Galaxy 4

Oh look it's got a sort of... chumbly movement.

Galaxy 4 is up there with Enlightenment in my having difficulty getting a copy of. I was able to watch an animated recon of the first episode (Four Hundred Dawns) but it was close to terrible in terms of quality. I scavenged around some more and finally was able to locate some of the Loose Cannon versions which made watching the story so much easier. It also helped that Episode Three (Airlock) has been found as getting a moving episode break in a recon story helps so much more.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Steven and Vicki land on an unknown planet that despite being conducive to life, does not appear to have any. They prepare to go out but stop when hearing a strange beeping sound. A machine is bumping it's way around the TARDIS, investigating. Vicki seems amused by the machine and dubs it a Chumbly. The Chumbly sends a signal and then rolls off.

The three exit the TARDIS to explore. They find a Chumbly with a gun pointed at them. Though blind, the machine is sensitive to their movements. It demonstrates the power of it's gun and then herds the three across the landscape. As they walk, two women emerge and cast a metal net over the Chumbly, causing it to shut down.

The women identify themselves as Drahvins. They desire to take the Doctor and his companions to their leader, Maaga. They also warn the three against the masters of the Chumblies, the Rills. Vicki hesitates but when more Chumblies arrive, the group dashes off, forced to leave the metal net behind. The other Chumblies pull the net off the trapped Chumbly, freeing it.

The party arrives at the Drahvin's ship and Maaga enters. She is pleased at the capture of the Doctor and his party but angry at the loss of the metal net. She dismisses the guards and speaks of the Drahvin's war with the Rills. She also notes that the planet they are on will explode in fourteen dawns. She plans to take over the Rill ship as her ship was damaged in a firefight with the Rill ship while on a scout mission, looking for additional territory.

A Chumbly approaches her ship and Maaga fires the ship's lasers at it. The Chumbly is undamaged but flees the ship. The Doctor offers to head back to the TARDIS to see if the information the Rills have given the Drahvins about the expected death of the planet is true. Maaga accepts but demands a hostage to ensure the Doctor's return. Vicki volunteers and the Doctor and Steven leave. After they leave, Vicki overhears Maaga berating her soldiers for the loss of the metal net.

As they approach the TARDIS, they see a Chumbly circling around it, trying to gain access. Eventually it leaves and the Doctor and Steven enter the TARDIS. The Doctor checks his instruments and verifies what the Rills have said. He also notes that their timing is off and that the planet will actually explode tomorrow after only two dawns.

They attempt to leave the TARDIS but are forced to wait by the return of the Chumbly. The Chumbly again tries to enter the TARDIS, this time by detonating explosives around it. The Doctor and Steven are rocked but unharmed. The Chumbly retreats in failure and Steven and the Doctor return to the Drahvin ship. Before entering, the Doctor notes that the Drahvin ship is poorly made and not really fit for space travel. He suspects the Drahvins are not particularly technologically advanced.

Meeting again with Maaga, the Doctor lies and tells her what she originally told him: that the planet would explode after fourteen dawns rather than the two he discovered. Maaga demands that they help her take the Rill ship by force. The Doctor refuses but Maaga threatens to kill them if they don't. Steven tries to disarm her but a patrol returns and he is subdued. The Doctor agrees and he and Vicki leave to investigate the Rill ship with Steven being left behind as a hostage.

Steven attempts to incite an uprising among the Drahvin soldiers by pointing out the inequality between them and Maaga. He then tries to trick a soldier into giving him her gun and her taking Maaga's more powerful gun while on patrol. Maaga however enters and reprimands the soldier for nearly being tricked. Steven retreats to side and pretends to go to sleep so as to listen on other conversations.

The Doctor and Vicki find the Rill ship being patrolled by Chumblies. Vicki does a quick experiment and discovers that the Chumblies do not sense what is behind them. She and the Doctor follow a Chumbly until they can duck into the ship. The Doctor immediately notices that the Rill ship is a much higher technology level than the Drahvin ship. Vicki also notes a strong smell of ammonia in the air.

As Vicki and the Doctor continue to explore, Vicki is startled when she sees a Rill looking at them from the other side of a door. They flee the room but run into a Chumbly, forcing them back into the ship. They hide and evade the Chumbly and run to the edge of the ship. The Doctor gets through the gate but Vicki is trapped. The Chumblies arrive and take Vicki while the Doctor works on modifying the outside exchanger which converts the air into ammonia for the Rills to breathe.

