Mawdryn Undead

That's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of course.

If there is one thing Mawdryn Undead is memorable for, it is for creating the UNIT dating controversy. During the Second, Third, and Fourth Doctor eras, it was pretty clear that the UNIT stories were operating a little ahead of broadcast time, with Sarah Jane's reference to 1980 in The Pyramids of Mars being the most significant example. There were of course, little continuity errors as the production staff usually forgot to change calendars so they would be talking as though it were the late 70's but standing next to a calendar that said 1971. Still, the overt evidence was that the UNIT stories were to be about five years ahead of the current year.

Mawdryn Undead shot that all up with it's placing the retirement of the Brigadier in 1976 and then doubling down with references to the retirement of Benton in 1979 as well as the constant references back to 1977 and 1983. The crux of the problem was that the story was not written for the Brigadier at all. The story was supposed to center around Ian but William Russell was not available and so the Brig was brought in to replace him and the rest is a very muddled history. What is extra annoying is that there is no reason why those years had to be used other than the story was shot in 1983 and they just used that as a baseline and counted backwards as needed.

Plot Summary

At a boys school two students, Turlough and Ibbotson, are admiring a classic roadster. Turlough shoves Ibbotson in it and steals the car for a joyride. While driving, they swerve off the road to avoid a truck and crash. While Turlough is passed out, he is approached by the Black Guardian. Turlough is an alien and wants to leave Earth. The Black Guardian promises to send him home if he kills the Doctor. Turlough reluctantly agrees and then comes around. The car had been owned by Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, now retired from UNIT and a teacher at the school.

On the TARDIS, Tegan is recovering from her incident with the Mara as shown in Snakedance. She asks to return to Earth for some recovery time when the TARDIS is buffeted. It is on a collision course with a ship locked in a physical and temporal orbit. To avoid hitting it, the Doctor materializes the TARDIS on the ship.

Recovering in the infirmary, Turlough is contacted by the Black Guardian who gives him instructions. When Ibbotson enters to tell him about being threatened by the headmaster, Turlough implies that he will take the fall for him, when in fact, Turlough blamed Ibbotson when confronted by the headmaster. Having assuaged Ibbotson, Turlough leaves the infirmary with Ibbotson and heads to a monument on the school grounds.

The Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa explore the ship only to find it apparently designed for amusement and deserted. A teleport pod had been initialized when the ship first approached Earth in 1977. It is now 1983 and the ship is beginning to swing away from Earth. The Doctor leads the team back to the TARDIS.

At the monument, under instructions from the Black Guardian, Turlough deactivates a cloaking device and the teleport pod appears. He steps inside and is beamed to the ship. Ibbotson is so terrified by this that he runs off. Upon meeting the Brigadier, he tells him what happened and the two walk towards the monument.

Back on the ship, the activation of the pod has affected the ability of the TARDIS to dematerialize. Guessing what the problem is, the group heads back to the control room. Turlough then slips inside the TARDIS. The Doctor checks the ship's controls and realizes that he'll have to unlock the pod from Earth. He heads back to the TARDIS to get some equipment and meets Turlough. Turlough tells them how he found the pod and was beamed to the ship. The Doctor prepares to leave in the pod to go back to Earth and instructs Nyssa to bring the TARDIS down once he has deactivated the pod. Turlough asks to come with the Doctor and he agrees.

Once they are back on Earth, the Doctor begins to work on the pod control unit outside. Turlough, under urging from the Black Guardian, picks up a rock to smash the Doctor's head in with. But the Doctor successfully deactivates the unit in a small explosion which knocks him backwards into Turlough, who drops the rock. The TARDIS briefly materializes but then disappears. The Doctor and Turlough attempt to figure out what went wrong when the Brigadier arrives with Ibbotson. He does not recognize the Doctor and has no memory of the TARDIS. He only gets agitated when the Doctor mentions UNIT. He escorts Turlough and Ibbotson back to the school and then takes the Doctor to his cabin outside the school grounds.

The TARDIS materializes outside the monument but Tegan and Nyssa see no sign of the Doctor. While outside looking, they see the teleport pod appear and upon entering, they see a man, badly burned. They assume it is the Doctor and take him back to the TARDIS. In the TARDIS, Nyssa elects to stay with the man while Tegan goes down to the school to find a doctor.

