful job of establishing an air of tension, building on the unresolved threat of the primitive man from the scanner with the sound of wind howling and the discordant droning of timpani. The music is especially good in this serial, an element I haven’t talked about much to this point in the series. Many serials have relied on whatever music the BBC had on hand at the time, and the few that have featured fresh compositions were never much to write home about. The Savages is a notable exception—I’ll talk more about Raymond Jones’s music a little later.

Still in the forest, the Doctor is now being observed by two men, savage in appearance, though neither of them is the man that appeared on the scanner. One is old, with mangy white hair and a full beard; the other is younger, with lank light brown hair to his collar. Both wear dirty, ill-fitting clothes that are little more than rags. As the Doctor continues to plod along with his strange device, the men creep through the underbrush behind him, the younger man hefting a wooden club.

Back by the TARDIS, Steven begins to yell impatiently for the Doctor. The Doctor hears him, but he is undeterred, continuing with his research. At one point, it looks like the savage men are about to strike, but the Doctor inadvertently turns toward them and they are forced to shrink back into the bushes.

Meanwhile, after receiving no response from the Doctor, Steven decides that he should go look for him, telling Dodo that he won’t be long. He leaves the scene, and Dodo sits on a boulder to wait. Shortly after Steven has left, however, Dodo looks toward the top of a ridge and sees another primitive man; she screams. Steven comes rushing back into the scene, but when Dodo points toward the top of the ridge, the man is gone. This is the exact same thing that happened with Ian and Barbara back in Season 1’s Marco Polo, when Barbara saw a hulking figure far above her on a snowy mountain ridge. But unlike that serial, where Barbara was quickly written off by Ian as “just seeing things,” Steven actually takes Dodo seriously. “Then the Doctor was wrong,” he says thoughtfully. “We’re not in the future at all. We must be back at the beginning of man.”

While this may not seem like much in the way of gender equality, it is important to understand how unusual it is for a woman’s testimony to be taken seriously in Early Era Doctor Who. So often, female protagonists like Susan, Barbara, and Vicki were disbelieved until one of their male counterparts could verify their claims. These were instances like when Susan was touched on the shoulder by a Thal in The Daleks and nobody would believe her, or when the titular character in Marco Polo refused to believe Susan and Ping-Cho even though they had direct evidence of Tegana’s malfeasance. However, while this scene is technically a nudge in the right direction, I don’t want to overstate what it means for one woman to be believed on one occasion. Based on what follows in this serial, Steven finding Dodo to be credible in this one instance is almost certainly an accident, not a conscious decision to give a female protagonist more agency.

Back in the forest, the two primitive men continue to observe the Doctor. “What is he carrying?” asks the younger man, referring to the odd camera-like device.

“It is not a light gun,” the older remarks. When the younger suggests they run, the older says, “Stay. We kill this man.”

Then the Doctor speaks, calling out, “Hello, there. I say, come out from underneath there. Now, don’t be alarmed. Come along, now.” The primitives are startled, thinking the Doctor has found them out. But a moment later, two men enter the scene, wearing clean, futuristic clothing and odd helmets comprised of semicircles. I say helmets because that is their intended function, but there are obvious weak points which would make them useless in actual combat. They seem like another cheap attempt by the producers to make something look space-y without much thought as to why.

At the sight of these futuristic men, the primitives flee, clearly frightened by them. The new men are soldiers, Captain Edal and his subordinate, Exorse (pronounced eh-DAL and EHK-source); they greet the Doctor warmly, Exorse saying, “It is a great honor to have you visit our planet.” The Doctor is surprised that he was expected, and Exorse explains, “You are known to us as the Traveler from Beyond Time…The Elders of our city have been plotting the course of your space-time ship for many lightyears. They estimated your arrival some time ago.” First the obvious: a lightyear is a unit of distance, not time. And second, I like how this sets up an unexplained dichotomy between these futuristic-looking soldiers and the primitive men. The audience knows that they should fit together somehow, and there is wonderful tension in trying to figure out how.

Edal asks the Doctor about the device he holds, and the Doctor describes it as his “Reacting Vibrator,” which is just really funny. When he mentions that he is traveling with two friends, the soldiers are surprised for the first time—and a touch hostile. Edal says that the Doctor must go with him to the city to make a report about these companions to the Elders. The Doctor is a bit taken aback by the imperative, and Exorse says, in a milder tone, “Captain Edal wishes to take you to the Elders of our city. They are waiting to welcome you.” This placates the Doctor, who goes offscreen with Edal while Exorse goes to fetch Steven and Dodo. Throughout this exchange, tense music hints that the viewers might not want to put too much credence in this explanation, even if the Doctor does.

Back with the companions, Dodo looks up at the ridge once more and says, “Steven!…There is something up there.” Steven says that she is imagining things. I don’t understand this. Steven just agreed with Dodo in the last scene; why would he doubt her now? This is why I say that Dodo being perceived a credible witness was just an accident—and why anything in the Early Era that even resembles the affirmation of a female character is an exception to the rule.

Anyway, there is a thump of something landing heavily in the soil near their feet. Dodo screams, and Steven plucks a razor sharp spear out of the ground. He believes her now, and they run back toward the TARDIS. Several primitives reveal themselves up on the ridge, and the constant thudding of spears pursue the fearful companions until they reach the TARDIS and use it for cover. Unseen by Steven and Dodo, one of the primitives is shot by something and keels over. All the while, frantic violins and cellos make for an incredible soundtrack, the discordant notes adding to the tension. It’s such a simple melody, just the same four notes over and over again. But the way the tempo builds and the volume swells adds so much momentum to an already chaotic sequence. Composer Raymond Jones does an excellent job here and throughout the serial, and it’s a shame that this is the only Doctor Who story he ever wrote music for.

After a moment, Dodo pokes her head out from behind the cover of the TARDIS and screams when she sees a man standing just around the corner—it is Exorse. Exorse introduces himself and tells the companions that the Doctor has gone into the city to meet the Elders. When Dodo asks about the savages, Exorse says wryly, “I think you will find that some of us are fairly civilized.” At Exorse’s invitation, Steven and Dodo follow him offscreen.

Cut to the interior of the city, where the Doctor is greeted by a host of people, some in the dark uniforms of soldiers but most wearing flowing white garments with tight golden collars. There are women present, but just two, and only one of them will get lines in this serial. The leader of these people—presumably the Elders—is a man named Jano (pronounced JAY-noh). Jano is a white man wearing blackface. I don’t think the intention of the showrunners is for Jano to be a black man, but his makeup is so dark that it’s difficult to see him as anything else. Like with Mavic Chen in The Daleks’ Master Plan, Jano will eventually be revealed as the antagonist, which makes his makeup at best a thoughtless piece of casual racism, and at worst a deliberate use of skin color as a visual representation of his immorality. Either way, if you add the titular antagonist from The Celestial Toymaker, this is the third racist antagonist in six serials.

The way the city is visualized is very disappointing. Throughout the serial, we see nothing but the inside of rooms and corridors, most of them nondescript and multipurpose. The setting is a step up from the city in The Sensorites, but only just, with geometric shapes to break up the boundaries of the space instead of the formless curtains of the Sensorite city. Throughout The Savages, set design is the most consistently subpar production element. Even if it were not a reconstruction, the underwhelming visuals of this serial would still render it visually disappointing.

Jano gives a monologue about how he is the leader of the Elders, explaining how they knew about the Doctor’s arrival. In the center of the room, which I presume is the chamber of the council of Elders, there is an object roughly the size and shape of a birdbath, but instead of water, the Doctor peers over the edge at a map of space. “We have charted your voyages from galaxy to galaxy and from age to age, but we never thought we would meet you face to face,” says Jano. This is incredibly advanced technology. I’m not sure even the Time Lords in the later seasons would be able to track the TARDIS with such precision. The fact that this technology even exists is borderline world-breaking, and it should probably be disregarded for the overall canon of the series to make sense.

There is a lot of flattering as Jano first compliments the Doctor about his technology, then offers him a place among their Elders. The Doctor preens like a peacock when he accepts, letting a woman pull one of the flowing Elder’s garments over the Doctor’s head. Then Exorse enters, escorting Steven and Dodo into the room. Dodo sees the Doctor’s new clothes and says admiringly, “You’re really with it now, Doctor.”

“With what, my dear?” the Doctor asks, which I find amusing. This sort of wordplay between the prim Doctor and modern Dodo has happened a few times now, but this is the best executed of the bunch. Before Dodo can respond, Jano ushers in a man who presents Steven and Dodo with gifts—Steven gets an ornate dagger, and Dodo gets a handheld mirror with its frame inlaid with diamonds. Continuing the series’ casual sexism, this reinforces men as creatures of action and women as vain and self-centered. After the gifts, Steven and Dodo are led offscreen by a young man and woman for a tour of the city, while the Doctor stays to talk science with Jano and the Elders.

Outside the city, Captain Edal tells Exorse that he doesn’t trust the Doctor and his companions. Then he orders Exorse to “get back on patrol,” directing him toward “the crater section.” They split up.

Hidden in a bush a short distance away are the savages from earlier: the old man, Chal, and the younger man, Tor. A third is with them, a woman with straight brown hair wearing rags like the rest. Chal, obviously the leader of the savages, tells the woman, “Nanina, go back to the caves. Tell the families to hide.” Nanina leaves, headed into the craters, where Exorse is already combing through the area, one finger curled around the trigger of his light gun.

I need to talk about the light guns for a moment. They are fire extinguishers. That’s it. The producers have tried to dress them up a bit, painting them a light color—probably yellow—and putting an angular, trapezoidal compartment around the nozzle. When the gun is fired, it’s very clearly just the actor pulling on the trigger of the fire extinguisher to discharge its dry powder. This powder gets referred to as “liquid light,” which just makes it funnier for me. The prop designer really phoned it in with this one.

Cut back to the city, where the young man and woman are leading Steven and Dodo through the corridors—the man is called Avon (AY-vahn) and the woman is called Flower. There’s a brief exchange where the four all comment on the beauty of the city. I don’t see it; the halls are decorated by geometric shapes in a funky but uninteresting design. The “perfect indoor city” is a science fiction trope that we’ve seen several times already in The Keys of Marinus, The Sensorites, The Space Museum, and The Ark. I understand its necessity as a budget-saver, but the perfect indoor city is a convention I find extremely boring. And even though the city of The Savages has a legitimate reason for existing as a kind of oasis of perfection, I can’t get past the sense that I have seen this before and will again many times.

Continuing on, Avon and Flower walk Steven and Dodo down the city corridor, extolling its beauty and virtue as a place of perfection, though Flower does admit to a desire to experience “real things” like rain and sunshine. Steven is impressed and asks the pair, “It’s certainly a wonderful job. But how have you managed it? What’s the secret?”

I get the sense that Steven means this in the colloquial sense of the phrase, but Avon and Flower are oddly touchy, reacting almost as if Steven has made an accusation. “Our scientists have made one simple discovery,” says Avon, “And due to this, they have found the way to give us all greater energy, greater intellect, and greater talents.” When Steven presses for more information, Avon says, “This is best discussed by the Elders and your Doctor.” It is clear that Avon is not pleased by the turn that the conversation has taken.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and the Elders begin to discuss exactly that: the secret of the city. “I know very well that you are far advanced than most planets,” the Doctor says, still dressed in his new Elder finery. “Now, I would like to know how.”

Cut back to the scrubland, where Nanina is trying to avoid a searching Exorse. Chal and Tor look on, terrified, as Exorse goes down into the ravine where she is hiding. The music rushes along, adding a feverish tint to the chase, until Nanina runs headlong into the line of sight of the man from whom she is trying to escape. Exorse turns, raises his light gun, and fires.

The jet of the fire extinguisher hits Nanina, and she is instantly immobilized, trapped in some sort of beam of light. More than that, Exorse has total control of Nanina’s movements. As he moves the light gun, Nanina moves, like a human puppet. Exorse leads Nanina out of the ravine and offscreen, while a somber Tor says, “He has taken her.”

I know I have often criticized the lack of subtlety in these serials, and it will continue to be one of the writers’ weak points going forward. But I have to give The Savages its flowers. While not necessarily subtle, the way that the editing cuts back and forth between the mysterious secret of the city dwellers and the savages does a wonderful job of implying that the secret somehow involves the capture of Nanina. Again, it’s not exactly subtle, but it does allow room for the viewer to make this inference, rather than one of the characters describing the situation explicitly.

Back in the council chambers, Jano begins to unwind the mystery. “We have learned how to transfer the energy of life directly to ourselves. We can tap it at its source. It is as though we were able to recharge ourselves with life’s vital force.”

Outside, Chal approaches Exorse, who is still puppeteering Nanina inside the cone of light. He begs Exorse to take him in her place, but Exorse ignores him, continuing on toward the city.

Once again in the council chambers—the quick cuts here are quite effective—the Doctor suggests that it would take a very high form of life to do as Jano describes. “That is true, Doctor,” Jano says. “We absorb only a very special form of animal vitality.” At this point, it is very clear that the savages are that special form of animal. The idea of sentient beings being referred to as animals is very Nazi-esque, and it adds a dimension of venom to the antagonist’s motivations that is normally more toned down in this era of Doctor Who.

Back on the tour, Avon and Flower continue to lead Steven and Dodo through the city corridors. We’re starting to see a bit of characterization of these supporting characters, with Flower speaking a little too freely, hinting at forbidden topics, saying things like “We’re not allowed to [go outside].” Avon, the more goal-oriented of the two, tries to steer the conversation back to the city’s virtuous elements. It’s a very familiar, borderline sexist dynamic, with ditsy Flower and stoic Avon comprising a predictable vehicle to give the viewer some more information. But considering even minimal characterizations like these are rare for supporting characters, it adds a dimension to Flower and Avon which ordinarily would be lacking. Still, it comes across as accidental characterization, a byproduct of the need to further explain the rules of the city to the viewer.

As this scene unfolds, Dodo lags several paces behind the other three, where she looks out a window and sees Exorse using his light gun to herd Nanina into a city door. When Dodo catches up to the others, she manages to pull Steven away for a few seconds to explain what she has seen. Like so often in Classic Who, the girl is not believed. “You must be off your head!” Steven growls. “You wouldn’t have a prisoner in a place like this.”

Before Dodo can convince him otherwise, Avon and Flower gather them up to continue on. Dodo groans about the guided nature of their tour, adding, “We’re not going to find out much about this place from these two, are we?”

Elsewhere, Exorse puppets Nanina down a long metal hallway, nothing like the artistic creations of the city we have seen so far. We are in the underbelly. At the end of the corridor, there is a door. Next to it, Exorse releases Nanina, who sags against a wall, begging to be let go.

Cut to a laboratory, where two men, presumably scientists, are looking over a third man who lies on an operating table. The third man is one of the savages. One of the scientists—an important character who will nonetheless not receive a name for a while—has curly brown hair and wears a light-colored uniform with a tight black collar. Unless stated otherwise, whenever I refer to “the scientist,” I mean this man.

The scientist looks over the savage’s readings, commenting that his vitality readings are low, only 17.4. If any viewer still doesn’t understand what is going on here, the scientist makes it very clear when he says, “Can’t they follow instructions…or have I got to supervise every transfer of energy myself?” Deciding that the man will recover anyway, he orders one of his underlings to release him. An assistant helps the savage off the operating table; the savage, exhausted, shuffles along, using the assistant for support. The two leave.

Then the scientist presses a button, admitting Exorse and Nanina. The scientist is very matter-of-fact in his cruelty, not caring for the savages beyond their capacity to provide the city and its people with their treasured life force. Though he does show mild curiosity when Exorse tells him that he met the strangers. Then Exorse leaves. The scientist takes Nanina—whom he refers to only as A47—and straps her to a gurney. A moment later, the assistant who took the first savage out returns. The scientist asks if that man is alright, and they look at a screen which shows the man in the stark metal corridor. He moves slowly, a lurch more than a walk, but they seem satisfied that he is able to move at all.

At the orders of the scientist, Nanina is wheeled away, despite her repeated pleas for them not to.

Elsewhere, Avon, Flower, Steven, and Dodo are still perusing the corridors when Dodo spots Exorse emerging from a concealed doorway. Curious, she takes the opportunity to slip away, going through the door into the metal corridor from earlier. I just gotta take a moment to point out how out-of-character this is for Dodo. To this point in her run, she has displayed an almost inhuman stupidity, rarely doing or saying anything insightful. But I like this sequence. I see this less as an out-of-character moment and more of an attempt to fix the mistakes the writers have made in making her such a dullard. However, even this only serves to revert her back to more of a Susan-clone, just like Vicki was. So while it is an improvement, it shows the writers’ inability to make a compelling young woman without falling back into the same mold.

Meanwhile, Jano continues his explanation of what this life force can do, and we get this awesome piece of casual sexism: “With our knowledge, we can make the brave man braver, the wise man wiser, the strong man stronger. We can make the beautiful girl more beautiful still.” I think that line speaks for itself.

In the corridors, Avon, Flower, and Steven have finally noticed Dodo’s absence. They look around but cannot find her.

Still in the metal corridor, Dodo creeps along warily until she arrives at place where her hallway ends, intersecting with another at a T-junction. Looking around a corner, she sees a man, the savage from the laboratory, stumbling in her direction. She is frozen in fear, eyes wide. He lumbers toward her, arms outstretched. Dodo screams. Credits roll.

So far, I am very pleased by the quality of this serial. Usually, if a serial is going to be successful, it is pretty apparent by the end of the first episode. That’s not to say a serial can’t fall off the quality cliff after a good opening—see The Space Museum—but it is very rare for a serial to improve after a subpar opener. The only one that comes to mind to this point is The Chase, which had an excellent final two episodes after four mediocre ones. The first episode of The Savages is definitely a good sign for things moving forward; it sets up a very compelling conflict between the Elders and the savages, and the storytelling has been very good thus far. Whether the serial can capitalize on its early success remains to be seen.

Part 2

The man lurches past Dodo, continuing to the end of the corridor, where he stumbles and falls. A pair of double doors just past the man slides open, revealing the scrubland outside the city. The tense music drops away, leaving a mournful viola, appropriately piteous to match the look that falls across Dodo’s face. She moves hesitantly to the end of the corridor; the man tries to speak but is too exhausted to make more than a groan. Dodo helps him outside.

Suddenly, she is confronted by two of the other savages, Chal and Tor. Chal makes to stab Dodo with his spear, but the fallen man manages to stop him as Dodo retreats back into the corridor. The savages and Dodo stare at each other as the doors slide closed, sealing them outside and her in. After taking a moment to digest what has just happened, Dodo turns and continues down the corridor, headed in the direction that the savage had come from.

This is fantastic scene. It feels like a very authentic first contact between these very different people, especially considering that Dodo, though sleuthing, has very little understanding of specifically what is happening here. It is really cool to see her compassion and to have the exhausted man react to it in a way that subverts the other savages’ expectations. This is one of those scenes that I wish I had in full, not just as a reconstruction. It is far and away Dodo’s best moment during her run.

Back in the laboratory, Nanina, still strapped to the gurney, is begging to be spared as a lab assistant slides the gurney into a glass case. Taking no pity, the scientist says, “Make the connection.” A large funnel is lowered over Nanina’s body, reminiscent of the contraption that nearly robotized the Doctor back in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Hearing the sounds of Nanina’s distress, Dodo moves toward the laboratory.

I realize at this point that I haven’t yet described the laboratory. Much of the setup is what you might expect from any Early Era Doctor Who serial: banks of computers with variously shaped gizmos ringing the room. But there are some features that make it unique. Aside from the glass case in the center of the room large enough for a human body, there is a series of vats built into one wall above a bank of controls. Despite being a rather series-typical laboratory, the vats make it clear that the set design is very in tune with the purpose of the space. And with the budget constraints of the series, any distinguishing features, however small, are greatly appreciated.

The scientist orders his assistants to begin the process of vaporization—mist fills the glass case, obscuring Nanina’s body. Then he turns a wheel on a control panel, beginning the energy transfer. The liquid in the vats begins to bubble violently as the assistants begin to read off a series of numbers.

At this point in the serial, there is a discrepancy between the reconstruction and the transcription. The reconstruction clearly puts Dodo in the laboratory to witness all of this as it is happening, but the transcription has her entering the room in a few scenes. I tend to believe the transcription in this instance, as there are several scientists moving through the space and no obvious hiding places.

Elsewhere in the city, Avon, Flower, and Steven are fretting over Dodo’s absence. When Flower suggests she might just be hiding or playing a game, Steven answers, “Not even Dodo would be as stupid as that,” which I think is the first real acknowledgement of Dodo’s stupidity by any of the other protagonists. Which is ironic, because she’s been the most intelligent protagonist so far in this serial.

As the lab assistants continue to read off numbers, Dodo enters the laboratory, seeing the glass case with Nanina and the vats of liquid.

Back in the chamber of the Elders, Jano and the Doctor are still speaking when suddenly Steven rushes into the room with Avon and Flower following, telling the Doctor about Dodo’s disappearance. When Jano asks Avon to confirm this, there is a menace to Jano’s tone that none of the protagonists seem to pick up on. Then the menace is gone, as Jano agrees with the Doctor’s assertion that no harm can come to Dodo while she remains in the city. Steven is irritated by the Doctor’s proposed inaction, letting out a sigh of frustration.

Meanwhile, Dodo is standing just inside the doorway of the laboratory, watching the goings on, when she is spotted by one of the lab assistants. The man creeps up behind her, then grabs her by the arms. Dodo struggles, but she is thrown into a control room after a barked order from the scientist. Once there, the scientist and his assistants are baffled by Dodo. They assume she must be from outside, but the only female savage they have ever used is Nanina. On top of that, they find Dodo’s clothing bizarre. Nonetheless, the scientist orders his assistants to prepare Dodo for transference, and the assistants slowly advance on her. “No!” Dodo cries repeatedly. I don’t think this and Nanina’s scenes were meant to be taken as a metaphor for rape, but they tug at the same emotional threads.

In the city corridors, Avon, Flower, Steven, and Captain Edal all arrive at the place where Dodo disappeared. When Edal opens the concealed door, Steven insists on entering to look for her, though the other three all try to talk him out of it. After it becomes clear that Steven will not be convinced to drop the issue, Edal draws his light gun and steps in front of Steven, barring his way.

Back in the laboratory, we finally get a name for the lead scientist: Senta. One of Senta’s assistants relays his confusion to Senta, remarking about the “savage” Dodo who refuses to submit like the other savages do. When Senta goes into the control room to investigate, Dodo has backed herself into a corner next to a bank of controls, threatening to smash it if anyone takes a step closer.

Meanwhile, Edal refuses to let Steven into the hidden corridor. Instead, he says he will look for Dodo himself, going through the doorway and closing the door behind him.

In the laboratory, Senta and two assistants question Dodo and learn that she is “one of the people from beyond time.” Before Senta can ask why she is there, another assistant calls from the other room, and everyone rushes in to find Nanina on the brink of death. In the commotion, the scientists had forgotten her, and her energy reserves have gotten dangerously low. Senta orders the others to break the connection.

At this moment, Edal enters and sees Dodo. He asks Senta, “What has she seen?” Senta says that he doesn’t know, and Edal takes her out of the room, saying that her friends are waiting for her.

Once Dodo is gone, Senta analyzes Nanina, who is unconscious on the gurney, mouth agape. “We’ve been lucky,” he says, confirming that she still lives. “It must be some considerable time before we extract any more life energy from this particular subject.” If it wasn’t clear before, we now see that all the savages are to Senta are assets to be subjugated for their benefit.

Out in the regular city corridors, Dodo and Steven reunite, with Edal, Avon, and Flower looking on. Dodo says that she was attacked by some sort of mad scientist, but Avon and Flower convince her that she was in a hospital. When Dodo says that she would never want to be a patient in a hospital like that, Edal fishes for information, asking her why she would think that. “Just a feeling about the place,” Dodo says. “It was all so sterile and inhuman.” Convinced that Dodo hasn’t seen anything too damaging, Edal says that she and Steven can go on their way, adding that Avon and Flower will be punished for their negligence. This worries Dodo, but Avon and Flower assure her that they’ll be okay. Edal leads Steven and Dodo offscreen.

As soon as the others are out of earshot, though, Flower becomes agitated, and it becomes clear that the punishment will not be as mild as they have made it out to be. Avon tries to convince her that they will be okay, but it is a meek attempt, as if he only half believes it himself. After a time, Edal returns. He fires his light gun at the two, puppeteering them out of the scene.

Back in the underbelly of the city, Senta orders his assistants to remove Nanina. Like the man from earlier, she is half led, half dragged down the metal corridor toward the door to the outside.

In the council chamber, the Doctor and Jano are just finishing up their discussion when Edal leads Steven and Dodo inside. Dodo says that she must speak with the Doctor, but the Doctor insists that he must return to the TARDIS first, saying that he has some information that the Elders may find interesting. The Doctor and his companions all leave for the TARDIS. As soon as they are gone, Jano’s tone turns very anxious. He asks Edal how serious the repercussions will be of Dodo’s snooping, and Edal answers, “What she saw meant nothing to the girl.” When Edal asks if the Doctor suspects anything, Jano says that he doesn’t know. Then Jano orders Edal to follow them back to the TARDIS.

Once outside the city walls, Dodo asks the Doctor why he wouldn’t let her tell him what she has seen, to which the Doctor answers, “Because I didn’t want those gentlemen to overhear what you were saying, child…I sense that things aren’t altogether right here.”

Before they can head for the TARDIS, Steven sees the body of a man lying in some bushes nearby, alive but unresponsive. It is the savage whom we first met in the laboratory, the one whom Dodo helped to get outside. In this scene, we will learn his name is Wylda (pronounced WILD-uh; a bit on-the-nose, don’t you think?). Wylda is a man in his middle years with thinning blonde hair.

When Dodo confirms that the man came out of the laboratory, the Doctor sighs and says, “It’s just as I feared…Yes, their wonderful civilization is based on this. They’ve discovered a way of extracting life’s force from human beings and absorbing it into themselves, leaving the victim as you see, almost dead.” He gives Steven the key to the TARDIS, telling him and Dodo to fetch some medicine.

Once they are offscreen, the Doctor stoops down to comfort Wylda. It’s hard to tell from the reconstruction but based on what we learn later, Wylda is conscious and aware of what is going on. A moment later, Edal enters the scene, having followed the protagonists. “He’s one of the savages,” the soldier says. “He’s probably shamming.” He kicks at Wylda. “Come on, you lazy animal. Get up. Move! Get back to your sector.” Again, there’s that very Hitlerian motif of referring to people as animals to dehumanize them. I get the sense that if the savages weren’t a useful resource for the people in the city, we would be looking at a story about extermination instead of subjugation. As it is, it’s still a very dark story, especially for Doctor Who.

The Doctor stands against Edal, refusing to back down, telling Edal that he knows the truth of the city’s apparent perfection. Seeing no alternative, Edal draws his light gun on the Doctor and orders him back to the city; the Doctor obeys.

Some time later, Steven and Dodo return to Wylda to find the Doctor gone. Steven says that he’s probably just wandered off somewhere—which, knowing the Doctor, that’s a fair assessment. Dodo starts administering the medication, but after a moment, she spies two savages, Chal and Tor, above them on the ridge.

Cut to the top of the ridge, where Tor wants to kill the companions and Chal wants to proceed peacefully. Both assume that Steven and Dodo are residents of the city, though they have noted the lack of light guns. Regardless, they think that Wylda’s life is in danger, and they move toward the companions.

Steven and Dodo don’t know where to go; they fear the city, and they don’t know the lay of the land. Before they can decide on a path, it is chosen for them, as Chal and Tor appear through some bushes. Just as Tor raises his spear, ready to throw, Wylda speaks up, his voice colored by his exhaustion, “Do not kill them. They’re friends.” Dodo explains that they aren’t from the city, and Wylda confirms that “the old man” spoke against Edal’s actions. When Wylda says that Edal has taken the Doctor prisoner, Steven and Dodo are distraught.

Meanwhile, in the chamber of Elders, Jano is questioning the Doctor, asking why he would condemn their perfect society for the sake of a few barbarians. The Doctor is incensed. “Indeed I am going to oppose you,” he spits, “just in the same way that I oppose the Daleks or any other menace to common humanity.” Two things about this line. First, I have addressed it several times, but I have no idea who is reading these reviews or if they have read more than just this one, so I might as well repeat it. In Classic Who, the writers use the terms human and mankind to refer to sentient, humanlike beings, even when that species originates from a planet that is not earth. This is something that we will see again and again, and it is just a quirk of classic sci-fi.

And second, this is what I was talking about when I was saying that many Doctor Who historicals have done a poor job at constructing a cohesive antagonist that is meant to be defeated. Here, we have clearly defined rules of engagement. We know the stakes, and we know what the Doctor can do to affect real change in the lives of an extorted people. We did not get that in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve or The Romans or The Crusade. In those stories, there were antagonists who may have functioned as roadblocks for the main characters, but the real enemy was history itself. And as the Doctor has pontificated on many an occasion, history cannot be changed—therefore, the enemy cannot be defeated. Hopefully, the writers addressing this dynamic within the text of the show itself is a sign of better storytelling when it comes to the antagonists of narratives set in the past.

Moving on, Jano insists that all progress is based on exploitation. “We have achieved a very great deal merely by the sacrifice of a few savages.”

“The sacrifice of even one soul is far too great! You must put an end to this inhuman practice.” After that remark, Jano orders the Doctor to be taken away, adding for Edal to tell Senta, the scientist, that he shall be sending him special instructions.

The way this conflict is framed reminds me very much of a philosophical concept: utilitarianism. It’s been a while since I took poli-sci classes, so I’ve ripped the following definition from Wikipedia for a quick refresher: “Utilitarianism is a theory that suggests an action is right if it promotes happiness or pleasure and wrong if it leads to unhappiness or pain, not only for the performer but for everyone affected by it. It encourages actions that maximize well-being for the greatest number of people.” What Jano is doing is moral according to very strict utilitarian ethics. You might not think so based on the first sentence of that definition, but the second one is really the key here.

Let me put it to you the way a professor put it to me in college. Consider a hypothetical society where everyone is free from want. No war, no deprivation, no disparity. Everyone lives a life of pleasure and self-actualization. Now, consider that in order to maintain this perfect society, all that is required is for a single child to live a life of abject misery, being imprisoned, constantly tortured to within an inch of their life, and never given any of the freedoms enjoyed by the rest of the population. Don’t worry about the logistics of why this child’s misery is required; just know that the happiness of everyone else is dependent on the misery of this one child. And everyone in this society is aware of the situation which allows it to flourish. Is this society just? According to strict utilitarianism, yes. Remember, it is about actions that maximize well-being for the greatest number of people. If one child has to suffer for the good of everyone else, utilitarian thinking says that this is an excellent tradeoff.

The plot of The Savages is almost identical to this utilitarian thought experiment—and I think it is emblematic of why utilitarianism as a philosophical concept has fallen out of vogue. What Jano is doing is very transparently evil, and any system of morality which would arrive at the opposite conclusion is—I believe—inherently flawed. It’s just very interesting to me how connected this serial is to real-world concepts, despite being set on another planet so far into the future. In my opinion, this is the platonic ideal of what science fiction should be. Like I said before, The Savages isn’t perfect; there are many flaws which keep me from placing it in the uppermost echelon of Doctor Who serials. But it offers a commentary that adds so much depth to the narrative, which is exactly the sort of thing I look for when delving into works of fiction.

Out in the scrubland, Steven and Dodo try to convince the savages that they can fight the men from the city, but Chal and Tor say that that would be a hopeless endeavor. They say that the Doctor will be taken to the room with the vats, with Chal adding, “He will become like us.” I know this was hinted at in the previous scene, but saying it outright eliminates much of the tension from the next two minutes of runtime. It almost feels like an editing error, like this scene should have come after what follows.

What follows is Edal leading the Doctor into Senta’s laboratory. Senta doesn’t know why the Doctor is there, even though the audience does, which makes their exchange of banter and pleasantries very tedious. After far too much dialogue, Edal makes it clear that the Doctor has been selected for the next energy transference. Senta initially balks at this, but Jano himself enters the scene and orders it done. The Doctor tries to leave, and soldiers have to fire their light guns at the Doctor to subdue him. He is strapped to a gurney.

Like Nanina, this gurney is slid into the glass case, and mist is fed into it. Then the process starts. The Doctor’s body can handle exponentially stronger energy drains than any of the savages, which astounds the scientists. “It’s impossible!” one assistant says. “He’ll never stand it!” But he does.

We were told way back in An Unearthly Child that he and Susan were not from Earth, though the true nature of their homeworld was never made clear. There have been a few times so far in the series where I have speculated on what the writers intended for the Doctor’s species. And each time I speculated, I made the case that it would be extremely unlikely for the idea of a Time Lord to have been even remotely flushed out. Therefore, I argued that nothing about the very early Doctor should be included in the mythos of things like Time Lord physiology or culture or lore, at least, not without it being confirmed much later on in the series. For example, it would be unproductive to speculate on what the Monk’s existence in The Time Meddler could mean for the society of the Time Lords, for the simple reason that I don’t think the writers had a clue at the time. Because of that, I tend not to include the Monk when thinking about characters like the Master or the Rani, not unless I want to compare them more broadly as antagonists or some other characteristic unrelated to Time Lords specifically.

Much of that thinking holds with this serial. The words “Time Lord” still won’t be uttered for a long time—three real world years from this serial. Even when the Doctor regenerates in three serials, the process won’t be referred to by that name, or really much at all. At this point in the series, I don’t think that Time Lords have been realized by the writers beyond some very basic concepts that we will see emerge over the next few seasons. But I do think the writers see the Doctor as something different. Something that they will eventually need to define. And I see this serial as an attempt to begin crafting that definition. In this energy transference, we see the Doctor’s physiology being defined as something inhuman—by the standards of the scientists, something almost supernatural. In the next episode, we’ll see something similar done with the Doctor’s intellect. This is the first step that the writers have taken to set up the Doctor’s regeneration in the short-term and the establishment of the Time Lords as a species in the long-term. And I am so excited to watch it unfold.

Anyway, the amount of energy the scientists draw from the Doctor goes up and up and up. The vats bubble. The assistants titter excitedly. The Doctor remains unconscious, strapped to a gurney in the glass case. Credits roll.

Part 3

After extruding an enormous amount of energy from the Doctor, Senta ends the process, declaring the whole thing a huge success. Jano enters to congratulate the scientists, saying that if the other time travelers are found, they might also produce such fantastic results. He orders Edal send out patrols to find them.

Outside the city, Chal and Tor have brought Steven and Dodo to the place where all the savages live: a system of caves. They say that the guards won’t follow them there, which is very convenient because at that moment, Tor receives news that the patrols are looking for them. Steven still wants to fight the city dwellers, but the savages insist that they can do nothing as long as the guards have light guns. Still, Steven assures Dodo that they will find the Doctor somehow. “When you do find him, he will not be as you remember,” Chal warns. “They leave us afterward only a hollow shell of ourselves.”

Back in the laboratory, Jano is asking Senta questions about the transference, to which Senta says, “His power is remarkably high.” This is a great way to continue to set up the Doctor as something apart from human—a dynamic I will be harping on a lot over the next few seasons. Then Jano orders for an immediate in-transference of the Doctor’s life energy, one that only Jano himself will receive. This breaks protocol—normally, several citizens would each receive part of an energy reserve like this—but Jano insists that such an unusual experiment may have risks that only he can shoulder.

Outside, Edal orders Exorse to patrol a place he calls the Valley of Caves.

Once again near the caves, Chal tells Steven, Dodo, and Tor that a patrol is coming. Tor says that there is no safe place for them to go, adding, “You cannot take them into the caves. The guards would follow and then our last refuge would be gone.” This is a weird logical inconsistency that directly contradicts what was said two scenes ago. Even though this is probably just an oversight, it’s the kind of lazy writing that I tend to take a very harsh stance on. It’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but no less egregious for that.

Despite Tor’s protests, Chal leads the companions into the caves, where Nanina is recovering. On the rock walls, there are murals which can’t be seen in the reconstruction which are described as beautiful by Dodo. “Our ancestors were great artists,” Chal says. “As time passes, we are less able to do such things. Most of our talents have been taken from us.” Then Wylda says a patrol is coming.

Outside the cave entrance, Exorse has found Tor. He shoots him with the light gun, trapping Tor in its beam. When he asks Tor where the strangers are, Tor’s eyes flicker toward the cave. So in reality, the guards really wouldn’t have gone into the caves, were it not for Tor being stupid enough to get captured like this. So far, this episode features the flimsiest plot of the serial.

Steven, Dodo, and Chal retreat deeper into the cave, leaving Nanina and a handful of other savages near the entrance. Then Exorse appears, lit from behind, almost completely in shadow. He looks genuinely threatening here, but the following scene takes so long to unfold that the tension is wasted. He asks Nanina to tell him where the strangers have gone, but she refuses. As this is happening, Steven and Dodo are led by Chal into one of the twisting passages that leads further into the rock. Back near the entrance, one of the other savages betrays Steven and Dodo, pointing to the exact passage they went down with Chal. All of this takes too long to unfold, about three minutes. There are things that were probably intended to maintain the momentum of the narrative—some threatening with the light gun and some other bits of dialogue—but this scene feels very stagnant. This is definitely a weak point for the serial.

Now, Exorse is steadily advancing through the dark toward Steven, Dodo, and Chal, who are slowly creeping toward what they know is a dead end. Steven has an idea and asks Chal if the light from the light gun can be reflected. Chal says yes, and Steven asks Dodo for her mirror. I think you can see where this is going. Still, it takes almost three more minutes of creeping before Exorse finds them, fires, has his light reflected, and falls under the control of his own light gun. Steven snatches the gun off the ground, and the three herd Exorse back to the entrance of the cave. Amazed, Tor says that the strangers must be gods.

All told, from the moment we first see the interior of the cave to now is a full nine minutes of runtime. This wouldn’t be so bad if it did not lead to one of two very predictable outcomes. Think about it: Steven and Dodo have to get back to the city somehow. Either they capture Exorse and go back to the city under their own power, or they become captured by him and have to find a way to free themselves once they are back in the city. Either way, the cave feels like an unnecessary detour in that process, and the longer it goes on, the more it comes across like a blatant attempt to pad the runtime. There is a way to write this sequence to make it something worth watching on its own merit. Perhaps there is a fight with the savages ganging up on Exorse, or maybe Nanina ends up with the light gun somehow. But as it is, you could almost skip this whole sequence and not miss anything important.

Back in the laboratory, the Doctor is barely conscious, unable to speak. Senta orders his assistants to help the Doctor to the guest apartments, where he will be held until he has recovered enough to undergo another transference. After they leave, Jano enters, ready for his in-transference. He sits in a chair inside another glass case and attaches electrodes to his temples and chest. Then Senta presses a switch and a glass cylinder is lowered over Jano’s head. Once Jano is ready, Senta begins the process. The vats begin to bubble as Senta monitors Jano’s readings.

In the cave, everyone is arguing over what to do with Exorse. Tor wants to kill him, but Steven insists that he is more valuable to them alive. In the end, they decide to tie up Exorse and leave him in the cave under the guard of Nanina and Tor, while Chal leads Steven and Dodo to a secret entrance to the city. But as soon as the three leave, Tor once again argues that they should just kill Exorse, hefting a club. Nanina puts herself between him and Exorse, refusing to let Tor pass. Sulkily, Tor goes off deeper into the cave.

What follows is the type of cliché exchange that often pops up in situations like this, where Exorse asks why she stopped Tor, and Nanina says that it is not good to kill. Nanina starts to clean Exorse’s wounds, and they have that saccharine realization that maybe everyone on the other side isn’t so bad after all. When Nanina gives Exorse her name, he says, “I shall remember.” Blah, blah, blah, I really hate this trope. First of all, Exorse has done nothing to earn Nanina’s respect, so why is this framed as a mutual understanding? I get Nanina sparing his life, but if it was framed so that she doesn’t gain respect for Exorse in the process, it would make her action even stronger. As it is, it’s just setting up for a dynamic where the evil, heartless subjugators get redeemed in the end, which is something I’ve never liked in fiction. A happy ending does not mean that the bad guys and the good guys have to walk away holding hands. The bad guys can come to understand those they persecuted while at the same time being subjected to some sort of punishment. When the bad guys are summarily forgiven, it trivializes the suffering of the persecuted and weakens the whole narrative underpinning of everything that came before.

Elsewhere, Steven, Dodo, and Chal have arrived at the door we have seen a few times now, the door through which Dodo helped Wylda. Steven is holding the light gun. Before they can talk about how to get inside, the door opens and a guard exits. The trio is forced to duck behind some foliage. Steven tries to inch toward the guard with his light gun, but the guard hears movement and turns toward it. Steven lunges toward the guard, firing his light gun at him; the guard collapses.

Dodo and Chal join Steven, where Chal offers this explanation for why the guard collapsed instead of being turned into a puppet: “The light must have hit his eyes. It was as if he was struck by a club. He will be like this for a long time.” This was hinted at earlier by a throwaway line from Chal about not letting the light from the gun hit your eyes. But even taking that into consideration, the serial did not do a good job at communicating this as a potential outcome. As such, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, a convenient way to get rid of a guard without worrying about prodding him as a puppet down the corridor.

Anyway, Steven tells Chal to stash the body in some bushes and wait outside while he and Dodo go in to investigate. They disappear through the doorway.

Meanwhile, Senta is in the laboratory, removing the glass cylinder from Jano’s head. The in-transference is complete. But when Senta tries to speak to Jano, the man doesn’t respond. Jano remains motionless for a moment, then suddenly stands up, looking very disoriented. Senta is relieved by this, saying that he was afraid for Jano.

Then, in a very good imitation of the Doctor’s cadence, Jano says, “Hmm? What’s all the fuss about, hmm? I’m quite alright. The trouble with you people on this planet is that you don’t—”

“What do you mean, Jano? You belong to this planet. You’re one of us.”

Jano is taken aback for a moment. Then he asks for his two friends. When Senta asks if he means Avon and Flower, Jano scoffs, “Good gracious, no, no, no. Steven and Dodo, the child with the ridiculous name.”

“The strangers?” Senta asks.

“Oh, strangers to you, perhaps, but I have known them both for—” Jano cuts off abruptly, very discomposed. He looks around the room as if only seeing it for the first time. Senta tells Jano that he will give him time to rest before leaving the laboratory. Once Senta is gone, Jano spies a metal rod on the control panel. He picks it up and looks around the room, saying, “Hmm! So, I’m in this dreadful place, am I? Well, I’ll soon do something about their equipment.” He makes to smash the vats before stopping, letting the rod clatter to the floor. Then, for the first time since the experiment, Jano speaks in his normal cadence, clutching at his head. “What’s happened to me? What’s happened to me?”

At this point, I’ll state the obvious. Something about the in-transference has given Jano not only some of the Doctor’s personality, but his history and his morality as well. It is almost as if the Doctor’s mind has captured Jano’s, stifling what would be his own thoughts. From what has been explained about this energy transfer process, this should not be remotely possible. This appears to be another intentional effort by the writers to distinguish some aspect of the Doctor from his human counterparts, this time his intellect. Something about his brain is so powerful, so inhuman, that instead of being mined for resources like the savages, the Doctor becomes the subjugator, even though nothing in the process is different. Nothing except the Doctor himself.

In the metal corridor, Steven and Dodo are surprised by the apparent lack of security.

