Fourth Doctor Summary

Of my generation and especially amongst Americans, before the New Series began, Tom Baker was the Doctor. If you ever find jokes about Doctor Who, especially in shows like The Simpsons or Futurama, you will always see a tall man with curly brown hair and a long scarf. For us, Tom Baker is the Doctor and I think that even with the New Series, Tom Baker remains the most recognizable Doctor.

I think this is a deserved honor because there is something that stands out about his era. Unquestionably the show hit it's classic era peak during the first half of his tenure in the Philip Hinchcliff era. Stories from that era are still generally regarded as some of the best of all time. Even as the show began it's slide as the 80's approached (due mostly to monetary issues) you still had Tom Baker giving pretty strong performances to carry the stories.

That is not to say that he didn't have his faults. The Graham Williams era is pretty notorious for Tom Baker imposing his own will on the production and some things just started to go over the top. It didn't help that Douglas Adams, script editor for Season 17, shared Tom Baker's absurdist sense of humor and that produced the weakest of all the seven seasons, in my opinion. This in turn gave way to the whiplash reaction of Christopher H. Bidmead who was overly zealous in removing all humor from Season 18. As such, the Tom Baker era ends much as Season 18 with an inevitable collapse in entropy rather than in some sort of heroic resurgence as was shared by many other iterations of the Doctor.

As good as Tom Baker is (and despite his own occasional opinion on the matter), he would have been hard pressed to produce as good of an era as he did without strong companions. Sarah Jane takes most of the limelight as she and Tom Baker are generally regarded as the apex of the show. She did well with the Third Doctor but there was such a natural chemistry between herself and the Fourth Doctor. That they took it upon themselves to write Sarah's exit and then have it be one of the best regarded scenes in the show speaks highly of the level of chemistry they had together.

But we should not shortchange the other companions. Leela was an excellent companion, even though her true nature and scope was lost early in Season 15. Romana I had excellent interplay with the Doctor and offered sharp wit throughout the whole of Season 16. Similarly Romana II played well but in a different way. Her intelligence was more subtle and worked more around a quiet determinism to get things done rather that just show up the Doctor. Even Adric worked relatively well as the older and more forceful Fourth Doctor offered a stronger foil as well as a check. With the more tolerant and softer Fifth Doctor, Adric asserted himself too much and got annoying.

We must also look at the team behind camera as well. Building on the lessons learned from the Barry Letts ear, Philip Hinchcliff built a strong show, relying on gothic horror in space and with a cadre of experienced writers and directors to assist. There also remained a relatively decent budget that helped the show look good which made the stories that much more convincing.

Budget cuts, rising inflation, strikes and a significant talent drain unfortunately mark the Graham Williams era. There were good stories and a number of them were well done from a production standpoint. But there were also some experiments that failed (Underworld) and stories where the kernel of a good story was lost in the shoddy production. Others would probably disagree with me but I personally feel that having Douglas Adams as script editor did the show no favors either.

The JNT era set forth things that would become hallmarks of the 80's. Many of them are very stereotypically 80's so they appeal in a nostalgic way but you also have the continued problems of budget and the shoddy look that started to come on to the show. Christopher Bidmead had some good ideas and made some decent changes but the total excise of humor was a mistake as many of the stories of Season 18 would have improved immensely if they could have simply had a little levity added to them.

Overall, I think it's impossible to not think of the Fourth Doctor era as the apex of the show. I enjoy many of the other Doctors and I would still rate the Second Doctor as my personal favorite, but it is hard to argue that the Fourth Doctor era, particularly the early Fourth Doctor era is of a type that can be popped into the DVD player and just enjoyed at any time. It is that factor alone that will keep it as the showcase time of the classic era.

Highest Rated Story: The Talons of Weng Chiang - 5.0

Lowest Rated Story: The Invasion of Time - 1.0

Average overall rating: 3.34

Robot
The Ark in Space
The Sontaran Experiment
Genesis of the Daleks
Revenge of the Cybermen
Terror of the Zygons
Planet of Evil
Pyramids of Mars
The Android Invasion
The Brain of Morbius
The Seeds of Doom
The Masque of Mandragora
The Hand of Fear
The Deadly Assassin
The Face of Evil
The Robots of Death
The Talons of Weng Chiang
Horror of Fang Rock
The Invisible Enemy
Image of the Fendahl
The Sun Makers
Underworld
The Invasion of Time
The Ribos Operation
The Pirate Planet
The Stones of Blood
The Androids of Tara
The Power of Kroll
The Armageddon Factor
Destiny of the Daleks
City of Death
The Creature From the Pit
Nightmare of Eden
The Horns of Nimon
The Leisure Hive
Meglos
Full Circle
State of Decay
Warrior's Gate
The Keeper of Traken
Logopolis

The Hand of Fear

Eldrad must live.