Maaga is confronted by her drone soldiers about going on patrol. She rues their lack of intelligence and overrides their patrol order to ensure Steven is kept prisoner. Maaga plots to take the Rill ship, leaving the Doctor's company and the Rills to die in the planetary explosion. Steven overhears this but continues to pretend to sleep.

Vicki in brought back into the ship where she is confronted by a Rill through the compartment. Vicki tells the Rill that she and the Doctor were sent by the Drahvins to take the ship due to their companion being held prisoner. The Rill denies killing a Drahvin but is not surprised at the Drahvin's use of them. The Rill tells Vicki that Drahvins attacked them in space but they shot down the Drahvin ship as well. The Rill tells Vicki that they encountered a wounded Drahvin after crashing and tried to help her but Maaga shot at them and they retreated. They then saw Maaga kill the wounded Drahvin.

Steven notices his guard has fallen asleep and overpowers her, stealing her gun. He runs out of the ship, holding Maaga and another soldier at bay with the captured gun. However a Chumbly arrives outside the ship and he is forced back into the airlock. Maaga orders Steven to drop his weapon and enter. When he refuses, she orders a soldier to empty the oxygen from the airlock.

Realizing that the Rills are friendly, Vicki runs out to stop the Doctor from finishing his sabotage of the air filtration machine outside. She stops the Doctor and leads him inside. The Doctor informs the Rills that their calculations are off and that the planet will explode in one more dawn. The Rill admits that is not enough time to get power from drilled gas. The Doctor offers to help the rill build their power supplies. They also receive word from one of the Chumblies about Steven's escape attempt and his cries of distress.

The Rills tell the Doctor and Vicki to take two Chumblies and save Steven. They are stopped a soldier on patrol who doesn't trust them. They trick the soldier into believing they have captured the Chumblies and then disarm her. They continue towards the Drahvin ship.

Steven decides to take his chances with the Chumbly but finds the pressure has decreased too much for the outer door to open. He starts to collapse due to oxygen depravation. As he does, a Chumbly fires a projectile, smashing the ship window and flooding the Drahvin ship with gas. The Chumbly breaks open the airlock and Steven revives with the atmosphere rushing back in. The Doctor takes hold of him pulls him away from the Drahvin ship, helping him to get his breath back.

Maaga clears the air and orders her soldiers to arm and advance on the Doctor and the Chumblies. The Rills, speaking through the Chumblies, order Maaga and her soldiers back. The group withdraws to the Rill ship with two Chumblies providing cover. The Drahvins withdraw back to their ship and plan a night attack on the Rill ship.

Back at the Rill ship, the Doctor continues to work on transferring power from the TARDIS to the Rill ship. Vicki and the Doctor head out to the TARDIS to complete the transfer. Steven stays behind in the Rill ship to recover and look around. Steven is skeptical of the Rills motives but the Rills tell Steven that if the Doctor is wrong about the time required, they will send the Doctor, Steven and Vicki away in their ship. Chagrined, Steven apologizes and tells the Rills of Maaga's plan to take the Rill ship and leave them to die on the planet. Steven and a Chumbly then begin work on the cables in the Rill ship.

One of the Drahvin soldiers exits the ship from the rear entrance and sneaks up behind the guarding Chumbly. She manages to destroy it with a piece of pipe. Maaga then takes the other two soldiers out and they march towards the Rill ship.

The Doctor and Vicki arrive back at the TARDIS and set up the cable between it and the Rill ship. They return, followed closely by the Drahvins. One of the soldiers enters the ship just as the Doctor and Steven activate the power transfer. A Chumbly paralyzes the Drahvin soldier and the Doctor and his companions are pulled inside the inner sanctum for their safety where they see the Rills unobscured.

The Rills dispatch more Chumblies to keep the Drahvins at bay. Maaga fires at them but they are forced to stay under cover. When the power transfer is complete, the Doctor, Steven and Vicki say goodbye to the Rills with a Chumbly to escort them. As they leave, the Rill ship takes off.

Terrified, the Drahvins try to head towards the TARDIS but the Chumbly escort beats them back. The Doctor and his companions enter the TARDIS and the Chumbly powers itself down. The TARDIS disappears as the planet begins to erupt. On the scanner, they observe the planet explode into dust.