Cut to a security room, where we see the reason why: two guards watch the companions’ progress through the hall. Hoping to goad them further, one of the guards speaks into a microphone, ordering the Doctor to be transported to “the end of emergency corridor U3.”

A little further down the corridor, Steven and Dodo find the Doctor, who is still barely able to move, leaning heavily against a metal wall. This development doesn’t make sense to me. The companions are practically on top of him by the time they see him. It’s not like the Doctor is put in a place that his companions could see from a distance, like bait in a trap. The way things unfold, Steven and Dodo would have been in this location whether the Doctor was put there or not.

In the end, the guards spring the trap. Steven and Dodo try to escape with the Doctor, but he is in no condition to run. After Edal releases some sort of mist that neutralizes Steven’s light gun, the three are slowly cornered by several armed guards. All the while, the Doctor stands still, so disoriented that he is apparently oblivious to what is happening around him. Credits roll.

Part 4

As it happens, it turns out that the Doctor being in this scene is a cheap device to get all of the protagonists together so that they can escape as one. I call it cheap because the companions don’t have to do anything to retrieve the Doctor; he just falls into their lap—and in a way that I think is illogical. This seems to be a function of Part 3’s poor use of runtime. It dedicated so much time to a predictable and uninspiring cave sequence that there wasn’t enough time for anything other than for the city dwellers to throw the Doctor at the protagonists with very little justification.

A brief aside: the way the city dwellers are referred to in this serial is very confusing. The savages refer to anyone who lives in the city as Elders, but city dwellers who are not in the council of Elders also refer to the councilmembers as Elders, as if they themselves are not. It feels awkward calling the non-councilmembers “city dwellers,” but I can’t think of another way to do it that isn’t confusing. And while we’re on the subject of names, this planet doesn’t have one, making it the second such futuristic setting, after Galaxy Four. In that serial, I referred to that place as Planet A, so it is only fitting this one receives the designation of Planet B.

Anyway, the guards have the trio cornered against the locked door to the outside; one demands Steven to throw down in his light gun. Watching this unfold in the security room is Jano, who says to himself, once again in the Doctor’s cadence, “No. Don’t, my boy. Don’t give it to them.” Then Jano throws the switch to open the door and set them free.

Seizing the opportunity, Steven and Dodo drag the still-exhausted Doctor outside. Steven fires a few shots with his light gun back at the pursuing soldiers, keeping them bottled up inside the doorway. In the security room, the guards are baffled—no one knows who opened the door, though it is clear someone must have helped them. Senta announces that there is a traitor among them and sounds an alarm.

Seeing Jano standing quietly near the button for the door, Edal becomes suspicious and accuses Jano of helping the strangers. Jano denies this, saying, “Kindly remember to whom you are speaking. I am…” There is a long pause, as if Jano is unsure of who he is. “Get back to your work, Captain.” Jano then orders a patrol to go after the strangers, saying he will lead them himself.

Steven and Dodo, still helping the Doctor along, find Chal right where they had left him. Amazed at the companions’ success, Chal tells them that the Doctor will recover in time but that they still need to get him to someplace where he can rest. Hearing the distant drone of light guns, Dodo, the Doctor, and Chal start for the caves, while Steven stays there to try and delay the pursuers.

Elsewhere in the scrubland, Jano leads a party consisting of Edal and four other soldiers. Jano says that the strangers may have gone back to their ships or to the Valley of Caves, suggesting that they split up. The way he phrases this, it is clear that Jano wants to be the only one who goes to the caves. Still suspicious, Edal orders two men to go guard the TARDIS, then insists on himself and the two remaining soldiers going with Jano.

A short time later, they come across Steven, who fires a shot at the soldiers before ducking behind some cover. Jano and the rest try to flank Steven, but by the time they arrive at his position, Steven has already begun to retreat toward the caves.

Cut to Dodo and Chal, who are still helping the Doctor toward the caves. For any aspiring writers out there, simple scenes like this are very important to making a story feel complete. It’s barely ten seconds of runtime and doesn’t add anything material to the narrative, but people experience time very linearly, and they expect their media to reflect that. When showing a sequence of events, it is important to show every event in the sequence, not just the important ones. If your describing, say, a woman transitioning from work to cooking dinner in her apartment, you have to at least mention the car ride home, or else you run the risk of confusing the reader. It’s the same dynamic here. A ten-second aside can make all the difference.

Meanwhile, Steven is taking pot shots at Jano and his coterie, playing for time.

Dodo, Chal, and the Doctor arrive at the caves.

Inside, Nanina is giving water to Exorse, who is still tied up and lying against the wall of the cave. Suddenly, Tor and a dozen other savages surround them, demanding that Exorse be killed while they still have the chance. Nanina refuses to move away, standing between Exorse and the mob, arguing that Chal is the leader and that Chal said the man is not to be killed. Just when it looks like the conflict will devolve into violence, Chal’s voice can be heard, calling from the entrance for people to come help the Doctor inside.

With the soldiers coming closer and closer to Steven’s position, Steven is forced to make a break for the caves. He runs, inadvertently rushing right into Jano’s line of fire. They make eye contact, and Jano doesn’t shoot. After a moment, Steven starts to run again, headed offscreen toward the caves. Edal enters the scene, demanding to know how Steven got away. Jano blames it on the incompetence of the other soldiers.

At the entrance to the caves, Steven arrives just ahead of the pursuing soldiers, yelling for Dodo and a few savages to get inside. Steven follows them inside, turning and firing at the soldiers with his light gun. All of the soldiers retreat except for one, Jano, who stands out in the open as if unaware of the danger.

Meanwhile, Dodo has fed some of the medicine from the last episode to the Doctor, and the Doctor has regained enough vitality to speak. Seeing Steven prepared to open fire on Jano, the Doctor calls out feebly, “Not at Jano…Please carry out my instructions, and do not harm Jano.” Seconds later, the soldiers reenter the valley and pull Jano to safety. Chal accuses the Doctor of letting the enemy leader escape, but the Doctor makes it clear that he doesn’t mean to help the city dwellers in any way. “All we need is one friend from the other side,” he says enigmatically, hinting at the existence of a defector.

I like how this continues to build on the mystique of the Doctor as something more than human. From this, we can gather than not only did the energy transfer allow the Doctor to affect Jano’s mind, but the Doctor knew this would happen. He has such an immense knowledge of science and the technology involved—even though he has spent very little time with it—that it enables him to orchestrate a plan that will inevitably lead to the savages’ freedom. For anyone familiar with the later Doctors, this is very 7th Doctor-esque in his ability to play chess while everyone else is playing checkers. I went into this project with one of my goals being to find areas where the Doctor’s characterization is cohesive, even across the divide of his regenerations, and this is a wonderful example of a trait which appears across his many iterations. Some regenerations bring it more to the surface, like the 7th Doctor, but it is always there, always a part of the Doctor’s personality to some extent. Additionally, this is yet another example of intentionality on the part of the writers, of seeing their vision for what the Doctor might become—and I cannot wait to see more.

Outside, it is getting dark. Jano orders Edal and the other soldiers to retreat to the city, which would leave Jano alone to guard the valley. Edal balks, but Jano pulls rank on him, forcing him to back off. Though unhappy, Edal and the other soldiers leave.

Back in the caves, the Doctor continues to demonstrate his near-perfect knowledge of the events he set into motion. Steven says that the soldiers have gone, but the Doctor says, “I think you will find they’ve left one behind.” Then the Doctor tells Steven there is no need to guard the entrance anymore. “We wait until it’s dark,” he says, “and then I think we shall have a visitor.”

Meanwhile, in the city, Senta is distraught that Edal left Jano alone. Edal voices his concern to Senta and the other Elders: “I was ordered to return here by Jano. Elders, I believe we are about to be betrayed.”

Later, night has fallen. True to the Doctor’s prediction, Jano enters the cave alone. When the Doctor says that Jano has come as a friend, even Jano is perplexed by this, and he asks how the Doctor could possibly know that. The Doctor explains what we have already discerned: that from the moment he learned about the planned energy transfer, he knew this would be the outcome. “It’s all very simple,” the Doctor says. “You wanted my intellect. You got it, and along with it, you received a little conscience.” This is where we, as viewers in the 21st century, have to suspend our disbeliefs a bit. I don’t think an absorption of the Doctor’s conscience would result in what Jano is experiencing—it is more like Jano’s personality has been quashed by the Doctor’s. But like I’ve said many times, I’m a sucker for high-concept sci-fi, and the idea of the Doctor possessing Jano in any capacity is so cool that I’m willing to let the specifics slide.

As the Doctor and Jano are talking, Exorse manages to free himself from his bonds. He waits for his opportunity and sprints out of the cave when everyone’s back is turned, catching them off-guard. Tor says that if Exorse gets back to the city, anything they plan will be for naught. Then Nanina sprints out of the cave.

This is where the writers cash in on that underwhelming buddy-buddy sequence we had between Nanina and Exorse. Nanina argues that he owes her his life, and that if he reports what he has learned to the city, Exorse will condemn the savages forever. Exorse leaves without saying a word, though the tropey-ness of the exchange really suggests that he will not give the savages up. Like with their previous scenes, I find the dynamic between Exorse and Nanina so predictable that it really diminishes whatever the writers want us to feel whenever they interact.

In the city, Senta finally reveals the truth of Jano’s in-transference to the Elders, and they all conclude that Jano is no longer fit to rule. Edal takes command. Exorse enters, out of breath.

Cut back to the cave, where Jano hints at some plan that they have concocted offscreen, saying that everyone must do their part.

Cut to the city, where Exorse does the predictable thing and says that he never saw Jano.

Outside the city, Jano holds a light gun ahead of him. Caught in its beam are the Doctor, Dodo, Steven, Chal, Nanina, and Tor, as if he has taken them all prisoner.

Meanwhile, in the control room of the laboratory, Edal doubts the authenticity of Exorse’s word and orders him to be sent to the interrogators. But as he makes the order, Jano enters, immediately reprimanding Edal and the other Elders for the impudence of assuming command in Jano’s absence. When Senta says that he did not expect Jano to come back, Jano signals to the corridor outside and the “prisoners” march into the room. When Senta says that Edal had accused Jano of being a traitor, Jano uses the opportunity to have Edal arrested. I really like the way political intrigue is being used as a deflection from Jano’s actions. It is not a place I would have expected the plot to go.

Once the guards are gone, Jano immediately turns to the Elders and Senta, ordering the laboratory machinery to be destroyed. When the Elders refuse, Jano says, “These people whom you call savages are our equals. What we have done to them is wrong. If you will not destroy all this, then I must.” He snatches a metal bar and drives it into the control panel.

Senta lunges for a button which sounds an alarm. Almost immediately, the momentum shifts, and it looks as if Senta is about to wrangle the Elders into resisting. Frantically, Nanina turns to Exorse, begging him to help them. After a moment’s hesitation, Exorse joins Jano, smashing the nearest console, which breaks the doors and prevents Edal and the guards from reentering the room. With nothing to stop them except the unarmed Elders, the Doctor and company make short work of destroying the laboratory. In the midst of the destruction, the Doctor turns to Dodo. “You know, my dear, there's something very satisfying in destroying something that's evil, don't you think?”

Once the room is thoroughly trashed, Edal and the guards finally succeed in entering the room. What follows is a very slapdash, hurried ending sequence that gave me whiplash both times I watched it. Jano turns to Chal and says, “This is only the beginning…After this destruction, our people must learn to build a world that they can both live in.”

“And both sides must learn to trust each other,” says Chal.

“We may need a new leader,” posits Jano. “Somebody who can unite us.

At this moment, Edal and the guards finally manage to break into the room. Before Edal can shoot Jano, Steven raises his light gun and shoots Edal instead. Edal falls unconscious, presumably taking the blast to his eyes.

Jano turns to the Doctor and asks if he can stay and mediate the new society that they must build, but the Doctor declines, saying that he must go. Then Jano says, “The man we need must inspire trust. His judgments must come from his heart, even more than his head.”

Chal turns to Steven. “Here is the leader we want, Jano.”

“This is what I thought,” Jano says.

“Just a minute,” Steven begins. “I couldn’t—”

“A great honor, dear boy,” says the Doctor.

“But I can’t walk out on you and Dodo!”

“Just think of the challenge to be able to set up the people of this planet for a new life,” the Doctor says, gesturing around him. “You’re quite ready for this task.”

“You think I can do it?” Steven says doubtfully.

“Yes, I do,” the Doctor says. “And you’re the only man who can, my boy.”

“Has the offer come from both sides?” Steven asks, turning to the others.

“You would give us new hope,” Chal says. “Our people will become great again. We will learn to live as equals without bitterness.”

“Very well,” Steven says. “I will stay.”

Dodo hugs Steven. “I shall miss you both, Dodo,” Steven says.

“I shall miss you,” Dodo answers.

Jano thanks the Doctor, then everyone except for the Doctor and his companions leaves the scene. “Well, I must say, young man, I’m very proud of you,” says the Doctor.

“Doctor, I don’t know if I—”

“I know, I know, my boy. Well, go on, you mustn’t keep them waiting.”

“Goodbye, Doctor.” Steven turns and follows the others out into the corridor.

Dodo starts to cry and turns to hug the Doctor. “Doctor, do you think we’ll ever see him again?”

“Well, who knows, my dear? In this strange complex of time and space, anything can happen. Come along, little one. We must go. We mustn’t look back.” The Doctor and Dodo wade through the debris of the laboratory, leaving through another door.

Cut to the scrubland and the TARDIS, which dematerializes. Credits roll.

Takeaways

I always say that the first and last serials of a protagonists’ run need to serve two functions to be successful: 1) they need to be a compelling narrative in their own right, and 2) they need to do the character justice by providing a proper welcome/sendoff. As far as the latter is concerned, this was a very poor way to end Steven’s run. It doesn’t feel grounded in the plot of the serial at all. Why Steven as a leader? He didn’t do anything more than be the man with the gun, and we saw Ian in that role enough to know that this isn’t anything remotely special for a classic male companion. On top of that, the ending was so rushed that I doubt it would have felt cohesive even if Steven proved himself to be the only man who could do the job. This definitely speaks to a sudden departure from the show by Peter Purves, which necessitated him being haphazardly written out of the script, which is a shame. I’ve argued that Steven has not lived up to his potential since the beginning of Season 3, but he still deserves a proper exit.

As far as the rest of the serial goes, I really enjoyed this one. The Savages presents an incredibly well constructed narrative, grounded in real philosophical theory. But it also does a wonderful job of worldbuilding, not only giving us the conflict between the Elders and the savages but showing how the history of that conflict has resulted in the system of exploitation and abuse of the savages at the hands of the Elders. This is very different from The Keys of Marinus or The Web Planet, where the protagonists were dropped into a conflict and told that it was happening. In The Savages, we are shown that the conflict is happening, which allowed for those inferences by the viewer that I spoke about in Part 1. I find that the questions that I have about the world are appropriate, such as, what did this society look like before the invention of the energy transference technology? I don’t need an answer; the mystery makes sense. I don’t have those open-ended questions like those in the more poorly written serials, which are attributable to their poor writing.

More than anything else, I think that this serial may be the most important story since An Unearthly Child in building the Doctor into a mystical figure, someone with attributes that are not quite human. In the energy transference, the Doctor is shown to possess not only an inhuman capacity to endure the process, but also an inhuman intellect which is able to possess and influence Jano. And then we learn that the Doctor knew this would happen, setting him up as a genius able to manipulate events in his favor, even if it seems to the viewer that things are out of his control. This, more than anything else, is a trait that will come to define the Doctor over the next few decades, and I’m excited to see it be reinforced in his character.

And The Savages is not perfect. I’ve already mentioned how the ending is deeply flawed. On top of that, Part 3 is a slog to get through, with incredibly predictable plot elements and sluggish pacing. I don’t like the dynamic between Nanina and Exorse, as it sets up the conditions for the Elders to be redeemed in the end. There is a line by Chal which demonstrates this perfectly: “We will learn to live as equals without bitterness.” Why? The savages were made to live lives worse than slaves, physically robbed of their intellect, their creativity, and their humanity. They only were savages because the Elders made them that way. To not seek any sort of punishment diminishes that persecution and makes their whole cause seem unnecessarily hollow.

Looking forward, I am inching ever closer to the Doctor’s first regeneration. In the meantime, the next serial is The War Machines, which takes place in the very near future, at least going by the date of the original broadcast—so near that I would categorize the serial as taking place in the present day. As such, we will be treated to footage captured on the ground, in the city of London, which is always a pleasant change of pace from the constraints of the studio. I’ll be looking out for any more hints at the Doctor’s inhumanity, and I’m excited for the addition of two fresh companions. I don’t expect to take another three months to get the next serial finished—I decided to go back to school, and I just haven’t had the time I would like to work on these. My goal is to finish another review over Thanksgiving break, but if that doesn’t end up happening, the semester is over in a couple of weeks. Until then, I’ll do my best.

Rating: 7.2/10

Chapter Text

3.10 – The War Machines

Thesis: Flat

When writing a narrative, almost everything boils down to the building and releasing of tension. Think back to what we were all taught in elementary school about the structure of a story: the inciting incident, rising action, climax, and falling action. What is being incited, rising, climaxing, and falling? It’s tension. Even a relatively stagnant period of the narrative such as the exposition is meant to establish the conditions for tension to be built upon later. As such, the basic structure of a narrative is a representation of tension at a macro level. But up close, there are hundreds of decisions that go into how a narrative is constructed, and therefore hundreds of opportunities to build and/or release tension based on what the plot calls for.

The War Machines is about an AI-powered computer that decides humans are inefficient and that it must enslave humans. These slaves will then construct War Machines at strategic points across London which will first take over the city, then the world. I usually don’t spoil the plot off the top in these reviews, but for this breakdown, I think it’s important. Because I want you to picture in your mind what that might look like. Really picture it. Maybe there are screaming civilians running through the streets. Worldwide panic. Scenes of sweaty politicians shouting at each other over what to do. The Doctor running around to save the day. A final confrontation between the protagonists and the evil computer. You know, sources of tension.

Now, how did The War Machines craft its narrative?

Was there panic in the streets? No. Despite the whole city knowing about the threat of the War Machines, all we see are Londoners staring blandly at their radios while broadcasters read out bland public announcements. As one such broadcaster puts it, London displays “characteristic calm.” Neither is there worldwide panic—the most we get is one poorly-accented American placing a call to New York, and at best, you could call his tone excited, not panicked.

What about the politicians? What are they doing? Well, we meet a few, but one is belligerently stupid in the way that those opposed to the Doctor’s actions often are during a crisis. And the other is a minister of some sort, maybe even the prime minister, but we only meet him after all of the important discussions have been made. In both cases, these men have the emotional range of a Concord grape, never rising past mild agitation, nowhere near panic.

But surely the Doctor runs around to save the day, right? Not really. He is quite absent for the first two episodes, and in the third, he spends much of his time hampered by the aforementioned belligerently stupid politician. It’s not until two-thirds of the way through the final episode that the Doctor even figures out how to defeat the computer.

But then there’s that final confrontation between the Doc and the AI, right? Wrong again. The Doctor sets up one of the computer’s own machines to destroy the computer for him. And it’s not even satisfying when it happens.

Are these War Machines threatening? No. They are very unwieldy, like forklifts with weapons glued to the front. They have strong arms to crush things, but they only work when something is exactly two to three feet off the ground and directly in front of them. They have nozzles that shoot mist, but they are like Dalek guns, affixed to the front of the machine. And these machines do not have nearly the mobility of Daleks; they take forever to turn around. Even by the standards of 1960s creature design, the War Machines are incredibly weak.

How about the enslaved humans, what tension do they add to the story? None. They are brainwashed and show absolutely no emotion, giving us long sequences with monotonous worker drones having technical conversations.

And the computer itself? Nah, it has exactly six lines, takes at least one second to pronounce every syllable of every word, and never demonstrates any of its supposed intelligence within its own dialogue.

So how does the narrative build tension? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

At its core, The War Machines is a deeply flawed serial. It has the most stagnant, uninteresting, directionless narrative of any serial I have reviewed so far—and yes, I am including The Web Planet in that estimation. At least The Web Planet failed for trying to be too out-of-the-box. Here, I found myself having to rewind the serial several times because it was a struggle to stay focused on what I was watching—it was that bad at keeping my attention. There are interminably long stretches where there is a complete lack of tension, followed by quick bursts of action that feel so out of place for all the nothing that surrounds them.

Despite all this, there is some good that comes out of The War Machines. With much of the serial shot on-location, we get some wonderfully atmospheric shots of downtown London, a refreshing change of pace from the serials filmed entirely in studio. We also get two new companions that I won’t spoil quite yet. But the bad outweighs the good by a pretty wide margin, and the prevailing theme of this review will be how incredibly flat this serial is.

Part 1

This serial opens with some lovely shots of the London skyline taken from one of its skyscrapers. The camera pans across and down, zooming in on a sidewalk running between a line of parked cars and a city park. We hear the wheeze of the TARDIS as it slowly materializes there, scaring some pigeons into flight.

Cut to street level, where we get a beautiful shot down the street, showing the front of the TARDIS and the hundred-or-so feet beyond to a policeman crossing to this side of the road. It is such a breath of fresh air to see on-location shots like this. As good as the set designers and the production team are at approximating locations in the studio, nothing beats the real thing.

The Doctor and Dodo exit the TARDIS and look around. Realizing where they are, they share a grin. Then the Doctor pulls an “Out of Order” sign from his pocket and hangs it on the doors to the TARDIS, which is a really nice touch. “Home,” Dodo says happily. “It’s marvelous to be back. It seems ages since I left.”

“Oh, when you’ve seen the ages that I’ve seen, you won’t use that term quite so freely.” Unless I missed something in a previous serial, this is the first reference ever made to the Doctor’s age—aside from passing remarks about him being generically old by human standards. Even here, it could be taken as the Doctor commenting on his apparent human age, and it won’t be until after his regeneration that this line is put into its proper context. As it is, this doesn’t really function as a hint at is inhumanity as much as it is an Easter egg to look back on later—and I love it for that.

Then we get something that does hint at the Doctor being more than human. He looks up at the skyline and sees a massive, cylindrical skyscraper that referred to throughout the serial as General Post Office Tower, or GPO Tower—which today is called BT Tower. Dodo marvels at it, saying that its construction must have been finished while they were gone. This is slightly inaccurate—according to Wikipedia, the tower was finished in 1964, two years before Dodo first entered the TARDIS—but that isn’t important.

What is important is how the Doctor reacts to seeing the tower. “You know, there’s something alien about the tower. I can sense it.” He squints at the back of his hand. “I can feel it’s got to be something sort of powerful. Look at my skin. Look at that! I’ve got that prickling sensation.”

This constitutes a departure from how the Doctor has been portrayed throughout most of his run, very overtly giving him a trait that cannot be explained by normal human physiology. In this instance, it’s hard to tell if it is another inhuman trait that the writers have intentionally seeded into the narrative, or if it is a byproduct of the writers needing some way to get the Doctor to go to the tower. Just based on its proximity to his upcoming regeneration, I do think it is very likely intentional. Either way, future Doctors will build upon this dynamic, giving us things like the 3rd Doctor’s superhuman martial art prowess, the 4th Doctor’s use of telepathy, and so on. Way down the line, I’ll argue that the abilities of Time Lords become far too expansive and too much like deus ex machina, but for now, these quirky inhuman distinctions are as fun as they are important for setting up his regeneration.

The next scene reveals the circular room at the very top of GPO Tower. Professor Brett, a middle aged man in a white lab coat with thinning brown hair, looks down on the city. The camera pans across the room and we see a massive bank of computers and two large control panels, with a few other electronic devices scattered around the room. For Doctor Who, this is a very typical laboratory setting, something seen as recently as the previous serial, The Savages. Though it is notable for existing in a non-futuristic setting, the set design isn’t very interesting to look at.

A woman stands next to one of the control panels, gathering some papers into a pile. She is tall and slender, with straight blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and bangs hanging down to her eyebrows. Looking to be in her mid-20s, she wears a knee-length dress with a high neckline and rippling waves of color from shoulders to her knees. The woman says a passing remark to Professor Brett before crossing the room and sitting at a desk with a typewriter and a telephone.

Elevator doors open, admitting the Doctor, Dodo, and a man with a mustache who leads them into the room. This man is Major Green, the man in charge of security for the building and someone who helps Professor Brett with logistics. The Doctor introduces himself as a computer expert, adding that Dodo is his secretary. Then Professor Brett explains the nature of the machinery within the room. “This is perhaps not the biggest computer in the world, but it’s certainly the most advanced. In fact, it can handle scientific problems well outside the range of any other computer in existence. We are about to link this up with computers all over the world as a central intelligence. A sort of problem solver.” He goes on to say that more will be explained at a press conference later tonight.

Professor Brett then calls over the blonde woman, whom he introduces as his secretary, Polly. “Polly’s pretty smart,” says Brett. “A cracking typist, right?” Polly makes a self-deprecating face. “Also a rather cheeky one at times,” Brett adds. Polly is played by Anneke Wills, and I will have more to say about Wills as the serial progresses.

Then Professor Brett names the computer as WOTAN (pronounced VOH-tan), which stands for Will Operating Thought Analogue. The origin of the name is a very deep cut, taken from a Wagner opera from the 1800s called Der Ring des Nibelungen. In the opera, Wotan is a character based on the Norse god Odin. The name is apt for a computer which is to become a central intelligence for computing around the world, but as the cultural significance of the opera has diminished in the ensuing 58 years, the connection between the computer and its namesake grows increasingly attenuated.

Brett goes on to claim that WOTAN can answer any question put to it with complete accuracy. The Doctor tests this by asking it, “What is the square route of 17422?” Wotan gives the correct answer, which the Doctor finds remarkable.

Then Dodo has the bright idea of asking it a question which it couldn’t possibly get right: “What does the word TARDIS mean?” When WOTAN produces a printout, and Dodo reads it, a stunned expression comes across her face. “Got it right,” she says. “Time and relative dimensions in space.”

I want to take a moment to talk about the very obvious implication of this development, which is that WOTAN is some sort of alien technology. Well, it isn’t. It is an entirely human invention. And I get it, I can suspend my disbelief enough to go along with an AI in the 1960s, one that is purported to have more knowledge than any human on Earth. But I can’t wrap my mind around how WOTAN could realistically know what the letters in TARDIS stand for. That goes beyond superhuman intellect, requiring knowledge that it should not have access to.

Anyway, WOTAN’s answer shocks the Doctor, but before he can get to the bottom of things, a blank look overcomes Dodo, and she has to be snapped out of an almost trance-like state by Professor Brett. Returning to normal, Dodo says there was just a buzzing in her ears. Brett says Polly will look after her, and when Polly asks Dodo what she needs, Dodo says that she feels out-of-touch with London—which is natural after being gone for several serials’ worth of adventures. “What I’d really like is to go to the hottest night spot in town,” Dodo says.

“Oh, well that’s easy,” Polly answers. “The Inferno.”

Cut to the interior of the Inferno, a modest nightclub, where a slow pan across the room shows a few dozen people bopping around on the dance floor to upbeat jazz music. The place looks industrial, with few accoutrements besides some wall hangings to break up the rough concrete walls, most of which are devil masks to suit the theme of the club. A long, curved bar runs the length of the room.

Dodo and Polly enter from the street and walk down a short flight of stairs toward the bar, where the bartender, a woman with long dark hair named Kitty, calls Polly over. “You’re just the person I need,” Kitty says. She goes on to tell Polly about a sailor that’s been moping at the end of the bar all week, sucking up all the oxygen. Saying she will do what she can, Polly leads Dodo to the end of the bar.

There, they find a handsome, early-20s man in a naval uniform with his hair cut short in a military fashion, scowling at the bar top. Polly tries to get the man out of his slump, but he wants none of it, turning away from her and saying, “There’s no law against sitting here, is there?” When he speaks, he has a cockney accent, which is unusual for Doctor Who at this time—in fact, it was very unusual for the BBC to feature any characters without a standard British English accent, as it was considered a bad example for children.

“Well, there should be when you’ve got that look on your face,” Polly remarks. “Look, I’ll show you.” She circles the bar until she is opposite the sailor, leaning on her elbows and scowling at the bar. This draws a laugh from the man, and Polly finally gets him to talk about what’s bothering him. The sailor says he has been given a six-month shore posting while the rest of his crew are off gallivanting through the West Indies. “And you’ll miss the swaying palms, the white beaches, the blue sea,” Polly says a touch mockingly. Bristling, the sailor scowls again and turns away from Polly. Giving up, Polly calls to Dodo, saying, “I can’t stand people with no sense of humor.”

As Polly moves away from the bar, a young man with greasy black hair appears next to her, using an arm to bar her way. “Try me,” he says. “I got a great sense of humor. Anything for a giggle.”

Polly asks to be left alone, but the man refuses, positioning himself in front of Polly so that she has nowhere to go. Seeing this all transpire, the sailor rises from the bar, demanding that the greaseball let Polly go. Greaseball refuses, and he and the sailor end up fighting. The dancing patrons fall silent and turn to watch as the sailor knocks Greaseball to the ground twice. After the second beatdown, Kitty the bartender hustles over and demands to know what is going on. “Nothing,” the sailor says disdainfully. “One of your customers wants to go home.” Greaseball slowly rises to his feet and leaves. The dancing slowly resumes.

“You want to be careful who you encourage,” the sailor says snarkily to Polly. Polly looks like she might take a swing at the sailor too, but Dodo manages to get in her way, assuring Polly that the man was just trying to help. When Dodo asks the man his name, he answers, “Ben. Ben Jackson.” Ben Jackson is played by Michael Craze, and just like Anneke Wills, I’ll talk more about him later in the serial.

Elsewhere, the Doctor exits a taxi and climbs the front steps of what looks like a high-end building somewhere in the city. A brass placard above the mail slot designates the building as the Royal Scientific Club, which is probably meant to be a copywrite-free version of the Royal Society: a real-world scientific organization that has existed since the 17th century. The Doctor has arrived for the press conference on WOTAN that Professor Brett referenced earlier.

Inside, a gathering of suited reporters and cameramen are listening to Sir Charles Summer, a tall, stocky man with a round head, bald except for tufts of white hair above each ear. This is the belligerently stupid politician I warned you about. I don’t know exactly in what governmental capacity he serves, but he is a man with significant political authority in this serial.

As the Doctor enters the room, we get this very exposition-laden monologue from Summer: “C-Day, that is, Computer Day, will be next Monday, July the 16th. That is in four days’ time. Now, on that date, all the computer systems in this country, and subsequently, in the whole world, will come under the control of this central computer, which we call WOTAN. Now, as you’ve heard, that will have both peaceful and military implications. I need hardly tell you that this is a great step forward for Britain, and indeed I may say, for the whole world.”

A reporter from New York asks a few questions in a terrible American accent, which gives us even more exposition from Summer: “No one operates WOTAN. WOTAN operates itself. The computer is merely a brain which thinks logically without any political or private ends. It is pure thought. It makes calculations. It supplies only the truth. It has no imaginative powers.” Summer goes on to say that the machine can not only think like a human being, but do so much more accurately than a human ever could. Basically, he’s talking about what we would refer to in modern terms as Artificial Intelligence—and I mean this in the traditional usage of the phrase, not in the way that large language models have co-opted and delegitimized it.

One last thing before I move on from this scene: Sir Charles Summer makes it very clear that Professor Brett is supposed to be here. During a lull in the press conference, he tells one of his associates, Professor Krimpton, to give Brett a call.

Cut to Brett in GPO Tower, who is on the phone, though this is a bit disorienting. It is clear that Krimpton is not the man on the other line—Brett insists that he must go, saying that he is late for an important meeting. On their own, there is nothing wrong with Summer telling Krimpton to make a call or with Brett being on the phone. But if these events aren’t connected, they shouldn’t come back to back.

As Brett is gathering up his things, Major Green enters the laboratory. Brett has a brief discussion with him, claiming that he has had the feeling that he was being watched all day long. Major Green says that this is impossible, leaving Brett alone in the room. As soon as Green is gone, there is a low, rumbling drone, almost but not quite musical in nature. It is very unsettling; great sound design. Hearing it, Professor Brett is frozen in place. A spiral is faintly overlayed on the footage to represent hypnosis as we see Brett’s hands flying up to cover his face, his fists balled, as if he is torn between keeping something out and fighting something off.

A moment later, the drone ceases. Brett lowers his hands, turns robotically, and walks over to WOTAN’s control panel. Devoid of emotion, he asks the computer, “What do you want?”

Back at the Inferno, Ben is on the dance floor, a smile on his face. After a moment, he goes over to where Polly and Dodo sit at the bar. Dodo looks troubled, and when Polly asks her what is wrong, she says that she’s had a headache ever since she was in the room with WOTAN. Dodo downplays this though, and Polly and Ben make for the dance floor, leaving her alone.

Meanwhile, Sir Charles Summer is just winding down the press conference when Professor Brett suddenly arrives. Again, his motions are robotic, and there is no emotion in his voice. Brett refuses to answer any questions, instead asking for Professor Krimpton, practically dragging the man from the room. Krimpton asks what is the matter, but all Brett will say is that he is urgently needed.

After Brett and Krimpton leave, Summer apologizes to the Doctor about Brett, noting that the man was acting very oddly. He tells the Doctor that Krimpton works with electronics, then speculates on the nature of Brett’s emergency, saying, “Perhaps there is something wrong with WOTAN, and he didn’t want to let it out.”

Summer leaves to investigate, and the camera pushes close in on the Doctor’s face as he says to himself, “I wonder. I wonder.”

Back in Brett’s laboratory, Major Green is making his rounds through the building when he is suddenly overcome by the droning that affected Brett. Similarly hypnotized by WOTAN, he straightens suddenly, saying, “I understand.” He walks over to Polly’s desk and starts to dial the phone.

At the Inferno, the phone behind the bar starts to ring. Kitty answers it, then goes to fetch Dodo once she learns that the call is for her. There is come pretty neat cinematography here, where the phone is the only thing that always remains in frame as Kitty and Dodo move in and out of the shot.

Cut back to the laboratory, where we hear Dodo’s voice say, “Hello? Who is this? Hello?” Major Green plugs the telephone directly into WOTAN.

Back at the club, Dodo becomes the third person to fall under WOTAN’s spell, grimacing in pain for a brief moment before becoming just as emotionless as the others, saying, “Yes. Yes, I understand.” Without a word to Polly or Ben, she leaves the club.

In the lobby of GPO Tower, Brett and Krimpton wait for the elevator; Krimpton is very put off by Brett’s behavior. When Krimpton asks if WOTAN has broken down, Brett answers, “On the contrary, it’s we who have broken down. We have failed.” The two enter the elevator car. We then see them exiting at Brett’s laboratory, with Brett saying, “We’ve reached a standstill. We cannot develop the Earth any further. Further progress is impossible…That is the conclusion reached by WOTAN…WOTAN has decided that the world cannot progress further with mankind running it…From now on, we are to serve.”

Krimpton thinks that Brett has lost his mind from overwork. Seeing Major Green, Krimpton tries to get Green on his side, unaware of both men’s allegiance to WOTAN. When Green says that he agrees with Brett, Krimpton starts to panic, rushing over to Polly’s desk and picking up the phone to make a call. But before he can, the force of WOTAN’s contact stops him, and like the others, he contorts in pain for a moment before succumbing to WOTAN’s influence. “What do you want?” Krimpton asks, turning to the computer.

Back at the Inferno, Polly and Ben are worried—Dodo has been gone for a long time and no one seems to know where she has gone. As they fret, the Doctor enters, and Kitty the bartender offers him a free drink. “It’s not every day we get the over-twenties in this place,” she says, which is such a great line. When the Doctor learns about Dodo’s disappearance, he is likewise concerned.

Meanwhile, Professor Brett, Professor Krimpton, and Major Green stand in the middle of Brett’s laboratory, WOTAN droning loudly in the background. “There is one special human brain that WOTAN needs,” Brett says. “The task of leading this brain here to serve WOTAN will be an extremely delicate matter. It has been arranged.”

A moment later Dodo enters the scene, emotionless as the rest. “What are my instructions?”

Finally, WOTAN itself speaks. “Doc…tor…Who…is…re…quired… Bring…him…here…” First, the obvious: Doctor Who is not his name. It is just the Doctor. Believe it or not, this will never be truly rectified until the modern series, so we just have to live with the annoyance of him being called Doctor Who from time to time. And second, I really hate the choices they have made with WOTAN’s voice. It takes the computer more than a second to spit out every single syllable, so each of its lines take an inordinate amount of time. This wouldn’t be a problem if it had something interesting to say, but it never does, so we’re just left with the annoyance. It’s almost as bad as the Animus from The Web Planet.

Anyway, credits roll.

Part 2

Dodo leaves the laboratory immediately to carry out WOTAN’s orders. The conversation that follows is incredibly expositionary, so I’ll just quote most of it directly instead of summarizing it.

Brett turns to the other two men. “Here are your orders,” he says. “Time is short. Progress is impossible unless WOTAN takes control within the next few days. Then WOTAN shall decide on the future of the human race: who shall live to serve the machines, and who shall be eliminated.”

WOTAN’s printer spits out a piece of paper, which Krimpton reads aloud: “London is the first capital to be taken over. Then Washington and Moscow. War Machines must be built immediately.”

“We shall require skilled labor,” says Brett. “A labor corps will come into operation immediately. Contact will be made to these people by telephone. When they are on the line, switch them through to thought control. This is the way each person will be enlisted.”

“When we have the people, where are we to construct the machines?” asks Major Green.

“At central points in London,” says Brett. “You, Major Green, will select suitable places.” Green leaves to make the arrangements. Brett continues, “You, Krimpton, will work upon a suitable electronic program for the new mobile computers. They must be able to move freely and contain their own power. All computer systems throughout the world must be integrated in WOTAN.” When Krimpton makes to leave like Green, Brett says that Krimpton has other orders that he must carry out first. “Top priority is to enlist Doctor Who,” he says. “He has advanced knowledge which WOTAN needs. Doctor Who must be enlisted into our services tonight.”

Back in the club, all the patrons have left, and Kitty says that she must lock up soon. The Doctor, Polly, and Ben are still worried about Dodo, who remains missing. At one point, Ben tells Polly that Dodo isn’t “stuck up like you, Duchess.” Polly does not appreciate the remark, telling Ben not to call her that. I bring this up because this is the first of dozens of times Ben will call Polly “Duchess” in the series, which Polly will eventually think of as a term of endearment.

Not now, though. Just as Polly is about to start calling nearby hospitals to see if she’s had an accident, Dodo enters the room, claiming that she had gotten a call from some friends and was just around the corner. Relieved, the Doctor tells Dodo that Sir Charles Summer has offered his house for the night, and they all go outside.

Ben and Polly go off down a side street to get the Doctor and Dodo a taxi, which visibly frustrates Dodo. Instead, Dodo surreptitiously eyes the mouth of a nearby alley, where two men wait in the shadows, one with a bottle of chloroform and a handkerchief. Dodo nods at the men, then says to the Doctor, “You know, Doctor, those two have gone off in the wrong direction. The taxis are all down there.” But before Dodo can lead the Doctor astray, Ben and Polly arrive just ahead of an approaching cab.

Out of this cab hops a homeless man, who tries to stiff the cab driver before being forced to cough up the fare after Polly offers to make change for the man’s quid. Then the Doctor and Dodo enter the cab. It pulls away from the sidewalk and leaves the scene. Once they are gone, Polly turns to Ben and offers to pay for his lunch the following day, telling him to meet her at the reception of GPO Tower. There’s some banter between the two, and Polly leaves.

Ben turns to the homeless man and asks him if he has a bed for the night. “I’m going to doss down in the old warehouse over there,” the man says in what is just an absurd, over-the-top, lispy peasant accent. It rivals the absurdity of the bartender’s simper from The Gunfighters. At least we don’t have to hear from him much longer. Ben leaves, and the camera follows the homeless man to the warehouse.

When the man peaks inside, there is a flurry of activity happening. Men are hauling on chains, driving motorized cartss, and unloading crates and boxes each emblazoned with a W for WOTAN, all under the direction of Professor Brett. Presumably, all of these men have fallen under the spell of WOTAN, enslaved by the computer to do its bidding. To one of these men, Brett gives a set of schematics. “This is your blueprint,” he says. “It must be followed in every detail. The outer sections are to be constructed at once. The electronic section must be assembled in this order.”

The homeless man moves further into the warehouse to watch the activity. We then see parts and wires being unloaded from the crates and boxes, welders working with their torches, men assembling parts, and so on. This is all supposed to look impressive, but it comes off as ridiculous. We have been led to believe that WOTAN has just made first contact with Professor Brett a few hours ago. Where have all of these parts come from, made precisely for this purpose and bearing WOTAN’s insignia? Realistically, it would take months to manufacture all of this, not hours. And in another aside to one of his men, we learn from Brett that “The machine must be completed and armed by tomorrow morning, ready to be programmed by WOTAN.” None of this should be remotely possible.

Then an alarm sounds, and Brett receives a printout from WOTAN that says there is an intruder in their midst. Brett orders the men to find him, and the workers quickly move toward the homeless man’s position. The choreography here is really poor. At one point, the homeless man walks into a man driving a cart in the opposite direction, which is apparently supposed to block the man’s escape. But there is plenty of room to step around the cart and continue. Instead, the man just stands there for several seconds until more men arrive to surround him. The scene cuts to Brett as we hear the homeless man scream, then Brett orders the men to resume their work.

When I say that the serial undermines its capacity to build tension at every opportunity, I am talking about scenes like this. We have a ridiculous, poorly-acted character in the homeless man. We have an impossible scenario thanks to the mere existence of all the parts for the War Machine. And we have terrible choreography which makes for an unbelievable series of events. On top of it all, there is another baffling decision made by the showrunners that rears its head throughout The War Machines: there is almost no music in the serial. Aside from the drone of WOTAN and a high-pitched sequence meant to signify hypnosis as the humans are subjugated, there is none at all. As a result, there are tons of instances of awkward silence—dead air—without even a simple melody in the background to carry the momentum of the scene. It really is hard to fathom how this serial was made, because so many of these mistakes stem from misunderstanding basic screenwriting principles. It’s just bizarre.

Cut to the home of Sir Charles Summer, where the Doctor and Summer are in the sitting room. Night has passed, and the Doctor is reading the morning paper. Suddenly, he calls Summer over to look at an article, detailing a homeless man found dead in Covent Garden, a neighborhood of London. The body was found at three in the morning. And with this, we have another impossibility—there is no way a dead man found at three in the morning could possibly make the morning paper, not today and especially not in 1966. Additionally, it is very unlikely that a paper would even think it newsworthy to report on the death of a homeless man in the first place. This is just a very cheap way to inform the Doctor that something is going on without thinking about the logistics of what is actually happening, just like how the boxes with WOTAN’s insignia make for a cheap way to move the development of the War Machines forward. It’s just bad writing.

Though the Doctor tries to impress upon Summer that he had seen the man the night before and that there may be some connection, Summer says, “Well, if you’d just stop worrying about the indefinable, you might be able to give me a little advice on a very real problem.” He then goes on to explain that two of his scientists have resigned suddenly, both experts in computers.

At this moment, Polly enters the room, saying that she was told by Professor Brett’s office that she wasn’t needed there today, and that she would be filling in for Summer’s secretary instead. This is odd to Summer, who never told Brett’s office that his secretary would be out for the day. Nevertheless, Summer is thankful for the assistance, pointing offscreen toward where Polly would be working for the day.