We now come to the last of the classic era stories for me to review. I still have some new series stuff to go through and as long as the show is on, we'll have new content, but this marks a type of end for me. My original thought when starting this was that I would be able to arrange for Survival to be the end, but that came and went a while ago. So I decided that The Hand of Fear, Sarah Jane's leaving story, would make an adequate substitute.

This story is generally divided. Everyone acknowledges that the last five minutes where Sarah leaves is damn near perfect. It's just the rest of the story that causes debate. I recall feeling that it wasn't quite as bad as it's reputation but still a rather mundane story for such an important companion to go out on. Of course you could say the same for Ian and Barbara going out in The Chase so it's not like there isn't a history of it. Perhaps it makes the goodbyes more memorable if the stories people leave in aren't that stellar overall. We shall see.

Plot Summary

On an alien planet, a group of hooded figures are overseeing the exile and destruction of a ship with a figure named Eldrad on it. However, the atmosphere is deteriorating and the hooded figures are forced to detonate the ship before it reaches it's maximum destructive potential. Once it is destroyed, the figures are dragged back inside their protective dome.

On Earth, the Doctor and Sarah land in a quarry, unaware that a segment is about to be exploded. They are caught in the blast, though they manage to avoid the worst of it. Sarah is partially pinned under some rock and as she reaches for the hole, she touches a petrified hand with a ring on it. She screams and that alerts the Doctor and the workers to her location. They find her unconscious, along with the petrified hand. She and the Doctor are then taken to a local hospital.

The Doctor is examined and cleared. Sarah is found to be ok but is still unconscious. They also find that her arm is very tense and her fist cannot be unclenched. Believing that it was the stress of nearly being buried alive, they leave her to rest. The Doctor instead heads down to the lab where one Dr. Carter is examining the petrified hand. The Doctor is quite interested in the initial reading of the hand and arranges for an electron microscope to be brought into the lab to examine it better. He leaves Carter to study a small sample of the hand while he heads back to the quarry to examine the layer of rock where it was found.

As the Doctor leaves, Sarah wakes up under the control of the mind embodied in the hand and the ring, which is hidden in her fist. She sneaks down to the lab and knocks Carter out with a blast of energy from the ring. She then takes the hand in a plastic box and slips out of the hospital. Carter comes to an hour later and reports her missing.

Shortly after the report is made, the Doctor returns to find Sarah gone. He becomes concerned and even more so when he sees the scan of the rock sample of the hand. The Doctor reveals that he found nothing in the rock pile which was from Jurassic strata. This means that the hand came down from space by itself 150 million years ago. The Doctor reasons that the sample is drawing regenerative energy from the radiation produced by the microscope. He then has Carter take him to the nearest nuclear reactor, a testing complex a few miles away.

Sarah arrives at the test complex and knocks the guard out with a blast from the ring. She then makes her way through the complex, stunning any worker who crosses her path. The Doctor and Carter arrive but are stopped by guards who have found the stunned guard. Sarah meanwhile makes her way into the reactor core where the hand begins to absorb the radiation and move on its own. As it gains more control, Sarah gets up and jams the door. She attempts to open the door but does not know the security code to open the inner door.

When Sarah opened the outer door to the core, the alarms initiated in the complex. In the chaos of workers running to their emergency positions, the Doctor and Carter slip away from their guards and make their way to the control room. They find the control room run by Professor Watson, giving orders to his people and trying to extricate Sarah from the room. Upon finding the door is jammed, Watson orders all staff out of the facility. The Doctor manages to make contact with Sarah over the security feed but is confused by her repeated statement of "Eldrad must live."

The Doctor runs to the roof to slip down the vent shaft. Unknown to him, Carter has also been taken over by the Eldrad consciousness and he follows the Doctor. He attacks him on the stairs but slips off when the Doctor dodges the blow, killing himself. The Doctor continues up the stairs and launches himself down the shaft. He bursts into the core and knocks Sarah out with a quick nerve pinch. As he carries her out of the core, the ring slips off her finger.