Turlough, back in the infirmary, attempts to escape his deal with the Black Guardian, but the Guardian, visiting him in a dream, lets him know that he will never escape him. Waking, Turlough decides to flee the school and attempt to escape using the teleport pod and it's parent ship. He lashes together a sheet rope and escapes out the window.

At the Brigadier's cabin, the Doctor manages to trigger the Brigadier's memory and he recalls the Doctor at last. The Doctor surmises that he must have suffered a trauma in the past which blocked his memory of him and his companions. However, in discussing the companions, the Brigadier recalls meeting Tegan. The Doctor then realizes that the TARDIS must have overshot and arrived in 1977, when the transport pod first showed up on Earth.

In 1977 Tegan, looking for help, meets a younger Brigadier. He has one of the boys go for the doctor and upon hearing the word TARDIS, realizes that the Doctor is here. He heads out with Tegan to help. Tegan, upon learning of events (the Queen's silver jubilee) realizes that the TARDIS came back too early and the injured man they met is not the Doctor. They meet Nyssa outside the TARDIS and tell her what is going on. Nyssa is agitated as "the Doctor" had ordered her to take off without Tegan. The three enter the TARDIS to see the man, Mawdryn, in a state of decay but hunched over the TARDIS console. With all of them aboard, Nyssa takes the TARDIS back to the ship. Mawdryn exits, ordering the group to stay there. The Brigadier waits a minute and then follows him out, ordering Tegan to stay when she tries to go as well.

In 1983, the Brigadier misremembers events and believes he stayed behind. Knowing that they had gone back to the ship, the Doctor and the Brigadier head back to the transport pod and prevent Turlough from taking off without them. All together, they head back to the ship. The Doctor orders Turlough to find the TARDIS while he and the Brigadier explore a laboratory he discovered. The lab is filled with stolen Gallifrean equipment and the Doctor surmises that Mawdryn and some of his companions had tried to become Time Lords themselves.

Mawdryn attempts to open a passage to his fellow scientists but when he fails, he crawls to the lab. Turlough, prompted by the Black Guardian, does open the passage and revives the scientists. Tegan, having left the TARDIS, finds the lab and the Doctor, along with the 1983 Brigadier. The scientists enter and Mawdryn explains that they had stolen Gallifrean technology in an attempt to become Time Lords but their experiments had instead caused a mutation where they would continue to age but would not die. Now, they only longed for death. They ask the Doctor's help but he refuses as the energy to help each of them would cost all his remaining regenerations, rendering him mortal.

Also realizing that the 1977 Brigadier is aboard, the Doctor instructs Turlough, who met them outside the lab, to find the Brigadier and take him back to Earth in the transport capsule. He would take the 1983 version in the TARDIS. Turlough agrees and finds the 1977 Brigadier but instead of transporting him, locks him in the same room where the scientists were.

The Doctor and his party attempt to leave in the TARDIS, but as they leave, Tegan and Nyssa begin to show the same degenerating effects as Mawdryn and his companions. They return to the ship and the Doctor tries again with the polarity reversed. This doesn't work either as Nyssa and Tegan turn into little girls. He heads back again realizing they were infected when they carried Mawdryn from the capsule to the TARDIS.

While waiting for the Doctor to return, Mawdryn discovers the 1977 Brigadier, who had escaped the room and was wandering around again. Realizing the danger of the two Brigadier's meeting, Mawdryn puts the Brigadier in the capsule and tries to send him back to Earth. But with the TARDIS stuck on the ship, the capsule is also stuck, having been forced to use the TARDIS' homing beacon as it's navigational circuit. When it returns to the ship, Brigadier removes the TARDIS homing beacon and heads back out into the ship.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and agrees to Mawdryn's plan, knowing that it is the only way to save Nyssa and Tegan. The three of them and the eight scientists are hooked up to an array while the Brigadier operates the control panel. Hearing the commotion, the 1977 Brigadier enters the lab. Turlough, on instructions from the Black Guardian, tries to stop him but the Brigadier casually shoves him aside. Entering the lab, he sees his future self and confused, offers him the TARDIS homing beacon. The older Brigadier takes it just as the energy is to take place. There is a huge release of energy as the two men touch.

The 1977 Brigadier passes out while the 1983 Brigadier comes back to his normal state of mind. The Doctor also discovers that his regenerations are still intact as the machine absorbed the time energy of the Brigadiers rather than himself. Mawdryn thanks him as he dies. In the hall, Turlough also discovers that the time energy release has cracked the crystal that the Black Guardian was using to communicate with him. Turlough then sneaks back and hides in the TARDIS.