As Polly leaves, Dodo enters the scene, very adamant about the Doctor visiting Professor Brett’s laboratory as soon as possible. When the Doctor insists on calling Brett first, Dodo is happy to oblige, knowing that this is the preferred method of contact between WOTAN and anyone the computer wishes to enslave.

When the Doctor places the call, he is overcome by a sudden convulsion of pain, just like everyone else subjugated by WOTAN. However, before he is taken completely under the computer’s spell, he manages to rip the receiver away from his ear and hang up the phone. Thinking the Doctor is now a slave of WOTAN, Dodo goes over to conspire with him, saying, “Don’t be alarmed, Doctor. This is the method of establishing contact…Construction has already begun. You are needed…Construction is taking place at strategic points in London.”

The Doctor is still reeling, unable to fully grasp any of what Dodo is saying. After a brief back and forth, Dodo eventually realizes that the connection has failed in some way. This is yet another event over the last two serials which aims to depict the Doctor as something more than human. He is the only character able to resist the power of WOTAN, something that no human has proven themselves capable of doing. Yet again, the writers are gearing up for the point when all of these superhuman traits culminate in the Doctor’s regeneration.

After receiving a glass of water from Polly, the Doctor begins to absorb some of what Dodo was trying to say. Taking her aside, he sits her down in a chair and looks at her very closely. “Yes,” he announces to Polly and Summer, “it’s just as I thought. She’s been hypnotized.” Then the Doctor begins the process of breaking the connection. “I’m going to start counting,” he tells Dodo. “And when I’ve counted up to five, you will be fast asleep…Just look at that ring on my hand.” He begins to wave his hand slowly in front of her face. “One, two, three, four, five.” Dodo falls into a deep sleep.

The Doctor says that she should remain asleep for at least 48 hours. Disturbed, Polly excuses herself from the room. Summer then volunteers to take Dodo to his house in the country, where his wife can look after her. Sighing, the Doctor looks at Dodo. “She said something about strategic points in London…Where, I wonder? Where?”

Cut to another War Machine montage, where we see crates labeled with W’s being handled in various places in and around London, including the airport and Battersea Power Station. Then we hear a series of mid-range beeping, and we get our first glimpse of a mostly-finished War Machine. Picture one of the banks of computers from any of the various Doctor Who laboratories we’ve seen over the last three seasons, only now it is on wheels. By my estimation, it is about six-and-a-half feet high, two feet wide, and four feet from front to back. On top of this portable computer is a satellite dish to receive and transmit data. Two spear-like protrusions jut out from the front of the machine. Overall, I don’t like the design very much. It’s too derivative, too much an amalgamation of what the show has already done before—a combination of a Dalek and a period-typical computer. Plus, it looks very insubstantial, as if there is nothing inside this hollow shell of metal. Knowing how these things are made, I know that this thing is hollow, but good creature and prop design should at least keep if from looking hollow.

Several of the enslaved humans use chains and ropes to guide the War Machine in front of Major Green for an inspection. Green orders one of the workers to stand 30 feet away from the War Machine so its weapons system can be tested. The man stands meekly in his place, showing no instincts to preserve his own life. Brett orders the machine to fire; the War Machine issues a jet of steam from one of its spear-like nozzles. The jet doesn’t appear to go anywhere near the test subject, but the man keels over dead anyway. Declaring the test successful, Green orders everyone to continue their work.

Back in GPO Tower, Professors Brett and Krimpton are in the laboratory with WOTAN. The computer speaks: “Where…is…Doc…tor…Who…?” Krimpton suggests that Dodo may have failed at her task. WOTAN continues, “O…ther…means…must…be…em…ployed… Doc…tor…Who…is…re…quired…”

At this moment, Brett hears someone approaching from the elevator. A moment later Polly enters the scene. She immediately senses that something if off about the two men, and when Brett closes the distance toward her, she recoils in fear.

Back at the home of Sir Charles Summer, Ben suddenly enters the sitting room to find the Doctor there—Summer has gone away, possibly to take Dodo to his country home. When the Doctor asks why Ben has come, Ben tells him that Polly never showed up for their lunch date and that the receptionist at GPO Tower said that she had come here. Then the Doctor asks Ben if he has seen the death of the homeless man from Covent Garden in the paper. Ben says he has, and the Doctor enlists Ben to do some digging around the area where the man’s body was found, telling him to look for anything out of the ordinary. Ben agrees and leaves the scene.

Cut to Covent Garden, where we see Ben walking purposefully down the sidewalk. As he passes the doors to the warehouse where the War Machine is being built, he hears a loud explosion which draws his attention. Looking around to make sure he isn’t being watched, he enters the building.

Inside, the War Machine is still being tested. It has been fitted with a three foot long, mallet-like arm, which is tested on a wooden table—it breaks the table cleanly in two. I must note that if whatever the arm is trying to hit is not precisely table height or exactly in front of the War Machine, this arm is basically useless. Rather than make the machine more menacing, this arm makes it even more ridiculous.

Then the War Machine is put through a “sight test.” A searchlight shines from the front of the War Machine, briefly illuminating Ben before he manages to duck behind some crates. The machine lumbers toward where Ben used to be, smashing through boxes and burlap sacks, eventually bursting through a wall of crates behind which Ben cowers against a wall. It rumbles toward the sailor, searchlight shining directly at him. Credits roll.

Part 3

Ben manages to break away from the War Machine, but it is too late; an alarm sounds, announcing his intrusion to the enslaved humans. Major Green announces that there is a stranger, ordering for him to be found and eliminated. Ben manages to make it all the way back to the door that leads outside, but as he approaches it, Polly enters the scene. Ben tries to warn her of the danger, saying he needs to get back to the Doctor, but Polly has already garnered that emotionless manner that tells the audience she is a slave of WOTAN. Polly turns and locks the doors, stalling Ben just long enough for the other slaves to come and drag him further into the warehouse.

Back at Sir Charles Summer’s home, the Doctor and Summer are worried about Bret, who has been gone for four hours. Summer wants to inform the police, but the Doctor says, “No…I don’t think we should allow the police to intervene at the moment. Otherwise, we might drive this threat further underground, or whatever it is.”

But Summer is singularly focused on the aforementioned plan to connect WOTAN to every major computer around the world. “We simply cannot let rumor upset the big switch-on,” he grouses.

Meanwhile, Ben has been brought before Major Green, who quickly declares him a spy and an enemy to WOTAN, ordering him to be killed. At this point, Polly intervenes, saying that WOTAN requires every worker who can be spared. Ben is an asset that can be used to contribute to the cause, she argues, and then he can be killed. Green agrees to this, and Ben is ordered to work—though Green makes the baffling decision to leave him unhypnotized. This is necessary in order for later elements of the plot, but it’s very lazy writing.

As everyone goes back to their duties, Ben rushes toward Polly. Thinking her to be playing a role to help set him free, he thanks her profusely, telling her that she even had him fooled by her act. But Polly is not acting; she tells Ben that they are working for a great cause, “the victory of the War Machines.”

At this point, I want to take a moment to talk about Anneke Wills and Michael Craze, and how their characters—Polly and Ben respectively—interact with one another. If you don’t already know or haven’t guessed, Polly and Ben become the newest companions at the end of this serial. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; after all, Steven left in the last one, and that almost always means the Doctor is about to find a new friend or two.

When it comes to chemistry between actors, Ian and Barbara remain the gold standard for the series. From the moment they appeared in a scene together in An Unearthly Child, it was obvious that they played well together onscreen, filling their respective roles with ease and enhancing the quality of each other’s character. Their friendly, often playful dynamic remained a delight until the very end, when they said goodbye at the end of The Chase and set off on a new life back in London. Then, though not quite at the same level, Steven and Vicki also had great on-screen chemistry, though I have argued time and time again that it was spoiled by poor writing choices which often had them split up for extended periods. But when they were allowed to be together, they had a fun brother/sister dynamic, filled with sarcasm and banter that elevated both characters.

At this point in the series, I honestly don’t remember what kind of duo Ben and Polly turn out to be. I remember liking them, but it has been so long since I have seen their serials that I don’t remember anything specific, besides Ben’s tendancy to call Polly “Duchess.” So far, they haven’t had much room to really establish what kind of relationship they will have. Their first scene together in the Inferno was a bit too contrived for me to get a feel for how they’ll be together long-term—though Polly’s mirroring of Ben’s scowl was a solid interaction that suggests something along the lines of Ian and Barabara’s playfulness. And since then, Ben hasn’t interacted with the real Polly, just the emotionless, slave-to-WOTAN version that trapped him in the warehouse. Given this lack of context, I don’t feel comfortable yet pontificating on how they will be as a pair going forward.

But I can talk about them individually. For Ben, my first impression is that Michael Craze doesn’t have much range as an actor. Everything he does comes across as a bit caricaturish, as if he is overacting to make up for his lack of comfort with the role. Despite that, he does present a very different male companion than either Ian or Steven: a practical, working-class man who seems to lack a bit of intelligence but more than makes up for it with his street smarts. I’m looking forward to seeing what Craze can do with the role when given more of a chance to do some character work.

Anneke Wills as Polly is also a bit of a mystery to me. At first glance, she strikes me as a better actor than Michael Craze—she is more expressive and seems to be more comfortable with her character. Yet from the moment she becomes enslaved to WOTAN, she becomes just as deadpanned as the rest of the worker drones. Because of this dynamic, I feel like I have had precious little time getting to know the real Polly, and like Ben, I want to see what Anneke Wills can do when she gets to act in more character-driven moments. For both her and Ben, I feel like the jury will be out until I can see a few more of their serials.

Next, the scene changes to Professor Brett’s laboratory, where Brett tells Krimpton that the War Machines will all attack simultaneously at noon tomorrow, taking over strategic centers of control.

Back to the warehouse, where Major Green is literally working his enslaved humans to death. One of his workers collapses and is unceremoniously run over by the War Machine. Elsewhere in the warehouse, Polly is looking very physically worn down, gasping for air and grimacing as she picks up boxes and tosses them onto the back of a cart. Watching her warily, Ben urges her to stop, but Polly says, “Must not stop. All must work must be complete by tomorrow noon…The attack is to begin.”

A moment later, Ben makes a break for it. He slips behind a stack of boxes close to the door, which is when his eyes meet Polly’s. They stare at each other for a long while, but Polly doesn’t raise the alarm. A few seconds later, Ben slips out the door and back onto the street. This is a fascinating concept. Why does Polly let Ben go? Is there some part of her humanity left beneath the subjugated shell? Unfortunately, this episode doesn’t explore it any further, beyond Polly acknowledging that what she does is unacceptable according to WOTAN.

Back at Summer’s home, the Doctor is still just waiting around for Ben to return. Why? What could possibly explain the Doctor acting so out of character and sitting around for hours at a time when there has been death and mind control in the streets of London? We are halfway through the third episode, and the Doctor still has no clue what is going on. He has been infuriatingly absent from the plot.

As the Doctor finally says to Summer that he can wait no longer, Ben comes rushing in. Panting, he tells them that Polly is in “a warehouse in Covent Garden. And there’s a machine, a killer machine. And if we don’t stop it, it’ll kill half London!”

Meanwhile, Polly reports to Major Green that she let Ben escape, seeming to remember that Ben was her friend. Green tells her that she must report to WOTAN for punishment.

Back at Summer’s home, this is when we start to get a taste of Summer’s belligerent stupidity. Ben explains all about the War Machines, telling them about the planned attack tomorrow, while the Doctor says that the menace behind the machines must be WOTAN. Summer refuses to believe this, not entertaining the idea that WOTAN has gone rogue. He also insists that armed men should be more than enough to arrest 20 men in a warehouse, despite the Doctor’s insistence that a show of force will only make it more difficult to figure out what is going on. Both the Doctor and Ben try to reason with him, but he blows them off, leaving to phone a minister to call in the army.

Cut to military blockades in downtown London, with tactical vehicles racing toward the Covent Garden warehouse. Sir Charles Summer, all confidence and bluster, authorizes the operation, and soldiers begin to enter the warehouse.

What comes next is the worst action sequence that this series has ever given me, and in Doctor Who, that is saying so, so much. The soldiers get into position inside the warehouse, and the order goes out for them to open fire. They pull the triggers of their weapons. There are no gunshots. They throw grenades. There are no explosions. This continues for the next six minutes, these soldiers pantomiming action with no visible effect or audible sounds of battle. Six minutes. At first, I thought the gunshots had been removed by the network for some reason—perhaps they had been deemed too violent for children or something.

During this time, the War Machine fights back, sending jets of steam toward the soldiers. Nothing visibly connects with them, so when the soldiers dramatically fall dead to the ground, it is really funny. We get a lot of quick shots of the War Machine and soldiers ducking for cover and soldiers getting into fistfights with the enslaved workers. The action choreography is very poor; I don’t ever get a good sense of where anyone is in relation to anyone else.

At about the five-minute mark of this dreadful sequence, the soldiers call a retreat and the few that remain flee out onto the street. It is then that we get this wonderful line: “It’s no use, sir. It’s jammed! All the guns are jammed! It must be that thing.”

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me that all the weapons, all the guns and grenades, have been nonfunctional this whole time? So why the fuck have the soldiers been pantomiming shooting them for the last six minutes? Here’s what I think actually happened, and I’m like 99% certain of it. This was meant to be a normal battle, with functioning guns and grenades and explosions and gunfire. But somewhere in its production, something went incredibly wrong with The War Machines. They ran out of time to add these sound effects in in post. In fact, that’s probably why there is never any music either; they just didn’t have the time to make it happen. In the meantime, they had to add in some ad-hoc scene where a soldier screams about none of the guns working after six minutes of firing those nonfunctional guns. Again, it’s just a theory, but it would explain a lot.

Anyway, the War Machine continues its rampage toward the open doors of the warehouse, and everyone rushes behind cover. Everyone except the Doctor, who steps right into the path of the War Machine. Credits roll.

Part 4

But the War Machine inexplicably stops its rampage.

Cut to a random pub, where a bartender and some patrons are chatting away in front of a television set. As we are about to learn, they already know about the emergency. But they are smiling, acting as though it’s your average weekday morning. Then a newscaster appears on the TV with the latest bulletin: “It was announced a few minutes ago that the machine, which is now being described as the War Machine, has successfully been put out of action. The city of London has responded with characteristic calm to the emergency…Further attacks on London can be expected in the next 24 hours.”

First off, screw the calm, demure Londoners. I want to see an appropriate level of chaos. And second, the extras in the pub have absolutely no reaction to the bulletin, neither to the news of the machine being handled nor the news of future attacks. The direction these extras were given is abysmal, and like I’ve said many times, it kills what little tension the narrative has cobbled together.

Back in the warehouse, the Doctor begins to explain to Sir Charles Summer and a newly-arrived minister why the machine has shut down so conveniently—the minister is a vaguely Churchill-esque character with thinning hair and thickly framed eyeglasses. That’s when we get this line from the Doctor: “Oh yes, this is all very simple. This is a computer, and this computer hasn’t been completely programmed.”

I have some issues with this explanation. First, that’s not how programming works. The machine was humming along just fine, doing exactly its intended function. It would have made much more sense if the Doctor had said the machine had moved out of range, or he had found a way to block the signal, or almost anything else. And second, even if you take the Doctor’s explanation at face value, there is no way for him to have known that, not without being able to analyze the War Machine.

I don’t know if this is yet another effort to make him seem to have a superhuman grasp on what is happening around him, but if it is, it’s a failure. Think about how this was pulled off in the previous serial, The Savages. There, the Doctor was given the necessary information to be able to manipulate the course of events to his advantage, learning how the energy transference system worked enough to be able to use the technology of the Elders against them. It was calculated, well thought out, and grounded in the rules given to us by the serial. Here, we have what looks to be an attempt at establishing the same kind of dynamic, but the Doctor lacks the appropriate knowledge and resources for it to be realistic. The Doctor has not been gathering information on how the War Machines operate; he has been sitting in Sir Charles Summer’s sitting room for more than half the runtime. So when he steps up to the War Machine with the full knowledge of its limitations and it proceeds to switch itself off, it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Moving on, at an undisclosed location, one of the enslaved humans radios to GPO Tower to tell Brett that another of the War Machines has been completed. Brett tells the man to begin its testing.

Back at the Covent Garden warehouse, the Doctor is analyzing the machine, looking for clues about the future attack. Ben is more concerned about Polly, who wasn’t among the workers who were captured and arrested on the scene, but the Doctor says that he must tackle the machine first. Then, the Doctor declares that he has found a timing mechanism inside the War Machine, saying that the other machines will attack at noon. I find this an odd way for the Doctor to receive this information, especially because Polly has already told Ben exactly what time the attack is to be carried out. It feels like a continuity error. Regardless, the Doctor also says that he has decoded “the programming mechanism” and found out that there are eleven other machines that will carry out the attack.

One important thing to note is that during this scene, the Doctor hands Ben his cloak. In the process, a key falls out of the pocket of the cloak, and Ben picks it up. I missed this on both of my viewings, but it is necessary in order to understand something that occurs in the last scene of the serial. I went back to watch this scene a third time, and it is easy to miss, especially if you are focusing on the Doctor.

In the undisclosed location, the second War Machine is being put through its paces. The testing does not go smoothly; the machine destroys its own transceiver, cutting itself off from the instructions of Professor Brett.

Meanwhile, the Doctor asks to speak with the enslaved workers captured at the Covent Garden warehouse, and Major Green is brought to him. Visibly confused, Green says that he doesn’t remember anything—he doesn’t even recognize the War Machine. It seems that the workers have been released from WOTAN’s hypnotism, not remembering anything after the moment they were put under the computer’s spell. Though why this has happened is never really explained. Regardless, Summer is very keen on getting into GPO Tower and taking it over by force, though the Doctor says, “That is very dangerous, Sir Charles. And if I may say so, your strongarm methods have already got us into plenty of trouble.” Summer takes offense to this, but the minister sides with the Doctor, asking him what he would suggest instead.

Out on the streets of London, another War Machine trundles down the road. On my first watch, I didn’t understand why the machine was on the loose before the planned noon attack, but I think it is supposed to be the one that smashed its own transceiver. It doesn’t come across well, because there was no scene showing this machine breaking free from Brett’s control or leaving the warehouse despite the workers’ attempts to stop it, or anything like that. It’s just suddenly out in the open. Anway, a man reports the existence of the War Machine to the news before being shot by its steam gun. This is the only time we ever get to see a War Machine interact with a civilian, and although there is a modest amount of panic when the man is talking on the phone, he does not scream and the scene cuts away from the impact of the steam gun, once again sapping the tension from the interaction.

Cut to another shot of very mild civilians showing no reaction to another news bulletin of a War Machine on the rampage.

Back in Covent Garden, Ben is mad that the Doctor doesn’t have time to take Polly’s absence more seriously. When one of the soldiers tells Ben that the Doctor has bigger things to worry about, Ben counters with, “Yeah, I know, but this bird saved my life, see?”

A little ways away, Summer receives a phone call about another War Machine by Battersea Power Station. The Doctor sees this as good news, saying that they should be able to capture it because it is electromagnetically controlled.

At Brett’s laboratory, Polly enters the scene, saying to Brett, “I’ve come to submit myself to WOTAN’s judgment. I allowed a prisoner to escape.” Brett tells her that WOTAN will consider her infraction after London is taken over.

In Covent Garden, the Doctor makes plans to surround the machine with wires, setting up a magnetic field powerful enough to shut it down.

Out on the street, a police car with a loudspeaker advises people to stay in their homes.

Now in a new location, the Doctor continues to detail his plans, now the third straight scene of his in which he does so, which feels like runtime padding to me. Though one important thing is established: Ben will be the one to close the circuit of wires once the War Machine is inside; he will be the one in the most danger.

Cut to the street, where three-quarters of a box made of wires await a War Machine which trundles toward it along the cobbles. Over the next two minutes, the machine approaches the trap mostly in silence, again without music and with only occasional bits of dialogue to fill the void. It really is incredible how flat this serial feels at just about every opportunity, especially the moments which should hold the most tension.

Anyway, Brett springs the trap, and the Doctor says they must transport the War Machine back to Covent Garden.

Once back at the warehouse, the Doctor reprograms the War Machine to attack Brett’s laboratory and sets it loose back on the London streets. Hearing this, Ben is worried that Polly has gone back there, and he dashes out of warehouse, racing to beat the machine there. He gets there in the nick of time, but Polly is still hypnotized and refuses to leave. Grabbing Polly by the arms, he wrestles her into a nearby stairwell and out of harm’s way.

A moment later, the War Machine arrives in the elevator and immediately starts firing on WOTAN and the enslaved humans. Professor Krimpton gets in between the War Machine and the computer and is killed. Then the War Machine successfully destroys WOTAN, shutting the computer and itself down for good. There is no final confrontation between the Doctor and WOTAN, which really diminishes WOTAN’s role in the serial as an intelligent antagonist. We have been told about what the computer wishes for the Earth’s future, but we never get anything about why it comes to that assessment, which would have been an interesting thing for the Doctor to have to grapple with. As it stands, the computer dies with barely a whimper, and its reasoning dies with it.

The Doctor and Summer arrive on the scene to find the computer destroyed and Professor Brett coming out of a trance. Summer consoles Brett, who looks around, dazed and confused. Summer tells him that he had better ask the Doctor for details before looking around the room and finding him gone. “Oh, where the devil’s he gone?”

Cut back to a London square and the exterior of the TARDIS, where the Doctor stands just outside the closed doors, looking as if he is waiting for someone. Then we see Polly and Ben walking toward him from down the street. They exchange pleasantries, then Polly says they have brought the Doctor a message from Summer about Dodo. “She’s says she’s feeling much better, and she’d like to stay here in London, and she sends you her love.”

Yep, that’s how Dodo leaves the show.

The Doctor is rightfully hurt by this, and in a fit of anger, he blurts out, “Oh, there’s gratitude for you. Take her all the way around the world, through space and time, and then…” Seeming to catch himself, he says a hurried goodbye to Ben and Polly before shoeing them away and turning toward the TARDIS.

Ben and Polly walk off a short distance, Ben muttering, “Well, the miserable old—”

“Shh! Watch him,” interrupts Polly. “I’m sure there’s something strange about that police box. Look, he’s got a key for it. He’s going inside!”

“Key. That reminds me.” Ben fishes a key from his pocket, the one that fell out of the Doctor’s cloak. “I forgot to give him this one back.”

“Come on,” says Polly, “we’ll do it now.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got to get back to barracks.”

“Oh, come on.” Polly drags Ben over to the front of the TARDIS. She knocks on the door, but there is no answer. “Doctor! What on Earth is he doing in there?”

Ben shrugs. “Ah, it’s locked. Let’s forget it.”

“Hey, Ben.” Polly gestures at the key in his hand.

“But I’ve only got a couple of minutes.”

“Come on!” Polly takes the key from Ben and unlocks the door. They both go inside. The TARDIS dematerializes. Credits roll.

Takeaways

There have been a lot of serials that have been disappointing. Some that are just terrible. But The War Machines is the first—and hopefully last—serial that feels downright broken, half-baked, unfinished. If you look at the serial’s shortcomings as potentially resulting from time crunch, some of them can be explained, such as the lack of battle sounds during the military’s fight with the War Machine or the absence of incidental music throughout. But others remain a frustrating mystery, such as the decision for the civilians to be completely calm despite the threat of the machines, the choice to keep the Doctor in Sir Charles Summer’s sitting room for the bulk of the middle of the serial, and the way that the progression of the plot hinges on the Doctor knowing information that he couldn’t possibly know.

On top of that, I always contend that a protagonist’s first and last episodes have the additional burden of functioning as a proper introduction or sendoff for that character, and The War Machines is no exception.

I’ll start with Dodo, because she was completely disrespected by the way she was written out of the show. She never gets to say goodbye, which isn’t necessarily a problem—a companion saying goodbye is the platonic ideal of a good ending, and there are ways to send a character off that don’t fill that kind of emotional role. But Dodo gets nothing at all, just a piece of dialogue that says she’s decided to leave the Doctor. Not only that, but the last time she interacted with the Doctor was when she was possessed by WOTAN. The last time Dodo ever said anything to the Doctor as herself was in the first ten minutes of the first episode, where she gets a headache before Polly takes her to the Inferno. I’ve said it before: Dodo is not a good companion. To this point in the show, she is my least favorite by a mile, and I expect her to hold that position for a long time. But even she deserves better than this.

Then there are Polly and Ben, and my feelings about their introduction are much more mixed. The last scene in the serial was far and away their best moment so far. Ben’s reluctance and Polly’s goading feels really authentic, and I hope those two traits carry over into the rest of their run—I think that would make for a fun dynamic between the two. And the decision to have them follow the Doctor into the TARDIS just as it dematerializes is a really fun way to begin their life with the Doctor. I’m really excited to see what happens in the next serial.

With that being said, the rest of the serial doesn’t put these characters in situations where I feel comfortable passing judgment on them quite yet. There are a few character moments—I like Polly’s expressiveness at times, and Ben’s drive to save Polly in the end is touching—but the plot didn’t offer either character much room to breathe. I’d like to see how these characters act away from the Doctor, in scenes where his presence doesn’t dominate, both individually and together. Until then, the jury is still out.

Looking forward, I am very excited as always to be drawing closer to the Doctor’s first regeneration—only two more serials! On top of that, I’m really interested to see Polly and Ben in the next serial. It’s called The Smugglers, and while I remember it being a rather forgettable historical, the first serial where companions get to experience traveling in the TARDIS is always a very important part of their run. Additionally, I’ll still be watching for any more hints of the Doctor’s inhumanity, which the writers have been seeding into the narrative for the last two serials.

Rating: 3.5/10

Chapter Text

4.0 - Season Four

Overview

In my overview of Season 3, my main focus was on how the season was the start of a period of transition for Doctor Who: the show began to find success where it had previously struggled to craft reliably solid sci-fi narratives, the end of the pure historical was drawing near, and the writers were recharacterizing the Doctor in preparation for his rapidly approaching regeneration. Season 4 marks the end of this transition period—comparatively at least; I think it’s safe to say that things are still in flux as the show continues to build its identity. The 1st Doctor regenerates at the end of the second serial in the season, The Tenth Planet, William Hartnell turning into Patrick Troughton. Aside from setting the conditions for an everlasting premise that exists largely unchanged to this day, this decision allows Troughton to play the Doctor as a remarkably different character in his second iteration, while maintaining the consistent moral core of what it means to be the Doctor.

The 1st Doctor is like a wise old magician. He maintains decorum whenever possible, even with people who harbor ill intent toward him and his companions. He is secretive, especially at the beginning of his run, keeping people at an arm’s length until they prove themselves worthy of his affection. He is arrogant to a fault, very confident in his ability to solve problems with reason and intellect and unwilling to admit wrongdoing even when it’s obvious. And he is easily irritated with people he views as playing the fool, often reacting with anger at what he views as dumb or frivolous observations.

On the other hand, the 2nd Doctor is consistently the first to play the fool himself. Often referred to in the fandom as the cosmic hobo, Troughton’s Doctor has no qualms about looking like an idiot, especially when it allows him to bumble into places that would otherwise be off-limits, like in The Macra Terror. When others are acting foolish, he is less likely to be irritated and more likely to brush them off entirely, which is perhaps best exemplified in his first full serial, The Power of the Daleks. Much younger and sprier than Hartnell, Troughton is able to maintain a breakneck speed that’s simply beyond what the 1st Doctor was capable of, dashing in and out of scenes, pulling his companions along in his wake in a way that is very reminiscent of NuWho. And he is a much more affable character, less likely to be in a temper and quicker to apologize to others when he finds himself in the wrong.

Despite these changes, the Doctor still feels like the same character at his core. He is still the kind of man who, upon seeing injustice, strives to alleviate suffering and persecution. He trusts his companions implicitly, treating them with kindness and compassion—though this is complicated by what I see as his mistreatment of Jamie in The Evil of the Daleks. He continues to display the kind of superhuman traits that were being worked into the 1st Doctor’s character at the end of Season 3. And he is still the same smart, determined, well-spoken rogue with a penchant for getting himself into difficult situations and solving problems in the nick of time.

As for the companions, in the last serial, The War Machines, we finally shed the dead weight that was Dodo Chaplet—and good riddance; if there’s ever another companion that stoops to her awful level, I’ll be shocked. In her place, there’s the new companion tandem: Ben and Polly. While not as inseparable in my mind as Ian and Barbara, it’s hard for me to picture one without the other. Neither of them quite lives up to the charm of Babs and Chesterton, but after the recent run of Vicki, Steven, and Dodo, the two are refreshingly enjoyable, with Ben often playing the role of the action hero and Polly being the loveable, slightly posh foil to Ben’s roguish charm. They have their flaws—Ben is often misogynistic and a bit stupid in a way that becomes grating after a while; Polly is too often forced to play the damsel in distress and is practically useless when asked to do anything even remotely physical. But all in all, the two are a welcome addition to the companion pantheon.

And then there’s Jamie. Introduced in The Highlanders, Jamie is the third companion with an origin outside of present-day Earth—after Vicki and Steven, who were both from the future. As Jamie is a Scotsman from the 18th century, I found his first three serials to be rather disappointing—he spends a lot of the time as the fourth wheel to the other protagonists, never questioning anything despite the fact that he should know almost nothing about the strange worlds he’s being taken to. And logistically, this makes sense; he had to be written into the scripts of his first two TARDIS adventures after the fact. However, from his fourth serial onward, he is a delight to watch. When he finally gets to act like a fish out of water in The Faceless Ones, he is an endless font of comedy, especially when he forces the 2nd Doctor to play the straight man for a change. He also demonstrates more depth of character than any other companion thus far: he is clever and loyal in The Macra Terror, brash in The Faceless Ones, and compassionate in The Evil of the Daleks. It’s still too early in his run to say for sure, but with a few more stellar performances, Jamie could easily become my new favorite companion.

As for the stories themselves, Season 4 has the highest average serial rating of any season so far in this retrospective, with its 6.37 average narrowly beating out Season 1’s 6.31. I’ve already mentioned that The Highlanders marks the last pure historical that we see in Doctor Who for many seasons. The first trip to the past after this is in The Evil of the Daleks, where the Doctor must face down his biggest enemy in 1866. In doing this, the showrunners begin to establish the aliens-throughout-history dynamic of Doctor Who that works so well, relying on more than just history itself to drive the narrative. The sci-fi serials also see a rise in quality, both in their production value and in the relative success of their storytelling—The Tenth Planet is a wonderful introduction to the second-most infamous antagonists of the series, the Cybermen, and The Power of the Daleks becomes the first serial of this retrospective that I rate as a perfect 10 out of 10.

However, there are still growing pains that the series must contend with. Having found science fiction that works, the showrunners are becoming a bit overreliant on the fan-favorite baddies: four out of the nine serials in Season 4 feature either the Daleks or the Cybermen—and with the first serial of Season 5 also being a Cyberman serial, we are in a run of the show where half of the stories are about one of these two enemies. There are also rumblings of a problem that I think pervades the entire series, both Classic Who and NuWho: the writers mistaking complex plots for clever ones, most notably in The Evil of the Daleks. As the show continues its slow evolution toward what typifies the modern series, these are just some of the issues that I will continue to monitor.

Chapter Text

4.1 – The Smugglers

Thesis: We’ve Seen This Already

If you go back and look at my overview of Season 1, you will find that I thought very highly of Doctor Who’s earliest historicals. My three highest rated serials of the season were all historicals: The Reign of Terror (8.1), Marco Polo (8.7), and The Aztecs (9.2). I argued that the writers were much more attuned to working with historical fiction than science fiction, and that the quality of serials set in the future were comparatively unreliable.

By the start of Season 4, this dynamic has drastically changed. For serials set in the future, the writers have begun to lean heavily into high-concept science fiction, and while they aren’t all successes—see The Ark and The War Machines—they offer much richer stories than what we got from the earlier seasons. With these serials, Doctor Who has begun to take bigger risks than ever before, giving us great concepts like the generation ship from The Ark, the energy transference technology from The Savages, and the Time Destructor from The Daleks’ Master Plan. Even if some of these serials fall flat, there is clearly an intentionality by the showrunners to make bolder choices with their science fiction, which to me, hints at the brighter future that is to come.

Contrarily, historicals have become the epitome of the writers playing it safe. Since the beginning of Season 3, every historical has either relied on some gimmick—like The Myth Makers being grounded in mythology and The Gunfighters being an American Western—or they have been very derivative of a serial that came before it—like The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve being a worse version of Season 1’s The Reign of Terror.

The Smugglers falls into the latter category, with so many elements that resemble Season 2’s The Time Meddler. The Doctor and company find themselves on the coast of the United Kingdom sometime in the past, with the TARDIS landing on soft white sand at the bottom of a cliff. New companions stumble out of the police box, not yet believing they have traveled through time. This disbelief lasts until they trudge up the cliff and speak with an old religious man who resides in an old religious building. While they are gone, the TARDIS is swallowed up by the tide, preventing the protagonists from leaving. So far, this describes the plot of both serials, and while the narratives deviate from this point, I can’t help the feeling that I’ve seen this before—and better; after all, the other serial has the Monk.

At this point in my retrospective, I am ecstatic to see the pure historical go away, with only one more before they disappear for more than a decade. They have become stale and uninteresting, and what replaces them—stories set in the past but with elements of science fiction—are much more in line with the capabilities of the showrunners at this point in the series.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial, with all of its episodes lost to time. I am experiencing it in the format of telesnap reconstructions, which are essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1

Just as an aside, Loose Cannon clearly didn’t have much to work with to reconstruct this serial. The audio quality is dreadful, and there are many occasions where characters have been taken from one scene and added to another just so that they can be visually represented. I try not to let the quality of the reconstruction affect my rating—after all, it’s a miracle to have any visuals at all from the lost serials. But I don’t feel confident in critiquing a lot of the visual elements of this serial, even less so than in other reconstructions. As such, I will be extra lenient as I move through this review, airing on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt.

The serial opens with the TARDIS in transit. Ben and Polly, having barged into the TARDIS at the end of the previous serial, look around at the size of its interior, stunned. The Doctor is enraged at first, yelling, “How dare you follow me into the TARDIS!…This is a vessel for travelling through time and space! Why did you follow me inside?” Though a bit clunky, lines like this are what make for great season premieres, giving new viewers a crash course in what’s happening and how a serial of Doctor Who is typically framed. Additionally, this is the first season to open with a companion’s first time traveling in the TARDIS, which provides new viewers with a fantastic analogue to be introduced to the series.

The Doctor shouts that Ben and Polly can’t leave now that they have dematerialized. He says that they probably won’t return to London any time soon: “That’s the cause of half my troubles through my journeys…I have no control over where I land. Neither can I choose the period in which I land in.” This is a marked departure from how the Doctor discussed the issue with prior companions. He flat-out denied not being able to control the TARDIS to Ian and Barbara in Season 1, and it took an argument for Steven to drag the information out of him in Season 2. It’s very interesting to see the Doctor more willing to admit fault. Since this is the 1st Doctor’s second-to-last serial, it could be that a softening of his ego is part of the evolution of his character—though it could just as easily be an unintentional, slightly out-of-character moment from the writers. I like to view it as the former.

The TARDIS materializes, and the Doctor switches on the scanner. They have landed just inside the mouth of a sandy cave, with a stretch of undeveloped coastline visible outside the entrance. Ben and Polly are still not convinced that they have left London, and the Doctor lets them out to see for themselves. As the two head outside to explore, the Doctor says to himself, “Oh dear, all this distraction. And I really thought I was going to be alone again.” It’s hard to tell from the reconstruction, but I get the impression that the Doctor is pleased by the turn of events. The Doctor leaves.

In the cave, Ben and Polly wonder how they could have gotten there, with Ben suggesting that the Doctor must be some kind of hypnotist. The Doctor exits the TARDIS, locking it behind himself, saying, “I’m not going to take you back to London in the TARDIS.” This phrasing is odd to me—it sounds hostile, which doesn’t fit the mood of the episode so far. Ben, who we learned at the end of the last serial has to return to his barracks, is upset at being so far from his post back in London. At the Doctor’s intransigence, he grouses that he’ll have to find his own way back to London and leads Polly out of the cave, with the Doctor following.

Out on the beach, Polly finds their sudden vacation to be very exciting, literally running through the sand and crying, “Wheeee!” I dislike how childish this feels; it reminds me of how Vicki’s uncharacteristic childishness in The Chase pushed the plot forward in a very irritating manner. But it doesn’t last; Polly quickly reverts to acting like an adult. Polly suggests that they are in Cornwall, which I find to be very unrealistic—how could she possibly know that just based on a mile of coastline? But Ben accepts this as true, saying that it will take hours for him to get back to his ship. He and Polly spot a path up the cliffside and begin to climb, the Doctor still trailing.

At the top of the cliff, they find a church. Ben and Polly take it as a sign that they are in their own time after all, as churches like this are all over the United Kingdom. But the Doctor disagrees, saying, “Oh, good gracious, most of them have been standing there for centuries.”

“Yeah? Well so have we,” says Ben. “Come on, I’ve got a train to catch.” The trio makes for the church. So far, I really like the dynamic between the Doctor and his new companions, though I would like to see Polly act with a bit more agency, like she showed in the previous serial. There is a level of snark and conflict between her and Ben that reminds me of Steven’s first proper serial, and I thought at the time that Steven could be a fantastic companion if that dynamic remained the same. I was disappointed when it didn’t, which makes me hope that the writers let the two continue to be snarky in a way that they didn’t allow Steven.

At the church, they find a small graveyard. Upon taking a closer look at the architecture, the Doctor declares that it could be any time after the 16th century, which Ben still flatly denies. Suddenly, the door of the church is thrown open, and an old man with wispy gray hair emerges, pointing a gun at the protagonists. Polly begs him to put the gun away, and the man shouts, “Hold thy tongue, lad!” With her striped shirt and long pants, and her hair tucked beneath a fisherman’s cap, Polly has been mistaken for a young boy. This event will be recurring throughout the serial. In fact, Polly is the only female character in this entire serial, and she isn’t even allowed to present as a woman, never balking at being referred to as a boy. This dynamic is both comically illogical—Polly looks nothing like a man, or even a boy—and comically sexist.

After a contentious back-and-forth, the old man accepts the three as travelers and invites them inside for “sustenance and direction.” As they follow him into the church, the Doctor leans over to Ben to gloat, saying, “I’m afraid you’re going to lose your bet, young man. That gentleman comes from the 17th century.”

Inside the church, we see an old, dusty vestry. The old man offers them brandy, which the Doctor refuses, saying, “No, we don’t touch it.” The old man is cagey—to which his loaded gun from the previous scene already attested—asking the three if they have seen any other travelers, either by the road or by sea. When the Doctor asks if he is expecting some friends, the man scoffs, mentioning someone called Avery and saying that he and his “boys” are not his friends. He goes on to say that although Avery is dead, his followers are still out there.

Eventually, the man introduces himself as Joseph Longfoot, the churchwarden. The Doctor asks Longfoot why he is so afraid and if there is anything they could help him with. Longfoot answers, “Ye help? Against Pike’s hook? No, thee cannot help.” He gets agitated when Polly repeats Pike’s name, saying, “It’s the blackest name I know, boy. So never say it to my face again!”

The Doctor then notices that one of Longfoot’s fingers is dislocated, and without asking for permission, he takes Longfoot’s hand and pushes the finger back into place. This immediately endears Longfoot to the Doctor, and the latter says that they must be leaving soon. When Ben mentions that they need to get back to the beach, Longfoot says that the beach is gone—high tide has swallowed it up. Again, this is exactly what happened in The Time Meddler, one of the many similarities which makes The Smugglers feel like a cheap recreation.

Longfoot says that the church is no place to spend the night, so he leads them outside and gives them directions to the nearest inn. Thunder can be heard in the distance; a storm is coming. As Ben and Polly start down the road, he pulls the Doctor aside and says, “While at the inn, take care…Guard thy tongue.” The Doctor doesn’t seem to take this as a warning and disregards it. He makes to leave, but Longfoot pulls him back one last time to say, “If you should come this way again and find me gone, remember these words. This is Deadman’s secret key: Smallwood, Ringwood, Gurney.” Put a pin in that for later. He holds up his now fixed finger, making it clear that his secret is some sort of reward for the Doctor having healed him. Then the Doctor says his goodbye, and he, Ben, and Polly all head down the road together. Longfoot retreats inside his church. After everyone has left the scene, a bald man emerges from behind a nearby bush, unsheathes a long dagger, and follows the churchwarden inside.

Cut to the exterior of an idyllic inn. A tall man in plain linens—presumably the innkeeper—exits through a door and walks toward a young man toting a barrel. The second man looks to be about 20, with light brown hair, a round face, and broad shoulders, all of which make him look a lot like Samwise Gamgee. The innkeeper refers to the young man as Tom and leans close to him, saying in a low voice, “There’s business afoot. [I have] a message for the churchwarden tonight…Tell him that Kewper has had word from friends…A delivery can be expected soon. I’ll tell him further when I’ve made arrangements.” Given the name of the serial and the apparent secrecy of the innkeeper, the nature of the business is obviously smuggling. Tom nods, hops on a horse, and gallops away to the sound of the oncoming storm.

Some time later, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly arrive at the inn, soaked from the rain. The interior of the inn is very hard to make out in the reconstruction, but it appears to be empty except for the innkeeper. Speaking of whom, the innkeeper introduces himself as Kewper (pronounced KYOO-per), adding, “I’ve no rooms. We’re full…Strangers are not welcome in these parts. Nor are they always what they seem.” This seems like very odd behavior for an innkeeper, even for one whose inn is probably just a front for smuggling goods. He comes off as incredibly suspicious in this interaction, something that the protagonists immediately pick up on.

The Doctor mentions the churchwarden, and when he says the name Joseph Longfoot, Kewper is suddenly much more amenable, saying that he can give them a room for the night and dry clothes “for the lads.” Then Kewper moves off to make the arrangements. Polly grouses a little at being called a lad, and Ben says that the local folk would probably die of laughter if they realized she was a woman in trousers.

“You would think it funny,” Polly snaps. “You and your bell-bottom sense of humor.”

“Oh, listen to our little dolly-rocker Duchess, then,” Ben says wryly. I’m loving this banter. It’s a nice change of pace, and a callback to when Steven and Vicki initially showed a lot of promise as a pair. It’s also exactly what the protagonists need: a little bit of conflict in the group dynamic, even if it’s just playful banter.

Kewper comes back, deposits a bundle of clothes for the companions to change into, and leaves the scene again. As the companions change clothes, Ben asks the Doctor about getting back to their own time. The Doctor isn’t very optimistic: “Oh, we shall return to the TARDIS, my boy, when the tide recedes. And let’s hope that we materialize in 1966…More likely we shall probably land in the far distant future.” Once again, the Doctor is oddly open about his deficiencies regarding the TARDIS, and I’m starting to view it as a definite shift in his characterization. As the scene ends, the Doctor says this wonderfully ironic piece of foreshadowing: “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about [why these people don’t like strangers], my dear, because I don’t think we’re going to be here long enough to find out.” We all know the Doctor and company will be here for a while.

Cut to the church, where Longfoot is in the vestry, rambling drunkenly to himself. The bald man from earlier enters the scene, and Longfoot cries out, “Master Cherub!” Cherub smiles, greeting Longfoot as an old shipmate, saying that they both used to sail aboard a ship called the Black Albatross. Longfoot tries to say that Cherub is mistaken, insisting that he is just a churchwarden, but Cherub is not fooled. Cherub says that Captain Pike has come for the gold that is owed to him: Avery’s secret treasure. Longfoot says that the gold is cursed, adding, “You’ll never find it…You can’t threaten me. I got friends here, powerful friends.”