With Sarah out, the core returns to normal and Watson returns everyone to their stations. The Doctor examines Sarah and finds no radiation on her at all and her having no memory of anything after grabbing the hand in the quarry. The Doctor shows Watson the video feed of the hand and the radiation results, demonstrating it's alien nature. Watson orders a technician named Driscoll to collect the hand. He does so and seals it back in the box Sarah brought. He also grabs the ring, which takes over his mind.

Driscoll takes the hand and places it in the decontamination room. He denies finding the ring but the Doctor asks him to look a second time. The Doctor then puts Sarah under hypnosis to learn about Eldrad. Sarah is only able to tell the Doctor of Eldrad and his planet of Kastria. He then brings her back to herself, telling her to forget about Eldrad.

Driscoll again denies finding the ring and the Doctor suspects that he has found it and is now under it's control. This is further confirmed when another technician reports a knocking from the decontamination room, where the hand has absorbed more radiation. Driscoll knocks out this technician, grabs the hand and takes it back to the core. Watson again orders the evacuation of the facility and the Doctor chases after Driscoll, only to see him unlock the inner door of the core and walk inside. This triggers a core explosion, causing much of the computer equipment in the control room to explode.

The Doctor and Sarah head into the core room where the Doctor reseals the door. Watson comes down shocked to find that all the radiation from the core explosion had been absorbed. He calls the military who decide to airstrike the reactor with nuclear missiles. The three exit the facility as Eldrad begins to burn through the door.

From a distance away, they observe two fighters launching missiles at the facility but, much as the Doctor expected, they fall inert, their energy having been absorbed by Eldrad. The Doctor and Sarah head back in where they meet Eldrad, who has reconstituted in a feminine form. She probes the mind of the Doctor to find that he is telling the truth about what happened and that he is a Time Lord. She asks for his help to return to Kastria from which she was exiled after her people turned against her, she claims, following an alien invasion. The Doctor agrees but only that he will take her to Kastria in the present time and not shortly after she was exiled 150 million years ago. She accepts his terms.

As the three make their way out of the core, Watson attacks Eldrad with a pistol. His shots have no effect and she chases him as he retreats to the control room to get more ammunition. She catches him in an energy beam and threatens to kill him but the Doctor stops her by declaring their deal void if he dies. She releases him and once they are sure he is ok, they leave the facility for the TARDIS.

The Doctor, Sarah and Eldrad travel via the TARDIS to Katria, a windswept wasteland. They make their way into the main complex where Eldrad reactivates the power. With the defenses she built shut down, the solar winds destroyed the surface. Eldrad reasons that her people have retreated into a network of caves far below the surface. She opens a door to head down there when she is stabbed by a poisoned spear, a booby trap left behind.

Eldrad tells them that her only chance is to go to the regeneration chamber below. The Doctor and Sarah take her down, avoiding several other booby traps along the way and passing over a deep abyss, which Sarah almost falls into. Upon reaching the chamber, Eldrad is laid out on the slab and the Doctor initiates the process. Eldrad's body is crushed and vaporized but the essence is reconstituted in his original masculine form. Eldrad emerges from the chamber, vowing to become king and take his full revenge on Kastria.

The Doctor and Sarah learn from Eldrad that there was no alien invasion and that the barriers protecting the planet were destroyed by him when the people of Kastria rose against him. As Eldrad finishes, King Rokon appears on the monitor telling Eldrad to come take his kingdom from him. Eldrad goes into the throne room but when he confronts Rokon, he finds only a dead body that crumbles to dust. Undeterred, Eldrad enters a chamber that held the genetic information of his people, from which he can regenerate the Kastrian race. But he finds that chamber empty as well.

An image of Rokon appears on the screen informing Eldrad that rather than attempt to scratch out a miserable existence, the Kastrian people opted for obliteration. They also destroyed their genetic repository so that no one could revive their race to serve as slaves to their will. Eldrad briefly breaks down, robbed of his revenge and dreams of power. He collects himself and then decides that he will become the ruler of Earth and use them to conquer the galaxy. The Doctor however refuses to take him back or to give him back his ring, which the Doctor had taken earlier to avoid another booby trap.