The Doctor notes that the ship is now destabilizing and will self destruct. He orders Nyssa to take the 1983 Brigadier to the TARDIS and hide with him in another room. He and Tegan grab the 1977 Brigadier, who is still unconscious, and drag him back to the TARDIS control room. Landing in 1977, they drag the Brigadier out to the grass and then leave where he is discovered by the doctor whom he had sent for when Tegan first arrived. Returning to 1983, they drop off that version of the Brigadier as well before realizing that Turlough might still be on the ship. They quickly take off only to discover Turlough trying to figure out the console. He asks to come with them and the Doctor agrees, much to Tegan and Nyssa's annoyance. They depart as the prison ship explodes.

Analysis

This was an enjoyable story for the most part. It was nice to see a plot fully using time travel and the paradoxical dangers that exist with that. But it did fall down a bit in it's execution and there were moments that felt a bit padded, especially when it became very obvious as to how the solution was to come about.

Like The Visitation, there was a desire to supplant the usual companions with someone older and a better actor. Episode One dragged quite a bit for me as it was a lot of set up with Turlough and the discovery of the ship by the Doctor. But once the Brigadier came on the scene full time at the beginning of Episode Two, the quality shot up a lot. The quality of acting between the Doctor and the Brigadier ran rings around the others, and I would include the Black Guardian in that as well. The Black Guardian scenes were sometimes painful to watch as he was overacting to emphasize his evil nature. It didn't help that the crow hat he wore made him look like he had a very bad hair dye job and that he usually stood behind some very weird blue screen effects that looked badly fake. It just made him very hard to take seriously. A more subdued performance with a sinister background would have helped a lot.

Tegan wasn't bad although she still failed to have much depth outside of "overwrought." Given how she started the story, her performance could be dismissed as PTSD from the Mara. Turlough has some potential, but he overemotes a lot especially when confronted by the Black Guardian. In a calmer situation, he might do alright, but his hysteria began to grate on me as the story went on. His near absence in Episode Two was appreciated, despite another scene with the Black Guardian. On the opposite end of the scale, there is Nyssa, who wears a perpetual bored expression. In Episode Two, she is supposed to be concerned as Mawdryn has instructed her to take off and leave Tegan behind. As Tegan approaches, one would expect her to show relief and or concern. Instead she looks mildly annoyed that she is even here. There are other points where emotion would have been expected, but instead she just stands there like a block of wood. I honestly think the actress who played Nyssa as a little girl showed more emotion in one five second clip than Nyssa did the entire episode.

Mawdryn and his companions were pretty good and even a bit gross despite the low budget make up effects. It was nice to have the "antagonist" be someone who just requires a great sacrifice to help rather than some megalomaniacal loon or another rubber monster. That being said, a little more development might have made Mawdryn and his companions more sympathetic. They weren't unsympathetic, but given that they were being punished for a crime, it was hard to feel particularly bad for them. Some of that might have been due to Mawdryn's rather flat delivery. He was so consumed with sounding weak that he lost most of his emotional range in doing so and that would have helped I think. But it was still enjoyable.

Pacing was also a small problem with this story. Early in Episode Three it became rather obvious that the two Brigadiers were going to meet at some point and that the meeting was going to cause the "mental breakdown" the 1977 Brigadier suffered. Given this, it also became clear that the meeting was also going to be the source of the solution to killing Mawdryn and his companions. Once that was figured out, the rest of the story felt a bit slow in getting there. Part of that was due to the fact that the 1977 Brigadier and Turlough spent a lot of time just wandering down various corridors while the rest of the characters didn't seem to have too much problem getting from point A to B. It just felt like a killing time exercise. If the 1977 Brigadier had been locked up for longer or trapped in the capsule for an extended period of time, that might have felt more real and perhaps the delay in the resolution would have felt less forced.

Despite all my nitpicks, this really was an enjoyable story. The overall plot was well thought out and well developed. The sets and costuming were well done and the Doctor and the Brigadier were strongly on point. It was the rest of the execution, including the acting of the companions that let it down at points. On balance, I think I could watch this one again without too much complaint. I would not rate it as high as others have as it has too many flaws, but it still an enjoyable watch.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5