Cherub asks about the old man and two lads that he saw leaving the church earlier, demanding to know what Longfoot had whispered in the Doctor’s ear before he left. Longfoot says that he only gave him directions to the inn, swearing that the three know nothing about Avery’s gold. Cherub doesn’t believe him, accusing the churchwarden of trying to sell the secret of Avery’s treasure to strangers. Suddenly, Longfoot makes a break for it, splashing booze in Cherub’s face and shouting, “You can rot in hell!”

Whipping his knife through the air, Cherub throws the blade at the small of Longfoot’s back. Longfoot goes down, and when Cherub asks him to use his dying breath to tell him the secret, Longfoot only says, “Avery’s curse on you, you black villain.” Longfoot dies.

Cherub is undeterred. “It wouldn’t be like you to go to Davy Jones’s silent, matey. So I reckon we best get onto that old fella and get our hooks into him.” What happens next is unclear in the reconstruction, but the transcription says that Cherub leaves the church and signals to someone down on the beach, a signal which is then passed on to a ship waiting in a nearby cove.

Back at the inn, Ben and Polly have finished changing clothes, now wearing period-appropriate men’s attire: plain linens with loose shirts and flowing sleeves. I thought the common room was empty, but Ben makes a passing comment about how the patrons look awfully shady, so there must be some extras in the scene that the reconstruction couldn’t show. Polly wonders what they could be up to and why the churchwarden told them to keep to themselves.

Suddenly, Tom, the young man from earlier, rushes into the room and pulls Kewper into a backroom. There, he tells the innkeeper that he found Longfoot’s body stabbed in the back. When Kewper says that none of “our lads” have been down that way, Tom says, “The strangers were, though.” This is a small continuity error—Tom should not know that information. Kewper tells Tom to go speak to the local squire and ask him to come to the inn as a magistrate. Tom leaves.

Meanwhile, in the common room, the Doctor and his companions are conversing with one another when Cherub enters, followed by several men. Marching over to the Doctor, Cherub says, “I want you, old fella.” Cherub goes on to say that he killed the churchwarden and that he wants to know what Longfoot told the Doctor when he whispered into his ear. The Doctor refuses to say, so Cherub has his men grab Polly and Ben, warning the Doctor that they will be harmed unless he comes quietly. Polly tells Cherub to leave the Doctor alone, which prompts Cherub to start calling the Doctor “sawbones,” which is a cool attention to detail that makes sense for the time period.

The Doctor is tied up and dragged outside. Polly and Ben try to struggle, but Polly us roughly thrown to the ground and Ben is knocked unconscious. The Doctor is thrown on the back of a horse cart and carried off.

Still inside, Polly kneels beside Ben and calls for help. Kewper enters tentatively, still thinking that the trio is responsible for the murder of Longfoot. Polly says that men have taken the Doctor and knocked Ben unconscious, and Kewper says that the squire will sort things out once he arrives, adding, “The squire’s the law in these parts.”

At the cliffside, the Doctor is taken down to the shore and bundled into a rowboat.

Back at the inn, the squire arrives on his horse. He is a portly man, with a black tricorn hat, long brown hair falling past his shoulders, and an ornate coat with a lacy white collar. With an air of self-importance, he tells Polly that before he can look for the Doctor, he needs to know who she and Ben are, adding, “If you want help, I want the truth.”

Elsewhere, the rowboat reaches a ship, and the Doctor is hauled ashore. Cherub says that he is to see the captain.

Meanwhile, Ben regains consciousness. Polly tells him that they’re in trouble, saying the squire wants to know who they are and where they have come from. Without that information, the man has refused to help them find the Doctor. When Ben starts to make a fuss, the squire huffs and says, “Be silent, sir!…I’m hereby arresting both of you…for the murder of the churchwarden.” He announces that the two companions will be imprisoned and punished.

Back on the ship, Cherub escorts the Doctor into a room where he finds the captain sitting behind a table: a man with dark hair, flowing silk clothes, and the head of a pike where his left hand should be. Cherub says that Longfoot is dead, but adds that before he died, he told “this old sawbones” the secret. When Cherub says that he couldn’t get the Doctor to speak, the captain says, “Well, by thunder, ye’ll talk to me. Or my name’s not Samuel Pike!” He slams the pike into the tabletop. Credits roll.

So far, I’m having a difficult time connecting with the serial. The elements of a good story are there, I suppose. There’s an interesting case of mistaken identity with the Doctor and his companions being fingered for Longfoot’s murder, and I do like the intrigue of what a name like The Smugglers still entails for the serial. But so much of the narrative feels generic: the setting, the characters, the inciting incident. It doesn’t help that so much of the setup is identical to The Time Meddler. Part of me wonders if the experience would be better if I were watching actual footage, so I’ll try not to be too hard on the serial until at least seeing how some of these plot points play out.

Part 2

The Doctor says that he has nothing to say, adding that he doesn’t even know this “Holy Joe” that Cherub and Captain Pike keep referring to. Pike clarifies that they mean joseph Longfoot, telling the Doctor that the three of them were once crewmates of Captain Avery, who was a notorious pirate. “He took plunder that was rightfully ours,” says Pike, “and we mean to get it back.” He threatens to let Cherub use his blades on the Doctor, adding, “Well, Doctor? Will ye loosen your tongue, or lose it altogether?”

Meanwhile, Ben and Polly have been locked inside a jail cell. Ben, ever the pessimist, tells Polly that he feels out of his depth, saying that it’s not like he can just report back to a 17th century navy. Polly is less concerned—excited, in fact—saying that Ben has no imagination. As this scene unfolds, I’m reminded of another serial, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and the relationship between Barbara and a girl named Jenny. For much of the narrative, the two characters were paired together, with pessimistic Jenny constantly butting heads with optimistic Barbara. At the time, I thought that it was refreshingly contentious, and I still think Jenny would have been a great companion just for how her pessimism had the potential to add depth to the TARDIS crew.

Now, as the relationship between Ben and Polly continues to take shape, I see a little bit of Barbara and Jenny’s contentiousness in these characters, which is by itself an extra dimension of conflict that we haven’t really seen among the companions since the first half of Season 1, back when the companions were still getting over being kidnapped by the Doctor. This is on top of that brother/sister dynamic that the two have already displayed, much like Steven and Vicki did in The Time Meddler. Already, Ben and Polly’s relationship has a depth to it that rivals the complicated relationship between the Doctor and Susan—and we’re only an episode and change into their run. Right now, I think these characters have a very high ceiling, with the potential to unseat Barbara and Ian as my favorite companion duo. Like Ben, I’m a bit pessimistic about their chances—after all, I made similar overtures about Steven in his first serial, and the writing in Season 3 really let me down. But I’m more than willing to be pleasantly surprised.

Moving on, Ben and Polly are just beginning to discuss how to get out of their current situation when Polly sees a rat in the corner of the cell. She gasps and shrieks, blubbering about how much she hates rats while ben scoffs, “Oh, shut up screaming! You big baby. Be quiet!” Again, I adore this dynamic. I hope the writers keep giving these two things to quibble over.

The loud voices are enough to attract the attention of Tom, who has been set to watch the two prisoners. He tells them that he’s not supposed to talk to the murderers, saying that they must be the culprits, as only a stranger would be loathsome enough to kill the churchwarden. Ben tries to argue with him, bringing up the men who kidnapped the Doctor, but Tom says that no one else saw them. “But they were here!” Polly cuts in. “How else do you suppose the Doctor would disappear?”

Seemingly remembering his mandate not to talk to the prisoners, Tom walks off without another word. “Daft nit,” Ben mutters. “What’d he think it was? Magic?” This gives Polly an idea, and she reminds Ben that people in the 17th century believed in things like witches in magic. She goes to gather straw from the corner of the cell and, seeing the rat there, thinks better of it and tells Ben to get her some straw instead.

Back outside the inn, Kewper exits the building and locks the door behind him. Walking down some stairs to the harbor, he boards a rowboat and pushes off toward where the Black Albatross docked out in the bay.

On that boat, the Doctor, Captain Pike, and Cherub are still in the captain’s cabin. The Doctor spends a lot of time buttering Pike up, complimenting his intelligence, style, and taste in wine. At first, this appears to successfully flatter Pike, much to Cherub’s dismay. But at the end of the exchange, Pike turns to the Doctor and snaps, “Now tell us what we want to know!” I suspect that Pike was only pretending to fall for the flattery, and that this is something that was unfortunately lost in the reconstruction. Altogether, this scene seems to have suffered significantly from the loss of the original footage, and I’m trying not to judge it too harshly even as I feel myself losing interest.

Suddenly, a man bursts into Pike’s cabin and says, “Captain! Boat to leeward.” This man is notable because I believe this is the first time the series has had a black man actually deliver a line of dialogue. 60s television reflected the segregated society of the time, and the BBC was no exception. To this point, there has been a miniscule amount of black extras, like in The Crusade—though even that was an example of racial insensitivity, as these black actors were playing Arab characters. But to this point, the only “black” characters that have been allowed a voice were really white men in blackface, specifically Mavic Chen in The Daleks’ Master Plan and Jano in The Savages. And I want to be very clear, a black character being given a handful of lines in this serial is a far cry from proper representation—especially given that this character’s name is Jamaica, reducing the entirety of his characterization to his country of origin. I simply see this as the first touchstone by which I’ll be gauging racial diversity and representation in the series going forward.

Anyway, Pike tells Cherub to go and greet whomever is on the rowboat, implying that he should kill them if they’re a tax collector. Then he orders Jamaica to take the Doctor to the galley and see that he is fed.

Meanwhile, in the village jail, Polly has constructed a large straw doll. She stands in the middle of the cell and wails, holding the doll by the neck and swinging it around slowly, while Ben bangs on the door and calls out to Tom for help. Tom opens the cell door and enters, eyeing the two skeptically. Ben explains that Polly—whom he refers to as Paul—has been possessed by their master, the Doctor, and that the doll is linked to Tom. Paul is the gibbet, says Ben, and when the doll’s neck breaks, so will Tom’s. This successfully frightens Tom, and when he asks Ben what they can do to stop it, Ben tells him that the only way for him to stay alive is to let them free. “Paul” starts wailing again for good measure, and Tom lets them go. Once they are in the hallway, Ben shuts Tom inside the cell, and the two companions decide to head for the church to see if they can discover who really killed Longfoot.

Back on the ship, Cherub greets Kewper as he clambers over the railing, demanding to know why the innkeeper has come. Kewper says that he has business to discuss with the captain of the ship, pressing a gold coin into Cherub’s hand and asking if there is any interest. Cherub invites the innkeeper belowdecks.

Cut to Pike’s cabin, where there is a knock on the door, followed by Cherub leading Kewper inside. Kewper is very vague about the nature of his business, saying, “Brandy? Silks, perhaps? Or should I call it…merchandise?” Cherub and Pike look at each other, wryly agreeing that the business sounds dishonest, to which Kewper adds, “The only man who would call such business dishonest would be a revenue man.”

At first, it seems like a deal may be struck between the men, but when Pike asks for more specifics about the nature of the smuggling, Kewper balks, saying that there will be no more details until they shake hands on it, assuring the pirates that he is “well supported” by the squire and the churchwarden. A moment later, Cherub pins Kewper’s arms behind his back, and Pike tells him that he means to speak with the squire without Kewper as an intermediary, saying that if the innkeeper gets in his way, “there’ll be another corpse put ashore with Joseph Longfoot.” Kewper suddenly realizes that these are the men who killed the churchwarden, not the Doctor and his companions. Pike calls Jamaica in and has him bring the Doctor back in the room. Once he does, Pike then puts Jamaica in charge of watching the Doctor and Kewper, who will be involuntary guests of the Black Albatross until the captain’s return. He and Cherub leave the ship.

Elsewhere, Ben and Polly have made it back to the church. Having already searched the vestry, the companions descend a flight of stairs into the crypt: a long, narrow chamber with coffins and stone columns supporting the church’s upper floor. The two continue to demonstrate a penchant for playful banter, with Ben suggesting that the murderer might return to the scene of the crime, then laughing at Polly when she gets frightened by the idea. Polly calls ben a fool; Ben calls her Duchess again and suggests that maybe it’s too early for a Sherlock Holmes-like murder plot.

They begin to think that the Doctor may have escaped somehow and gone back to the TARDIS. Just as they start to talk about returning there themselves, a stone tablet on the wall begins to slide on its own. The companions go silent and watch as the stone slides far enough to reveal a hole big enough for a person to walk through. Seconds later, someone does walk out of the dark opening: a tall man with long black hair, black clothes, and a black leather satchel at his hip. He steps into the room, and Ben whacks him over the head, knocking the stranger unconscious. Polly leaves to go tell the squire that they may have discovered the real murderer, and Ben begins to tie up the unconscious man.

Back on the ship, Pike has changed into his Sunday best for his sojourn to see the squire. He removes his pike-hand and tosses it to a cabin boy, telling him to look after it until he gets back. Pike and Cherub then leave on a rowboat.

In the crypt, the man with black hair has regained consciousness, and Ben removes a gag from his mouth, asking who he is. The man identifies himself as Josiah Blake, the king’s revenue officer—a tax collector. As an agent of the king, Blake demands to be untied, but Ben says that he doesn’t believe him, suspecting him for the murder of the churchwarden. Blake explains that he was on the trail of some smugglers in the area, and that the churchwarden was a suspect. He had been hoping to confront the man with the evidence of this smugglers tunnel leading all the way down to the beach, but he was thwarted by Longfoot’s untimely death. At the mention of the beach, Ben perks up, thinking of the TARDIS. Leaving Blake tied up, he heads into the tunnel, telling the tax collector that he won’t be gone for long.

Next, the scene cuts to the squire’s hall: a stately mansion with fine furnishings. Pike and Cherub wait to be shown into the squire’s study, quietly conferring about their plans. Together, they will pose as businessmen sent by Kewper, hoping to find out anything they can about the local smuggling ring. Once they have the information they need, they will steal the smugglers’ store, find Avery’s treasure, and ransack the squire’s hall for good measure.

A moment later, the two pirates are escorted into the squire’s study, where we find the pompous squire sitting behind his desk. Pike introduces himself and Cherub as businessmen in the confidence of Kewper, whom he says is on board their ship accounting their merchandise—“such silks, such brandy, and tobacco.” The squire, thinking these men are common smugglers interesting in offloading their goods, tells them the rundown of his operation. He says that the goods are received at the church at the top of the cliff, though he’ll have to arrange for someone new to receive them now that the churchwarden is dead.

Before the squire can make the new arrangements, Polly suddenly enters the room, shoved brusquely inside by the squire’s servant. The squire thanks the servant for having found an escaped prisoner, but Polly shoves the servant’s hands away, saying that she has come of her own accord. She is about to tell the squire about the man in the crypt when she recognizes Cherub. “You!” she cries out. “You’re the one that kidnapped the Doctor!”

Back on the ship, Jamaica looks on as the Doctor and Kewper talk too quietly for him to make out what they’re saying. In a whisper, Kewper tells the Doctor that his companions have been arrested for the murder of the churchwarden, which he now knows was done by Cherub. Furthermore, he says that Captain Pike is “the bloodiest pirate now alive,” adding that if he suspects that Avery’s gold is buried somewhere ashore, he will burn the village to the ground trying to find it. The Doctor says that he has a plan to escape and warn the village, asking Kewper to play along as he suddenly calls out to Jamaica, “Tell me, sir, you play cards?”

Meanwhile, back in the squire’s study, Polly has finished telling the squire all about Cherub’s kidnapping of the Doctor and about the man that she and Ben discovered coming out of a tunnel. But Pike and Cherub turn easily turn the squire against her, and she is not believed. She tries to tell the squire that these men are villains, but the squire says that he vouches for their character. Pike tells the squire that the man in the crypt may be a tax collector, suggesting that they all ride out to the church to recapture Ben and set the poor man free—it doesn’t come across in the reconstruction, but I suspect there were some meaningful looks in this exchange that shed some light on the squire and the pirates’ true intent to kill the tax collector. Regardless, Polly is bound and gagged before the three men leave for the church, dragging her along after them.

In the crypt, Ben returns from the tunnel, stepping back inside the room where Blake is still tied up. He announces that the passage leads right back to the TARDIS, saying that if he could tell the others, they could all escape. This means nothing to Blake, but the way Ben talks about escaping leads him to suspect that he might be a smuggler after all. Just then, the squire enters the crypt, with Cherub and Polly following close behind. Ben is initially relieved to see the squire and Polly, but at the sight of Cherub, he becomes angry. The squire eyes Ben with a smug grin. “Recaptured again, ay boy?” He pulls out a pistol. “We’ll have no more tricks this time.” Credits roll.

I’ll be honest, I’m enjoying this serial much more on my second watch. After my first go round, I had settled on a rating of 3.7, thinking that the narrative was a boring repetition of The Time Meddler. While I still think this repetition keeps this serial far from a perfect 10, I do find myself slowly warming to the charisma of Pike and Cherub, and the plot is complex enough to be more rewatchable than many of the narratives I’ve watched since the start of Season 3. Right now, my rating is sitting at an even 5.0, and I’m very curious to see if it nudges in either direction by the end of the serial.

Part 3

The squire orders Ben to be restrained, then recognizes Blake as a tax collector. This worries the squire, who takes Pike and Cherub aside and discusses what to do about the man. Cherub suggests they kill Blake, but Pike wants to use him. After all, if he knows nothing, they can lay all of the blame at the feet of Ben and Polly, Blake can take them away, and two problems would be solved at once. Returning to the others, Cherub cuts Blake free, and the squire convinces the tax collector to take “these pretty young vagabonds” off to be punished according to the king’s justice. Blake initially refuses, saying his only duty is to look for smugglers, but Cherub says that Ben and Polly could easily be the smugglers he has been looking for all along. Blake thanks the three men, then escorts Ben and Polly out of the crypt at gunpoint.

Next, we find the Doctor laying out a deck of cards face down on a table in front of Kewper while Jamaica looks on. The Doctor asks the innkeeper to pick five cards which will help him read Kewper’s future. They go through a lengthy sequence, where the Doctor pretends to glean Kewper’s fate from the five cards he selected, with Jamaica watching intently all the while. After the Doctor is finishes weaving his fortunetelling, Jamaica asks him if the cards would tell him his fate as well. The Doctor says yes, and when Jamaica sits down at the table to shuffle the deck, Kewper strikes him over the head, knocking him unconscious. Finding themselves absent their jailor, the Doctor and Kewper agree that they must warn the squire about Pike and Cherub’s true intent. They find their way onto the deck, sneak past the rest of the crew, and leave for shore in Kewper’s rowboat.

Outside the church, Pike and Cherub are liberally praising the squire for getting “rid of both law and villainy,” really buttering him up. Flattered, the squire announces that he has something to show them; he walks over to a nearby sarcophagus and slides back the heavy stone lid. Within are all sorts of smuggled goods. Pike asks where his goods would go if this cache is full, and the squire tells him not to worry, that this sarcophagus will be emptied before the next low tide. But the squire refuses to tell Pike how to get his goods up to the church, saying that he will be met on the shore. “This is our domain,” he says. “The sea is yours. Our routes and methods must remain our own.” This seems like a bit of a continuity error to me—didn’t Polly already tell the squire in front of Pike and Cherub about Blake emerging from a tunnel in the crypt? Surely Pike could puzzle out what that means.

At this point, I’m starting to remember why my initial rating was so low. The pacing has really started to drag—I’m seven minutes into Part 3, and I’ve gotten less than a page worth of analysis out of it. It’s not quite Part 3 of The Savages, with its ten-minute spelunking sequence, but the complexity of this narrative is actually starting to bog it down. Two of the three scenes so far have yielded very dense, exposition laden paragraphs—again, not as bad as long, empty sequences, but not easy to sit through either. I think part of the reason I enjoyed Parts 1 and 2 more on my second watch is because I can sit down and actually digest what’s going on as I take my notes. Sorry if it seems like I’m floundering a bit, but I write these breakdowns in real time during my second watch-through. My opinion has changed again, aligning more with my original opinion. It feels like there is a lot of internal motion within the narrative, but the whole thing is barely moving forward.

Moving on, the scene cuts to the stables of the squire’s hall, where Pike converses alone with the squire. They arrange for a fire to be lit on the shore after midnight at the place on the beach where the pirate crew will unload their goods. They still have to settle on payment, and they agree to hash out the terms over wine. As they walk off toward the house, Cherub detaches himself from where he had been eavesdropping in the bushes.

Cut to another set of stables, this time back at the inn. Blake forces Ben and Polly against a wall, still at gunpoint, when he suddenly holsters the gun and cuts their bonds. Ben and Polly are baffled, and Blake explains that the squire the man he most suspects of being the head of the local smuggling ring—he doesn’t trust the companions, but he trusts the squire far less. Blake goes on to explain that he thinks the Pike and Cherub will soon be unloading smuggled goods on shore, and that he needs to ride soon to fetch armed men to confront them. Polly says that she wishes the Doctor were here, as he was so good at getting himself out of trouble when they were back in London.

“Yes, and why not here, my dear?” says the Doctor, striding into the room. Ben and Polly are elated, greeting him warmly. Then Kewper enters, whom Blake says is also suspected as a smuggler. Thinking that the Doctor has freed him only to lead him into a trap, Kewper flees from the stable on a horse, firing a shot that misses Blake on his way out.

Back on the ship, an incensed Pike is confronting Jamaica over the missing prisoners, threatening all sorts of grisly deaths: feeding his liver to sharks, cutting him from ear to ear, and keelhauling him from here to Port Royal. Jamaica begs for his life, giving Pike the little information he has, telling him that the Doctor and Kewper were going to make a report to the squire. This doesn’t concern Pike, who knows that the squire is in his pocket. Pike goes ahead and lays out his plans: most of his crew will surprise the squire and loot the smuggler’s hoard by the light of day, while he and Cherub will look around the church for Avery’s gold. “It will be a merry night,” Pike says to Jamaica, “but not for thee.” With a swing of Pike’s pike, Jamaica falls to the floor. Pike wipes the blood from his blade onto a white handkerchief and drops it on the new-made corpse. Then he calls out for Cherub, but another crewmate says that Cherub isn’t aboard. “Where in Satan’s name is he?” he asks.

Meanwhile, the Doctor tells Ben, Polly, and Blake that Captain Pike intends to sack the church and look for the treasure, and by his estimation, it will happen either tonight or tomorrow night. Blake says that he needs to fetch help if the pirates are to be driven off, especially if Kewper has warned the smugglers and intends to put up a fight. Everyone is worried that the village will be crushed between the two factions. Here’s a question that the writers never seem to have asked: why should I care? I don’t know any sympathetic villagers in this serial. The closest is Tom, and as an underling of Kewper, we know him to be at least tangentially involved with the smuggling ring. Here’s a tip for any budding writers out there: it is always easier for the audience to sympathize with a few innocent bystanders than it is with the vague concept of a village. Make it real for the viewer. Show a butcher whose livelihood is threatened or a baker who gets taken hostage. Part of the reason I think this serial is starting to drag is because I don’t feel emotionally attached to what is supposed to be the driver of the plot.

Blake takes a horse from the stables and gallops down the road. Then Ben and Polly tell the Doctor the good news about the smuggler’s tunnel that leads right down to the TARDIS. Polly says that they can leave at the next low tide, but the Doctor says that they can’t leave yet. When asked why, he answers, “I know it’s really difficult for both of you to understand, but I’m under moral obligation…It’s this village. I feel that I might be responsible for its destruction, and therefore, I must at least try and avoid this danger until Blake comes back.”

This is a really interesting development in the Doctor’s characterization. We’ve had plenty of situations where the Doctor has been forced to help some faction within a narrative, like in The Crusade, The Mythmakers, and The Gunfighters. Other times, he has outright refused to help people unless circumstances have dictated otherwise, like in An Unearthly Child, The Keys of Marinus, and The Sensorites. But this is the first time that the Doctor has explicitly stated that his intent to help someone is borne out of a sense of moral obligation. Right now, that obligation stems from his guilt over having instigated the whole situation by being there to receive Joseph Longfoot’s whispered secret. A few seasons down the line, this obligation will eventually evolve into a heroic drive to help those in need no matter the cost, and I can’t wait to catalogue more of that evolution.

The Doctor tells Ben and Polly that if they can find Avery’s treasure first, he thinks they can bargain with Pike—or at least buy enough time for Blake to return with reinforcements. Saying goodbye to Tom at the door, the three leave for the church. Unfortunately for Tom, as soon as the protagonists are out of frame, Cherub appears and presses a dagger to Tom’s throat, demanding to know where the three have gone.

Back at the squire’s hall, Kewper has warned the squire about the true nature of Captain Pike. The squire, nervous about having delivered the secrets of their smuggling hoard into the hands of pirates, lets Kewper take the lead on planning how to get out of it. Kewper says that the pirates aren’t even after the smuggled goods, or at least not primarily—he tells the squire that they’re really after Avery’s gold, the secret of which has been told to the Doctor. The innkeeper goes on to say that if they can get their hands on the gold, they would be free to set a trap along the smuggler’s tunnel for the pirates. This makes no sense to me. Why would they have to wait to set a trap until after they find the treasure? This only increases the chance that their plans will fail by pinning its success on an unknown quantity. Regardless of the logical leap involved, they speed off toward the church, promising not to tell anyone else about the situation.

Cut to Blake, who’s galloping hard down a country road.

At the church, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly are rooting around in the graveyard for clues. Ben finds a headstone with a funny epitaph and reads it aloud: “Henry Hawksworth. He did die of drinking too much small beer when he was dry.” This sparks a memory in the Doctor, and he excitedly bustles them into the crypt.

Once there, the Doctor finally tells the others what Longfoot had whispered in his ear in Part 1. “Dead man’s secret key,” says the Doctor. “Ringwood, Smallbeer, and Gurney.” Now, this is categorically not what Longfoot said; the actual quote was Smallwood, Ringwood, Gurney. This is a massive continuity error; it’s an inconsistency with the one phrase that the entire plot hinges on. I know that the showrunners rarely allowed multiple takes in the early days, but this is quite possibly the worst mistake I’ve seen to this point in the series. Even a crappy voiceover would be preferable to this horrendous oversight. It undermines the integrity of the whole narrative.

Anyway, once in the crypt, Ben and Polly find two of the three graves they are looking for: Ringwood and Gurney. Then Ben looks at the remaining engravings, saying, “Come on Smallbeer, let’s have you!” Didn’t they already find Smallbeer? The epitaph out in the graveyard wasn’t a name, but it has to be what the clue is referring to, right? It would be too big of a coincidence otherwise. Also, these are just names on graves, with nothing about them that points to the actual location of Avery’s gold. As we will eventually see, the three names don’t actually point to the treasure—at least, not on their own.

Outside, Kewper and the squire have arrived at the church. Finding the door open, they begin to wonder at who could be inside. They decide that it can’t be Blake or Pike, as both of them would have posted guards on the door. Thinking that it must be the Doctor, they march inside, hoping to get the secret of Avery’s gold out of him.

Back in the crypt, the Doctor announces that they’ve now found the third name—which means Smallbeer was engraved somewhere in the room. This makes the epitaph out in the graveyard, the random thing that Ben read aloud, a ridiculously lucky break that just so happened to be the very thing that the Doctor needed to hear to send him in the right direction. Bleh. Anyway, the Doctor goes on to say, “Yes, of course, yes. It would help if we found four names.” Ben and Polly ask what he means, but before he can explain, Kewper and the squire enter.

When the Doctor asks what they are doing here, Kewper says, “The same as you, my friends. Seeking Avery’s treasure.” Seeing the Doctor and his companions in the crypt, the squire says that while they may not be guilty of killing the churchwarden, there is definitely more to them than meets the eye. The Doctor says that he won’t help them find it, and Kewper threatens to kill Ben and Polly if he doesn’t fess up. This is met with disapproval from the squire, who says that he will not stomach killing—he’s corrupt, but he’s still a lawman.

Kewper and the squire begin to argue, and as they raise their voices, Cherub sneaks into the crypt unnoticed. Just as Kewper and the squire start to threaten each other with a hanging, Cherub hurls his dagger, killing Kewper with a blow to the back. A gunshot rings out. Polly screams. Credits roll.

I may take issue with the pacing of this serial, but the structure is excellent. Part 1’s cliffhanger had the Doctor meeting Captain Pike, and Part 2 ended with Ben and Polly being arrested for the second time. Now we have a gunshot and a scream, demonstrating a wonderful arc of escalation. I just wish the stuff between these points were interesting enough to help prop the plot up a bit more.

Part 4

The squire has been shot; he falls to a knee, a hand pressed against the wound. Cherub points the gun at the Doctor and company, demanding the secret to Avery’s gold, promising more death if he doesn’t get his way. It seems that Cherub has deserted Pike and his crew, desiring to have the treasure all to himself. Polly asks for mercy for the squire, and when it looks like Cherub might let her tend to the man’s wounds, he suddenly pulls her away from the others and points his pistol at her head. He turns to the Doctor and says, “Now sawbones, talk, or the young lad dies.”

Cut to Blake, still galloping on his horse. There’s a discrepancy between the reconstruction and the transcript, with the reconstruction saying that Blake is thrown from his horse and left on the road as it gallops away. The transcript says nothing about this, simply having Blake headed toward a militia outpost. As much as I like the image of Blake being unhorsed for basically no reason, it makes absolutely no sense for the plot, so I’ll side with the transcript on this one.

Meanwhile, the Doctor quietly tells Ben and Polly that they must play for time. Then he tells Cherub about Longfoot’s puzzle, giving him the three names. Cherub says that he recognizes the names, as they were all crewmates on Avery’s ship. But he also mentions a fourth name, Tim Desmond.

I have some major problems with the way this plot point has evolved. First, as I’ve already complained about, the epitaph on the gravestone outside about someone dying from too much small beer is purely a coincidence. If it hadn’t been there, there would have been nothing to lead the Doctor to suggest they look at gravestones. This is incredibly contrived, and it didn’t have to be that way—there are any number of perfectly logical plot devices that could have gotten the Doctor to associate his list of names with the graves.

Second, when the Doctor said in Part 3 that he wished there had been a fourth name, it was speculation based on absolutely nothing. I get that the writers are trying to portray a Doctor that is one step ahead of every other character, but it falls really flat when there is nothing in the actual plot to support his assumptions. An example of this done well is The Savages, where the Doctor used what the audience already knew about the energy transference technology to make connections that eventually culminated in a satisfying climax. But what we have here is more like The War Machines, where the Doctor walked right up to one of the machines just before it switched itself off, operating off of knowledge that he shouldn’t have had access to. The Smugglers does the same—the fact that he even mentions the possibility of a fourth name before this exchange is nonsensical.

And third, the fact that Longfoot never gave the Doctor all four names to begin with only serves to further cheapen an already undermined plot device. Giving just three names means that the Doctor could never have made the connection on his own, not without talking directly to whomever was responsible for the churchwarden’s murder. Only a very narrow set of circumstances could have given the Doctor the information he needs to actually act on Longfoot’s secret, which makes for yet another shallow plot contrivance.

Down on the beach, Pike and his men have landed. Pike tells one of the men to go look for Cherub and leads the rest up the hill.

Up in the churchyard, Pike creeps onto the grounds and, finding them deserted, uses a birdcall to signal back to the rest of the crew. Once they join him, he slides the lid off of the sarcophagus containing the smuggled goods and says, “Gaptooth, there’s your loot.” Gaptooth, an elderly pirate and seemingly the man that Pike has put in charge of the others, is ordered by Pike to remove the goods and take them down to the beach, where he is to await further instruction. Gaptooth says that it will be dry work, to which Pike says, “Broach a cask, then…when it be finished.” The pirates complain about not being able to drink until the work is done, but they get started. Pike enters the church, wondering aloud where Cherub has gone.

Elsewhere, Blake, still on horseback, trots down the road back toward the village, now at the head of a line of mounted militiamen.

Inside the crypt, Pike stealthily creeps down the stairs, watching as Cherub continues to threaten the Doctor, the second-in-command still holding Polly at gunpoint. Pike then announces himself, causing Cherub to have to think quickly—Cherub insists that he had suspected trickery from the Doctor and that he was not deserting the crew. Pike doesn’t believe him, and Cherub drops all pretense, shoving Polly away and turning his gun on Pike; Pike knocks it to the ground. The two then draw swords and begin to fight. The Doctor and his companions look on, with Polly saying, “Doctor, it’s just like the squire said! Avery’s curse.”

Back in the churchyard, the remaining pirates are all very drunk, having broached a keg of rum before doing any of the work, passing it around. Gaptooth manages to get two of the inebriated crewmen to start carrying the smuggled goods down to the shore, while the rest of them continue to drink deeply from the keg.

Meanwhile, Pike and Cherub are still dueling in the crypt. It doesn’t come across in the reconstruction, but the transcript says that Pike clearly has the upper hand. Seeing this as an opportunity to escape, Ben suggests he, the Doctor, and Polly all flee down the tunnel. The Doctor agrees that it’s a good idea, but he maintains that he must see things through to the end, still saying that it’s his duty to play for time until Blake can arrive with reinforcements. Ben and Polly leave him behind and enter the tunnel, with Ben saying that if the Doctor hasn’t followed in fifteen minutes, he will come back for him.

On the other side of the room, Pike finally gets the better of Cherub, knocking his sword to the ground, dodging a thrown knife, and skewering Cherub through the middle. Then he turns to the Doctor. After a passing comment wondering about where the Doctor’s lads have gone, Pike once again asks for the secret of Avery’s gold. The squire, still alive, tells the Doctor not to say anything. The Doctor says that he has always had every intention of telling Pike the secret, reaffirming what he told Pike back in Part 2, but he adds, “I want to change the terms of my plan. That is, if I may.”

Down on the beach, the two pirates that Gaptooth had sent back down the cliff with goods have discovered a cave. Inside, they find the TARDIS. Intrigued, they venture further and spot the smuggler’s tunnel.

Back in the crypt, we learn that the Doctor’s terms are that Pike can have all of the gold if he spares the village and its people. Pike initially dismisses this, saying that once his men have gotten “the fever” in their bones, nothing will stop them short of bloodshed. The squire scoffs at Pike, saying that he must be a poor captain who cannot control his crew. This rankles Pike, who agrees to the Doctor’s terms just to show them that he has a disciplined crew, which is a very satisfying piece of manipulation, building on the groundwork laid in the Doctor’s interactions with Pike in Part 2.

Up on the bluffs, Blake and the militiamen have finally arrived in sight of the church. Dividing the men into two groups, Blake leads them onward.

In the smuggler’s tunnel, Ben and Polly are inching their way downward when Polly suddenly stumbles, coming up with a limp. Ben asks if she’ll be okay, and she tells him that she’s well enough to continue on toward the TARDIS, adding that he should go back and get the Doctor. Ben agrees, and turns back up the tunnel. After a few steps, he turns back. “Polly?”

She stops. “Yes?”

“Put the kettle on.”

Polly sighs and turns her back to Ben. I love these two so much. I really hope the writers don’t let me down like they did with Steven.

Up on the clifftop, Blake sends one half of the militia off to the beach and leads the rest toward the church.

Inside the crypt, the Doctor finally reveals the secret to Pike, giving him the four names and pointing out where they are located on the surrounding engravings. Then he moves to the spot on the floor where the names intersect, and Pike finds a loose flagstone there. Pike pulls it aside, revealing a dark opening. After rooting around through the darkness, he comes up with a string of pearls wrapped around his pike-hand, gloating to the Doctor and the squire, scoffing at the notion of Avery’s gold being cursed. Suddenly, the sound of fighting and gunshots can be heard, and Pike’s attention is drawn to the entrance of the crypt. “It that is a trap, sawbones,” he growls, “I swear you’ll lie beneath that slab yourself!”

Outside, the militiamen rout the pirates, forcing the few survivors to flee into the church.

Down on the beach, Polly emerges from the cave. There, she is ambushed by the two pirates from earlier. She shakes them off and limps back toward the cave and the TARDIS within, but before she can get more than a few paces into the cave, she is thrown to the ground. “Ben!” she screams.

At this point, it’s been almost three minutes since we saw Ben and Polly separate, and the idea of him still being in a position to hear Polly cry out breaks my suspension of disbelief a bit. Regardless, Ben does hear. Creeping back toward the TARDIS, he creeps up behind the second of the two pirates and knocks him out. Then he reaches Polly to find her scratching and biting at the pirate above her. Ben launches himself at the pirate, knocking him far enough away for Polly to scramble to her feet. Then the pirate turns toward Ben, his knife drawn.

On the beach, Blake and the militiamen spot the TARDIS and head inside the cave. There, they find the pirate standing above Ben, ready to stab him with the knife. There’s a gunshot, and the pirate falls over, dead, killed by Blake’s pistol. Ben tells Polly to wait for him and the Doctor at the TARDIS, then continues on with Blake and the men up the tunnel toward the church.

Inside the crypt, Pike’s men are quickly being overwhelmed by the militia. Pike shouts words of encouragement from where he gathers what he can of Avery’s gold, yelling that there is treasure for them all if they can just make it back to the Black Albatross. But it’s clear that the battle is lost, and a cornered Pike lashes out at the Doctor, whom he sees as the cause of his demise. The Doctor, who has gone over to the squire to try and tend his wounds, turns to see Pike drawing near, brandishing his blade. At the last second, the squire pulls the Doctor aside; Pike’s pike-hand whistles through the air where they just were.

A gunshot echoes through the crypt, and Pike falls to the floor. The two men turn to see Blake lowering his pistol just inside the entrance to the smuggler’s tunnel. The tax collector quickly crosses the room toward the dying pirate. As Blake and the squire watch Pike die, the Doctor quietly slips into the tunnel unnoticed, making his way back down through the passage with Ben. Blake thanks the squire before turning and regarding the rest of the chamber, saying, “But where’s the old man? I would offer my gratitude to him.” Realizing that he must have left through the tunnel, he adds, “Godspeed, old man.”

This is the second time that the Doctor and his companions have left the people that they have saved without so much as a goodbye—the first was at the end of the previous serial, The War Machines, with the Doctor disappearing after the evil computer, WOTAN, had been destroyed. I want to quickly run through the changes that we’ve seen in the Doctor’s characterization over the last few serials, because I think this quick exit is another one: 1) In The Savages and The War Machines, the Doctor demonstrated an inhuman intelligence and capacity to manipulate the events around him. 2) In both serials, he has been given inhuman physiological traits as well, with the ability for his consciousness to overwhelm Jano’s in The Savages and the tingling of his fingers at the beginning of The War Machine. 3) Earlier in this serial, the Doctor expresses a much more clearly defined moral underpinning to his decisions than he ever has to this point in the series. And now 4) the Doctor leaves in his TARDIS without the expectation of gratitude, a clear departure from a typical Early Era serial resolution.

To me, these changes in characterization seem like a rushed yet comprehensive setup for the Doctor’s first regeneration, an event which will occur in the finale of the next serial. More than that, I see all of these traits as a new benchmark for the Doctor’s characterization. When I said that Season 3 was a period of transition in the series, this is the culmination of that transition: a Doctor which much more closely conforms with a modern expectation of how the Doctor should act. He’s not finished by any means, but like I’ve said many times before, we have reached a new stage of the Doctor’s evolution, and I can’t wait to unpack where he goes from here.

Additionally, since the start of this retrospective, I’ve made a point to keep track of a few recurring events that happen throughout the series. So far, that list includes times when the TARDIS is rendered inaccessible (which I call TARDISOut-of-Commission™), when the Doctor has some sort of relationship or love interest (TheDoctor’sLoveInterest™), when a major plot point is triggered by the Doctor or a companion wandering off (SomeoneWandersOff™), and when there is an allusion to rape (RapeyScene™). I’d like to add these unheralded exits to the list, which gives me two new entries:

QuickExit™ #1: The Doctor leaves after defeating WOTAN in The War Machines.

QuickExit™ #2: The Doctor leaves after defeating Captain Pike in The Smugglers.

And in the interest of consistency, I did look back in my notes, and I realized that I did consider the TARDIS being swallowed up by the tide as something that put it out of commission when it happened in The Time Meddler. As such, it happening in The Smugglers gives us TARDISOut-of-Commission™ #9.

Continuing on, the Doctor and Ben regroup with Polly outside the TARDIS, and the Doctor unlocks the doors to let them all inside. He and Ben quickly catch Polly up on the goings-on, to which Polly says, “So they’re all dead, then, the ones who wanted the treasure.”

“Yes,” says the Doctor. “Superstition is a strange thing, my dear, but sometimes it tells the truth.” I want to point out that not everyone who wanted the treasure is dead. The squire still lives, though the serial did try to paint him as a man who had a change of heart when he was negotiating with Pike to save the village. I suppose that’s a good moral for the viewer to walk away with—the squire gets to live in the end, though not unscathed; the bullet wound is his penance for his villainy. I don’t think the serial does enough to communicate this dynamic, though, as I didn’t pick up on it until my second watch-through.

Anyway, the Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS, and Ben and Polly wonder where they will end up next. The ship lands, and Polly suddenly clutches at her shoulders, saying that it’s freezing cold in the TARDIS. “Just look up at the scanner,” the Doctor says seriously. “We have arrived at the coldest place in the world!” Credits roll.

One final note: this runs completely counter to how the TARDIS functions in most of the rest of the series. The temperature outside the ship never effects the interior unless it is something on the magnitude of the heat (or lack thereof) of a star, like in Amy’s Choice, an episode in the 11th Doctor’s run. The coldest place on Earth wouldn’t make a dent inside the TARDIS. It’s one of the quirks that stem from the rules of the universe still taking shape, and something that should be disregarded in order for the overall canon of the series to make sense.

Takeaways

At its core, The Smugglers tells a decent story: a murder mystery where the Doctor and his companions get framed for the killing of Joseph Longfoot. Throw in two factions feuding over a dead pirate’s gold, a corrupt politician, and a climactic fight in an old crypt, and you have all the makings of a compelling narrative. The antagonists are rather charismatic, with the conniving Captain Pike wrangling his own crew as much as he does the local smugglers. Ben and Polly are a delight in their first real serial as official companions, with frequent banter that reminds me of both Steven and Vicki’s brother/sister dynamic from The Time Meddler and Barbara and Jenny’s pessimist/optimist dynamic from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. And the Doctor continues to demonstrate character growth as we near his fast-approaching first regeneration, with the writers establishing that his heroic actions are grounded in a personal morality and sense of conviction.

The problems with this serial mostly stem from the details: specifically, there are too much of them. Too many plot devices and pieces of exposition and character interactions. The sheer density of the narrative keeps it from ever picking up any significant momentum, leaving us with a ponderous pacing and plenty of opportunities for the audience to lose focus. There isn’t any room to develop the setting or really explain anything about the village and why we as viewers should care if it is destroyed. On top of that, many of the details feel incredibly derivative of The Time Meddler, from the TARDIS getting swallowed by the tide to the church at the top of the hill to the preindustrial coastal English village and its primitive inhabitants. All in all, much of The Smugglers feels like a worse version of that serial, and if I had to choose between the two, I’m picking the one with the fabulous Monk every time.