The Doctor makes it appear that he tosses the ring aside, distracting Eldrad. Eldrad lunges for it but realizes it was not the ring. He then runs after the Doctor and Sarah. The two reach the narrow bridge that spans the chasm and hide behind two rocks, stretching the Doctor's scarf between them. As Eldrad runs to the bridge, they raise the scarf, tripping him and causing him to fall into the abyss. The Doctor then takes the ring and tosses it into a different part of the abyss.

The Doctor and Sarah head back to the TARDIS and take off. The TARDIS lurches oddly, affected by the cold and the Doctor begins to work on it. But out by the stress of the adventure and the fact that the Doctor isn't even listening to her concerns. Sarah leaves the control room to gather her things, making a show of leaving. While she is gone, the Doctor receives a psychic message from Gallifrey, ordering him to return. When Sarah reenters as part of her show, the Doctor informs her of his call and how he must leave her behind. She protests but Doctor insists. He lands the TARDIS and they share a quiet goodbye as she leaves. She stops to watch the TARDIS disappear before realizing that the Doctor had once again miscalculated and dropped her off nowhere near her home in South Croydon. Undeterred, she walks off whistling.

Analysis

Aside from the resolution to how to deal with Eldrad, I can't really understand why this story is regarded as middling at best. It has it's problems, but when looked at as a whole, it really does fairly well and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it a second time through.

Aside from a little bit of uncharacterized wimpy-ness from her in Episode Four, this is an excellent story for Sarah Jane and one that features her range nicely. You have her chummy relationship with the Doctor and her noble concern for those around her to say nothing of when she is possessed by Eldrad. Those scenes of her in that state in Episodes One and Two are a very strong performance punctuated with little personality quirks that take it from generic possession to Sarah Jane being controlled. It's a rich delivery from a strong character.

This doesn't even take into account her performance in the leaving scene. The bit of pique that sets up the scene is right within the normal teasing and jostling that goes in between the Doctor and Sarah but then it drops immediately into sincerity. There are no tears, no begging aside from that lone appeal at the beginning but there is that wistful moment of saying goodbye and trying to draw it out to preserve the moment. Once the TARDIS lands, you have the Doctor trying to lie as though it's a simple "I'll see you later" with Sarah going along with it. But she has this reserve in her eyes that lets you know that her travels with the Doctor are over. But once that moment's gone, its a reflection on the good times again. Playing with the dog and laughing that the Doctor dropped her in the wrong location then whistling as she walks down the road. I think I would have preferred a fade out as she walked off in the distance with her back to the camera rather than the freeze frame, but it still worked very well as a goodbye.

As far as the Doctor, he was very engaging. He had his aloof and funny moments but his deep concern for Sarah drives all the action in the first two episodes. It is after that, once Sarah is out of danger than the aloofness returns to the fore and his almost mocking of the situation disarms Eldrad of her power while on Earth, hiding the true danger of Eldrad while she is on Earth. I would even go so far as to suspect that he doesn't trust Eldrad's story but still goes along with it both to return Eldrad to Kastria as well as try to save her life on the hope that some good can still come of the situation. The change and yet consistency within character draws one in to the Doctor's performance and makes him enjoyable through the whole story.

Even the side characters are interesting and well performed. Though there is little action with him prior to Eldrad taking control Dr. Carter is interesting and you feel bad for him when he is killed trying to kill the Doctor. Similarly, Professor Watson is also engaging, with the little character moments of saying goodbye to his family when he thinks he might die and also not being the typical obstinate bureaucrat and actually believing the Doctor the first time around when the Doctor theorizes about the nature of Eldrad. Watson does go a little off script with his pistol attack on Eldrad, especially given that Eldrad had just absorbed the equivalent of three nuclear explosions worth of energy, just to add a little action and reinforce the fact to the audience that Eldrad is not who she claims to be. But it still works out and it's nice to have secondary characters that draw you in so well.

Eldrad her/himself is probably the weakest thing in the story. Eldrad is abstract in Episodes One and Two which is far scarier than being fully realized. The female Eldrad is not bad in her performance though she does go through the pantomime shtick of being the victim. I think it would have played better to make Eldrad appear more sincere in these situations, which would have made the trick of the Doctor and Sarah more believable, rather than the obvious wink to the camera that she was lying to the Doctor about her nature. I also didn't like the direct address to the camera after realizing her new form but that's more on the director.