As they travel, the Doctor remarks how he could do with a rest. They turn on the scanner and Vicki makes an idle comment about a planet they are passing. The scene then shifts to the planet Kimbel where a member of the Space Patrol wakes in a thick jungle.

Analysis

Galaxy 4 may hold an interesting distinction as the only story I've seen where it actually went down in my estimation when I could see it move. Most of the time, movement will draw you further into the story, but in this case, direction choices by Derek Martinus actually pulled me further out of the story rather than further in.

One of the few things I think I can that I liked about this story is the Doctor. The Doctor is a lot more perceptive than he is shown to be on the surface. It is tempered with his mischievous, almost doddering nature, but he is still thinking well ahead of the Drahvins and not taken in by them at all. Of course he also still has a few foolish moments that keep him in that silly vein, but overall, I enjoyed the Doctor here.

Steven and Vicki weren't bad here but neither gave a particularly good performance. It is fairly well known that when this story was originally written, it was written with Ian and Barbara in mind so Steven ended up playing more of Barbara's role and Vicki absorbed some of Ian's more action oriented scenes (such as disarming the guard when going to rescue Steven). Vicki's Ian moments are actually pretty good as she sounds like a rational, thinking person. It's the overly silly and cutesy lines (such as creating the Chumbly name) where she is actually just annoying.

Steven is far more passive than he should be, although it does demonstrate that Barbara was not a wilting violet in Steven's escape attempt. His performance on the whole wasn't bad overall, even in this more passive state, with the strong exception of his being left alone with the Rills early in Episode Four. Whomever it was written for, Steven's scene where the Rills convince him of their decent nature is pretty painful for him. Cynicism is one thing, but that scene plays into a near racist trope. Even if you wanted to think of Steven (or Barbara) as having racist tendencies, to be that openly hostile about it and to have the Rills put such a strong emotional slapdown on it is just painful to watch.

The Rills aren't bad but they are a bit too noble for my taste. It's something of a cliché to talk about ugly on the outside but good on the inside and vice versa and this story is all about that. I would have liked a touch more nuance with the Rills, even if it was a developed coldness towards the Drahvins as being deserving of death for murdering their own kind. It would have been just a touch of grey that would have done well I think.

The Drahvins are boring. There is some light potential there with the three soldiers being tube manufactured drones with no intelligence and Maaga being the only one with the ability to think. That could have been explored both in the maintaining of military order but also in the shortfalls of having only one thinker in the form of the commander. However, it is only implied at best given the Drahvin's limited technology and very black hat attitude.

That actually was one of the worst scenes in the recovered episode: Maaga's soliloquy of evil to the camera. There started to be some nuance in her performance but it quickly devolved into how she will kill the others in their escape and how great she is because she can envision it in her mind. I suspect they were going for an Iago style moment where the darkness of the mind would be made manifest. It even had the background turn dark and her silhouetted as though alone in her mind. But the decision for her to look directly in camera and just stare at it while fantasying just didn't work for me at all. She was stepping out as though trying to scare the audience rather than muse on her thoughts and I found it to be a huge distraction with her performance.

There is a bit of a reputation for the last story in a season of Doctor Who to look a bit bad because the budget has run out and that does seem to apply to Galaxy 4 as well. Galaxy 4 actually led off Season 3 but it was filmed at the end of Season 2 so it was subject to the money issues. But the story just looks cheap. The Chumblies do not look very robust, especially with all the interaction they have to go through. The backdrop was clearly visible and the sets for both ships seemed flimsy. It just looked very much like a story on a studio set and a small one at that.

The overall story was very simple and it got a bit boring at times. There were sections in every episode where someone would go on a long talk that usually was only a bit of superfluous backstory. Many of these scenes were with Maaga and the other Drahvins but there were moments where the Doctor and Vicki would be shown in a little scene and it had nothing to do except pad the story's run time. When the story is that simple and you drag it out even longer, it becomes tedious and not having any interesting visuals to go with it only makes it worse.

Overall, I can't recommend this one. If it is was found, I might try to watch it again as maybe Episode Three was an aberration in the direction, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Aside from the acting of the Doctor and a few little nuances here and there, there's not a lot to enjoy with this one. I think even if there was an improvement in the directing in the other three episodes, there still wouldn't be a whole lot to pull the story up. So, I wouldn't worry about this one if you have trouble finding it. It's not worth the effort.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5