And I can’t let this serial go without harping once again on just how egregious it is for an actor’s line flub about the entire crux of the narrative to make the final cut. You can’t have Longfoot say “Smallwood, Ringwood, Gurney” in Part 1 and have the Doctor say “Ringwood, Smallbeer, Gurney” in Part 4 and pretend like they’re the same thing. There were three real-world weeks in between the shooting of these two episodes: fix it! And then there is the air-out-of-the-balloon moment in Part 4 when you realize that no matter what Longfoot said in the beginning, the Doctor could never have figured out the code on his own, and he required a member of Avery’s crew to give him the last piece of the puzzle the whole time. It makes the whole serial feel contrived and small.

Looking forward, I am enthralled by the dynamic between Ben and Polly. It is easily my favorite facet of this serial, and I can’t wait to see how the writers can expand on what we’ve been given over the last two stories. Part of me is very pessimistic about their chances—after all, I said incredibly complimentary things about Steven after his first episode, and I finished his run thinking he was worse than Vicki. But as always, I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised. Additionally, I am absolutely on the edge of my seat to get my first glimpse of the 2nd Doctor in the next serial, The Tenth Planet. I’m so excited to spend the next three seasons with Patrick Troughton and experience even more developments in the Doctor’s character.

Rating: 4.5/10

Chapter Text

4.2 – The Tenth Planet

Thesis: Predicting the Future and Guessing Wrong

All writing done within the genre of science fiction is by its very nature speculative. As such, consumers of the genre are always watching from a position of suspended disbelief, and it is important for a sci-fi narrative to foster a certain amount of credibility for the viewer to latch onto. It’s not the job of science fiction to perfectly predict what society will look like in, say, the year 2126, but it’s imperative for such media to present the viewer with an approximation that seems accurate enough not to cause cognitive friction. Often, this is accomplished through giving the audience some insight into how the technology of the universe is meant to function, and I will almost always contend that the more that the technological rules are explained, the easier it is for the audience to buy into the story’s framing.

Generally speaking, the further into the future that a narrative is set, the more liberties a writer has when creating the technology of their science fiction. The reasoning behind this is very intuitive—the more distance there is between a story and the audience’s frame of reference, the less that story needs to draw from that frame of reference to make sense. That’s not to say that the story won’t still be grounded in things that viewers can connect with, those universal human concepts like love, exploitation, and greed. In fact, I find science fiction to be an incredibly effective way to express commentary on modern society in a way that reaches people who wouldn’t normally be receptive to such a message, using the distance from our frame of reference to provide clarity on some aspect of it.

For the vast majority of science fiction set in the future, this dynamic holds true. However, things get complicated when a story is set in the very near future. It’s an amorphous descriptor, but in the Doctor Who universe, I generally view the “very near future” as any year within three decades of the serial’s initial broadcast. The Tenth Planet is one such serial, being initially broadcast in 1966 and set in December of 1986. The pitfalls of writing in the very near future should be obvious: if the story’s representation of society deviates too far from how society actually evolves in the real world, it can result in something that feels very anachronistic in hindsight.

Written during the height of the space race, The Tenth Planet is very much a product of its time, depicting planet-wide space travel capabilities, with a system of stations and bases all around the world dedicated to supporting orbital flight and a globalized military structure to manage it. In many ways, the space travel portrayed in this serial is decades ahead of its time, with rockets being sent into orbit with an ease that is still impossible today, a level of global cooperation that feels like a pipe dream, and commonplace expeditions to the moon that the supporting characters barely consider important enough to mention. Considering the fever pitch of space exploration in the 60s, it makes sense why the writers would assume a level of advancement that far outstripped reality.

But are these anachronisms really mistakes? For me, there are two questions which help me make that determination. First, do the anachronisms seem reasonable in hindsight, or are the differences between media and reality so great that it makes it difficult for me to suspend my disbelief? And second, is the anachronistic world internally consistent, or are there logical leaps that undermine the premise of the narrative?

For the first question, I’ve already brought up how the prevalence of space exploration in the 60s makes the technology of The Tenth Planet seem like a legitimate—if a bit farfetched—assumption. As for the second, the answer to this depends on the worldbuilding given to us throughout the serial. What do the details of its technology actually look like? Without spoiling too much before I get into the actual review, the details are superb. More than any other story to this point in the series, this serial excels at explaining the rules by which its technology operates. It is incredibly grounded in actual science, and while I don’t know enough about rocket science to know if it’s entirely accurate, the approximation presented in the narrative gives me a thorough understanding of what’s going on.

Whether or not you view these anachronisms as mistakes, it’s safe to say that they were unintentional. No writer approaches their craft with the intention of creating dissonance. While this doesn’t mean that these anachronisms can’t be criticized, I tend to give a lot of leeway to the writers, unless what they have written is egregiously out-of-bounds by the standards of the two question I have posed above. In fact, I tend to be much harsher when it comes to scientific inaccuracies that are not speculative in nature, such as the litany of mistakes in Part 1 of The Keys of Marinus, like how there are tidal pools despite there being no tides; or in Galaxy Four, where the crew of a solar powered ship try to fix it by digging for oil. I can tolerate quite a few anachronisms, but when it comes to basic mistakes like these, they significantly undermine the quality of a serial in my mind.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial with a missing episode, with Part 4 lost to time. I’m experiencing this missing episode in the format of a telesnap reconstruction, which is essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1

The serial opens with stock footage of a cylindrical rocket taking off from a launching pad, the camera tracking its ascent for a few moments.

Crossfade to a complex set of controls, with a hand dancing across what must be more than a hundred little round buttons. The camera pans up to a matrix of indicator lights which flash in intricate, nonrepeating patterns, supposedly relaying information to the operator. As the screen fades to black, we get a late title card, with the name of the serial and its writer shown in between manic strings of repeated letters, hinting at the robotic nature of the serial’s antagonists. I didn’t mention it before, but ever since The War Machines, there have been unique delayed title sequences for each serial. We won’t get to see them for about half the upcoming serials—Season 4 is the most ubiquitous stretch of Classic Who for its lost media. But they are a nice touch.

Cut to a man in military garb who stands over a radio, with the camera pulling out to reveal a mission control center, which presumably oversees the rocket. The military man is tall and handsome, with neat brown hair and a gruff American accent. Moderately deep wrinkles place him somewhere in his middle years, and three stars designate a high rank on the shoulders of his brown collared shirt. A voice over the radio hails the mission control center, referred to as “Snowcap,” and orders the man to take over control of the rocket from Geneva.

The military man does take control and hails the rocket, which is called Zeus 4—the voice of a man with an Austrailian accent answers him, and they exchange pleasantries. Then the military man cedes control of the radio over to another man named Barclay, who is perhaps ten years the first man’s junior, wearing a black sweater and black glasses.

As the camera pans across the room, we see a very densely populated set, with around a dozen men sitting at control panels and looking at screens. Lots of equipment makes for tight quarters in and around these workstations, with transmitters, computers, monitors, and all sorts of machines, a collection which gives a wonderful impression that complex work happens here. As for the people, most of them are in military dress like the first man, but a few are like Barclay, with clothes that designate them as civilians—probably scientists.

Cut to the interior of the rocket from the first scene, where two men are strapped into the command module, wearing thin spacesuits without helmets or gloves. Between the men is a series of buttons and levers. A ladder is mounted to the wall behind them, as well as a cluster of pipes and pieces of electronic equipment.

The men are Bluey Shultz and Glyn Williams. Glyn, the captain, is a black man with an American accent, appearing to be in his 40s. Bluey, the second-in-command, is the Australian we heard talking to the military man over the radio; he’s a man of around 50 with a receding hairline. It’s worth noting that this is the second time in two serials that there is a black character who actually has a speaking role, coming on the heels of Jamaica in The Smugglers. But while Jamaica’s characterization was entirely reduced to his country of origin, Glyn is a character with a position of authority and actual depth to his characterization. While this representation is definitely an improvement, it’s also worth mentioning that this has nothing to do with inclusive casting practices and everything to do with a common trope in classic science fiction: the globalization trope. I’ll go more into detail about this trope a little later.

At the prompting of Barclay, the two astronauts relay a series of readings to Snowcap Base, establishing the chain of command for the viewer by having Glyn tell Bluey to dictate the numbers.

Cut to stock footage of a snowy landscape, with a few snowy mountain peaks surrounded by flat tundra. Tense music plays, hinting at the setting’s hostility toward human life.

Then the scene flashes to the inside of a military barracks, where a skinny man with black hair and military garb reads a comic book on his top bunk, singing “La Donna E Mobile” to himself. On the wall next to him are pinups of several women in various stages of undress. Pulling out, the camera reveals two other men occupying the space. One, another American with two stripes of rank on his shoulders, looks through a periscope, saying, “Man, it’s blowing like crazy out there. All I can see is snow, snow, and more snow.”

Cut back to the exterior, where the top of the periscope sticks out of a snowbank, slowly rotating. A fierce wind is blowing snow sideways, limiting visibility to only a few feet beyond the periscope—this is a clever way of hiding the boundaries of the studio set. After a few seconds, the TARDIS materializes near the periscope.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly are donning heavy winter coats, getting ready to venture out into the cold. Polly compliments the Doctor on his “fantastic wardrobe,” which elicits a snarky comment from Ben. Once they are all bundled up, the Doctor opens the doors and they head outside.

Out in the storm, the companions find the periscope and a large aerial poking out of the snow, and Polly suggests that there must be a submarine or something hidden beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, the American man spies the trio on the periscope and calls over to the skinny man still singing on his bunk. The skinny man, who has a thick Italian accent and is identified as Tito, thinks the American is joking until he mentions that one of the people is a woman. There’s a very funny bit where Tito does a doubletake before slamming his is comic book down and leaping down from the bunk, saying, “A woman?!” Five men crowd around the periscope as Tito peers through and exclaims, “Mama mia. Bellissima!” The American takes the scope back from Tito and sees the TARDIS through the billowing snow, referring to it as some sort of hut. He orders the others to bring the strangers inside.

Up on the surface, a trap door opens, and men with guns emerge, quickly surrounding the protagonists. Seeing no alternative, the three allow themselves to be escorted through the door.

The American, whom the other soldiers soon refer to as a sergeant, is very suspicious of the three, asking where they have come from. When Polly says that they landed just outside in a spaceship, the sergeant doesn’t believe a word of it. The Doctor asks where they are, and the sergeant says, “You’re at the South Pole base of International Space Command, and frankly, pops—”

“Doctor,” the Doctor cuts in, a touch ornery at the brusque treatment.

“—Doctor, your story’s gonna have to be awful good.” The sergeant tells Tito to call for the CO. This gives us an interesting moment where the Doctor whispers to Ben, asking what a CO is, and Ben explaining that it means Commanding Officer. I love when the companions are able to demonstrate expertise that the Doctor doesn’t have; it really adds to the Doctor/companion relationship when the Doctor isn’t always the one dominating every interaction. It hasn’t happened often, and when it did, it was usually Barbara using her knowledge of history to help them in historical settings, with two notable examples being in The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror. Though we did also see some of this with Vicki’s knowledge of computers in The Space Museum and Susan’s prior experience with thought transference in The Sensorites. Throughout this serial, Ben’s military experience allows this companion to shine in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time.

Tito phones mission control, only to discover that the CO isn’t there. Just as he asks where he has gone, a door opens behind him, and in steps the CO, General Cutler, the first American man who we saw speaking into the radio. As soon as he enters the room, it’s clear that the other soldiers tread lightly around General Cutler, who we can assume is probably a bit of a hardass. When Cutler asks what’s going on, the sergeant’s answer is trepidatious: “Well sir, [these people,] they just appeared outside…They just appeared. From a hut.”

By this point, the protagonists have arrayed themselves in a line, along which Cutler walks, eyeing them all critically. The Doctor and Polly are simply waiting to hear what the man has to say, while Ben has fallen reflexively into a military posture. When Cutler asks him to identify himself, Ben replies mechanically, “Able seaman Ben Jackson, sir! Royal Navy.” Then Cutler asks why he isn’t with his ship, and Ben’s rigid composure breaks slightly: “That’s a bit difficult to explain, sir.”

The Doctor interrupts, assuring the general that they don’t mean him or the base any harm. Cutler scoffs at the Doctor’s remarks, saying that he doesn’t see the Doctor as a credible character. When the Doctor says that he doesn’t like Cutler’s tone, Cutler retorts with, “And I don’t like your face, nor your hair.” The Doctor is taken aback. Cutler continues, “Sergeant, bring them into Tracking and put them under guard in the Observation Room. I’ll deal with them as soon as I have time.”

In the next scene, we learn that mission control is what Cutler was referring to when he said Tracking and the Observation Room. These are two sections of the same room, which is a bit confusing, something that only came across on my second watch when they are listed as separate settings in the transcript. The scene starts with Cutler entering and descending a flight of stairs, followed by the sergeant, Tito, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly. Cutler and Tito stay in the Observation Room, which comprises most of the large space, while the sergeant and the protagonists cross to the Tracking Room, a small quadrant of the space that is separated from the main room by a large, glassless viewport.

Polly and Ben both admire the base, noting that it’s just like what they’ve seen on television, though there are notably fewer personnel. The sergeant says, “This is General Cutler’s outfit…He don’t like a lot of personnel. Cuts down to the bare minimum and works them right into the ground. We only spend a couple of months on this station, anyway. We can’t stand more than that.”

When Polly suggests that they might be able to catch a ride back to England, the Doctor says that they’re not exactly where they think they are, pointing to a calendar on the wall that says December 1986. The companions are a bit dismayed, but less so than when they discovered that they were in the 17th century in the previous serial. The new companions are starting to accept unplanned the nature of their journeys through time and space.

Then Ben wonders aloud whether people have landed on the moon yet, which makes the sergeant look at them funny. The sergeant says that an expedition has just returned from the moon, his tone suggesting that this is one of a long line of lunar flights. When asked what this most recent launch is for, the sergeant tells the protagonists that it’s a routing atmosphere testing probe.

Suddenly, there is a commotion from the Observation Room, and the scene cuts to Barclay speaking rapidly into the radio. Glyn, the lead astronaut on the rocket, can be heard through the speaker, saying that their altitude is 1100 miles, more than a hundred miles out of position from their target of 980. Barclay says that that’s impossible, asking the astronauts to double-check their position against the position of Mars.

Cut to the rocket, where Glyn orders Bluey, the Australian astronaut, to carry out the visual check. At first, when Bluey looks into the scope, he records Mars as being significantly off from where it should be. Hearing this, Barclay says that Snowcap Base will do their own check on Mars’s location. Then, Bluey says in an aside to Glyn, “It wasn’t Mars I had.” Glyn laughs, telling him that it would explain the wrong positioning, ordering him to try again. “No, listen, Glyn,” Bluey says seriously. “There’s something else out there…There’s another planet out there!” Glyn looks through the scope himself and tells Bluey that he’s right—the two are way too nonchalant about this discovery for my liking. Glyn tries to radio back to Snowcap Base, but Barclay says that the base can barely hear him. When Glyn looks at his gauges, his face goes grim, and he announces a power loss.

Meanwhile, in the Tracking Room, the Doctor has written something down on a piece of paper, and he demands that the sergeant brings him to see Cutler. After some slight pushback, the sergeant relents, leading the Doctor into the Observation Room where the general and Barclay are looking intently at a monitor. The Doctor tries to tell Cutler that he knows exactly what they will see before they see it—again, an attempt by the writers to demonstrate his superhuman knowledge of events, like we have seen in The Savages, The War Machines, and The Smugglers, yet another attempt to entrench this characterization before the Doctor’s regeneration.

General Cutler blows the Doctor off, and Barclay takes the Doctor’s piece of paper and, without looking at it, puts it in a pocket. Dyson, a scientist like Barclay in civilian clothes, tells Cutler that the object on screen is definitely a new planet, and that “it’s approaching quite fast.” Barclay concludes that the gravity of this new planet must be what has pulled the Zeus 4 rocket out of its regular orbit, adding that they must get them down as soon as possible. When Barclay contacts the rocket again, Glyn tells them that they are registering a power loss of 20%, and Barclay notes that the radio signal from the rocket is quite faint, coming in at just “strength two.”

Cut to the rocket, where we hear Barclay’s voice relaying a set of flight adjustments to the two-man crew. Glyn and Bluey are worried, but they remain largely in control of their emotions, which probably befits the temperament of astronauts—though I still contend they should have had a much bigger reaction to a new planet suddenly appearing in the solar system. Glyn gives the order, and Bluey pulls on a lever to make the flight adjustments. But rather than point the nose of the ship down, the adjustment causes them to tumble, spinning out of control. Glyn shouts for Bluey to use the manual controls, but Bluey, his face drenched in sweat, doesn’t have the strength to pull the lever. Glyn puts his hand next to Bluey’s, and together, they just barely manage to shift the lever. “What the heck’s going on?” demands Glyn. “I feel absolutely clamped down.”

“It’s like something’s sucked out all the power out of my body,” Bluey says weakly.

Cut back to Snowcap Base, where we hear Bluey relay the news of their sudden exhaustion to Barclay. Barclay suggests that it might be “space exhaustion,” which is conceptually really funny to me. Is there something in space which causes this, or is it just being tired in space? Regardless, Bluey says that the feeling is something else, and Barclay tells him that they have calculated their descent path.

Back on the ship, the two astronauts are fighting extreme exhaustion as they make the necessary checks before landing. Suddenly, Glyn notes that they’ve lost the flight path again, which makes the calculations from the base obsolete.

On the base, Barclay says again that the new planet is what must be pulling Zeus 4 further out to space. He tells Dyson to calculate a new correction path, then goes over to the Observation Room, where Cutler points to a screen and says that they can see this mysterious new planet much clearer. When Barclay looks at the monitor, we see a spinning planet, with landmasses that are mirror images of the continents of Earth, only flipped 180 degrees upside-down. It takes a moment for everyone to register the similarity, and once they do, the Doctor tells Barclay to look at the piece of paper that he gave the scientist earlier. Taking the paper out of his pocket, Barclay turns a baffled look toward the Doctor, saying, “You knew!”

Cutler thinks that it’s some sort of trick, but Barclay insists on hearing more. The Doctor starts to explain: “You see, millions of years ago, there was a twin planet to Earth, and—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Cutler interrupts, storming into the Tracking Room. For the rest of the serial, ignore the scientific absurdity of two planets with identical landmasses. It’s one of those quirks of classic science fiction that you just have to roll with. Barclay follows Cutler, suggesting that they hear more of what the Doctor has to say, but Cutler tells Dyson to get Geneva on the line, saying, “We’ll see what Wigner has to say about this.”

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly discuss the situation in a corner of the observation room. “I know what this planet is and what it means to Earth,” the Doctor says gravely. “[It means] that pretty soon, we shall be having visitors.”

Next, we see Cutler speaking into a telephone: “Put me through to the General Secretary, immediately.” The Doctor asks who that is, and the sergeant identifies him as the Secretary General of International Space Command, Mister Wigner.

The scene cuts to an impressive office in Geneva, Switzerland, home of International Space Command. A man sits behind a stout wooden desk with a map of the globe painted on the wall behind him, with a woman with blonde hair waiting impatiently at his side, holding a stack of files. Two men speak in a corner of the room, locked in serious conversation, also carrying folders and glancing at papers. One of these men is dressed in military garb, presumably European. Another wears stereotypically traditional African garb, meant to signify the internationalized nature of the organization—again, this is in line with the globalization trope, which I will get into later.

The man behind the desk, Secretary General Wigner, speaks with a German accent into a telephone. He looks to be in his late-40s, with a round face and very short brown hair. After receiving a report from Cutler, Wigner pulls the receiver away from his face and orders the two men off to do tasks that will allow them to get an exact fix on the new planet. Before Cutler ends the call, he tells Wigner about the three strangers who have appeared at the base, one of which who knows a lot about this mysterious new planet. Cutler says that he will report back to Wigner once he has more information about them.

Back in the Observation Room, Cutler speaks with the Doctor and his companions, increasingly suspicious of the trio. The Doctor says that explaining how they came to be at the South Pole will be very difficult, and Cutler tells them that appearing just before the apparition of this new planet makes them prime suspects in his eyes. Speaking into an intercom, he orders the sergeant to take men outside and break into “the hut.”

In the barracks, the sergeant tells Tito that they have to go up onto the surface and search the blue box. Neither man is happy about it, but they start to get dressed.

Next, we get another great miniature of the South Pole exterior, with the TARDIS in the foreground and several mountain peaks behind. The scale is a bit wonky—the TARDIS seems way too big compared to those mountains—but I love how atmospheric the set is, with a thin layer of mist to simulate the blowing snow. With a high-pitched whirring, a round spaceship slowly descends onto the permafrost, a craft that looks something like a squat teapot with a flat, circular top. It touches down and stops emitting noise; these must be the visitors the Doctor was warning his companions about.

Back to the life-sized South Pole exterior, where the sergeant and Tito emerge from the trapdoor and cross to the TARDIS. The sergeant fiddles with the lock for a few seconds before shouting to Tito that they need a welder’s torch, ordering him to go back inside and fetch one, as well as another soldier to help them operate it. Tito heads back into the trapdoor.

Next, we see three silvery figures marching silently across the polar landscape. They are hard to make out through the blowing snow, but they look something like medieval knights in shining armor. At the door to the TARDIS, the sergeant turns to see these figures approaching. At first, he thinks it might be Tito and some reinforcements, but as the figures come closer, they resolve into metal men with handle-like protrusions rising from the sides of their heads and large, headlight-like instruments holstered at their waists.

The sergeant pulls out his pistol and fires several shots at the metal men, but to no avail; they continue inexorably on. They get all the way to the sergeant, where we get our closest look at them yet, albeit not a great vantage through the blowing snow. We can see their faces a bit better, though, a stark white mask with holes for eyes and mouth. One of the metal men strikes the sergeant on the back of the neck, and the human falls to the ground.

Back in the living quarters, Tito has found the torch and another man to help, and they exit through the trapdoor. When they arrive at the doors to the TARDIS, they find a figure facing away from them, wearing a black coat. It turns, revealing that one of the metal men had donned the coat as a disguise; the two others emerge from behind the TARDIS. After they strike down Tito and the other soldier, the camera pushes in close on these metal men, revealing a very intricate costume, with exposed human hands, tubes that feed into an array of metal equipment at their chests, and featureless white fabric pulled tightly around their faces and heads. From two metal-rimmed holes cut into the fabric, a pair of lifeless, human eyes stares. Credits roll.

I don’t think these creatures are quite good enough to dethrone the Daleks as my favorite creature design of the series, but these costumes are a really close second. As the first iteration of the Cybermen, they are clearly unpolished, but already, they exude an almost-human quality that makes them so unnerving to look at. And the actual human eyes are an aspect of the costume that I wish was preserved in the later versions—it’s so damn creepy! Like with so much about this retrospective, I can’t wait to see how the Cybermen evolve over time, becoming a threat to the universe almost on the scale of the Dalek Empire.

Part 2

Meanwhile, General Cutler is laughing at the Doctor inside the Observation Room. The Doctor has a smug look on his face. “I can only repeat, sir, what I have already told you,” he says. “You will get visitors from that other planet.” Cutler walks off, not believing him.

In the Tracking Room, Cutler asks about the positioning of Zeus 4, and Barclay tells him that the rocket has now reached an altitude of 1250 miles, almost 25% higher than expected. Cutler radios the rocket, saying, “We’re going to get you down here, sure as God made little green apples,” which I find endearing for a character as hardnosed as Cutler.

Back outside, the three metal men stand over the bodies of the three humans, which are quickly being covered in snow. The figures pull on the coats of the three humans as a disguise, but it looks very silly, leaving their metallic arms and legs fully exposed.

Meanwhile, in Geneva, Secretary General Wigner watches a television set as a newscaster reports on the appearance of the new planet, which has been confirmed by multiple observatories around the world. “Some observers have reported that its landmasses resemble those of Earth,” the pundit says, “but this is being hotly disputed in top astronomical circles, and no general agreement has yet been reached. Jodrell Bank, England, says the planet is approaching Earth, but there is absolutely no cause for alarm. It won’t come near enough to collide, so I repeat, there is no danger.”

Wigner switches off the television set, turning to the blonde woman and saying, “Let’s hope they’re right.” Then the woman tells him that they are unable to contact Snowcap Base, saying that there’s some sort of interference—which I take to mean that the metal men have blocked the signal. Sidenote, it feels odd to be calling them “metal men” at this point in the serial, but I try not to name things in the context of a plot summary until they’ve been named within the narrative. I only referred to these enemies as Cybermen because they are so ubiquitous.

Anyway, back at the South Pole, Barclay speaks into the intercom, telling all staff that they are about to calculate the final descent path for Zeus 4, and that everyone needs to work together if they are to be successful. The Doctor, certain that Zeus 4 will not survive another orbit, tries to tell Cutler to listen to him. Cutler won’t hear any of what he sees as the Doctor’s nonsense, and he turns and barks a command at the sergeant in his winter coat. Only it isn’t the sergeant; the hood of the coat is lowered to reveal a metal man, with two others revealing themselves behind it.

Pandemonium breaks out. Men jump up from their workstations, some fleeing, some inching toward the metal men. One rushes at them with a raised gun. The metal man detaches the large headlight-like device from its waist and flashes a light at the soldier. Smoke comes from the soldier’s body, and he falls to the ground, dead. At the sight of this, all of the humans freeze.

Cutler tries to retain control of the situation, ordering his men back to their stations. Then he speaks sternly to the metal men, saying that he has two men in space who need their help to return safely. The cyberman opens its mouth hole, but when it speaks, its lips do not move; it’s more like there is a speaker which plays the sound of speech through that hole. “They will not return.” The metal man’s speech is stilted and strangely musical, placing emphases on the wrong syllables. There’s a metallic undertone to the speech as well, sounding almost like someone speaking into a metal pipe.

The metal man continues to talk, saying that there is no point in trying to save Zeus 4, insisting that it is a foregone conclusion that they will die. Polly shouts at them, saying that the metal men should care about the loss of life, but a metal man says, “I do not understand you. There are people dying all over your world, yet you do not care about them.” Then the conversation shifts. “You will be wondering what has happened. Your astronomers must have just discovered a new planet, is that so?…That is where we come from. It is called Mondas…Eons ago, the [Earth and Mondas] were twins. Then we drifted away from you on a journey to the edge of space. Now we have returned…We are called Cybermen.”

We get a ton of exposition in this exchange, but for once, I don’t mind how dense these pieces of dialogue are. Coming from the mouths of the Cybermen, I almost feel entranced by the singsong nature of their voices and the misplaced emphasis on the syllables. And in a way, it makes sense for creatures with their origin to explain things in this such a robotic manner. Speaking of their origin, the Cyberman continues, “We were exactly like you once, but our cybernetic scientists realized that our race was getting weak…Our lifespan was getting shorter, so our scientists and doctors devised spare parts for our bodies, until we could be almost completely replaced…Our brains are just like yours, except that certain weaknesses have been removed.” Barclay asks what weaknesses the Cyberman means, and it replies, “You call them emotions, do you not?” Polly says that this is a terrible thing, asking if it would care about someone in pain. “There would be no need,” the Cyberman says flatly. “We do not feel pain.”

Suddenly, General Cutler bends beneath a table and presses a button, rising with a triumphant look on his face. He tells the Cybermen that Europe will know that there’s an emergency now, to which the Cyberman says, “That was really most unfortunate. You should not have done that.”

Meanwhile, in Geneva, Secretary General Wigner is walking slowly around his office of international subordinates as he talks: “Well, it seems to me there is a pattern. Number one, a new planet appears. Number two, the Earth is losing its energy. Number three, as the planet gets nearer, the energy loss gets worse. This, in my mind, connects the two. Exactly how, I don’t know, but a—”

A woman with short brown hair enters the room and interrupts Wigner, telling him that they received an emergency signal from the pole for a few moments before it went off again. Frowning, Wigner tells the woman to contact Snowcap Base on the emergency microlink.

Back at the South Pole, the Cyberman tells Cutler to radio Geneva and tell them that nothing is wrong. Cutler refuses, and a Cyberman presses its hands to Cutler’s head; the general instantly falls unconscious and slumps to the ground, carried to a corner of the room by the Cyberman. When the first Cyberman, whom I will be referring to from now on as the leader of the Cybermen, asks Barclay to contact Geneva, Barclay also refuses. Then the leader turns to Dyson and asks where the communication controls are. Dyson, showing extreme cowardice, instantly points them out to the Cybermen, saying, “For God’s sake, Barclay, do as he asks. Do you want the place destroyed?”

Relenting, Barclay takes control of the radio and gets in contact with Geneva, telling Wigner that the emergency message had been a fault, and that the static on the line is probably caused by something they were doing with the reactor earlier in the day. This seems to satisfy Wigner, who tells Barclay to let him know the moment they discover anything new about the mysterious new planet. Barcley ends the call.

Once again, Barclay begs the Cybermen to allow them to try to land Zeus 4 safely. The leader says that the pull of Mondas is too strong and that they will never be successful, but agrees to let them try, telling his subordinates, “[They] may use their equipment. Any attempt at deceit, however, kill them at once.”

As Barclay and the other humans begin to calculate Zeus 4’s descent once more, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly talk quietly amongst themselves. Ben insists on making a break for the TARDIS, but the Doctor says that they would be killed instantly. Then Ben spies a discarded rifle on the floor and goes to pick it up.

“Stop!” a Cyberman shouts, quite intimidating from where it stands atop the staircase into the room. After a very pregnant pause, the Cyberman calls Ben over. “You do not seem to take us seriously,” it says. Taking the gun from Ben, it bends the weapon into a circle, demonstrating its enormous strength. Then it orders another Cyberman to escort Ben from the room and keep him under guard. “We must be obeyed,” it says to the onlooking humans.

Cut to Ben being unceremoniously thrown into a room by a Cyberman, who slams the door closed. When Ben tries to open it, he finds it locked. Gathering his bearings, Ben realizes that he’s in a projection room.

Back aboard Zeus 4, Glyn and Bluey have received another set of coordinates to adjust their flight path for a landing. On Barclay’s command, Bluey fires the retro thrusters; the two astronauts brace themselves against the backwards acceleration. When Glyn checks their velocity, he is dismayed to find they still have not reached re-entry velocity. Bluey fires the retro thrusters again, only to discover that they have run out of fuel. As Glyn frantically contacts Snowcap Base for more instructions, a resigned Bluey grabs his space helmet and starts to put it on.

Down at the South Pole, Dyson announces that instead of slowing down, Zeus 4 is rapidly gaining speed. “Their course is changing. Now, they’re spinning out. The acceleration is enormous!”

On the rocket, smoke is billowing into the command module. The whole capsule is vibrating. Bluey has his helmet on, and Glyn struggles to pull his onto his head.

Back on Earth, Dyson announces that the rocket is beyond escape velocity and will never be able to re-enter. Suddenly, the monitors on the wall which had been showing images of the astronauts flash white, then go black. Instantly, the mood in the base changes. The men are quiet, everyone somber. Polly, still frantic, asks the Doctor what has happened. “I’m afraid the spaceship exploded, my dear,” he answers sadly.

The leader of the Cybermen says, “Now, perhaps, you can see that your planet is in great and imminent danger. In order to save you, we shall require information to be transmitted to Mondas.” This confuses the Doctor and company, and the Cyberman clarifies, “The energy of Mondas is nearly exhausted, and now we turn to its twin and will gather energy from Earth.” Barclay and the Doctor are outraged, and when Dyson asks how much energy will be drawn, the Cyberman says, “Until it is all gone.”

The men of the base talk over one another trying to get more information from the leader of the Cybermen, who turns to Dyson and asks, “Age, name, and occupation.” The Doctor demands answers from the leader, who tells them that the humans on the base will not die because they will be taken to Mondas. The room explodes into furious arguing as the scene fades to black.

Meanwhile, in the projection room, Ben smacks a screwdriver against a table, saying sarcastically, “Oh, I can just imagine trying to tackle one of them geezers with a screwdriver.” The amount of irony in this statement cannot be measured by modern science.

After ambling around the room for a moment, Ben gets an idea: if he points the projector at the door, it might blind the Cybermen. He does so, cutting the lights in the room and switching on the projector before banging on the door. A few seconds later, a Cyberman enters the room, and like Ben had predicted, it is immediately blinded. Ben rushes at the creature and yanks its headlight-like weapon away, backing toward a corner of the room. The Cyberman makes some pretty pathetic noises—made a bit comical by the vocal modulation—then walks menacingly toward Ben. Just as it looks like the Cyberman might hit Ben over the head, Ben flicks the switch on the weapon, shining its light on the Cyberman. It collapses to the ground. Ben stands over its body, looking shaken, saying, “You gave me no alternative!”

Back in the Observation Room, the leader of the Cybermen still insists that the people of Snowcap Base will come to live with them on Mondas, saying that they will all be stripped of emotion and made into Cybermen. Everyone is aghast at the notion, and the leader seems perplexed by their reaction. “We have freedom from disease, protection against heat and cold, true mastery,” it says. “Would you prefer to die in misery?”

The next part of the scene occurs while the camera follows what’s happening in the far corner of the room. As Polly tries to reason with the leader of the Cybermen, General Cutler slowly wakes and takes stock of his surroundings; none of the Cybermen see him moving. As he is still beginning to stir, Ben sneaks into the room, still holding one of the Cybermen’s weapons. Cutler, who seems to be the only one who notices Ben’s arrival, gestures for the weapon, and Ben passes it to him through a small window.

Seeing his opportunity, Cutler suddenly leaps up from where he had been sleeping, firing the weapon at both Cybermen, who fall to the floor, dead. Immediately, he takes control of the base again, barking for some of his men to take the bodies of the Cybermen away, and for the rest to get back to work. Grabbing a telephone, he has the operator put him through to Geneva.

The scene cuts to Geneva, revealing Wigner on the other end of the line. Cutler tells him about the Cybermen, saying that he and his men were able to defeat them, though he acknowledges the likelihood of more being on their way. Wigner turns to one of the men in his office and tells him to put all military bases around the world on immediate alert.

Then the scene cuts back to the South Pole as Wigner tells Cutler about a one-man mission that had been sent up to help bring Glyn and Bluey down, adding, “This is a dangerous mission. We needed for a brave man, so we asked for volunteers…Your son volunteered.”

A look of horror falls across Cutler’s face. It takes him a moment to respond. “You’ve sent my son to his death. You realize that, I hope.” Wigner gives Cutler the task of bringing his son down safely, wishing him good luck before ending the call.

Cut back to Wigner as he hangs up the phone and says, “We are probably going to fight the first interplanetary war.” Then we get a lot of shots in quick succession: stock footage of massive radio telescopes pointed toward the sky. Some wonderfully tense music plays here. There are no music credits in this serial, which means that it’s just something the BBC had at their disposal at the time—and therefore I don’t give it as much credit as something like the original music we heard in The Aztecs or The Savages. Still, it’s a great backing track, really heightening the sense of impending peril.

At Snowcap Base, the camera pushes in close on Cutler screaming into a telephone. “Major, I want the guard doubled on the main entrance. Use Section One. Yes, and Section Two to the flight exit and tracks. Section Three to the fuel tanks—check them over, and double the guard on them.” We don’t hear the response, but it must have something to do with the men of the base being exhausted, because Cutler shouts, “I don’t care what sort of a rest they’re on! Get them out there, and do it quick!”

Polly leans close to Ben and the Doctor, commenting that Cutler is a ghastly man. Then Cutler approaches the three, telling them that this place will soon be sealed up tight against invasion. When the Doctor says that he has underestimated the Cybermen, Cutler snaps, “Oh, that’s what you reckon it is, old man? Well, you’re entitled to your opinions, so long as you keep them to yourself!” He turns to Ben. “You did well, boy, to kill that soldier.”

Ben looks remorseful. “I had no choice.”

“Oh, don’t apologize!” Cutler yells. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Cutler starts to move off, and Polly says, “He seems to be enjoying this.”

Hearing this, Cutler stops in his tracks. “Look, missy,” he says scornfully, “I’ve got a personal stake in this emergency. That’s my son up in that capsule. And you know what happened to the last one.” Polly apologizes, but before anything else can be said on the subject, one of Cutler’s subordinates shouts for the general, pointing at his monitor, where dozens of lights on a radar screen show a fleet of spaceships approaching Earth. Credits roll.

Part 3

With the threat of the incoming Cybermen, Cutler’s demeanor becomes even more manic. Turning to Dyson, he tells him to establish communications with his son’s rocket, which has the callsign Zeus 5.

Suddenly, the Doctor starts to sway, his eyes closing. He faints into Ben and Polly’s arms. Alarmed, the companions call out to Cutler, who says that he doesn’t have time to deal with the Doctor and orders them to take him to a bunk in the barracks. Ben, Polly, and a soldier carry the Doctor offscreen.

Next, Dyson announces that Zeus 5 has been contacted, and Cutler hails his son. The son’s name is Terry, but this is never mentioned in the serial. Poor naming conventions in Doctor Who are probably the biggest pet peeve I have with the series, and while naming characters has improved significantly since Season 1, it still rankles me whenever it comes up. It’s such an easy fix to assign a name to a character as they are introduced to the narrative. And I usually don’t include the names of characters who the writers didn’t deign to name in their dialogue, but Terry is such an important character that it would be unwieldy to keep referring to him as “general Cutler’s son” all the time.

Cutler greets his son, asking if he has experienced any energy loss like Zeus 4 had. Terry says that there’s significant loss on the Mondas side of his orbit, but not when he’s on the opposite side of Earth, leading him to believe that the Earth shields him from Mondas’s effects. Then Cutler tells Terry that there has been trouble with Zeus 4, saying that they no longer need Zeus 5 to help Glyn and Bluey down. Instead, Cutler says that he will be getting Terry down from orbit as soon as he can.

In the barracks, Ben and Polly have settled the Doctor into one of the lower bunks. “I don’t understand it,” Polly says. “He just seems to be worn out.” Ben says that there is nothing they can do for him right now, and he and Polly return to the Observation Room.

Cutler, still speaking with his son, asks him if he has seen any spaceships, which he says should be some thirty miles beneath him. Terry says no, and Cutler ends the call by telling him to report back if he sees anything. Then Cutler turns to Barclay and Dyson and lays out what he sees as the current situation: “One, my son has been sent on a foolhardy mission, and we’ve got to get him down. Two, another visit from these creatures is almost a certainty. Three, the Earth is being drained of its energy by this so-called planet Mondas, or whatever it is called.” Dyson says that there is nothing they can do about any of them, and Cutler counters, “That’s where you’re wrong…We can destroy Mondas…by using the Z-bomb.”

This idea horrifies the two scientists, who say that the risk of deadly radiation affecting the Earth would be enormous. Barclay says that Cutler can do nothing without getting the authority to use the Z-bomb from Geneva, and Cutler insists that Wigner will give it to him. Then Ben asks him what a Z-bomb is. “It’s a doomsday weapon,” Cutler says, “and rightly primed, it could split that planet in half. There are two or three at strategic positions ‘round the globe. We have one of them and the means of delivering it to Mondas.” Any fans of NuWho should be reminded heavily of the Osterhagen Key from The Stolen Earth, an episode in the 10th Doctor’s run, a device which was designed to trigger a series of 25 nuclear warheads which would destroy the Earth if there was no chance for human survival. This is a comparatively primitive iteration of that idea, but the throughlines are very striking.

Cutler contacts Secretary General Wigner, telling him about the expected Cybermen attack. Wigner says that they have already received reports on the matter, turning to an aide and saying, “Ouvrez les lignes des communications avec toute les gouvernements.”

Now seems as good a time as any to talk about the globalization trope and its prominence in 50s-80s science fiction. All media reflects the time in which it was created, and science fiction is no exception. Taken as a genre, it is perhaps even more representative of the global mood of the day, as it is often a depiction which extrapolates the current trajectory of society out a number of decades, centuries, or even millennia. This is why we can look at a work like George Orwell’s 1984 and see it as a commentary on the fascism Orwell witnessed during World War II and how such fascistic tendencies might exert themselves on the public in the post-war uncertainty of the late-40s.

Whenever I have said that Doctor Who is a product of its time, I have been talking mainly within the context of the sexist and racist elements which are a reflection of the broader society in which it was produced. But this facsimile goes well beyond these cultural dynamics. Once the dust had settled after World War II, there was a concerted effort by many world powers to foster international relationships and lines of communication, especially in the 60s and 70s. Even during the height of the Cold War, there was a massive emphasis on forming multinational treatises and coalitions, a clear departure from the noninterventionism of the 20s and 30s which was viewed as a resounding policy failure.

As a reflection of the period, much of Classic Who—and science fiction of the time more broadly—is grounded in the idea that this trend of globalization would continue until the entire world was essentially one cohesive society. The 1986 depicted in The Tenth Planet hasn’t yet reached this supposed utopian endpoint, but it does represent a marked uptick in globalization from what existed in reality, even for a field as narrow as space exploration. This is why we see a multinational military force in control of the command stations: an Italian soldier and Australian and African American astronauts, among others. It’s why Wigner can put militaries around the world on red alert with a few words to an associate, and why he leans toward an aide to deliver a few quick orders in French. All of it comes back to the politics of the day and the assumption of unending global cooperation.

This reflection of society is something that happens throughout the series, and as the global mood has shifted away from globalism and toward neoliberal isolationism in the 2010s and 2020s, we have gotten Doctor Who stories which reflect this shift. Think of episodes like Kerblam!, an episode during the 13th Doctor’s run that is so steeped in neoliberal values that the Doctor sees fit to compromise human well-being in favor of automation and corporate profits—in my opinion, one of the worst depictions of the Doctor’s morality in the entire series. And while I lay much of the blame at the feet of Chris Chibnall’s complete misunderstanding of the Doctor’s character—and I will have a lot to say about Chibnall when I eventually get to his tenure—the global mood plays an incredibly important role, just like it did for the globalization trope in The Tenth Planet. Like so much else in this retrospective, I look forward to seeing how Doctor Who’s ethos evolves as the society underpinning it changes.

Continuing on, Cutler requests permission from Wigner to fire the Z-bomb at Mondas. Wigner categorically refuses, saying that the risk posed to the Earth by such an action is far too great without first allowing scientists enough time to calculate the fallout. Cutler initially concedes the point, but toward the end of the call, he asks, “But do you give me authority to take any action necessary against the Cyberman?”

“Yes, of course,” Wigner answers. “You must do all you can.”

Cutler thanks Wigner, then hangs up the phone. Immediately turning to his subordinates, he orders the Z-bomb to be prepared for launch, intentionally misunderstanding “any action necessary” as Wigner signing off on the action.

Ben speaks out against this, trying to get Barclay to see that there is another way: “Look, the Doctor said that it’s not only Earth that’s in danger, but that Mondas itself is in far greater danger. Otherwise, why have they bothered coming here?…He said eventually it would absorb too much energy [from the Earth] and burn itself out. Well, shrivel up to nothing. So all we’ve got to do is wait!” I want to point out that at no point did we actually get to hear the Doctor make these proclamations. I get that this is a very dense script, with lots of fast dialogue and quick events that are necessary to move the plot forward. However, the way that Ben relays the Doctor’s ideas secondhand is a terrible way of telling where the writers could be showing instead. If there is room in the script for Ben to relay these words verbatim, then there is definitely room for the Doctor to say them himself.

Barclay continues to expand on the risks involved, saying that there would be a huge blast of radiation on the side of the Earth facing Mondas, and that Mondas “might even turn into a sun, a sort of supernova.” To drive the point home, he says that Zeus 5 would certainly be destroyed. But Cutler is unmoved. He says that they can time the launch so that the Z-bomb would strike Mondas when Terry was on the far side of the Earth. Then he orders for a soldier to take Ben away and keep him under guard in the barracks. On his way out, Ben tells Polly to keep working on Barclay and try to convince him to disobey Cutler’s orders.