The male Eldrad is where it really goes to pot though. Female Eldrad had some depth and could have played the deception better depending on the script or direction. The male Eldrad simply goes to eleven and stays there. It's all rage fueled revenge and even the moment of brokenness feels like it should have been more shattering than it was. Eldrad recoups rather quickly and decides to just move on to Earth without much more than a passing glance at Kastria. Had Eldrad not started at eleven but been a bit more reserved, perhaps even sly, his breakdown at being denied revenge and rule over Kastria would have felt deeper. He then could have gone to eleven when talking about taking over Earth. That would have felt like a man who has fallen into a desperate madness and clawing at anything that would give him purpose. Instead, it becomes just another monster and one who is dispatched in a very ignoble fashion.

The dispatching of Eldrad is a failure on multiple fronts. It is a failure of writing as such a crude trick should never have been employed in the first place. It is a failure of direction as it was neither set up nor shot in a way to make it even semi-believable. It is also a failure of performance as Eldrad does not even properly trip over the scarf. He actually more steps on it and then effectively jumps into the chasm rather than properly falling. I'm sure moving around in the suit was difficult but it was the most kiddy and stage-y moment in the whole story. As such, Eldrad went from the creepy, legitimately scary force, to a bumbling monster that would be at home in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

I thought the overall direction was pretty good along with the visual effects as well. The hand moving independently worked very well and everything else was all within normal. I also enjoyed the large use of different shooting angles when maneuvering around the plant on film. Not only did you get the nice look of film, but it better captured the scope of the facility Sarah and the Doctor were moving through. It was much nicer than just looking at corridors the whole time. I think the only point where things erred is when the missiles were fired at the plant. They weren't supposed to go off but it felt like just a static shot of the plant. An indicator that the missile had at least fallen to the ground near it would have looked good.

Overall, I think this story gets a bit shortchanged by fans. Is it a brilliant masterpiece for Sarah to go out on? No. But it is a good and entertaining story to enjoy in one sitting, which puts it at least one above The Chase. Sarah's leaving scene also has the advantage of clearing out the bad taste that the disappointing ending can leave and that does wonders for improving the overall feel of the story. Not one to start with, but I'm happy to have ended on this one.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

The Brain of Morbius

That squalid brood of harpies, the Sisterhood. That accursed hag Maren found out I was holding a Time Lord and rescued him. May her stinking bones rot! I'll see her die Condo! I'll see that palsied harridan scream for death before Morbius and I are finished with her.

Continuing in the trend of taking old stories and putting a Doctor Who spin on them, we now go to Frankenstein. This is another story that is highly regarded as a classic but for which I didn't care as much on my first watch. Granted, I'm not that big on the story of Frankenstein (original or the various movie adaptations) so the setting for this one put me a little off right from the get go. But we shall have to see if a second visit improves my opinion of things.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Sarah arrive on the planet Karn, the Doctor highly put out as he suspects the Time Lords to have redirected him there. Although he tries to sit things out, he can't overcome his curiosity when Sarah discovers the decapitated body of an insectoid who crashed on planet. In fact, they discover a number of ships crashed into the surface of the planet. They also spy a small castle nearby and head towards it as it begins to rain.

Their movements are observed by Ohica, an acolyte in the Sisterhood of Karn, a society of women that tends a sacred flame that produces a special "Elixir of Life" which they share with the Time Lords. Ohica reports to the leader Maren and Maren discloses that the flame is dying and hasn't produced Elixir in over a year. She suspects that the Time Lords are interfering and summons the other acolytes to investigate.

The Doctor and Sarah arrive at the castle where lives a surgeon named Solon and his dimwitted servant, Condo. Solon invites them in and attempts to appear welcoming. He is in fact only interested in the Doctor's head, having been looking for a suitable specimen for some time. In fact, the decapitated body found was Condo's work, Condo having been promised a replacement arm after Solon completes his work. Solon takes them in and offers them drugged wine. The Doctor drinks it but Sarah does not. The Doctor recognizes Solon and also manages to recognize a bust of the renegade Time Lord Morbius just before he passes out. Sarah mimics doing the same.