Once in the barracks, Ben tries to shake the Doctor awake, but he is still out cold. Then he tries to fiddle with the lock on the door before giving up. Next, he spies a ventilation shaft above the top bunk, wondering aloud where it leads to.

Elsewhere in the base, we find Cutler, Barclay, Dyson, and two other men entering a large room with a raised platform in the exact middle. On this platform is perched a large cylindrical device with a nest of wires coming out of it and a radioactive symbol painted on its casing: the Z-bomb. Banks of controls ring the raised platform, with more controls along the exterior walls. A heavy door of reinforced steel leads from the room; another radioactive symbol is painted on it. All of the men wear protective masks and clothes.

Cutler is in good spirits, sure that the Z-bomb is a panacea for dealing with the Cybermen. Dyson begins to show some doubt, wondering about what will really happen once they explode such a lethal weapon so close to the Earth. Cutler insists that they have no other choice but to try, saying that it’s the only way to save his son. As the scene comes to a close, the men begin to prepare the Z-bomb for launch.

Back in the Observation Room, Polly makes Barclay a coffee, asking for more information on what the worst-case scenario would be for the Z-bomb exploding on Mondas. At first, Barclay is reluctant to speak about his fears, but he eventually tells her that there could be a massive loss of life and vegetation. Polly asks if they could just fight off the Cybermen long enough for Mondas to destroy itself, just like the Doctor said it would, but Barclay says that without his help, Cutler would launch the Z-bomb anyway. Then Polly says, “Can’t we pretend to follow his orders, but in fact, make sure the rocket doesn’t go off?”

Before Barclay can respond, Cutler strides into the room, asking for a status report on the Cybermen. A soldier tells him that the radar shows them rapidly descending, headed straight for Snowcap Base. Cutler says that the soldiers will ambush the Cybermen with their own technology, ordering a section of his troops to don snow camouflage and be issued the headlight-like weapons. With the launch estimated at ten minutes away, Cutler also notes that the Cybermen will come before the rocket is ready. Then Cutler leaves the room to make some more last-minute checks, saying, “We’ll have to hold them off, then proceed as with a normal launching.”

Once Cutler is gone, Polly turns to Barclay and says that this is their chance to find a way to put a stop to the launch. Agreeing with Polly, Barclay follows her offscreen.

Cut to the barracks, where Polly and Barclay rush inside to find Ben and the Doctor, the latter still unconscious. Ben asks if there is anything they can do to stop the rocket, and Barclay says that they can shut it down if they can get inside the rocket silo. Then he remembers that the ventilation shaft in the barracks leads directly there, and Ben says that he thinks he can squeeze through. Barclay draws up a crude diagram on a piece of paper, saying that there is a panel on the rocket labeled “Plug Servo Leads,” and that all Ben needs to do is open the panel, snip a pin off a plug, and put it back.

Suddenly, an alarm sounds; Barclay says that it means the Cybermen are here. Barclay continues his explanation to Ben even more urgently.

Next, we see the miniature of the frozen landscape once again, with another spaceship landing on the otherwise empty tundra. There’s a continuity error here—with the first set of Cybermen all killed, where did the first ship go? Then a large contingent of Cybermen makes their way toward the base, at least eight of them. Laying concealed in the snow, soldiers fire the Cybermen’s own weapons at the invaders, taking them all out.

Cut to Ben crawling through the ventilation shaft, checking Barclay’s notes to make sure he’s going the right way. After a moment, he arrives at a grate overlooking the rocket silo, where a scientist is doing some work. While Ben watches, the door to the room is opened, and another scientist calls the man out of the room, leaving the silo empty—outside, Barclay distracts the scientists by showing them some notes on a clipboard. Meanwhile, Ben begins to unscrew the screws on the grate.

Back at the barracks, a soldier enters to make sure the prisoners are still contained. Polly quickly dives onto the top bunk and covers herself, pretending to be Ben sleeping. Satisfied, the guard goes away.

In the rocket silo, Ben hops down from the grate and crosses the room to where the massive rocket is propped up in its frame. A raised platform takes him to the panel that Barclay told him about.

Outside, the soldiers emerge from their camouflage and walk over to the corpses of the Cybermen to collect their weapons.

Meanwhile, in the Tracking Room, Cutler asks where Barclay has gone. One of the other soldiers suggests that he might be checking on something in the rocket silo.

In the hallway outside the silo, Cutler finds Barclay and demands to know what he is doing with the scientists. Cutler brushes past him and enters the silo, where he finds Ben with his head and arms inside the panel of the rocket. Rushing up behind him, Cutler grabs Ben and yanks him backward; Ben tumbles over the railing of the platform. Barclay enters the room, sheepishly saying that he can explain what was going on. Cutler orders a soldier to take Ben back to the Observation Room, then physically pulls Barclay out of the room, saying that he will deal with him once the situation is over.

Back in the Observation Room, Ben is sitting slumped against a wall, unconscious. Polly is next to him. Cutler warns her that if the rocket fails to launch because of something Ben did, he will take the law into his own hands. He then turns to Barclay and issues the same warning, adding, “You’d just better make a good job of that launch. Okay, start the countdown.” Barclay insists that the final preliminary checks must be made first, and he goes back to his work.

At another station, a soldier finally manages to contact Zeus 5. Cutler rushes over to talk to his son; Terry gives us more of the same: the power loss comes and goes, and he hasn’t seen any sign of spaceships. Cutler once again says that they will get Terry down as soon as they can.

Then Barclay does his final checks over the radio, hearing from the gantry team, fire control, fuel control, search monitors, bomb fuse team, and booster guidance, each in quick succession. Then he announces the countdown, starting at T-minus two minutes. When I said in my thesis that the details of the technology are stellar, this precise scene is what I had in the front of mind, though it isn’t the only one. Everything feels very technical and authentic, lending a lot of credence to the world the writers have constructed.

Ben regains consciousness, and Polly asks him if he had finished sabotaging the rocket. Ben says that he can’t remember.

At about T-minus 1:35, one of the scientists announces a fault on the range computer; Barclay pauses the countdown to see if it can be resolved. Neither Ben nor Polly knows if this has anything to do with Ben’s tinkering. Either way, Cutler gives them a very hard look until one of the scientists announces the all-clear. Barclay resumes the countdown.

At T-minus 1:25, the missile emerges from the ground of the tundra, pointed skyward.

At T-minus 1:05, Barclay orders everyone out of the silo area. The land lines are released.

At T-minus 50 seconds, the firing circuits are switched to auto action.

From T-minus 40 seconds onward, everyone in the room waits silently, all eyes on the monitors. The countdown reaches 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… Credits roll.

Part 4

Before I get into the final episode of this serial, I want to talk a little about what this serial means for the series as a whole: specifically, what does The Tenth Planet mean for the human perception of aliens in the Doctor Who universe? To start off, the accepted canon date for planet-wide first contact isn’t until 2006, when the Sycorax appear to the whole world in The Christmas Invasion, an episode which begins the 10th Doctor’s run. Yet clearly, this shouldn’t make sense according to the events established in the classic series. How can it be that the Cyberman invasion of 1986 doesn’t qualify as first contact?

There are three main factors, all of which culminate in the following answer: because it’s inconvenient. One, The Tenth Planet was produced before the classic showrunners decided that the presence of aliens on Earth should be kept a secret, a decision which basically reestablishes the Earth of Doctor Who as being largely consistent with our reality. Two, almost all of the stories in which there are planet-wide alien incursions are Troughton stories, with many of them being missing or incomplete serials. As such, modern viewers simply do not have access to many of these stories, which really limits the debate on the subject. And three, the worldwide success of the modern series, especially the episodes immediately following the reboot, means that there’s simply a level of familiarity with The Christmas Invasion which gives it a ubiquity in the canon that none of the comparable classic serials can muster.

In my introduction to this retrospective, I mentioned that there would be things that need to be disregarded in Classic Who in order for the series canon to make sense, especially in the Early Era. To this point, these have largely been minor quibbles about the workings of the TARDIS, or one-off pieces of dialogue that would otherwise have major series implications, that sort of thing. The Tenth Planet forces me to do the same on a much larger scale: in order for series canon to be internally consistent, we must disregard the idea that the entire globe was made aware of the Cyberman invasion.

I don’t want to belabor the notion—I could breakdown the serial plot point by plot point and pick apart the things that can stay and the things that must go, but nobody wants to hear that. However, I do want to emphasize that this sort of mental gymnastics regarding the Early Era serials is necessary and good for the series as a whole. Considering that the alternative would be making up increasingly elaborate fan theories as to why the world forgot about the Cybermen, I am perfectly content with declaring that it doesn’t entirely conform to canon and not thinking too hard about it. And lastly, this doesn’t mean that I don’t think the serial can be enjoyed on its own. There is a ton to like about The Tenth Planet, and its nonconformity shouldn’t take anything away from the experience. I’m just saying that you probably shouldn’t take too seriously the implications of what this serial means for the broader show.

One more thing before I move on: this episode is lost, meaning that I am watching it as a reconstruction. Because of the way that it ends, this is far and away my most coveted of the missing episodes, and I dearly wish I could see the footage in its original state. Maybe someday.

At the end of the countdown, Barclay shouts, “Blast off!” But the rocket doesn’t move. Instead, it seems to power itself down, the whir of the thrusters falling silent.

Polly turns to Ben, ecstatic that they all have a chance at life. Hearing this, Cutler turns to her and says, “Your Cyberman friends may have a chance of life, but not you, sailor. Nor that old man. Now go get him up here!” It’s clear that the general now fully believes the three to be some kind of double agents for the Cybermen. Polly tries to say that the Doctor is too ill to leave the barracks, but before she can make her case, the Doctor announces himself as he enters the Observation room, his voice quite unsteady. The Doctor ambles over to Ben and Polly, telling Cutler that his plan to fire the rocket has been foiled.

Cutler snaps at him to get over with his companions, then moves toward the radio to contact his son once more. Polly asks the Doctor what has happened to him, and the Doctor answers, “Oh, I’m not sure, my dear. Comes from an outside influence. Unless this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.” Keep this last sentence in mind; it will soon alter the trajectory of Doctor Who forever.

When the Doctor and his companions follow Cutler, they find him pointing his revolver at Barclay, accusing him of sabotaging the rocket for the Cybermen along with the three protagonists. He demands that Barclay fix the rocket, but Barclay finally stands up to the general, saying, “I can’t fire this rocket, and neither can you.” Outraged, Cutler gestures with his gun toward the Doctor, Ben, and Polly, telling Barclay to join the other traitors.

Next, Cutler hails Zeus 5, and we learn that Terry is in bad shape. His craft has begun to tumble just like Zeus 4, and the energy loss is severe. However, he does note that Mondas has started to act very strangely, brightening like a sun and then darkening again. The Doctor says that the planet cannot absorb much more energy without breaking apart, and Cutler tells him to shut up. But before Cutler can ask his son any more questions, the signal is lost, and the line goes dead.

A soldier announces to Cutler that more Cybermen are landing, but Cutler doesn’t seem to hear him. Angered out of his mind, he turns to the Doctor and his companions. “The enemy!” he shouts. “The enemy! I’ll tell you who the enemy is. You are the enemy!…You killed my son!…The only person I gave a care about in this whole world, and you killed him. So now, I’m going to kill you, and I’ll start on you, Doctor!” Cutler raises his revolver.

Before Cutler can shoot, Cybermen enter the Observation room; one fires its weapon at Cutler, and he dies. The leader of this new troop says, “Silence! Anyone who moves will be killed instantly.” The Doctor thanks the leader for having saved their lives, and Ben mentions that the humans have saved Mondas. When the leader of the Cybermen asks Ben to clarify what he means, Ben tells them that they stopped Cutler from firing a missile which would have destroyed the home of the Cybermen.

The Doctor tells the Cybermen that their planet is finished, suggesting that they could all live on Earth in peace. The leader says that it must confer with the other Cybermen, and as the metal invaders converse with one another, the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Barclay whisper quietly. The Doctor says they cannot trust the Cybermen, saying that they must play for time—similar to the solution suggested by the Doctor in the climax of the previous serial, The Smugglers.

The leader of the Cybermen speaks up once again, telling the Doctor that they cannot discuss peace with the humans while there is still a missile pointed at Mondas. Seeing this as an opportunity to stall while Mondas finishes burning itself out, the Doctor agrees to this condition, saying that the warhead will be removed and placed in the Radiation Room. In order to make sure that there will be no duplicity, the Cybermen say that they will take two hostages: one who will be taken back to their ship and another who will stay in the base under guard. When Polly is the one chosen to go to the ship, Ben objects, insisting that he be taken in her place, but the Doctor convinces him to go with Barclay and Dyson to disarm the rocket. The Doctor is to be the one held hostage in the base. As Polly is led out of the Observation Room, the Doctor says to her, in a very lighthearted tone, “Very well, child. Off you go. And don’t forget your coat. I don’t want you to get cold.” I really like how the Doctor’s demeanor here paints him as someone in control, even in the midst of extreme crisis.

Next, the scene changes to the interior of the Cybermen’s ship. It’s incredibly blurry in the reconstruction; all I can make out is a chair that resembles a high chair, with clamps to lock someone into it. Polly balks at the chair, but a Cyberman presses his hands to her head, knocking her unconscious. Her body is clamped into the chair.

In the Tracking Room, the Doctor sits in a corner, under the guard of several Cybermen. A call comes over the radio from Geneva, and the Cybermen allow the Doctor to answer.

Cut to Geneva, where we see Wigner spluttering into his telephone about landings of Cybermen all over the Earth. Suddenly, several Cybermen stream into his office. “I am now controller of the Earth. Resist us, and you die,” one says, his sing-song voice laughably different from the ones at Snowcap Base. Seriously, if you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing this Cyberman’s rendition, go and take a look at the reconstruction. It completely took me out of the serial for a few seconds.

The newly self-appointed controller of Earth tells the leader of the Cybermen at the South Pole to “proceed with [the] second objective,” adding that the Cybermen must have time to evacuate before the end. This immediately puts the Doctor’s back up, and he demands answers from the Cybermen. When they are not forthcoming, the Doctor snatches the microphone of the intercom, calling out, “Ben! Barclay! Do not help them! They’re going to use the Z-bomb to destroy the Earth!” This is a very big assumption by the Doctor, based on almost no information—the sort of thing that I’ve often found myself criticizing in the Doctor’s characterization as of late, in The War Machines, The Smugglers, and now here. I’m all for the Doctor demonstrating an inhuman ability to reason through things—this was done very well in The Savages—but as the writers have rushed this facet into his characterization in preparation for his first regeneration, more often than not, we’ve been given things that look like leaps of logic.

In the Radiation Room, Ben, Barclay, and Dyson have received the message; the trio are dressed in the same protective gear that we saw in Part 3. Ben and Barclay still have hope, while Dyson thinks that they are dead men no matter what they do. Still, the Cybermen are monitoring their progress, both via a camera and a Cyberman who waits outside in the corridor. Ben has an idea, asking why the incredibly strong and smart Cybermen would need humans to move the bomb for them. This sparks a thought in Barclay, who says, “I think I see what [Ben’s] driving at. They use us because they daren’t handle it themselves…It could be that they’re afraid of radioactivity.”

The three decide to test this theory, with Barclay and Dyson pretending to play dead while Ben bangs on the door for help. After a few seconds, a Cyberman cautiously steps into the Radiation Room, where it is immediately weakened. Ben snatches its weapon and pushes it outside the room, closing the door behind it. Dyson asks why they didn’t try to escape, but Ben and Barclay say that as long as they defend the Radiation Room, the Cybermen can’t set off the bomb. Ben says, “So all we’ve got to do is sit tight and wait until Mondas breaks up, like the Doctor said!” He has a sobering thought. “But they still got the Doctor and Polly.”

Back in the Tracking Room, the Doctor says that they are in a stalemate. The Cybermen remind him that they can to whatever they want with him and Polly, but the Doctor tells them that it won’t help them save their planet. The leader contacts the Radiation Room, telling Ben and the others that if Earth and Mondas continue as they are, Mondas will not survive. Therefore, they must destroy the Earth so that there is nothing left for Mondas to leech energy from. This confuses me a little. I understand the dynamic of Mondas’s imminent destruction, but I was under the impression that the Cybermen had deliberately moved Mondas close to the Earth, triggering this whole series of events. If they didn’t, how did they return from the “edge of space?” And if they did, why don’t they just leave now?

Cut to the Radiation Room, where Ben refuses to help the Cybermen blow up Earth. Seeing no alternative, the leader says that he will take the Doctor into the spaceship along with Polly. “Now, we give you three minutes to start fusing the warhead,” it says. “If you fail, you will never see your friends again.” The screen goes dark, and Ben smashes it, saying that now the Cyberman can’t spy on them. I found this to be a little confusing as well. If the Cybermen could spy on the humans this whole time, why did they not hear when the three were talking about radiation being one of their weaknesses? I’m still having a great time with the serial, but it’s starting to lose its consistency.

On the Cybermen’s ship, the Doctor is locked into a one of the cage-like chairs right next to Polly. As they await their fate, a whirring sound rings through the spaceship, steadily rising in pitch. At first Polly thinks that the sound is from the engines and that they are going to be taken to Mondas, but the Doctor says that the vibrations are coming from Mondas itself. “This spacecraft receives its energy from Mondas,” he says. “Perhaps it’s absorbing too much.”

“Doctor, I’m scared!” Polly cries out.

Meanwhile, Ben and Barclay are scrambling around the Radiation Room, looking for anything radioactive that’s small enough for them to carry so that they can use it as a weapon against the Cybermen. Dyson, proving himself to be a loathsome patsy, says that they are just wasting their time, in firm belief that the Cybermen will spare their lives and take them all to Mondas. This doesn’t deter the other two, who begin to remove the reactor rods from the nuclear reactor, racing against the three-minute timer set by the Cybermen.

In the Tracking Room, the leader of the Cybermen announces that the three minutes are up, switching on the monitor to converse with the Radiation Room, only to find that the screen remains black thanks to Ben’s vandalism.

Back in the Radiation Room, Ben, Barclay, Dyson, and an unnamed scientist carefully open the door and step out into the hall, holding the reactor rods out in front of them. They decide the Ben and Barclay will go back into the Radiation Room, while Dyson and the fourth man hide in the hall and sneak up behind any Cybermen who come to investigate, trapping the Cybermen between two sources of radiation.

A moment later, several Cybermen converge on the door to the Radiation Room armed with a long pipe that sprays a sedative gas. One of the Cybermen presses the nozzle beneath the crack of the door, and gas begins flowing into the room.

Inside, Ben and Barclay instantly show signs of weariness, but they hold out hope that Dyson and the other soldier will come to their rescue. And miraculously, the spineless scientist actually comes through, rushing up behind the Cybermen with the fourth man at his side. Ben and Barclay throw open the door, and the Cybermen collapse between the reactor rods, incapacitated. The trio have no time to celebrate; they collect the Cybermen’s weapons and return the reactor rods to the nuclear reactor. Then Barclay points out a piece of technology that the Cybermen use to communicate with one another, and Ben presses something that causes it to emit a high pitched beeping. Ben, Dyson, and Barclay grab the Cybermen’s weapons and head back toward the Observation Room.

Once there, a Cyberman announces that resistance is useless, and that they must drop their weapons if they want to survive. Suddenly one of the soldiers cries out that something is happening to Mondas, and everyone’s attention turns to a monitor, where they watch as Mondas melts like sugar dissolving in water, fading into nothing. All around them, the Cybermen have begun to do likewise, melting into the ground and fading into smoke.

Out of nowhere, Terry’s face pops back onto another monitor, and he hails Snowcap Base, saying that all of his troubles with energy loss have suddenly gone away. Barclay answers him saying that they are on emergency power, and that they should be able to handle Zeus 5’s reentry as soon as full power has been restored. While Barclay and the others are busy returning the base to normal operations, Ben slips out the back, unnoticed. Then Wigner calls from Geneva, announcing that the Cyberman menace has ended all over the world, asking Barclay to produce a full report. Wigner hangs up the phone, and Barclay sighs. “Did you hear that?” he says, turning to Dyson. “He wants a full report. Where exactly shall we begin, do you think?”

Back in the Cybermen’s spaceship, Ben rushes inside, much to the delight of Polly. Ben helps Polly out of her cage before turning to the Doctor’s, only to realize that he’s unconscious. Polly doesn’t know why he passed out, only noting that it happened right as the lights went out and the Cybermen around them disintegrated.

Ben gets the Doctor’s cage open, shouting, “Hey, come on, Doctor! Wakey, wakey! It’s all over now.”

The Doctor regains consciousness, but he is very weak. “What did you say, my boy? It’s all over. It’s all over. That’s what you said.” He pauses, and a touch of despair creeps into his tone. “No, but it isn’t all over. It’s far from being over.”

“What are you talking about?” Ben asks.

The Doctor suddenly seems to regain some of his strength, urging, “I must get back to the TARDIS immediately!”

“Alright, Doctor,” Polly says consolingly.

“Yes,” the Doctor continues, “I must go now.”

“Aren’t we going back to say goodbye or anything?” Ben asks.

“No. No, I must go at once,” the Doctor insists. I’ve been keeping track of all the times that the Doctor leaves without saying goodbye as part of this retrospective, but given the circumstances, I don’t think this one counts.

“Oh, well, you better have this,” Ben says, passing the Doctor his cloak in what is a touching mirror of what the Doctor had done for Polly before she was taken hostage. “We don’t want you catching your death of cold.”

“Ah, yes,” the Doctor says. “Thank you.” The Doctor’s speech is very labored once again. “It’s good. Keep warm.” The Doctor leaves the ship under his own power.

“What’s happened to him?” Polly asks Ben.

“Dunno,” he answers. “He seems to have lost his sense of humor.” The two companions follow the Doctor out.

When they arrive at the TARDIS, they find the doors closed. They bang on the entrance, shouting for the Doctor. Inside, the Doctor seems to have been drained of all energy, slumped against the main console. Using the last of his strength, he flips the switch to open the doors, then collapses to the floor of the TARDIS.

Ben and Polly rush to the Doctor’s side. “Doctor!” Polly calls. “Quick, help him!”

She goes to reach for the Doctor, but Ben holds her back, saying, “No, leave him.” Perhaps he has sensed that what is happening is beyond their control.

As the TARDIS begins to flash and wheeze, the Doctor’s face suddenly glows bright, a pure white light filling the screen for a long moment. When the light dims, Hartnell’s facial features have been replaced by those of Partick Troughton. The 1st Doctor has regenerated. Credits roll.

Takeaways

What can I say? I’m sitting here, trying to gather my thoughts, still with chills running up my spine at having seen the Doctor’s first regeneration. It’s not the first time I’ve watched it, but I think a hundred more watches would make no difference. This is the event that changes the trajectory of Doctor Who forever, a simple aspect of the Doctor’s physiology that allows for the show’s evergreen premise and enduring legacy. And while I could go on at length about what the Doctor’s ability to regenerate means for the series, I think that’s a topic better off explored in depth in the next serial. For now, I just want to look at The Tenth Planet on its own.

Throughout this retrospective, I’ve been saying that a serial in which a protagonist enters or leaves the show has two responsibilities: 1) it must function as a standalone story, and 2) it must provide a serviceable introduction/departure for that protagonist. As such, I hold these stories to a higher standard than the others. To this point, this has only applied to the introductions and departures of companions; for the Doctor, I will be raising the bar even higher.

I’ll start with the Doctor’s regeneration. Is it the best the series has to offer? Definitely not. But it’s the first, and like so many of the other firsts the series has given us, I don’t expect a ton of polish. The reconstruction makes it incredibly difficult to see Hartnell’s acting, but just from the audio, it seems to me like he’s acting his heart out. Watching the Doctor’s body fail is heartbreaking, and he sounds so pitiful, almost delirious as he leaves Ben and Polly in the Cybermen’s spaceship. And from the little I can see of the visuals in the reconstruction, the reveal of Troughton’s face is very well done.

I do have my issues with the reasoning behind the regeneration. Throughout the serial, it’s stated many times that Mondas is leeching energy from the Earth, and the Doctor hints that his sudden weakness could be due to an “outside influence.” I find this explanation to be very unsatisfying—there’s nothing else on the surface of Earth that’s visibly affected by the energy loss. And yes, there’s a second explanation offered when Doctor suggests that maybe “this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.” But even as a red herring, the energy loss plot device was extremely poorly executed.

As for how the serial functions as a standalone narrative, The Tenth Planet weaves an incredibly tense narrative, and it is my favorite story set in the future to this point in my retrospective. I adore the Cybermen, even though—like the Doctor’s regeneration—they are quite unpolished. Despite some glaring disparities in how some of the Cybermen inflect their voices, I find them to be delightfully creepy, especially when the camera pushes close in on their faces and we get to see those too-human eyes staring out of the metallic eyeholes. The plan of the Cybermen feels like a very legitimate threat, more than what many antagonists have given us since the beginning of Season 3.

The setting is very well thought out, with nothing that feels inauthentic or unnecessary. All of the blinking machinery and monitors in the Observation and Tracking Rooms successfully give the impression of a working mission control center. General Cutler and his motivations are a bit generic, but his acting is good enough that I didn’t mind. I also like how Ben and Polly are continuing to show promise as companions. They don’t have as much time to banter as they did in The Smugglers, but they are allowed to shine in other ways, especially Ben, who is able to think his way out of a bad situation in the Radiation Room.

Moving forward: Troughton!!! I can’t wait to dig into a new Doctor, looking for where his characterization aligns with Hartnell’s Doctor and where it deviates. I’m curious to see how the series treats his regeneration—from what I recall, the Doctor almost plays it off as if nothing has happened, leaving Ben and Polly to deal with it on their own. This dynamic would be very similar to when the 11th Doctor regenerates and 12 bolts off on his own, leaving a baffled Clara in his wake. In the immediate future, I will be taking a slight detour before I begin the next serial, posting an intermission that summarizes my thoughts about the 1st Doctor’s run. And after that, it’s onto the next story, The Power of the Daleks.

Rating: 9.4/10

Chapter Text

Intermission 1 – The First Doctor: A Review

After 3+ seasons, 134 episodes, 29 serials, eight companions, and one regeneration, I want to take a moment to look back on the 1st Doctor’s run now that I have seen it in its entirety. In this chapter, I’ll be summarizing the evolution of the 1st Doctor’s characterization, ranking the companions and the antagonists from best to worst, recapping how I’ve rated the serials so far and doing some analysis of that data, and sorting the serials into categories based on how watchable I think they are. Feel free to skip between the headings for whatever strikes your fancy.

The First Doctor

Objectively speaking, the 1st Doctor is probably the most inconsistently characterized Doctor in the series, with traits that morph over time to suit the needs of the writers. However, I believe that without these changes, we wouldn’t have ended up with the powerhouse of a character that we get with his subsequent iterations. The 1st Doctor, much like many other elements of early Doctor Who, reflects the work put in by the showrunners to flesh out what the series should look like. This work resulted in what I like to think of as three distinct characterizations within William Hartnell’s run: one from 1.1 to 1.7, one from 1.8 to 3.8, and one from 3.9 to 4.2.

I’ll start with what I think remains the same throughout Hartnell’s run, because it helps to establish the core of the Doctor’s character moving forward. The 1st Doctor is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing old man who is fiercely protective of those he considers friends and who has a knack for getting himself into trouble. He is intelligent to a fault, with a very short temper for what he sees as the stupidity of others, and he is usually very reluctant to admit when he has made a mistake, which makes for some funny moments when another character has to make him do so. Once Susan leaves the series, the Doctor demonstrates a soft spot for young women who remind him of his granddaughter, doting on characters like Vicki and Dodo. He cares a lot about decorum and appearances and is almost always courteous, often even when speaking with those who are doing him considerable harm. His clothes are less of a costume than the later Doctors and more of an overarching style; he prefers long coats, usually dark in hue, with a striped vest, a cravat or looping bowtie, and loose-fitting trousers, often checkered. As I start to get into Troughton’s serials, I’ll be looking for where there are parallels in the Doctor’s characterization and where there is significant deviation.

Turning to the variations in Hartnell’s Doctor, it’s easy to see why the showrunners wanted to revise what they had initially created. For the 1st Doctor’s first characterization, which lasted for most of Season 1, we saw a Doctor that wasn’t that different from the companions with whom he traveled. Yes, he was this mysterious figure from outer space, with a time traveling blue box and a deep knowledge of science, but when it came to the narrative arcs of the Season 1 serials, the Doctor tended to be just as confused, lost, and scared as Susan, Ian, and Barbara. Though his intelligence often put him in a position to take the lead and push the plot forward, he spent much of the time butting heads with his human companions, usually Ian and especially in the first three serials. At times, like in An Unearthly Child, Ian would outright take the lead among the protagonists, with the Doctor grudgingly following along in his wake. While this characterization allowed for some interesting conflicts within the Doctor/companion relationship, it didn’t give the Doctor much mystique beyond his ability to (sort of) control the TARDIS.

From 1.8 onward, the Doctor’s characterization rapidly shifted, resulting in a Doctor that was much more prone to lead the protagonists at all times than he was in Season 1. We start to see him donning disguises and bluffing his way in and out of tight spots like he does in The Reign of Terror, The Romans, The Crusade, and The Myth Maker, time and again reinforcing the Doctor as a confident rogue who can think his way out of any situation. Additionally, he starts to represent himself more as an experienced traveler of the universe, demonstrating a lot of knowledge about the settings he finds himself in and using that knowledge to aid the protagonists in some way. These two new traits begin to create the mystique of the Doctor, a mystique that will continue to grow over the next several decades. This also allows the companions to become more of an analogue for the viewer, enabling us to experience the universe of Doctor Who through their eyes. During this period—and, I would argue, for most of the rest of the classic series—the companions are far less likely to challenge the Doctor for control like they did in Season 1, comfortable in their role as second fiddle to the man with the blue box.

As Hartnell’s Doctor approaches the end of his run, we see the Doctor’s characterization change once again in what I believe to be an attempt to set up his first regeneration. These changes try to establish the Doctor as something more than human, and the most notable of these is a drastic increase in his already formidable intelligence. In each of his last four serials, the 1st Doctor has a comprehensive understanding of events in a way that makes him seem superhuman: his knowledge of the energy transference technology in The Savages, his understanding of the War Machines in The War Machines, his assumption of a fourth member of Avery’s crew in The Smugglers, and his foreknowledge of the Cybermen’s arrival in The Tenth Planet. Additionally, there are changes to the Doctor’s physiology, hinting at his inhumanity there as well: his ability to control Jano’s mind through energy transference in The Savages and the tingling feeling he gets in his fingers when he looks at GPO Tower in The War Machines—and of course, his regeneration in The Tenth Planet. Although the execution of these elements often feels rushed and clunky, I appreciate the precedent they set for future Doctors.

Overall, I really like Hartnell’s performance throughout his run—though I must admit that I like all of the Doctors to some extent, and it will take a few more regenerations before I can really start to rank them against one another. I may come back and edit this section once I can articulate a bit more about what the end of Hartnell’s run means for the changes in the character moving forward, but I can say without reservation that I will miss the 1st Doctor. He will forever be the incarnation that started the series on its grand adventure, and he will always hold a special place in my heart. I think it’s most fitting to end his run with one of his most memorable pieces of dialogue, from his goodbye to Susan in The Dalek Invasion of Earth: “One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear.”

The Companions Ranked

In this section, I will rank the Doctor’s companions, counting down from worst to best. I want to say up front that I don’t consider Katarina, from The Myth Makers and The Daleks’ Master Plan, or Sara, also from The Daleks’ Master Plan, to be proper companions, and I won’t be talking about them here. If you want to hear my reasoning behind this, you can find it in Part 4 of my breakdown of The Daleks’ Master Plan. Additionally, since Ben and Polly only have two serials under their belt as travelers in the TARDIS, I don’t feel comfortable ranking them yet—though based on those two serials, their trajectory is very bright.

6. Dodo Chaplet

I don’t think it’s a controversial take for me to say that Dodo is one of the worst companions—if not the worst companion—the series will ever give us. Her biggest character trait is the she is preposterously stupid, which makes it difficult to write an interaction where she doesn’t come off as irritating to the audience. For the other lower-end companions, I will be arguing that they suffer from the poor quality of the writing around them, and while this does affect Dodo to some extent, Dodo remains the only companion who I find to be a complete failure at a conceptual level. If you took Dodo and plopped her into The Time Meddler, which is my highest rated serial to date, I have a very hard time believing that she would be any more successful.

There is an argument to be made that The Savages, by far my highest-rated Dodo serial, was able to elevate her character, but I would argue that this was accomplished by breaking her character. Throughout the serial, she was actually quite intelligent, being the only companion who is skeptical about the Elders’ perfect society—in this way, the story completely changed her characterization. And even then, she wasn’t exactly a standout success; she was just tolerable, which for Dodo is a win, I suppose. Jackie Lane, the actress who plays Dodo, never struck me as having much range, but she wasn’t terrible in her portrayal either; it was the writing that was the major flaw in Dodo’s character. I think you could put a superstar in that role and see only marginal improvement. Dodo was horribly written, and I was glad to see her go.

5. Steven

After a stellar performance in his first serial, The Time Meddler, Steven is a tale of wasted potential. From the moment he joined the TARDIS crew, Steven offered a refreshing change of pace from what had become a very buddy-buddy dynamic among the protagonists. While I understand that the Doctor and his companions will always demonstrate a great deal of friendship, I also think that there has to be some sort of push and pull within the Doctor/companion dynamic, or else the relationship risks becoming stale. Steven provided some much needed conflict to the series, talking back to the Doctor and showing a healthy dose of skepticism. More than that, he even managed to elevate Vicki, who had largely been a below average companion to that point, with actor Peter Purves showing excellent chemistry with actress Maureen O’Brien.

Unfortunately for Steven, it was all downhill from there, as the writers criminally mismanaged his character. Despite Steven having such great chemistry in scenes with Vicki, the next two serials rarely allowed them any screentime together, never recapturing that magic before Vicki’s departure in The Myth Makers. Additionally, Steven lost all of the skepticism and snark that was so welcome in his introductory serial, essentially reducing him to a typically placid follower of the Doctor. Much of his run was plagued by terrible writing that further hampered his character, often completely robbing him of agency. The worst of these serials were The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, The Celestial Toymaker, and The Gunfighters, where Steven was presented as a bumbling fool who couldn’t get out of his own way. Though he wasn’t nearly as offensive a character to me as Dodo, I was still happy when the show moved on from him.

4. Vicki

Like Steven, I thought Vicki had some potential when I watched her first serial, The Rescue. I didn’t think she had quite the ceiling that I saw in Steven’s character, but I really enjoyed actress Maureen O’Brien’s ability to convey emotion, more so than I did with Susan, whom Vicki was replacing. And there were a few instances in Vicki’s run where she lived up to her potential, such as in The Space Museum, where the narrative’s odd premise allowed her to flourish as the most self-determinate protagonist, while the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara largely took a backseat. She also had some great moments in The Time Meddler, where O’Brien’s chemistry with Peter Purves made for some very amusing banter, giving her and Steven an endearing younger sister/older brother kind of dynamic.

And like Steven, Vicki’s potential was wasted, though not quite to the extent of her successor. From her second serial onward, Vicki spent much of her run following along in the Doctor’s shadow, reduced to a poor imitation of Susan. I suspect this is because Vicki was jammed into narratives that were originally written for Susan, but regardless, I never felt that the writers did enough to define Vicki as her own character—even long after Susan’s departure, she was still filling a very similar narrative function. On its own, I don’t think Vicki’s portrayal was bad, but coming on the heels of Susan’s run, I couldn’t shake the sense that I had seen it done before—and done better. Her run came at a time in the series when the quality of the writing was slipping, and her characterization felt like a misguided attempt to cling to something that had worked before. By the end of her run, I wasn’t sad to see her go, but I feel like the showrunners could have turned her character around given more time—though considering the quality of the writing in Season 3, it’s probably for the best that they didn’t try.

3. Susan

In my estimation, there is a huge gap between 3 and 4 on this list. For Vicki on down, the runs of the replacement companions were often mediocre at best, with a few bright spots sprinkled in here and there. For the original three, their output in terms of quality was far more consistent, and I could see an argument for any of them to make the top spot.

Susan was the hardest of the three for me to rank, because I feel she had the highest highs and the lowest lows of the original three companions. Of all the companions so far, Susan had the most complete character arc, bringing with it some of the most poignant character moments the series has had to offer thus far. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that her arc was complex—none of the Early Era antagonists showed much complexity by today’s standards—but from the beginning to the end of her run, she changed more than any other. When we were introduced to Susan in An Unearthly Child, she was mysterious and smart beyond her apparent age, and she provided a much-needed conduit between the Doctor and her schoolteachers for the first couple of serials. Then, a gulph started to develop between Susan and her grandfather, with Susan expressing a longing to settle down in Marco Polo, spending a significant time away from the Doctor in The Keys of Marinus, and getting into an argument with him in The Sensorites about how he treated her like a child. In her final serial, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, she fell in love with a human, and the Doctor locked her out of the TARDIS, realizing that as long as he was around, she would never be truly happy.

Unfortunately, much of what makes Susan great also highlights some of her weaknesses as a character. At the start of the series, Susan functioned as a compassionate foil to the Doctor, softening the Doctor’s aggressive and distrustful stance toward Ian and Barbara while ultimately agreeing with almost everything that the Doctor did. But when the Doctor’s stance toward his human companions became more friendly, Susan’s agreement with the Doctor remained except for a few incidences, some of which I listed above. This resulted in many times were Susan felt like an unnecessary extension of the Doctor’s character, and she often faded into the background, especially at times when all four protagonists were in a scene together. Additionally, while I like the growth in Susan’s character, there are times where she defaulted to a childlike dependence on the other protagonists in ways that really rankled me, such as when she broke down in tears in The Aztecs despite having by far the fewest hardships of the protagonists, or in The Reign of Terror when she was completely helpless and unable to act as her life was being threatened.

Lastly, I thought that actress Carole Ann Ford played fear very well, but fear was often all that Susan gave us. It seems to me that Susan spent a majority of her time afraid, and the remainder happy, with very little in the way of nuance or variation. I tend to lay this at the feet of the writing more than Ford’s acting, because we occasionally got some stellar performances from Ford, like when she pined for her lost home in Marco Polo and her departure scene in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Overall, I wish that the showrunners had taken more risks with Susan’s character, perhaps letting her take the lead on more occasions and thinking for herself. What we got was good—if a bit stale at times—but Susan could have been great.

2. Ian Chesterton

While not quite as complex or compelling as Susan’s character arc, Ian’s evolution from chemistry teacher to action hero was a delight to watch. Throughout his run, Ian demonstrated a keen intellect, relying on his knowledge of science to solve problems, especially at times when the Doctor wasn’t around. But it wasn’t until The Aztecs when Ian really began to show a knack for using his physical strength to defend the protagonists when the occasion called for it. Here are some of my favorite badass Ian moments: his defeat of Ixta on the steps of the Aztec temple in The Aztecs, his deadly poise when threatening Lemaitre in The Reign of Terror, and his gladiatorial fight in The Romans. All of this culminated when he was knighted by King Richard I in The Crusade before riding off to rescue Barbara from imprisonment.

For Ian being ranked so high on this list, I find myself not having a ton to say about him relative to the rest of the original three. William Russell always gave a great performance, and he had fantastic chemistry with Jacquiline Hill, the actress who played Barbara. The writers always seemed to put Ian in a position to take decisive action, and there were few times where he felt powerless or incapable. I don’t think Ian’s best moments were quite as good as either Susan or Barbara’s, but his run was consistently great in a way that outperforms what I think Susan had to offer. And my enjoyment of the Doctor/companion relationship began to stagnate toward the end of Ian and Barbara’s run, largely due to the downturn in the quality of the writing. Still, I was sad to see Ian leave, and his and Barbara’s sendoff at the end of The Chase was legendary.

1. Barbara Wright

Regardless of the seasons that are to come, I will always remember Barbara as my original favorite companion. While I think Ian just barely edges out Barbara in terms of consistency, I believe that the peaks of Barbara’s character are some of the best that the 1st Doctor’s run has to offer, falling just shy of the high points of Susan’s character arc. I love the instances where Barbara took control of a narrative, such as when she stood up to the Doctor in The Edge of Destruction, when she pretended to be the reincarnation of an Aztec deity in The Aztecs, and when she drove a city bus through a Dalek barricade in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Aztecs in particular was the highlight of Barbara’s run for me, with her struggling against the crushing tides of history, ultimately failing to eliminate human sacrifice from the religion of the Aztec people.

I think what sets her above Ian in my mind is her kindness and optimism. That’s not to say I see Ian as mean or defeatist, but Barbara really shined when she was put in a position to uplift someone else. We saw this many times, most notably in The Dalek Invasion of Earth when Barbara’s optimism acted as a buoy for Jenny and her pessimism, and in The Rescue when she comforted a grieving Vicki. Additionally, actress Jacquiline Hill had great chemistry with William Russell’s Ian—their ability to play off one another was fantastic, a credit to both companions. Overall, Barbara allowed Wright to show off more range than any other companion to this point in the show, and it’s not that close.

However, I do have some issues with Barbara’s character, most of which stem from the sexist treatment of female roles that I’ve commented on several times in this retrospective. Too often, Barbara was made to play the role of the damsel in distress—The Reign of Terror, The Romans, The Web Planet, and The Crusade all featured Barbara being captured and subsequently rescued by the more empowered male characters. Weakness or fear often played a large part in Barbara’s characterization as well, like when she hurt her ankle in Planet of Giants and when she is too afraid of rats to try to escape a prison cell in The Reign of Terror. Despite these flaws, the heights of Barbara’s run are enough for me to place her at the top of my list, and her sendoff at the end of The Chase was more than deserved. Seriously, if you haven’t seen the end of The Chase, do yourself a favor and go watch it.

The Antagonists Ranked

Like any run of Doctor Who, the 1st Doctor’s run gave us a wide variety of antagonists. Here’s how I rank them from worst to best.

25. The Animus (2.5 – The Web Planet)

It’s fitting that the worst antagonist would come from the worst serial. The design of the actual creature is bafflingly unreadable, its voice is unintentionally hilarious, and it controls the most irritating creatures I have every had the displeasure of watching: the Zarbi. Nothing about the Animus makes for an enjoyable experience.

24. The Monoids (3.6 – The Ark)

Take the worst bigfoot costume you’ve ever seen, add a ridiculous Beatles wig, and pop a ping pong ball into the actor’s mouth. Then make them do menial tasks, like gardening and typing. And when they finally manage to take power from their human counterparts, have them throw the humans into a room called the Security Kitchen, which is as stupid as it sounds. These one-eyed monstrosities never should have seen the light of day.

23. WOTAN and the War Machines (3.10 – The War Machines)

What was a fantastic idea conceptually was really flubbed in the execution. WOTAN, an AI-powered computer bent on taking over the world, has no compelling motivation, no interesting dialogue, and no final confrontation with the Doctor. The War Machines are unwieldy things, with unconvincing weapons and nothing to make them seem more than cheaply built props. These antagonists were such a missed opportunity—but hey, at least they took Dodo out of the picture.