Solon has Condo take the Doctor to his lab but elects not to operate until they repair the generator as he does not wish to operate by candlelight. Sarah gets up and sneaks down the hall, hiding as they pass. Unbeknownst to any of them, the Sisterhood has gathered together and using their power, teleported the TARDIS to their cave. Feeling vindicated in her suspicions, Maren has the Sisterhood use their power once again and teleports the Doctor to their cave. Sarah enters the lab a minute later but instead of finding the Doctor, finds a body constructed from various creatures by Solon.

Sarah hides as Solon and Condo reenter. They notice that the Doctor is missing but Condo assures Solon that he put the full vial of the drug in the wine. Solon immediately suspects the Sisterhood and he and Condo leave to see what they plan to do with the Doctor. Sarah follows behind them.

In the Sisterhood's temple, the Doctor comes to and Maren offers him a chance to admit his collusion with the Time Lords. The Doctor admits that he might have been sent by the Time Lords though he isn't sure but denies any plan to steal the Elixir of Life. The Doctor also tells them that he thought he felt the presence of Morbius just before he passed out. Maren scoffs at this, stating that she was present when Morbius was executed and is certain he is dead.

Solon and Condo observe a couple of Sisters entering their cave with wood and follow them. They enter just as the Doctor is being tied to a pole with a pyre built around him. Solon intercedes for the Doctor, first offering Condo as a replacement and then begging for just the head of the Doctor if he must die. Maren denies both and shoos them off. However, while they are distracted, Sarah, disguised as a member of the Sisterhood, reaches up and cuts the ropes binding the Doctor to the pole. As the Sisterhood lights the pyre, the Doctor leaps off and he and Sarah make a run for it. Maren sends a bolt of energy after them from her ring which hits Sarah but they still manage to loose them.

Solon and Condo return to their castle and Condo attacks Solon for offering him as a replacement. Solon only placates him by offering to restore his arm. Condo relents and goes to prepare the lab. Solon then goes downstairs and speaks to Morbius for whom he is building the new body. Morbius is becoming impatient and wants implantation immediately. They are interrupted by the sound of the door opening upstairs.

Condo and Solon enter the main hall and find the Doctor and Sarah sitting at the table. The Doctor tells Solon that Sarah was blinded by Maren's ring and wants him to examine her eyes. They head to the lab where Solon looks closely. He has Condo take her back to the main hall and informs the Doctor that the retinas are almost completely destroyed. Her only hope of regaining her sight is to drink the Elixir of Life which can restore tissue. The Doctor leaves, leaving Sarah at the castle.

Solon then writes a note and calls Condo. He tells him to give it to Maren and to get there before the Doctor. Condo rushes off. This leaves Sarah alone in the hall where she hears a voice calling for Solon. She follows it down the stairs but is unable to see the brain of Morbius speaking from within a jar. Morbius cries out and Solon shoves her out of the room. Sarah however stays in the stairwell to listen.

Solon tells Morbius that he has offered a deal with the Sisterhood that will return the Doctor's head to him. Morbius is alarmed when Solon mentions that the Doctor is a Time Lord and fears that the Time Lords have discovered him. Also fearing that the Doctor has made a deal with the Sisterhood, Morbius orders Solon to put him in the artificial brain case that Solon manufactured. Solon objects noting that he never got it working right and the risk might be too great but Morbius overrides him. Before he can continue, Sarah pulls the door shut and locks Solon in. She then wanders out to warn the Doctor.

The Doctor arrives at the Sisterhood's cave, is captured and brought before Maren. She had just received the letter from Solon warning her of his approach and offering a deal in exchange for his head. The Doctor explains his problem but Maren laughs, telling the Doctor he has been tricked as the ring's effects are only temporary. She also notes that the fire is dying and they have no more elixir anyway. The Doctor examines the flame and pops a firecracker down into the hole. The fire goes out for a moment and then a burst of flame erupts. The Doctor notes that there was a build up of soot and that should have cleared things out. Still suspicious and disbelieving of the Doctor's theory regarding Morbius, Maren renders the Doctor unconscious and has her acolytes bear him to Solon.

While looking for the Doctor, Sarah is discovered by Condo who drags her back to the castle. He frees Solon who ties her up in his lab. Condo strokes her hair but Solon orders him to get the lab ready. As he does, Condo discovers his arm attached to the body Solon had put together. Condo attacks Solon and knocks Morbius' brain out of its jar and on to the floor. Solon shoots him and rescues the brain, replacing it in the jar. Gut-shot, Condo stumbles off but Solon, not wanting to let the brain die, frees Sarah and forces her to assist him in the operation.