22. Odysseus (3.3 – The Myth Makers)

Odysseus is one of those characters that really gets under my skin with every single thing they do—and not in a way the showrunners intended. Every piece of dialogue is hammed up to the max, with an underlying stupidity to the character that makes it particularly frustrating whenever Odysseus outmaneuvers the Doctor and company. His one saving grace is that he isn’t as integral to the story as the antagonists below him on this list.

21. The Voords (1.5 – The Keys of Marinus)

For about ten minutes in the first episode, the Voords look truly menacing. Covered head to toe in black latex suits, they slink around Arbitan’s island, a mysterious threat. Unfortunately, the Voords quickly start to act in a manner that undermines their credibility as a legitimate danger, like when a Voord tries to hide against a flat wall in an empty hallway, or when Ian pushes one into a shaft and we see some sort of paper cutout falling into a pool of water. Then the narrative forgets about them for four and a half episodes, only cutting back to them at the very end to see the protagonists overcome them in all of ten minutes. Like with Odysseus, the Voords would be lower on this list if they had more screentime.

20. Queen Catherine de Medici and the Catholics (3.5 – The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve)

I went on at length about how ahistorical it was to paint the Catholics as comparatively evil to the Protestants during the religious turmoil of the Dark Ages—if you want more of my thoughts about that, feel free to read that review. As for Queen Catherine, her characterization was far too flat and unconvincing for her to be considered a decent antagonist. She is only in a handful of scenes, lacking a distinct voice in a narrative over which she is ultimately supposed to control.

19. The Drahvins (3.1 – Galaxy Four)

Now we’re starting to get into the territory of antagonists that have at least some merit. The Drahvins are conceptually fascinating: a species dominated by conniving women, with men viewed only in their capacity for procreation and a lesser class of women workers who are bred specifically for their docility. In theory, this should spawn some very interesting dynamics among the antagonists, but all we get to see is one of these powerful women in complete control over several of the worker drones. There is no worker uprising, or a second woman to compete with the first for power, or any Drahvin men to make the distinction more real to the audience—nothing that makes the Drahvins interesting in practice. They could have been so much more.

18. The City Administrator (1.7 – The Sensorites)

Visually, I hate everything about the City Administrator—he’s a Sensorite, an awfully designed creature that demonstrates the perils of creature design on a budget. As an antagonist, he’s below average, but not terrible. His motivations make sense, but his plans take way too long to unfold, dragging down the pacing of the serial. Ultimately, the City Administrator isn’t the worst part of the narrative, but he’s not great either.

17. The Moroks (2.7 – The Space Museum)

As the defenders of a decaying colonial empire, the Moroks are comically stupid. It’s such a shame that they were being played completely straight, because with the right comedic tone, these antagonists could have been some of the best of the 1st Doctor’s run. As they are, the Moroks are the kind of characters who are so stupid that watching them succeed against the Doctor can feel very frustrating.

16. Chal and the prehistoric tribe (1.1 – An Unearthly Child)

As the first antagonists of the series, they do what they need to do, demonstrating to the audience the perils of traveling through time. Like some of the other antagonists on the bottom half of this list, the stupidity of the prehistoric tribe can make their ability to trap the Doctor seem really irritating, especially Chal’s. However, there is a great fight scene between Chal and another member of the tribe, so good that it warranted these antagonists a more middling spot on this list.

15. Johnny Ringo and the Clantons (3.8 – The Gunfighters)

As antagonists, these guys rarely feel like a legitimate threat. Normally, this on its own would deserve a much lower ranking, but within the context of a campy American Western, I don’t necessarily hate their ineffectiveness. I thought that the scene in Part 1 where the Clantons threaten Steven and Dodo was very funny, and I liked that Johnny Ringo was able to add a dimension of legitimacy to the Clantons, even if his American accent was ridiculous.

14. El Akir (2.6 - The Crusade)

Overall, El Akir provided the menace and genuine feel of evil that a lot of these Early Era antagonists fall short on conveying. However, I don’t like that a lot of this menace comes from abducting Barbara and throwing her into his harem of unwilling women—I always cringe when I see insinuations of rape used as a plot device in what was ostensibly a children’s show.

13. Jano and the Elders (3.9 – The Savages)

I really liked the technology used by Jano and the Elders—the idea that energy and intellect can be involuntarily robbed through a scientific process is brilliant high-concept sci-fi. However, Jano was a bit of a bore, and the soldiers under his control proved to be pretty feckless characters, with ridiculous weapons that were made out of fire extinguishers. I would have ranked them higher if Jano had had a more commanding presence.

12. The Celestial Toymaker (3.7 – The Celestial Toymaker)

The titular antagonist was not one of the many, many problems with The Celestial Toymaker. Though he was a white man dressed up as an Asian stereotype, his scenes with the Doctor were fairly compelling, and his enigmatic motivations made him seem unreadable, despite his actions being very straightforward. I wish there was more of him and less of, well, pretty much everything else.

11. Captain Pike, Cherub, and the pirates (4.1 – The Smugglers)

At this point in the list, we start to get antagonists that go from tolerable to good, and the pirate crew of The Smugglers are the first that I would call good, full stop. We get to see Cherub and Captain Pike murder some villagers, which is a wonderful way to establish them as a legitimate threat. While the background pirates aren’t anything to write home about, Cherub adds a dimension of intrigue to the crew, ultimately proving his mutinous intentions in the finale.

10. Mr. Forrester (2.1 – Planet of Giants)

Unlike the rest of the antagonists on this list, Forrester had the unique responsibility of driving most of the serial’s plot, as the protagonists were too small to do most of the heavy lifting. While he may not have been the most complex antagonist, Forrester’s willingness to poison an entire country for wealth made for a harrowing threat, especially when Barbara began to show signs of exposure to his insecticide. Also, I love that the Doctor and his companions never learned anything about Forrester or his motivations, keeping so much of Forrester’s actions and the protagonists’ on different planes of existence.

9. Tegana (1.4 – Marco Polo)

To this point, I have brought up several antagonists who’s stupidity really undermined their ability to add to the narrative. Tegana is the exact opposite—his cunning trickery made for situations where it felt reasonable for the Doctor and company to stay under Marco Polo’s thumb. While not necessarily satisfying in the way that an audience member might find satisfaction in the protagonists’ success, Tegana being able to thwart the main characters was narratively satisfying, in a way that made his ultimate demise incredibly rewarding.

8. Mavic Chen (3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan)

As an antagonist, Mavic Chen is a very shallow character, a corrupt politician motivated solely by the accumulation of power. However, Chen is an example of a flat character done very well, chasing the protagonists from planet to planet, trying to save his fragile alliance with the Daleks. Aside from some additional depth to his character, I wish the writers had expanded on his motivations a bit more—in this 12-part epic, there was definitely room to build on his personal history. But overall, Chen was a delight to watch.

7. Koquillion/Bennett (2.3 – The Rescue)

As the first—and only—twist villain of the 1st Doctor’s run, it was really fun to piece together the secret motivations of Bennett. His costume when he was dressed up as Koquillion was fantastic, with jagged spikes and sharp claws that gave him a creepiness that many of the other antagonists lack. If not for the rushed climax, Bennett would probably be a slot or two higher on this list.

6. Robespierre (1.8 – The Reign of Terror)

As the first of two actual historical figures on this list, it’s very clear that the early writers had a knack for bringing real-world villains to life. Robespierre is a manic, suspicious, and violent man; he seems perfectly suited to be the man responsible for the execution of thousands of innocents under his watch. Unlike some of the other antagonists on this list, Robespierre’s limited screentime added to his menace, and when he was referenced by other characters, it felt like he was a constant threat that lay just out of sight.

5. Tlotoxl and Ixta (1.6 – The Aztecs)

Though their motivations are fairly simplistic—Tlotoxl distrusts the protagonists, and Ixta wants to lead the Aztec armies—what makes these antagonists so great is that their reasoning actually makes sense. Tlotoxl is correct when he identifies Barbara as a false goddess, so it makes sense for him to try to kill her. Likewise, when Ian is placed into the army power structure as a rival to Ixta’s command, it makes sense for Ixta to want to ally with Tlotoxl to bring down the false goddess. In the end, I want the protagonists to survive just like any other Doctor Who story, but Tlotoxl and Ixta are actually in the right throughout this serial—which is what I think makes their performances so compelling.

4. The Daleks (1.2 – The Daleks, 2.2 – The Dalek Invasion of Earth, 2.8 – The Chase, 3.2 – Mission to the Unknown, 3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan)

The design of the Daleks is absolutely stellar, in my opinion the best creature design to this point in the show. They are the perfect aliens for the Doctor’s first off-world encounter, and their enduring legacy is a testament to their strength conceptually. Additionally, their Nazi-like exterminationism always sets up a Dalek story to have lots of opportunities for tension. The reason they are not higher up on this list is because the climactic actions sequences of many of these Dalek serials comically undermine the effectiveness of the Daleks as an enemy. In The Daleks, the ridiculous showdown in Dalek central control was my least favorite part of the serial. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, it was frustrating to see how little of a fight the Daleks put up once the humans began to uprise in the climax—how are these flimsy creatures supposed to have conquered the world in the first place if a mob of humans can hoist them up and carry them out of a mine? And in The Chase, the fight scene between the Daleks and the Mechanoids was doomed from the start, with the two least mobile creatures in the Doctor who universe made to square off. Going forward, I want to see the Daleks put in situations which better hide their physical limitations.

3. The Cybermen (4.2 – The Tenth Planet)

Conceptually, I adore the Cybermen: humanlike beings who have voluntarily dispensed with their natural bodies and human emotions in order to extend their lifespans. I love the design of the metal men, even if it is unpolished by the standards of the Cybermen we get later in the series. And in my opinion, the lifeless eyes staring out from the metal eyeholes are a fantastic aspect of the design that I wish was retained in the later iterations. Their weapons are a bit ridiculous, and I would appreciate it if in the future the showrunners would make sure the actors playing them all had the same approach. But overall, this was a fantastic beginning to the Doctor’s second-most infamous enemy.

2. Nero (2.4 – The Romans)

For his first few scenes, I thought Nero was going to be one of those antagonists whose stupidity kept me from buying into his ability to pose a legitimate threat to the protagonists. He seemed like a bumbling idiot who couldn’t keep out of his own way, getting into trouble with his wife and thinking of nothing beyond his next meal. But then Nero’s portrayal takes a tonal shift, and the madman goes from a threat to the Doctor to a threat to the entire Roman empire. Simply put, the writers do an incredible job building Nero’s character and then demonstrating why such a person should be kept as far from the halls of power as possible. With his endless legion of sycophants, there is no one to stop Nero’s worst impulses as he sets fire to Rome just so that he can rebuild it in his image, with the Doctor and his companions narrowly escaping in the confusion. Nero is an excellent antagonist, and I can’t wait to see what the writers can do with other historical figures moving forward.

1. The Monk (2.9 – The Time Meddler, 3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan)

I love the Monk. I love him so much. Throughout The Time Meddler, actor Peter Butterworth steals the show, creating a Monk that is wonderfully charismatic, likeable even. It’s such a joy to see him take the time to prepare a proper English breakfast in a monastery in 1066, or in The Daleks’ Master Plan when he ducked back inside his TARDIS just to return a moment later wearing a pair of sunglasses. And in The Daleks’ Master Plan, he appeared just as the quality of the serial had begun to nosedive, singlehandedly saving the serial with his antics, switching allegiances at the drop of a hat if he thought it would save his own skin. I’d sacrifice every story that features the Rani just to have one extra story that brings the Monk back, no strings attached. He is my favorite antagonist, and it will be difficult for anyone to unseat him going forward.

Statistical Analysis/How I Rated These Serials

Here’s every serial that I have reviewed so far, arranged from best to worst. The serial numbers have been color coded by season, which makes looking at the seasons as a whole a little easier.

Looking at the above table, it’s interesting to see where the various seasons tend to populate. I’ve averaged the serials of each season together, which demonstrates what I believe to be a notable dip in quality from Season 1 to Season 3.

There isn’t much else I can do with these numbers yet, not until after the 2nd Doctor’s run is over. The only other way I could think to break them down is to average them by the companions that were in them. The quality of the serials tracks fairly consistently with my companion rankings, which makes sense. With the exception of Dodo, who was conceptually terrible from start to finish, I tend to attribute the success or failure of these companions to the quality of the writing around them. Susan, Ian, and Barbara were elevated by the good writing around them, whereas despite showing promise at times, Vicki and Steven struggled to gain traction in serials marred by poor writing.

Serials Sorted by How Important and/or Watchable I Think They Are

For the following list, I made it with the intention making an easy guide for which 1st Doctor serials I would recommend, which ones I would avoid, and which ones fall somewhere in the middle. I have categorized each serial as must-see, notable, watchable, skippable. Again, this is all subjective and based on personal preference, but if someone asked me how best to experience Hartnell’s Doctor, here is the answer I would give:

Must-see Serials:

These are serials that are either important to understanding the 1st Doctor’s run or serials that I find to be very enjoyable—a representative sample that I would recommend to anyone who hasn’t experienced the 1st Doctor. None of these are worse than middling quality, and only one of them is partially reconstructed.

1.1 – An Unearthly Child – Rating: 6.3/10

What can I say about An Unearthly Child apart from this is where it all began? Meet the 1st Doctor through the eyes of Ian and Barbara, his first human companions, along with the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan. Experience the thrill of the TARDIS dematerializing for the very first time, whisking the protagonists off to the unknown.

1.2 – The Daleks – Rating: 7.8/10

This serial is the Doctor’s first interaction with the series’ most longstanding and infamous baddies: the Daleks. Get to know the pepper pots as they were initially conceived, not as time-traveling foils to the almighty Time Lords, but as limited mutations confined to their metallic city. A compelling conflict and gorgeous set design make this 7-part serial very easy to digest.

1.6 – The Aztecs – Rating: 9.2/10

Ian and Barbara really come into their own in this serial, with Barbara taking charge of an Aztec civilization and Ian developing the attributes of an action hero. In this wonderfully paced narrative crammed full of compelling character moments, we see the Doctor’s first romantic interest of the series, and we start to learn the rules and limitations of being a time traveler.

2.1 – Planet of Giants – Rating: 9.6/10

Far from an important serial, Planet of Giants is a fun romp in which a materialization mishap shrinks the TARDIS down to the height of an inch. Watch the miniaturized protagonists try to thwart the murderous schemes of a money-hungry businessman, with lots of creative set pieces and giant insects.

2.2 – The Dalek Invasion of Earth – Rating: 7.1/10

Previously restricted to one city on Skaro, the Daleks have become an interplanetary force intent on conquering the Earth. This serial has several captivating subplots which constantly drive the narrative forward, and we get to see the first companion departure of the series.

2.3 – The Rescue – Rating: 4.9/10

Though most of this serial is your standard-fare Doctor Who story set on a distant planet, The Rescue introduces us to Vicki, the first new companion since the very first serial. In addition to what I believe to be Vicki’s second-best showing, we get a fantastic creature design in the antagonist, Koquillion, as well as a great plot twist.

2.9 – The Time Meddler – Rating: 9.8/10

This is my favorite serial in the 1st Doctor’s run. As the first historical setting to feature elements of science fiction, we are finally given a story in the past where the Doctor is fighting to save history, rather than just fighting to save his own neck. Oh, and we get the Monk, a dastardly misfit of an antagonist who is so charismatic and likeable that he becomes the only non-Dalek antagonist to return to the series later in Hartnell’s run.

4.2 – The Tenth Planet – Rating: 9.4/10

As the only serial to make this list with a missing episode, The Tenth Planet is very special to me. Taking place in the near-future year of 1986, this serial gives us our first look at the Cybermen as they invade an Antarctic space monitoring station. The showrunners nailed so many elements of this story, especially the fantastic setting with its incredibly cohesive technology and realistic sci-fi elements. And if nothing else, the Doctor’s first regeneration alone makes the rest of the serial well worth a watch.

Notable Serials:

These are serials that I would recommend to anyone who wants to explore the 1st Doctor’s run more thoroughly than the serials provided in the must-see category. These include middling serials, good reconstructions, and lower-quality serials which have elements that are somewhat important to understanding Hartnell’s iteration.

1.3 – The Edge of Destruction – Rating 6.6/10

Though notable for being one of only a handful of Doctor Who stories to take place inside the TARDIS, it’s not very crucial to one’s understanding of the 1st Doctor or his companions. The mystery is intriguing if a bit dense at times, and it’s nice to see the Doctor warm up a little to his human companions—at least at the end. It’s only two episodes, so even if it’s not your cup of tea, it’s a quick ride.

1.4 – Marco Polo – Rating: 8.7/10

As the first of many serials to be entirely lost, Marco Polo spends seven episodes weaving an immensely atmospheric narrative, full of moral ambiguity and featuring a variety of obstacles for the protagonists to overcome. We begin to see hints of Susan’s discontent with the Doctor’s ever-wandering lifestyle in her conversations with new friend, Ping-Cho—and at the same time, Ian and Barbara begin to show a measure of happiness with life on the TARDIS.

1.8 – The Reign of Terror – Rating: 8.1/10

Another reconstruction, The Reign of Terror is a harrowing tale set in Paris amidst the chaos of the French Revolution. It is a 6-part serial, but its frantic pace and unending intrigue make it feel much shorter than its runtime would suggest. In this serial, we get to see the Doctor really in control for the first time, using his knowledge of the time period and his bombast to bluff his way into the halls of power by pretending to be a government officer. This is the serial that establishes the Doctor as a confident rogue with a mystique that will continue to grow as the seasons progress.

2.4 – The Romans – Rating: 4.0/10

Though plagued by issues of scope and pacing, The Romans is a mostly-fun story featuring the hardships of Ian and Barbara contrasted with the luck and frivolity of the Doctor and Vicki. And you can’t forget Nero, the delightfully unhinged emperor of Rome, my second-favorite antagonist of the 1st Doctor’s run.

2.7 – The Space Museum – Rating: 5.5/10

The opening episode of The Space Museum is a fantastic piece of high-concept sci-fi, as the Doctor and company must grapple with a TARDIS malfunction that leaves them incorporeal. Though the following three episodes leave a lot to be desired, it’s very interesting to see the normally self-determinant Doctor relegated to the role of bystander, while his least independent companion, Vicki, largely drives the narrative.

2.8 – The Chase – Rating: 5.4/10

I only included this serial here because of its stellar final two episodes, which culminate in the introduction of the next companion, Steven, as well as the departure of Ian and Barbara. Honestly, if you want to just watch those, you wouldn’t be missing much. Parts 1 through 4 are filled with simplistic worldbuilding, blasé plots, and horrible comic relief.

3.2 – Mission to the Unknown – Rating: 6.1/10

This is a 1-part reconstruction that serves as a prequel to The Daleks’ Master Plan. You could watch that 12-parter on its own and still understand everything that’s going on, but if you’re going to commit to that, you might as well add this episode to complete the baker’s dozen.

3.4 – The Daleks’ Master Plan – Rating: 6.6/10

A 12-episode epic, this mostly-reconstructed serial has definite ups and downs. The first five-and-two-thirds episodes have excellent pacing and a very interesting plot. Skip Part 7; it’s a horrible Christmas special and isn’t canon. Parts 8 through 11 are a bit of a slog, but they do give us the second appearance of the Monk, my favorite antagonist from the 1st Doctor’s run. And the climax in Part 12 is fantastic, worth the price of admission alone. Even as a reconstruction, the final episode is my favorite individual episode of the Hartnell era.

3.8 – The Gunfighters – Rating: 4.4/10

If you want a good snapshot of the companion Dodo, this serial is probably your best bet. This campy Western is nothing to write home about, and it would have been much better as satire instead of the earnest genre flick that The Gunfighters tries to be for much of its runtime. Still, there is some very good humor in the first episode, and if nothing else, the awful American accents throughout this story are amusing.

3.9 – The Savages – Rating: 7.2/10

Set on a futuristic planet, this 4-part reconstruction is a fascinating mix of wonderful science fiction and real-world philosophical concepts. As a commentary on exploitation and tribalism, its plot is centered on one faction of people who use their advanced technology to exploit and enslave another. This serial gives us the best story set on another planet since The Daleks, and it is a good sign of the quality science fiction to come.

4.1 – The Smugglers – Rating: 4.5/10

As the first serial where Ben and Polly travel in the TARDIS, this 4-part reconstruction is worth the watch just to see how their playful relationship is introduced. Their banter reminds me of Steven and Vicki’s brother/sister dynamic at its best, with an added dimension of Ben’s pessimism coming into conflict with Polly’s optimism. However, the narrative of The Smugglers has trouble getting off the ground due to being very derivative of the far superior The Time Meddler, with an overly complex plot that bogs the story down and sets a lethargic pace.

Watchable Serials:

These are serials which have something of value, serials that I wouldn’t consider to be a complete waste of time. If you need a Hartnell fix and are not satisfied by the serials listed above, give these a go.

1.7 – The Sensorites – Rating: 3.0/10

Though it has a very gripping opening episode, The Sensorites is severely limited by a horrible creature design for the titular aliens and a remarkably nonsensical society on the planet Sense-Sphere. The pacing is too slow except for the climax, which feels rushed, but it’s fascinating to see the early showrunners grapple with a sci-fi heavy narrative—even if it’s fairly unsuccessful.

2.6 – The Crusade – Rating: 3.8/10

This partially-reconstructed serial is set during the Third Crusade. I’m not normally one to care much about historical inaccuracies, but the ahistorical depiction of King Richard and his armies made for a barrier to my enjoyment of this story. Though the first two-and-a-half episodes comprise an interesting narrative, the baffling decision to switch the antagonists late in Part 3 results in an unsatisfying resolution.

3.3 – The Myth Makers – Rating: 2.5/10

Although there are some good comedic moments, such as the family dynamics among the Trojan royal family and the swordfight between Steven and Paris, this serial is hindered by having to watch the same story play out twice: once on either side of a conflict. Plus, the Doctor uncharacteristically doling out scientific advancements to save his own skin—especially after so recently lambasting the Monk in The Time Meddler for doing the very same—is a massive incongruence that I do not appreciate.

3.6 – The Ark – Rating: 2.2/10

This is not a good serial, but it might be the most conceptually advanced science fiction of the Hartnell era, featuring the last of the humans on a 700-year voyage to a new homeworld. The actual story is simplistic and the alien-of-the-week is a joke, but if you don’t expect too much from The Ark, there is something to be gained from the experience.

3.10 – The War Machines – Rating: 3.5/10

With gorgeous on-location shots filmed in London proper, what should be a fun romp through the city is instead a lifeless, uninspiring slog that’s constantly restrained by its poor pacing and lack of momentum. The first episode-and-a-half are alright, and it does give us our first look at new companions Ben and Polly—though if you want a genuine look at what these characters have to offer, pick something from Season 4.

Skip These Serials:

These are the serials reserved for the committed completionists. For everyone else, your life is better off for not having been subjected to these stories.

1.5 – The Keys of Marinus – Rating: 0.8/10

This is a poorly-conceived narrative, with an impetus that breaks with the Doctor’s morality, a boring antagonist, an incredibly contrived plot, and a teleportation device which consistently breaks the rules established by a character in the first episode. The Keys of Marinus is ambitious to a fault, trying to cover way too much ground in its 6-episode runtime. The only way to enjoy this serial is if you turn your brain off completely.

2.5 – The Web Planet – Rating: 0.0/10

When I first went through Classic Who, I remember coming across dozens of poor-quality episodes. After each of these, I would say to myself, “That was bad, but was it as bad as The Web Planet?” And the answer was always no. Irritating moth-people, a lethargic pacing, and the incessant shrieking of stupid ant creatures. Just take the batteries out of your smoke detector and listen to that for 147 minutes. It’d be a better experience.

3.1 – Galaxy Four – Rating: 1.7/10

There is not a serial in the 1st Doctor’s run that is more logically flawed than Galaxy Four. There are so many questionable decisions and plot holes that it’s honestly fascinating to watch. If it weren’t the worst quality reconstruction of the Hartnell era, I may have put it in the watchable category.

3.5 – The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve – Rating: 0.3/10

A truly aimless plot, where the removal of the Doctor from most of the story means that Steven is left running around like a chicken with its head cut off for most of the runtime. Add on the ahistorical portrayal of Protestants as the moral paragons of Europe, and it makes for an incredibly frustrating serial that leaves me feeling angry.

3.7 – The Celestial Toymaker – Rating: 0.3/10

Every once and a while, the showrunners give us a narrative that really tries to hammer home that Doctor Who is a children’s show, and The Celestial Toymaker is the worst of these. Everything about this serial is childish. The protagonists are infantilized, the Doctor is mostly absent from the narrative, and the pacing is horrendously slow. It doesn’t feel like a Doctor Who story at all, and I wish it didn’t exist. Oh, and did I mention that a supporting character says the N word? An old white man. And yes, it has the hard R. Hard pass for me.

Chapter Text

4.3 – The Power of the Daleks

Thesis: Static vs Dynamic Worldbuilding in Futuristic Settings

The 2nd Doctor will be the focus of much of this review, so I figured I’d lead with something else that makes the story of The Power of the Daleks feel so compelling: its worldbuilding.

For a narrative placed in an imagined futuristic setting, some of the most important aspects of filmmaking will always be the visuals—what does the set design communicate about the nature of the society that the writer is trying to create, and so forth. But in my opinion, what can make or break a story’s worldbuilding are the nuances that the audience doesn’t explicitly see—how do the visuals and the writing itself communicate aspects of the society that exist exclusively offscreen?

In what I have seen so far of the Early Era, most of Doctor Who’s futuristic settings employ what I consider to be very static worldbuilding, which means that the offscreen elements of a narrative are either simplistic enough to be understood in a few lines of dialogue or ignored entirely. Consider what we know of the Daleks and the Thals in The Daleks: there was a war 500 years before the Doctor arrived, and in the intervening period, both species had lived for generation upon generation, for all intents and purposes undisturbed in their respective societies. The audience doesn’t get to learn much of anything about this period, aside from allusions to the Daleks becoming more warlike and the Thals becoming more peaceful. Additionally, there is no variation among the members of the two species: every Dalek and every Thal is characterized according to a very narrow set of traits that coincide with every member of their societies.

Or consider The Rescue, where all we knew about the people of Dido was that they were an entirely peaceful race, which was conveyed in a line or two by the Doctor. Within this characterization, there was no room for deviation, and we never got any reason as to why they were peaceful or how the Dido society—the Didoans? Didoites?—was constructed. Or take The Sensorites, where all we learned about Sensorite culture was that their society was arranged in a caste system, where everyone was placed where they were best suited to work and was happy with that placement. All of the work done to establish this concept was relegated to a single back-and-forth between a government figure and the protagonists, and we never got to see anything of normal Sensorite society beyond the confines of the palace of the Elders.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is dynamic worldbuilding, which I use to describe narratives where the world beyond what we see onscreen is a living, breathing character unto itself, with multiple dimensions that both reflect and influence the plot housed within it. Take The Space Museum, for example, where the protagonists found themselves in the middle of a fledgling uprising on a planetary outpost of a dying colonial empire. Or Galaxy Four, where the Drahvins, a complex, matriarchal society led by ruthless sociopaths, were in the midst of a skirmish with the technologically superior Rills, all while the planet where they had both crash-landed was doomed to explode.

I want to be clear: worldbuilding, as a very important aspect of writing science fiction, can make or break a story on its own, but it’s often more complicated than that. The Sensorites had some of the worst worldbuilding of the series, but I would argue that it didn’t have much of an affect on the plot, whereas its poor pacing and creature design were much more of a drag on its quality. Similarly, The Daleks managed to tell a very compelling story despite its simplistic worldbuilding, and the decent antagonist of The Rescue as well as its brisk pacing helped to blunt the effect of the incoherent society it created for the Dido. The Space Museum’s substantial work flushing out the world was counteracted by mistakes in tone and pacing that detracted from its stellar first episode. And the dynamic world of Galaxy Four did little to ameliorate the litany of plot holes, scientific innacuracies, and repetitive plot points that made very difficult for me to watch.

In The Power of the Daleks, the writers have created what I believe to be the most dynamic futuristic setting to this point in the series—and I specify futuristic setting because the historicals have often given us very complex worlds just by nature of them being able to draw on actual historical events; in a sense, the historicals get to cheat a little. Here, the protagonists find themselves on an Earth space colony on the planet Vulcan. The Doctor is instantly embroiled in intrigue when he finds the body of an Earth Examiner, a government operative tasked with reporting back to Earth on the status of the Vulcan colony. None of the colonists seem to know who sent for the Examiner. Meanwhile, there is upheaval on Vulcan as a group of rebels seek to overthrow the governor; there is a supporting character seeking to play the rebels and the governor against each other to gain power for themselves; there is a fanatical scientist who seeks the secrets of a mysterious space capsule uncovered from the mercury swamps outside despite cautious opposition from others in the colony; and there are the Daleks, who present themselves as servile to the humans in an attempt to use all of this turmoil as an impetus for them to wipe out the planet.

From start to finish, the worldbuilding is what drives the plot of this serial, with characters filling roles which are appropriately derived from where they are positioned within the society of the Vulcan colony. I mentioned way back in Marco Polo, the fourth serial of Season 1, that it felt as if I finally knew the rules of the series, as if I understood the intricacies of a game could start moving the pieces around the board. The Power of the Daleks is the same concept on a more granular scale, where the world is so comprehensive and thoroughly constructed that each character’s position within it conforms very naturally to the rules of the society that the writers have laid out for them. For me, this exemplifies the series’ next step in the quality of its sci-fi heavy narratives, something that I argued was lacking toward the beginning of the series, but which has improved substantially over the last several serials—and I’m really excited to see where the series goes from here.

One more thing before I move on to the review: this is another missing serial, with all of its episodes lost to time. I am experiencing these lost episodes in the format of telesnap reconstructions, which are essentially a handful of key frames stitched together with the original audio to form a cohesive story. For The Power of the Daleks, I am aware that the BBC has produced an animated serial using the original audio. However, I find the quality of the animation to be very substandard, and the reconstruction gives me a better feel for what the original visuals actually looked like. As I mention before every serial with missing episodes, you can find all Loose Cannon reconstructions here:

https://archive.org/details/doctor-who-loose-cannon-reconstructions

If reconstructions aren’t your thing and you’d rather read transcriptions, you can find them here:

http://chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/

Part 1

Since this serial introduces us to the 2nd Doctor, I want to paint a very thorough picture of his character in this review—I’ll be leaning more heavily than normal on using quoted dialogue and describing long back-and-forths, which I’m hoping will help readers get a baseline for Patrick Troughton’s portrayal. Additionally, since this is the first serial with more than four episodes since The Daleks’ Master Plan, expect this review to be longer than normal.

The Power of the Daleks opens where the previous serial ended: inside the TARDIS, with an unconscious William Hartnell transforming into an unconscious Patrick Troughton. The 2nd Doctor’s appearance is much younger than the 1st’s, with a mop of unkempt black hair, slightly curled, that bulges out around the crown of his head. His body is skinnier, his face longer, with thick brown eyebrows sitting on a severe browbone that casts an intensity over his eyes that the 1st Doctor lacked. The 2nd Doctor’s mouth is wider as well, with deep laugh lines and a flat chin.

Standing well away from the Doctor, who lies at the base of the main console, Ben and Polly confer next to the TARDIS doors. “His face, his hair, look at it!” says Polly.

“He’s breathing,” Ben says bewilderedly, “and the TARDIS seems to be normal.”

“Ben, what are we going to do? We can’t just leave the Doctor there.”

“What, him?” Ben says, gesturing toward the Doctor, his tone full of disbelief. “The Doctor?”

Polly is less skeptical. “Well, that’s who came through the doors. There was no one else outside. Ben, do you remember what he said in the Tracking Room? Something about, ‘This old body of mine is wearing a bit thin.’”

“So he gets himself a new one?”

“Well, yes,” Polly answers.

“But it’s impossible!” Ben says.

“Not so long ago, we’d have been saying that about a lot of things.” I love the continued dichotomy between Ben’s skepticism and Polly’s credulity, further building on their characterization of pessimist and optimist respectively. This duo continues to demonstrate themselves as unique characters in a way that Ian and Barbara didn’t do as well.

Suddenly, the Doctor moans and sits up. As he does so, there is a piercing, high-pitched whistle and the thumping of a drum that sounds like a heartbeat; the Doctor clutches at his head in pain. The perspective switches, and we see through the Doctor’s eyes as he experiences double-vision, with two Bens swirling around one another.

“Stop! Stop!” groans the Doctor, his voice strained. “Concentrate on one thing! One thing!” The pitch of the whistle starts to dip; the drumbeat slows. Eventually, it stops altogether, and the Doctor stands, staggering slightly, using the TARDIS console for support. Tentatively, he lifts his arms, smiling when he realizes he can stand unsupported. “It’s over,” he says with a chuckle, a manic gleam in his eye. His voice is noticeably lower than Hartnell’s, and much gravellier.

After taking a moment to compose himself, the Doctor runs his hands across his face, feeling out his new features. He bends down over the console, throwing a few switches and pulling a lever. As the TARDIS dematerializes, he quickly sheds his coat—much too big for his skinnier frame—crossing to a corner of the console room containing a few large chests. As he does so, the Doctor’s ring slips off of his finger and falls to the floor.

Still standing at the doors with Polly, Ben calls out tentatively, “Doctor?”

The Doctor doesn’t acknowledge his companion. He opens a large chest, rapidly pulling out pieces of clothing as he searches for something that will fit him better. “The muscles are still a bit tight,” he says idly.

Ben turns to Polly. “What are we going to do?” he says quietly.

“It is the Doctor. I know it is,” Polly says resolutely. Then, sounding less sure of herself, she adds, “I think.”

“It’s not only his face that’s changed,” Ben remarks. “He doesn’t even act like him. Come on, it’s time we sorted this out.” He turns toward the Doctor. “Now look here!”

The Doctor crosses to Ben, now wearing a black suit coat and a checkered bowtie that’s noticeably off-center. He shoves a small, ornately framed mirror into Ben’s hands, saying, “Hold that. Tilt it.” As he checks his reflection, his face is suddenly replaced by that of William Hartnell, only to fade back into a reflection of Troughton. The Doctor takes a moment to manipulate the muscles in his face, watching them move in the mirror, before abruptly turning his attention back to the chest full of clothes.

Miffed at being ignored, Ben demands, “Now, what’s the game, huh?”

Still not answering, the Doctor turns back toward his companions, brandishing an ornamental dagger. “Ah, the Crusades. From Saladin.” He chuckles. “The Doctor was a great collector, wasn’t he?” I love the callback to a previous serial—we don’t get enough of these, in my opinion—but as far as I am aware, the only protagonist Saladin ever interacted with was Barbara, and he never gave her a dagger.

“But you’re the Doctor!” Polly says, sounding almost accusatory.

“Oh, I don’t look like him,” the Doctor replies mischievously.

“Who are we?” Ben asks, wanting some recognition from this strange man that he is still the Doctor.

The Doctor answers glibly, “Don’t you know?” Then he continues rummaging around in his chest and pulls out a rectangular piece of dull metal. He eyes his companions very seriously, saying, “Extermination,” implying that the metal has something to do with the Daleks. He tucks it into a pocket of his coat, then pulls out a magnifying glass, looking at his own hands. “Very good. Nails need growing.”

Once again trying to get a definitive answer, Ben snatches the 1st Doctor’s ring off of the ground and says, “Now look, the Doctor always wore this, so if you’re him, it should fit, now shouldn’t it?” He slides it onto the Doctor’s finger; it’s far too big and clatters back onto the floor. “There,” he says, turning to Polly. “That settles it.”

“I’d like to see a butterfly fit into its chrysalis case after it’s spread its wings,” the Doctor says.

“Then you did change!” Polly exclaims.

The Doctor runs a finger across his teeth. “Life depends on change and renewal.”

Still clearly skeptical, Ben scoffs, “Oh, so that’s it. You’ve been renewed, have you?”

“I’ve been renewed, have I?” the Doctor replies, a touch mocking. “That’s it. I’ve been renewed. It’s part of the TARDIS. Without it, I couldn’t survive.” This seems to imply that the Doctor’s regeneration depends on the TARDIS, which is contradicted by series canon on multiple occasions. At this point in the series, the Doctor’s “renewal” isn’t even referred to as a regeneration, and has nothing to do with the concept of a Time Lord. As such, I see the Doctor’s claim about it having something to do with the TARDIS as another thing in the early days that has to be disregarded in order for the series canon to make sense.

Suddenly, the Doctor turns to Polly. “Come here!” he says harshly, perhaps rankled by Ben’s oblique yet obvious approach to questioning his legitimacy. When she doesn’t obey right away, the Doctor mollifies his tone slightly, though he remains impatient as he repeats, “Come here.” When she does, followed closely by Ben, the Doctor says in a lowered tone, as if telling a secret, “The Doctor kept a diary, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Polly answers nervously.

“Thought so. I wonder where.” Memory loss has been a common symptom of regeneration over the years, though it is quite inconsistent. The 3rd Doctor, though disoriented, seemingly retained all of his memories, immediately recognizing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart upon waking and clearly remembering the terms of his exile by the High Council of Time Lords. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the 12th Doctor, who barely has any clue as to who he is for a lengthy period of time, even forgetting how to fly the TARDIS for a while after regenerating, crash-landing in prehistoric times before accidentally transporting a T-Rex to Victorian London. Always, this memory loss has been a temporary phenomenon, but like many other symptoms of regeneration, its precise specifications tend to vary widely from Doctor to Doctor. Based on what I remember of the rest of the series, my opinion is that this is largely due to inconsistent writing, but I want to see if that opinion changes as I continue through this retrospective. For now, the 2nd Doctor’s first scene gives us a decent baseline for what to expect: a brief period of intense pain and disorientation, followed by some memory loss and referring to his old body in the third person as if they were someone else. We’ll see what gets reinforced over time and what gets changed.

As Ben and Polly look on, the Doctor continues to rummage through his things, pocketing various objects in his continued search for his diary. “He’s a very different Doctor, Ben,” Polly says.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ben answers. “Just where do we stand, though?”

The Doctor finds an old box inside the chest and opens it. With a very childlike smile, he reveals a white descant recorder. He takes away from the chest, flexing his fingers over the holes of the recorder, his search for the diary forgotten. Puffing into the mouthpiece, he plays a jaunty tune, tapping out the beat with his foot as he dances a little jig. Then he spots the diary inside the chest and stops his song, pocketing the recorder and once again bending low over the chest. He straightens with a small black book that says “500 Year Diary” printed clearly on the cover. For the size of the book, this title is a bit ridiculous—a throwaway line about it being “bigger on the inside” would have been a nice touch—but however clunkily executed, this is the first acknowledgement of the Doctor’s lifespan being longer than that of a human. It will be a while before we get an exact age.

“Doctor?” Polly starts hesitantly. “Doctor, what’s going to happen to us?”

Still not giving a direct answer, the Doctor thumbs through the pages of his diary, then turns to the TARDIS console. “I think we must have landed for some time,” he says. “I think it’s time we went for a scroll.” Without a second thought, he flicks a switch and the doors swing open.

“But you don’t know where we’ve landed!” Polly cries out.

“No, you haven’t checked the oxygen or the temperature or anything!” Ben adds.

As if this is a dreadful inconvenience, the Doctor looks at his instruments, grumbling, “Oxygen density: one-seven-two, radiation: nil, temperature: 86. Strong suggestion of mercury deposits. Satisfied, Ben?” He snatches a stovepipe hat off of a nearby clock—the same clock that Barbara found melted in The Edge of Destruction. “Now, are you two coming, or are you not?” The Doctor strides through the doors.

Polly turns to Ben, saying, “He does know us. He said, ‘Ben.’ Didn’t you hear him?”

Ben isn’t convinced. “Yeah, I heard. But he might just have been copying you, though, mightn’t he?” The two companions follow the Doctor outside.

Alright, that was about as detailed as I’ll ever be with a 7-minute sequence, but I really want to provide some clarity for the 2nd Doctor’s character. My initial observation is that this is a very different Doctor than what we saw from the 1st Doctor, while at the same time maintaining the core of the character’s identity. With the 1st Doctor, we saw a very low tolerance for what he viewed as stupidity; if someone made a comment that the Doctor felt was beneath addressing, he would often snap at the culprit. Here, we see that the 2nd Doctor has the same low tolerance for stupidity when Polly and Ben try to get him to confirm his identity, but instead of addressing it with head-on, he ignores it entirely. Yes, it eventually gets to the point where he says something snarky to Ben, but it’s only after being pushed several times. I’ll be watching to see if this kind of reaction is repeated in his character.

One thing that hints at a significant change in characterization is when the 2nd Doctor flung open the doors to the TARDIS without so much as a cursory nod toward safety. Can you imagine the 1st Doctor doing anything like that? The 1st Doctor’s run made a point of showing him checking his instruments whenever the TARDIS landed somewhere new, or else he made Susan do it for him. In my introduction, I said that I was going through this retrospective trying to put myself in the position of someone watching the series for the first time, and it can be difficult at times for me to separate what I am seeing from what I know is going to happen—like how the 2nd Doctor earns his reputation among the fandom as a “cosmic hobo.” However, this new carelessness is an obvious departure from the 1st Doctor’s characterization that is communicated very effectively to the audience, and I don’t think it’s confirmation bias for me to say that a new viewer is already experiencing a much more lackadaisical Doctor in Troughton’s first scene.

Similarly, I know that the recorder becomes a recurring prop for the 2nd Doctor—a dreadfully annoying one at times—but the way he dropped his search for the diary just to take the time to dance and play a tune is another thing that I can’t picture the 1st Doctor ever doing. Right from the start, The Power of the Daleks is doing a terrific job establishing the 2nd Doctor as a happy-go-lucky, somewhat erratic figure, prone to act on a whim in the absence of clear and present danger—a trait which seems to manifest as a tiny attention span. However, it’s important to put into perspective that this is still just the first scene of Troughton’s first serial. I need to see more interactions with the Doctor to understand what else might have changed, and like with the 1st Doctor, I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers alter his characterization over long spans of time.

As for the companions, I really appreciate the writers treating the Doctor’s regeneration with the level of what-the-fuck-is-going-on-ism that it deserves. So often, the series has undercut extremely emotional or surprising moments by moving on from them way too quickly. Take Dodo becoming a companion, for instance. She never, ever, ever questioned what was going on around her, aside from vague observations about things being strange that she never actually seemed concerned about getting to the bottom of. Even Ben and Polly’s first trip in the TARDIS, though treated with more introspection than Dodo’s, had both companions moving on from their unexpected time traveling way too quickly. In a similar vein, the tragic conclusion of The Daleks’ Master Plan, which ended with a somber Doctor looking over the wanton destruction and saying, “What a terrible waste,” received no recognition in the following episode, with the Doctor and Steven moving on as if nothing had happened.

Here, Ben and Polly offer an analogue for the viewer that makes a lot of sense given the circumstances. Whether the viewer is a skeptic like Ben or credulous like Polly, they have someone to guide them through the Doctor’s change in appearance, while at the same time treating the unexpectedness of it with the gravitas and mystery that it deserves. The 2nd Doctor’s choice not to address Ben and Polly’s questions directly, aside from being a great way to demonstrate a change in his characterization, allows room for Ben and Polly to explore their own emotional responses, coming to possible conclusions and discarding them just like the viewers have to do. In short, the reactions of the companions provide a rich emotional backdrop which both enhances and centers the Doctor’s first regeneration. I am incredibly pleased with how well-written this serial has been so far.