With the operation nearly finished, Solon is interrupted by the Sisterhood depositing the Doctor. He goes up to examine the Doctor but Morbius rises up off the table, controlled only by animal instinct. He advances and attacks Sarah, who had just regained her sight. She dodges away and runs upstairs, warning Solon. Solon runs downstairs and tries to stop Morbius but he knocks him down and lurches upstairs.

The Doctor comes to and Sarah warns him of Morbius' approach. Morbius emerges and knocks the Doctor down. He then turns on Sarah but Condo, still wounded, lurches to help her. Morbius overpowers and kills him. He then stumbles out toward the cave of the Sisterhood. The Doctor revives and carries Sarah down to the room where Morbius was to let her recover. He then returns to the lab where Solon has revived and arming a stun gun. Together they pursue Morbius.

Morbius discovers a member of the Sisterhood watching and kills her. After discovering her, the Doctor and Solon split up to look for Morbius and Morbius attacks the Doctor. Solon shoots Morbius, knocking him out and together they take him back to the castle. The Doctor threatens Solon to disconnect Morbius so that he can take him back to Gallifrey. He then leaves to check on Sarah but Solon follows him and locks the two of them in the room. Solon then resumes the surgery, correcting what was missed before.

Trapped in the room with no escape, the Doctor devises a plan. He mixes several chemicals in a dish and places them in a ventilation shaft. He then adds cyanide to the mixture. The mixture creates a gas which drifts up and kills Solon. However Morbius is unharmed. He comes down to the room where the Doctor challenges him to a mental battle. Morbius accepts, promising to kill him.

The Doctor and Morbius engage their minds using equipment in the lab. Morbius overpowers the Doctor but the mental strain is too much after the surgery and there is an electrical discharge in his brain case, forcing him to break off. The Doctor collapses into a coma, the strain too much for him. Morbius however stumbles upstairs, trying to clear the haze.

Meanwhile, the Sisterhood discovers the body of their murdered sister. Ohica becomes convinced that the Doctor was telling the truth that Solon has resurrected Morbius. She gets permission from Maren to lead the Sisterhood against Solon and Morbius. They gather torches and enter Solon's castle just as Morbius emerges from his battle with the Doctor. Already weak from his battle with the Doctor, Morbius flees from the torch-welding mob. The Sisterhood corners him on the edge of a cliff and drive him over the side to be smashed to pieces below.

Ohica finds Sarah and the Doctor. Noting that the Doctor is dying, they take him to the Sisterhood's cave for Maren to examine him. Maren notes that only the elixir can save him. A small amount had been created after the Doctor cleared the flame. Though she needs it, Maren orders Ohica to give it to the Doctor. The Doctor drinks it and recovers. Maren then passes into the sacred fire where she becomes young and then disappears.

The Doctor gives Ohica a couple more firecrackers to clean out the fire pit should it be required. He and Sarah then enter into the TARDIS and disappear, though the Doctor has the TARDIS leave in a bang and flash rather than it's usual vanishing act as a final joke.

Analysis

Unfortunately, a second pass through The Brain of Morbius did not improve the story for me. There are several small nits to pick here and there but the fundamental flaw of the overall story is that the Doctor acts like a childish moron throughout the story. If the Doctor was written in any way that was halfway competent, the story would have been over within one episode. Having your main character be deliberately stupid does not make for a good hook to draw one in.

So let's start with the Doctor. We always expect a certain level of naivety and some childishness, especially with the Fourth Doctor. His petulance at being tossed into a situation to do a job for the Time Lords is understandable and even entertaining. But after that, things go downhill. Sarah has the good sense to avoid the drugged wine but the Doctor does not, even though Solon might as well have "creepy bad guy" tattooed on his head. He continually dismisses the danger posed by Solon and Morbius. His playing around nearly kills Sarah when Morbius breaks loose the first time and does get Condo killed. He also allows Solon to finish his work on Morbius by being stupid and letting himself and Sarah get locked in a room, a trick that Sarah pulled on Solon. This actually forces the Doctor to become a blatant murder as he had to have been aware that Solon would have been in the room with Morbius and breathing the same cyanide gas. Even the final battle was a failure on the Doctor's part as he is mortally wounded by Morbius. It is only the flaws in the braincase (which Solon pointed out) that weaken Morbius to the point where he is easily driven over a cliff by the Sisterhood. Doctor Who is at its best when the Doctor is the central hero. Here he isn't even playing the helper role. All the critical actions (except the murder of Solon) are done by others.