Moving on, the scene cuts to the Doctor walking on his own across an alien landscape, hardly paying it any mind as he reads through his diary. The TARDIS has landed in a misty swamp, with small, bubbling pools that emit a silvery steam. The ground between these pools is rocky, with rock formations arrayed in such a way that the Doctor is in a small, clearing-like hollow. The Doctor meanders through the landscape, seemingly aimlessly, engrossed in his reading. He nearly steps into one of the bubbling pools, then turns suddenly, ambling away from the liquid. When he looks up from his diary and sees the danger that he narrowly avoided, he chuckles to himself, before promptly stepping in ankle-deep mud and scowling. He calls out to his companions: “Are you coming, you two?” Without waiting for a response, he continues on.

Next, the Doctor arrives at a small boulder which blocks his path. From a pocket, he takes out a tape measure, measuring the boulder’s height, width, and breadth before murmuring, “Time I put you through some tests, I think.” Taking a few steps back, the Doctor breaks into a sprint and leaps, clearing the boulder with inches to spare.

“Hello?” a voice calls. “Hello? Is anyone there?” The camera angle changes to show a man entering the clearing. He is about the same height as the Doctor, perhaps a decade or so younger than the Doctor’s apparent age, with short brown hair and a receding hairline. After a moment, he spots the Doctor, relieved to see another sentient being. “Ah, so you’ve come at last,” he says, approaching him. “I’m from Earth. I’m the Examiner.”

Before the Doctor can say anything at all, a gunshot rings through the clearing, and the Examiner falls to the rocky soil. It looks like the Doctor is about to run for cover, then, changing his mind, he approaches the fallen Examiner. The Doctor rolls the man over and confirms that he is dead before searching the Examiner’s pockets for some kind of identification. I don’t want to read too much into every little interaction by the 2nd Doctor, but going directly to body instead of looking around or running for cover seems like another change in his character—self-preservation does not seem as important to the 2nd Doctor as it did the 1st.

Cut to a longer shot of the clearing, which reveals someone in a white protective suit watching the Doctor’s actions closely. We cannot see their face or any identifying features.

Still searching the man, the Doctor finds a badge in his breast pocket, instinctively pulling his spectacles out to read it. Then, finding that his new body no longer needs the spectacles, he puts them away—this is a wonderful touch. He reads aloud, “Earth Examiner. Accord every access. Vulcan.” As the Doctor reads, the white-suited figure creeps toward him from behind, beginning to raise their gun. Suddenly, Ben’s voice can be heard from beyond the clearing, calling out for the Doctor. The mysterious figure dodges out of sight just as the Doctor turns toward Ben’s call.

As I move through this retrospective, I’ve been keeping track of a few things that keep popping up in the series, some of them being tropes that feel specific to the construction of a Doctor Who narrative. One such trope is when a major plot point is triggered by one of the protagonists randomly choosing to wander off from the others. As such, the Doctor choosing to take a stroll on the planet Vulcan gives us SomeoneWandersOff™ #9.

Cut to Ben and Polly, who are traipsing around outside the TARDIS, taking in the inhospitable swamp. Ben complains about the heat, adding, “Don’t want to get too many lungfuls of [this air], I know that. Here, when I was a kid, we used to live opposite a brewery. You could take a walk and get tipsy all in one go.” It’s not an important line, but I always love hearing about the companions’ pasts, and we don’t get very much of that.

When Polly crosses to one of the bubbling pools, Ben tells her to be careful, identifying the liquid as mercury. Almost as soon as he has issued his warning, a burst of steam erupts from the pool, the vapors hitting Polly square in the face. She coughs and sways, suddenly faint. Ben shouts for the Doctor once again, more urgently this time, yelling out that Polly is in danger.

Cut back to the Doctor, who turns and actually heeds Ben’s call, making for the edge of his little clearing. But before he can get too far, the mysterious white-suited figure appears behind him and knocks him out with a blow from the butt of their pistol. The figure presses an object into the Doctor’s palm, closing his fingers around it. Then the figure leaves, dragging the Examiner’s body out of the scene.

What follows is a discrepancy between the reconstruction and the transcript. The transcript says that Ben is pulling Polly’s unconscious body away from the pool when he is hit by a burst of vapors himself. This much I agree with, but it goes on to say: “The last thing Ben sees before he passes out is a white-suited figure holding a pistol and approaching fast.” In the reconstruction, there is no evidence that Ben ever sees the figure, nor is there any in the dialogue that follows in the rest of the episode. Because of this, I don’t think Ben ever sees the Examiner’s assassin.

Sometime later, a man in a white protective suit squats over the Doctor’s unconscious body. A second man, similarly attired, older and thinner with a beak of a nose, enters the scene and says, “Ah, Quinn, what have you got there? My people have found two more of them by one of the pools.” Quinn points out that the Doctor has a nasty bruise on the back of his head, assuming that he must have fallen and knocked himself out—that is, if Quinn isn’t just the assassin and is lying about it. “Yes,” says beak-nose, “the other two have had a rather bad dose of fumes. The girl has, anyway.”

Ben and Polly are then helped into the clearing by two additional men in white protective suits. This is a really nice way to set up a whodunnit-style mystery. The Examiner’s assassin could be any one of these men, or possibly others that we haven’t met yet. It is soon made clear that Quinn takes the Doctor for the real Earth Examiner, and that he assumes Ben and Polly are his entourage.

“We saw your rocket overshoot the landing area,” he tells Ben, who is recovering. “Don’t worry. Most of the ships from Earth do overshoot. I’m Quinn, Deputy Governor.” Beak-nose introduces himself as Bragen, Head of Security. Ben is obviously out of his depth, but he keeps nodding and saying aye, letting the Vulcan colonists continue to assume whatever they want about his origin. With two men to carry the Doctor and Quinn to help Polly, they start to move offscreen, with Bragen suggesting that the Examiner is here to see “Lesterson’s space capsule.” As the scene comes to a close, the Doctor opens his eyes, catches Ben’s gaze with a wink, and feigns unconsciousness again.

As a sidenote, connecting back to my thesis about worldbuilding, the line about the rocket overshooting is lovely. Is the landing area too small? Is this a dig at stupid Earth pilots who lack local knowledge? I have no idea, but I love that the serial is prompting these questions. And it’s so cheap, too—just one line of dialogue that adds a lot of color to the world.

Another sidenote: apparently, this serial is set in 2020. I’m choosing to disregard this entirely, because at no point in the serial is this ever mentioned. As far as I can tell from my research, the year 2020 was only ever mentioned in promotional materials for the first episode. Rather than try to retcon a reason as to why there’s an off-world Earth colony in 2020 or write it off as another quirk of classic sci-fi, I’m going to take my cues from what is explicitly shown onscreen and leave the year undefined.

Cut to a laboratory where a man named Lesterson and a woman named Janley stand over a table, where Lesterson is rubbing a cloth across a piece of metal. Janley is very tall, a head taller than Lesterson, with long brown hair and a blouse that comes off as a light gray in the black-and-white footage. She looks to be somewhere in her 20s. Lesterson, perhaps in his late-40s, is short and skinny, with bony shoulders that feature prominently through his white collared shirt. He wears thinly framed glasses, with his short brown hair neatly combed and a square jaw. Lesterson is the scientist alluded to by Bragen in the last scene; Janley is his assistant. The laboratory is hard to make out in the reconstruction, but a huge metal structure dominates one side of the room.

Janley tells Lesterson about the arrival of the Earth Examiner, and Lesterson says that he must be here to examine “the capsule,” adding, “Well, they can’t stop me working on it, I’ll tell you that…The Governor’s always been difficult about it, but surely they wouldn’t send somebody all the way from Earth just [for that.]”

Then Janley asks, “What about the meeting?…I’ve arranged everything. Can we still use the old rocket room?” Lesterson grudgingly gives Janley permission, though he makes a comment wishing that Janley would stay away from “pressure groups.” Janley goes into a diatribe, saying that the colony of Vulcan is in dire need of new leadership and that the current administration has allowed it to become run-down. “But if we ran things,” she adds resolutely, “you’d have better facilities, more money.” Lesterson shows no interest in the prospect, and Janley sighs.

“This is what I find important,” Lesterson replies, holding up the piece of metal that he’s been polishing, a large bracket of some kind. “Two hundred years in a mercury swamp, and this piece of metal that dropped from it? Look! A couple of minutes’ polishing and it’s as good as new…Rain, damp, heat, mercury. Nothing touches this metal. No corrosion, Janley. Think of that!”

Janley moves toward the exit, warning that the Examiner might put an end to Lesterson’s research whether he likes it or not, adding that the Governor may have even brought the Examiner here for the express purpose of shutting him down. “You should join our group, Lesterson. You might need us one day.”

The next scene takes place in a room listed in the transcript as “guest quarters,” which gives us a rather reserved setting compared to the litany of random space-ish set elements that many of the other futuristic settings the series has given us thus far. For all intents and purposes, it’s a modern living room, with the Doctor sitting on one side of the room with his recorder and Ben and Polly facing him from the other. There are still odd design elements that the producers have decided represent the future, such as the series of teardrop-shaped windows in the rear wall, but so far, the sets of Vulcan are a much more subtle approach to the future than what we’ve seen from serials like The Space Museum and The Daleks’ Master Plan.

The Doctor titters away at his white recorder, much to the annoyance of Ben and Polly. He has apparently caught his companions up on the events that transpired out in the mercury swamp, because Ben says, “So the murdered man was the real Examiner?” The Doctor answers by playing two repeating notes on the recorder. “Well,” Ben continues, “did you see who did it?” A high-pitched shriek from the recorder: no.

Polly holds out her hand, which holds the button that the mysterious figure had placed in the Doctor’s palm, noting that it might be a clue. Then she asks the Doctor if he plans on letting the colony believe that he’s the real Examiner, to which the Doctor answers with his two repeated notes again: yes. Will it be dangerous, she asks. Another yes from the recorder.

This process irritates Ben to no end, and he stands in anger, asking why the Doctor won’t talk to them properly. Polly tries to calm him down, saying that the Doctor hasn’t done anything wrong—all the while, the Doctor plays a jaunty tune. Pulling away from Polly, Ben snatches the recorder away from the Doctor. “He knows what happened back at the TARDIS,” he grouses, “yet will he tell us? Will he come out and say? Will he admit to being the Doctor?” Ben blows into the recorder himself, mocking the Doctor’s flippancy with a high-pitched “no” of his own.

There is a knock at the door, and four men enter. Two are rank-and-file soldiers, who stop just inside the entrance to the guest quarters—almost all of the extras in this serial are soldiers like these. The other two are Bragen, the Head of Security, and an older man with white, slicked back hair and round beard. The latter introduces himself as Hensell, the Governor of Vulcan. All four men wear shirts and trousers of the same color as what Janley wore in the last scene, indicating that this is the uniform worn by the people of Vulcan.

Like Ben back in the TARDIS, Hensell takes an oblique approach to getting information from the Doctor, saying that if Vulcan had had warning about the Examiner’s arrival, they could have helped guide their ship down to the surface. And like in the TARDIS, the Doctor refuses to engage on another’s terms, cutting straight to the heart of the matter: “If Earth didn’t warn you we were coming, Governor, they must have had a very good reason. I wonder what that was.” Hensell is affronted, demanding to know why the Examiner is here, but the Doctor won’t say anything beyond “To examine.”

Increasingly frustrated, Hensell says, “Someone’s leaked reports about these rebel groups. That’s it, isn’t it?” Then Bragen suggests that it could have something to do with Lesterson’s capsule—the second time he’s mentioned it in as many scenes. Hensell tells Bragen off for getting involved in internal affairs, but the Doctor wants more information, so Hensell elaborates, “It was found in a mercury swamp. It must have been here for centuries…before the Earth colony arrived. I felt it might be dangerous. It might contain bacteria.” Then the Doctor abruptly dismisses the Governor and the rest of the colonists; the Governor grudgingly leads them out.

Once they have gone, the Doctor starts playing his recorder again—“Oh, how did he get that thing back again?” says Ben—and Polly asks why the Doctor was looking at Bragen while Hensell was talking. The Doctor says that he wanted to see whether Bragen agreed with what Hensell was saying, though he doesn’t answer Ben when he asks the Doctor if he learned anything from it. All the Doctor says is that he must take a look at this mysterious capsule. As the scene comes to a close, Ben warns the Doctor to be careful with this Examiner impersonation, arguing that he’ll never fool whomever killed the real Examiner—the Doctor takes no heed, playing away on his recorder.

In a corridor somewhere in the colony, Bragen is posting a piece of paper on a bulletin board. Quinn, the Deputy Governor whom we met with Bragen out in the swamp, approaches Bragen and demands to know why he needs a pass to see the Examiner. Bragen says it was the Governor’s idea, but Quinn insists that it sounds like one of Bragen’s “red-tape ideas.” Bragen is nonchalant about the whole thing, which irritates Quinn to the point of storming off. When he does, he almost collides with Janley who is coming the opposite way. Janley asks if the Examiner is going to allow Lesterson to open the capsule, and Quinn says that he won’t know until he can speak to the Examiner. As she speaks, Janley touches Quinn’s sleeve, which is missing a button.

Cut to later that evening, where we find the Doctor, Ben, Polly, Bragen, Quinn, Hensell, Lesterson, and Janley all crowded around in front of the capsule in Lesterson’s laboratory. The Doctor sees that piece of metal that Lesterson had been polishing earlier and asks Lesterson where it came from; Lesterson says that it fell off the capsule when it was being moved into the laboratory. “You can see,” Lesterson says excitedly, “this metal could revolutionize space travel. That’s why I’m insisting that we open it. Well, who knows what other marvels there may be inside?” Lesterson says that he has a theory about how to open the locking mechanism on the door, and when the Doctor gives his approval, Lesterson shines a laser at the wall of the capsule; the door opens.

Everyone enters the capsule. It’s a well lit but empty space, with nothing of note inside. The Doctor appears to notice some kind of nook that may lead further into the capsule, but he says nothing about it to the others. Instead, he says that this must be some sort of entry bay, then declares that any further exploration must wait until morning. This irritates Hensell and Lesterson, but the Doctor is intransigent—he strides confidently from the capsule and out of the laboratory.

“What’s he up to now?” Ben says quietly to Polly.

“Ben, we’re not going to let him out of our sight,” she answers. The two companions follow the Doctor out of the room.

Once they have gone, Hensell turns to Lesterson and asks the scientist if it was worth sending for the Examiner now that he has gotten permission to explore the capsule. This confuses Lesterson, who says that he thought Hensell had sent for the Examiner. Quinn asks for permission from Hensell to speak with the Examiner, suggesting that he can get to the bottom of why the Doctor here, but Hensell refuses him. Instead, Hensell tells Lesterson to keep an eye on the Doctor, saying, “I don’t mind what you do with him so long as you keep his nose out of our business.” I love the political intrigue that this serial is setting up—so far, we have an unknown assassin, some kind of rebellion, and the mystery of who really sent for the examiner.

Everyone leaves the laboratory except for Lesterson. Once they are gone, the scientist notices that the strange metal bracket has been stolen from his workbench.

Later, in the guest quarters, Ben and Polly are lounging in their beds when they spy the Doctor heading off down the corridor, moving toward Lesterson’s laboratory; they follow him. Cut to the interior of the lab, where the reconstruction finally gives us a great view of this space capsule. It is large and shaped like a dome, with circular nob-like protrusions on the exterior and an oblong door leading inside. Light glows from this doorway. At the entrance to the capsule, the Doctor removes two pieces of metal from his pockets: Lesterson’s bracket and the piece of Dalek metal he found in the chest back on the TARDIS. At this point, it’s very easy to see the connection that the serial is trying to make. The clues fit together in a way that I find extremely satisfying as a viewer, even if the solution is obvious. With all the mystery and intrigue going on behind the scenes, giving the capsule an immediate closure in this way feels good in a way that it probably wouldn’t if it were the sole focus of the narrative.

The Doctor enters the capsule at the same time that Ben and Polly enter the laboratory. Just catching a glimpse of the Doctor, the companions follow him inside. With his companions looking on, the Doctor slips Lesterson’s piece of metal into a narrow opening in the wall. A door slides open, and we start to hear the same mid-range hum that we have heard in other Dalek structures throughout the series. The Doctor steps through this new doorway.

Inside are two Daleks, a nest of cobwebs draped across them to show that they haven’t moved in some time. Without having acknowledged the presence of his companions at all to this point, the Doctor suddenly says quietly, “Polly, Ben, come in and meet the Daleks.” I like this bit of characterization—it either means the 2nd Doctor is very good at pretending like he doesn’t know people are watching, or that he has enough faith in the intelligence of his companions for them to have followed.

Polly says that the Doctor could have opened the door earlier, but the Doctor doesn’t answer her directly. Instead, he hefts the pieces of metal and says, “These two pieces of metal are identical. The Doctor got one of them from the Daleks himself.”

Ben asks, “Why do you keep saying the Doctor if you mean you?” It just occurred to me that by giving the Doctor the role of the Examiner, the writers have allowed the 2nd Doctor a longer runway of sorts, where he doesn’t have to introduce himself as the Doctor or refer to his real identity at all outside of interactions with Ben and Polly. It’s a very cleverly written way to extend the tension between the Doctor and his companions well into the serial.

Anyway, the Doctor doesn’t answer Ben either—a running theme so far in his characterization—instead turning his attention on the Daleks. When Polly says that nothing could live through two hundred years in a swamp, the Doctor says, “Nothing human, no.” The Doctor stoops down to analyze tracks on the dusty floor, suddenly grave. “There were three Daleks in here! What’s happened to the other one?”

Suddenly Ben and Polly cry out, as a small, barely-seen creature, with tentacle-like claws, scuttles across the floor. Credits roll.

I am extremely pleased with this serial so far and how it has treated the Doctor’s first regeneration. In fact, I have to put it as my new favorite opening episode of the series so far, unseating the opener of The Space Museum. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of my favorite episode overall—that’s still the finale of The Daleks’ Master Plan—but this would be an incredibly engaging plot even without the Doctor regenerating and the quirky fun that that entails. The layers of mystery and intrigue on Vulcan are wonderfully crafted, and the reveal of the Daleks in the last scene is a great way to heighten the stakes of the serial. I can’t wait to get into the rest of this story.

Part 2

The Doctor shouts at Ben to go outside and fetch a flashlight from the laboratory—Ben does, but unbeknownst to him, a man from the colony watches him from the doorway; the man quickly leaves to get help. By the time Ben reenters the Dalek capsule and switches on the flashlight, the clawed creature has disappeared. Once the protagonists have calmed down—relatively speaking—they take stock of the fact that a Dalek has apparently been removed from the capsule. When Polly suggests that it couldn’t have been Lesterson because he hadn’t opened the capsule, Ben counters, “No, he said he hadn’t opened it. Let’s get our facts straight.”

“Excellent!” the Doctor remarks. “Good thinking!” He ushers his companions back out into the laboratory. Then the Doctor suggests that Lesterson may be experimenting on the Daleks, implying that the seemingly dead creatures might only need power to return to normal. “Now, Lesterson’s a fanatic. The Governor’s jealous of his own position. What does that suggest to you? Don’t know. Haven’t thought about it. But all is not well with this colony.”

I find this piece of dialogue to be really bad. First of all, Lesterson has not demonstrated anything near fanaticism. Eventually, he will, but at the moment, he’s just a scientist doing his job. Sure, he’s being accused of secretly experimenting on the Daleks, but for all Lesterson knows, there is nothing at all dangerous about them. That’s not fanatical behavior. And second, what does “The Governor’s jealous of his own position” mean? He’s certainly not jealous of Lesterson’s position, and I don’t know what else could possibly be meant by that given the context. All in all, this dialogue seems to be trying to give us the impression that the Doctor is thinking through things, and at great speed, but if you break it down, it’s largely nonsense.

But then we get this interesting exchange: Ben says that one Dalek wouldn’t pose much of a threat on its own, but the Doctor says urgently, “[One Dalek is] all that is needed to wipe out this entire colony!” Umm, no. It’s not. At least, not according the caliber of the Daleks we have seen to this point in the series. On many occasions, the Daleks have shown themselves to be very beatable. En masse, they can overwhelm humans, like in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and when it comes to a single human versus a single Dalek, the Dalek will win most of the time. But we’ve seen multiple times now, in The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and The Daleks’ Master Plan, instances of several humans banning together to overwhelm a single Dalek, often even picking it up and slamming it against something until its casing shatters.

No, a single Dalek as they are currently conceived cannot wipe out an entire colony. However, as fans of the series already know, future iterations of the Daleks are indeed lethal enough for a single Dalek to be a threat to an entire planet—and for this to make sense, the Daleks we have already seen must experience some sort of change in characterization to get to that point. Now, I much prefer this change to be something experienced onscreen, maybe through some kind of upgrading process like what we sometimes get from Cybermen stories. But it’s also possible to do this work offscreen, through some kind of retconning process. It’s possible that the showrunners have simply decided that the Daleks should be more lethal. Although this leaves a lot to be desired as a viewer, I’m okay with this sort of rewrite as long as it makes the Daleks a more compelling threat—and as long as these retcons are used very sparingly.

Meanwhile, Quinn, the Deputy Governor, is in the guest quarters, quietly calling out for the Examiner. Remember, Quinn was the man whose sleeve was touched by Janley, where we learned he was missing a button—perhaps the one placed in the Doctor’s hand by the assassin. Quinn finds the guest quarters empty, but before he can leave, the door opens, startling him. Bragen enters, asking why Quinn has come to see the Examiner despite Governor Hensell’s orders for him to stay away. Quinn refuses to answer, and when Bragen moves to block his exit, Quinn knocks the Head of Security to the ground, stepping over him and out the door. Bragen calls a guard in, telling him that the Examiner is missing and must be found.

Back in the laboratory, the Doctor examines the exterior of the Dalek capsule as Ben and Polly look on. “Of course,” Ben begins, “the real Doctor was always going on about the Daleks.”

“Real Doctor?” the Doctor says. Then, a bit dejected, “Oh, you mean the real Doctor.” Polly asks what the Doctor plans to do about the Daleks if they’re as dangerous as he says they are. “Save my breath,” the Doctor answers. “Would Lesterson listen?” He pauses. “Lesterson listen. Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen. Exercises the tongue. Try it. Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen.”

Ben tries to get the Doctor to focus, telling him that he should throw his weight around as the supposed Earth Examiner and demand that the Vulcan colonists destroy the Daleks. In the background, Polly is on the verge of laughing, saying, “Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen.” The Doctor crosses over to her with a grin and joins in: “Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen…” This moment is incredibly charming. Even though Polly has largely defended the 2nd Doctor against Ben’s implications that he is a fraud, I see this as the moment when Polly fully buys into him being the same man, the moment where she reaffirms her companionship to him. We will see this again and again over the years—Peri with the 6th Doctor, Rose with the 10th, and Clara with the 12th to name a few—but even after watching the rest of the series, Polly’s kindness here still sticks out to me as the best of all of them. In the face of Ben’s cynicism, Polly accepts the Doctor for who he has become.

Their tittering is interrupted as two men enter the room, the man who watched Ben retrieve the flashlight and Lesterson. Lesterson demands to know why the Doctor thinks he can rummage through his laboratory without permission, to which the Doctor holds up his Examiner badge, which says Accord every access, saying, “It doesn’t say ‘except your laboratory’ anywhere, does it?”

Lesterson bustles over to the Dalek capsule to make sure that everything is order, disappearing for a few seconds before reemerging to confront the Doctor. But here, the Doctor gets the better of him, turning to his companions and asking them what they noticed when they were inside the capsule. When Ben and Polly mention the Daleks, saying that they were amazed by their presence, the Doctor rounds back on Lesterson and spits, “You didn’t even give them a glance! Why? Because you’d been in there and seen them.” He then accuses Lesterson of removing and hiding the third Dalek.

Lesterson calls the Doctor’s accusation nonsense, just as Bragen strides into the room, asking what all the commotion is about. Polly explains that Lesterson lied when he told the Governor that he had never been inside the capsule—a point which Lesterson concedes—but Lesterson denies having taken a Dalek from the capsule, adding that they are inert lumps of metal that are not a danger to the colony. There is an interesting exchange where Ben begins to explain about the creature they had seen inside the capsule, but he cuts himself off when the Doctor issues a shrill note on his recorder—clearly this is information the Doctor wants to keep close to his chest.

When Lesterson insists that it’s his duty as a scientist to examine and investigate his lumps of metal, the Doctor scoffs, “These lumps of metal, Daleks, I want them broken up or melted down. Up or down, I don’t care which, but destroyed!” This is a fantastic line from the Doctor—it feels like something any Doctor could have said. Lesterson scoffs at this, and the Doctor turns to Bragen and demands to be taken to see the Governor. Bragen says that that would be difficult, and the Doctor retorts, “But not impossible.” He gathers his companions and storms out of the laboratory, with an exasperated Bragen following in his wake.

Once they have gone, Lesterson tells the man who snitched on Ben—apparently an assistant of his—to run and fetch Janley, saying that they have no time to waste. Then, he turns to the capsule and opens a hidden compartment, wheeling out an inert Dalek. “They won’t stop me experimenting,” he says, a maniacal edge to his voice. “There must be some way to bring you back to life, and I’m going to find it.”

At this point, it’s safe to say that the viewer might describe Lesterson as a fanatic, but the Doctor wouldn’t know that. There has been a trend in these Early Era serials—even in the well-written ones, which I believe The Power of the Daleks is—where characters inexplicably know things that they shouldn’t. These things fall into one of three categories: 1) something learned by a different person in a different scene, someone who has never had the chance to relay their knowledge to the character in question; 2) something that has been revealed to the audience but not to the character on the screen; 3) something that occurs in the future of the narrative but which hasn’t been revealed to anyone yet. Sitting here in 2025, it’s easy to say that this is poor writing—and don’t get me wrong; it is—but it’s more emblematic of the quality of television writing of the time than it is of anything specific to Doctor Who. I’ll still call attention to these instances when they happen, but unless they’re especially egregious, they won’t subtract much from my opinion of the serial.

Back in the guest quarters, Bragen reaffirms that as the Examiner, the Doctor has the right to access any part of the colony, but he implies that if he wanted to visit Lesterson’s laboratory, he should have just asked. The Doctor responds, “If there was a bomb under this floor timed to go off in five minutes, would you ask my permission before you ripped up the floorboards?” Then the Doctor notices a bowl of fruit which has been placed on a table while they were gone. Suddenly delighted, he plucks a piece of fruit out of the bowl.

Bragen hints at a spate of disturbances that have been happening around the colony: acts of sabotage, rebel cliques, and secret newspapers; he says that the Doctor should learn more once he has time to speak with the Governor. When Ben asks him when that will be, Bragen answers, “Oh, he’s going on a tour of the perimeter of the colony. I’ll find out if he can see you before he goes.” Bragen leaves the scene.

Again, regarding the details of the worldbuilding, this small piece of dialogue is a very effective way to make the setting feel much, much bigger than what can be shown onscreen. There is a dilemma not just in Doctor Who, but in the broader genre of science fiction, where producers must portray large worlds with a limited budget and a set amount of screen time. Some classic serials stick out in my mind for having supposedly large worlds just offscreen, but which fail to capture any of their supposed enormity. The Sensorites, already covered in this retrospective, never gave me anything to latch onto regarding what existed outside the Palace of the Elders. Similarly, The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon, two serials from the 3rd Doctor’s run, show frustratingly little of the lives of Peladonians beyond the walls of the royal palace. Same thing with The Ribos Operation, a 4th Doctor serial with a plot centered around the valuable resources of a planet which is not at all explored by the writers. And this isn’t unique to Classic Who, either. New Earth, a 10th Doctor serial that takes place 5 billion years into the future, spends the entirety of its runtime within a disappointingly Earth-similar hospital, never taking advantage of the broader setting or the leap into the extreme future.

Although the moving pieces of the plot—the murder mystery and the budding rebellion—help to ground the serial’s worldbuilding, The Power of the Daleks also draws success from the way it has chosen to place humans in a single colony on Vulcan, rather than as a planet-wide population. This way, unlike with the stories I mentioned above, it doesn’t feel like I’m missing out as a viewer when the plot is centered on a handful of locations in one part of the colony. Then, the writers use some clever lines to add color to the world, whether they are critical to developing the plot—like when Janley tells Lesterson that the rebels would take his work more seriously—or they are throwaway lines, like when Quinn said that most Earth ships overshoot the landing area. The Governor visiting the perimeter of the colony performs the obvious plot-critical function of implying that the Governor will be physically removed from the narrative for a period of time, but it also establishes the colony as a large enough space that the Governor can stay within it and still be unreachable to the protagonists—by extension, this gives the colony a large enough size to justify all the rebellion and political intrigue bubbling just beneath the surface. If you’re a writer and you want to work on worldbuilding, you don’t always have to go big. Small, frequent, and consistent worldbuilding can be just as effective, if not more so.

Moving on, once Bragen has left the guest quarters, Ben turns to the Doctor, who has become unusually fixated on the bowl of fruit, and says, “You know, it’s the little things like this that make it difficult to believe that you’re the Doctor. The other one, I mean. The proper one. Oh, nuts, you know what I mean.”

“Nuts?” The Doctor says, turning to some of the other plates of food on the table. “Yes, certainly. Here we are.” He offers a plate to Ben. “Crackers?”

“You, my old China, are an out-and-out phony,” says Ben.

“China,” the Doctor muses. “Yes, I went there once, I believe. Met Marco Polo.”

“No, not China. China! China and plate, mate, friend.”

“Yes, Marco Polo, a friend. I believe he was.”

“Don’t listen to him, Doctor,” Polly cuts in. “I know who you are.”

The Doctor waves his two companions to silence, gesturing at a piece of fruit he has taken from the bowl. Placing it on the table, he takes a knife out of his pocket and slices it in half, revealing a small listening device. He takes the bug, drops it on the floor, and crushes it with his foot.

Now able to speak freely, Ben says to the Doctor, “Microphones…So that’s why you were messing about and talking nonsense.”

“I never talk nonsense,” the Doctor says. Polly clears her throat deliberately. “Well, hardly never,” he amends. I am absolutely loving the Doctor-companion interplay in this serial. I understand that the showrunners are highlighting the Doctor’s new characterization, but I really hope this kind of banter is maintained going forward.

Ben suggests that Bragen was the one who planted the bug in the room, though Polly points out that even if he did, he could have been ordered to do so by someone like the Governor. The Doctor reminds them that the only clue they have to this whole mystery is the button that must have come from the murderer of the real Examiner. Polly adds that they also need to discover who sent for the Examiner in the first place. For the latter, Ben rules out Lesterson, saying that all he cares about is his capsule. He also doesn’t suspect the Governor, explaining that Governors are all the same, and that reaching out for help from Earth would make it seem like he wasn’t fit for the job. When Ben suggests that they go back to the TARDIS and leave Vulcan to its own problems, the Doctor reminds him about the Daleks. Ben says that they must be dead, but Polly mentions the creature they saw in the capsule—Ben can’t explain that. “I can,” the Doctor says solemnly, “and that’s why we have to stay.”

Back in the laboratory, Lesterson, Janley, and the male assistant—who we learn is named Resno—are standing around the inert Dalek, arguing. Janley scoffs at Resno for not wanting to be a part of the rebellion, saying that if everyone were like him, there would be no progress. Resno retorts by saying that the Governor will get to the bottom of “you rebels” and wipe them all out. Lesterson shouts at both of them to be quiet, reminding them that they only have a limited time to experiment on the Dalek before the Examiner shuts them down.

Sometime later, Bragen returns to the guest quarters to tell the Doctor and his companions that the Governor will not be able to see them tonight. The Doctor makes as if to go and see the Governor anyway, but Bragen is adamant that once the Governor has shut his door for the night, no one is permitted to enter, not even the Examiner. Bragen leaves, and the Doctor tells his companions that he must get word to Earth about the danger, saying that a higher authority may be able to prevent Lesterson from experimenting further. After checking to make sure the coast is clear, he leaves, telling Ben and Polly to wait in the guest quarters for him. In doing so, he accidentally pulls the doorknob off the door, casually slipping it into his pocket. This never comes up again—I think it’s meant to show how absentminded the 2nd Doctor is to everything except for whatever is currently occupying his attention.

Meanwhile, Lesterson and his assistants have hooked up a large cable to the Dalek. With Janley and Resno looking on, Lesterson flips a switch and a whirring sound fills the room; the cable feeds power to the Dalek. Slowly, the Dalek’s plunger rises, and a dim light becomes visible in the lens of its eyestalk. Lesterson is thrilled, rushing around the Dalek and taking notes. Janley screams as the plunger reaches out for her, but Lesterson tells her not to be alarmed and that the power they are feeding to the Dalek is only temporary. He is baffled by the purpose of the Dalek’s gun, and when he theorizes about the way the Dalek moves and thinks, he supposes that there must be some kind of directing influence, perhaps even a “positronic” brain. Positronic is a piece of technobabble that gets repeated a lot throughout the series.

To Lesterson’s dismay, the Dalek’s eyestalk and plunger suddenly begin to droop. The scientist crosses back to the control panel and turns a few knobs; the pitch of the whirring increases as more power is fed into the Dalek. The plunger and eyestalk rise again. Without any of the humans noticing, the eyestalk turns to regard Resno as he works, as if watching the assistant. After a moment, Resno turns to see the eyestalk pointed directly at him; he shouts, and the eyestalk immediately falls away. Despite his insistence that the Dalek was watching him, Resno is unable to convince the others of what he has just seen. “You can’t use the phrase ‘watching us,’” Lesterson says jovially. “You’ll have us believing that the thing has intelligence next.”

Cut to a dark room, with a large communications array in the center of it, the machinery shrouded in semidarkness. The space looks remarkably similar to the layout of the TARDIS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a repurposing of the TARDIS set. Quietly, the Doctor enters the room and crosses to the machinery, discovering the body of the radio operator lying on the ground next to the operator’s chair, unconscious. When he analyzes the machine itself, he finds that all the communication lines have been severed.

There is a rustling noise, and the Doctor whirls around to face the shadows. “I know you’re there,” he says. The Deputy Governor, Quinn, steps into the low light around the machinery, greeting the Examiner with apparent relief, saying that he has been trying to speak with him ever since he arrived.

Before the Doctor can respond, Bragen enters the room with two of his soldiers in tow, asking what has happened. The Doctor says that he found the operator unconscious, and Quinn confirms this as true. Then Bragen points to what Quinn is holding in his hands—a pair of wire cutters—and asks where they are for. When Quinn says that he has just picked them up, the Doctor mentions that the cables have been cut. With (potentially feigned) surprise, Quinn says that Vulcan’s communications have been cut off both internally and to Earth. Bragen says that the only people who would do such a thing are the rebels.

Perhaps seeing this as the time to play his hand, the Doctor pulls the mysterious button out of his pocket and shows it to Bragen, saying that he was attacked just after he landed in the swamp and that this button was collected from his assailant. Bragen identifies the button as belonging to Quinn, then accuses him of attacking the radio operator and sabotaging the communications relay. Quinn denies this, but Bragen has him taken away under guard, noting that the Governor will want to start an inquiry into the incident.

Back in Lesterson’s laboratory, Lesterson pushes the power feeding into the Dalek to a new high. Janley and Resno still help him, with Resno looking through the lens of a camera at the Dalek. The Dalek’s eyestalk is once again trained on Resno, which makes the man very uneasy. “I tell you, it’s intelligent,” he says. “It’s watching me, Lesterson, weighing me up. I can sense it…I don’t like it, I tell you. I don’t know what these things can do!” Lesterson tells him to stop overreacting, and Resno reluctantly returns to the camera.

Suddenly, a bolt of negative light fires from the Dalek’s gun. It strikes Resno, and he spins to the ground. With a cry of surprise, Lesterson cuts the power to the Dalek, and Janley rushes over to the fallen man. “It’s alright,” Janley says. “He isn’t dead…[just] knocked out by the shockwave.” Lesterson rushes out of the laboratory to fetch help.

What follows is another discrepancy between the reconstruction and the transcript. In the reconstruction, Janley slowly crosses to the control panel and flips the power switch to see if she can get a response from the Dalek; the Dalek remains unresponsive. In the transcript, she kneels by Resno with a sheet and begins to wrap it around his body. Based on what happens later in the serial, I feel that the transcript is more likely to be correct.

The following morning, the Doctor is standing at a window of the guest quarters, playing his recorder while his companions argue. Polly says that they should be working to defend Quinn, while Ben says that he is certain Quinn is guilty. Ben cites the missing button and the pair of wire cutters as his reasoning, while Polly says, “Look, there are some people you know are alright. You just know by looking at them.” I love how every interaction between Ben and Polly has been used to elaborate on the differences in their worldviews. Here, Ben is prioritizing facts and logic, while Polly is prioritizing intuition—a very Nietzschean dichotomy. As they argue, Bragen enters the scene to escort the trio to the Governor’s inquiry.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory, Lesterson and Janley are preparing for some sort of demonstration, with Janley pulling a dark sheet over the Dalek. Lesterson is giddy with excitement, saying, “The wonderful thing, Janley, is that we don’t know the full scope of this experiment. Who knows where we may go from here? Who knows what this Dalek may do?” Then he asks Janley about Resno, and Janley responds that he has received medical attention and is recovering. However, she insists that no one can know about Resno’s accident, lest it be used as a justification to shut down Lesterson’s experimenting. I have a tough time wrapping my mind around how that could be the case. When we last saw Lesterson, he was running out of the laboratory to find help for Resno. How is it that no one else knows about it? And why does Lesterson not know about his condition? I guess it could be a callous disregard for everything that isn’t a science experiment, but it still seems a bit out-of-character for Lesterson. Anyway, the two get ready to leave the laboratory, with Lesterson saying, “Let’s go and surprise them.”

Cut to the Governor’s office, where the accused Quinn stands for the inquiry in front of Governor Hensell, who sits behind his desk. Bragen looks on from the side, while the Doctor, Ben, and Polly occupy chairs behind Quinn. Quinn asserts his innocence, saying that he has done nothing wrong. When Bragen brings up the button that the Examiner discovered in his hand after being assaulted, Quinn says that he has no explanation for it. The Doctor says that the Daleks could be a motive for Quinn to destroy the communications relay—if Quinn wanted Lesterson to continue with his experimenting, it would be the logical thing to do.

Before the Doctor can elaborate, however, Lesterson strolls into the room, Janley following close behind. Hensell is outraged, especially when Lesterson refuses to leave. Instead, Lesterson signals to Janley, who turns and motions out into the hall. Into the room glides a Dalek, fully restored and operating under its own power, though without its silvery gun attached. Its eyestalk instantly focuses on the Doctor. “It recognized the Doctor,” Ben says, bewildered. “It recognized him.” I know that as a time traveler, the Doctor doesn’t encounter the Daleks according to their own chronology, but that hasn’t yet been explored in any way by the writers. Here, the implication seems to be that the Dalek can see past the Doctor’s regeneration and recognize him for who he is. This is an interesting way of increasing the mystique of the Daleks—if not in a way that I find to be all that believable.

The Doctor mutters about Lesterson and Janley being stupid fools. Noticing the Doctor’s uncharacteristic fear, Ben asks what the Daleks can do, to which the Doctor answers, “Nothing yet.” Then Lesterson orders the Dalek around, making it turn, cross the room, move a chair, and come to a stop, going on about how it will revolutionize labor throughout the colony, suggesting that it may even end all of the colony’s problems. “Yes, it will end the colony’s problems,” the Doctor retorts, “because it will end the colony.”

“I am your servant,” the Dalek says unprompted, in its usual stilted, robotic cadence.

Lesterson is thrilled, tittering about the Dalek’s ability to speak, but the Doctor is increasingly agitated. “It can do many things, Lesterson,” the Doctor says, “but the thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings. It destroys them, without mercy, without conscience. It destroys them. Utterly. Completely. It destroys them!” By the end, the Doctor is shouting, trying to make himself heard over the Dalek, who is repeatedly declaring his status as servant to the humans. Credits roll.

Part 3

Pleased with Lesterson’s demonstration, Hensell gives him permission to continue his experiments on the Daleks. Unnerved in a way that I haven’t seen him to this point in the series, the Doctor pleads with Hensell, practically groveling at his feet, saying that although he can’t provide any proof, the colony of Vulcan is in grave danger as long as the Daleks are allowed to exist. When Hensell doesn’t budge, the Doctor declares that he will be contacting Earth as soon as communications have been restored. Then he turns to the Dalek, saying, “You’re my servant, are you?…Very well. Immobilize yourself. Go on. I order it! Immediately!” The Dalek’s eyestalk droops, and the Doctor leaves the room, followed by his companions.

As soon as the Doctor has left, the Dalek starts to move again. Lesterson asks why the Dalek has disobeyed the Doctor’s orders, and the Dalek says, “His order was wrong. I cannot serve human beings if I am immobilized. You gave me power. Your orders are right. I serve you.” This astounds Hensell even further, who is shocked by the Dalek’s ability to reason. Pleased, Lesterson orders the Dalek to follow him back to the laboratory, where he will perform tests on the Dalek’s capabilities.

In a corridor, the Doctor paces back and forth while Polly complains about not being able to help Quinn. Ben says that there isn’t anything they could have done to help. At any rate, Ben and the Doctor both say that the Daleks are a more important threat to worry about.

Back in the Governor’s office, Quinn’s inquiry is still going on. Bragen suggests that Quinn is one of the rebels and that he attacked the Examiner and cut off communications as part of some rebellious plot. Quinn says that as Deputy Governor, such sabotage would be against his own interest, revealing that he was the one who sent for the Examiner in the first place, with the goal of stopping the rebel threat that Hensell refused to take seriously. With this new information, Bragen quickly comes up with a new theory, turning to Hensell and saying, “If you’re removed, [Governor], who takes your place? The Deputy Governor, of course.” He addresses Quinn. “You attack the Examiner in the mercury swamp and blame it on the rebels. Then you sabotage the radio and blame that on the rebels, too.”

Outraged, Hensell orders two soldiers to take Quinn away, fully convinced of the man’s guilt. Stripping Quinn of his title, he tells Bragen that he will now be performing the duties of Deputy Governor.

Meanwhile, in the guest quarters, the Doctor takes a chair and uses it to smash the outer casing of a small electrical unit that he’s appropriated from somewhere, perhaps Lesterson’s laboratory. Ben and Polly look on as he pulls the mattress off his bed and tugs at one of the metal straps of the bedframe until it comes loose. “He’s a right little delinquent, isn’t he?” Ben says wryly. This is the first time in the serial where Ben appears truly comfortable in the Doctor’s presence—it seems that the Dalek’s recognition of the Doctor was the proof he was looking for that Troughton’s Doctor is the same man, which is a nice way of furthering Ben’s characterization as a logical thinker.

The Doctor lays out their dilemma: “Smash the Daleks, and the people here will lock us up or kill us. Let the Daleks go, and we’ll all be exterminated…Mustn’t underestimate any of them. Lesterson’s a first class scientist…He opened the capsule. He realized that the Daleks could be reactivated.” Ben suggests that they could kidnap Lesterson to stop him from bringing the Daleks back to life, which earns him some blank stares from the Doctor and Polly. Rebuked, Ben shrugs it off, saying that it sounded like a good idea to him. Then the Doctor finishes his tinkering, holding up his makeshift gizmo and saying, “[This] could be the answer to all our problems.”

The three exit into the corridor, where they come across Quinn being hauled away by the two soldiers from the Hensell’s office. “Examiner,” Quinn calls out, “don’t let them fool you about the rebels. They’re strong. Try and find out where they hold their meetings!” He is yanked around a corner and out of sight.