On the flip side of things Sarah is very strong and this even includes her being without sight for nearly two episodes. Sarah has the presence of mind to see Solon for what he was and avoid the drugged wine. She rescues the Doctor from the Sisterhood at the cost of her own sight (temporarily) and manages to cage Solon to try and warn the Doctor a second time. She is constantly there for the Doctor and is never rescued by him. Her one instance of being in trouble is a direct result of the Doctor and it is Condo that saves her. If you are fond of Sarah Jane, this is a very strong story for her, but with the Doctor being as stupid as he is, she's being forced to make up for his shortcomings.

There are a lot of roles where I like Philip Madoc but this story is one where he goes up to eleven and never comes back down again. He's clearly trying to play the mad but frustrated genius but there is no subtlety in his performance. His constant irritation at Condo makes you question why Condo would ever believe or listen to him. Similarly, his lack of subtlety only makes the Doctor look that much dumber for not seeing him as he is at the start of the story. His only moment where he pulls it in is when the Doctor has him cornered and forces him to examine Sarah's eyes. He keeps things in check to the point where the lie is believable and that sends the Doctor off again. Knowing that this performance is obtainable, it makes the other moments where Solon goes to the extreme seem that much more out of place. I just couldn't get into it.

Condo, again by contrast, is quite enjoyable. He is the typical Igor type character but doesn't go over the top. He give you the strong impression that while a slow person, he has his own level of intelligence about him. He has things he cares about and things that he wants, which keeps him tied to Solon. Of course he is not above violence and even going after Solon whom he knows deep down is a liar and foul person. It would have been very easy to go too far in Condo's portrayal but I think it was done well and sets up one of the most believable characters in the story.

The Sisterhood was pretty good for the most part. Maven was quite good and most of the Sisterhood seems to perform well but I thought Ohica was a bit too stiff. I get that she was trying to be formal but it still seemed more like someone who wasn't quite comfortable with their lines. I thought the Sisterhood did fairly well in their plot as well but I had a hang up with the idea that they would be so ignorant of what Solon was up to. They knew he was cutting up corpses and if Morbius was such a significant enemy to them, I find it hard to believe that he could have shielded himself completely from them. This gives them the appearance of being a bit more inept that you might have expected from a society that freely interacted with the Time Lords.

I thought about saying something about Morbius but he's not much more than a MacGuffin so there's little to say outside of the Time Lord brain match. This always sticks in the fan's craw as anyone can clearly see both in direction and in dialogue that the faces of the crew shown are meant to be prior versions of the Doctor. People attempt to retcon them to Morbius but that does go against the nature of the scene. Still, I can bring myself to care that much. It does throw a wrench into things from a continuity standpoint, but so do a lot of things and this scene at least has some dramatic tension. The real question is why does Solon just have one of these devices lying around?

I will praise the set design and the overall atmosphere of the story. It is completely studio and looks it at times, but the overall atmosphere is very enjoyable. There is the gloom and sense of fear pervading the story that you would need to give the story an extra sense of dread and call back to the old Universal 1931 version of Frankenstein. I wish the direction had been at the same caliber. It's not bad but it is fairly pedestrian and doesn't draw the eye in any significant way. I also blame the director for some of the failures of the acting performances as that would be his job to tell them to reign it in or ramp it up as the situation requires.

There are all the little things but I think the ultimate problem of the story is the writing. Terrence Dicks wrote the original treatment but it got reworked by Robert Holmes. Between the two men, changes were either introduced or old holes were not covered up that ultimately bring it down. People always seem to talk about the atmosphere and the quips, especially by Solon, in this story but when you boil it down, there are a lot of flaws in the overall plot and you can't wave those away by simply talking about how moody or intelligent things sound.

Ultimately, my trepidation for this story was somewhat justified. It's not painful and there are some things to enjoy about it. But it does have deep flaws that are all around and can't be overlooked. On a basic level, the story can be enjoyed, especially if the watcher is not overly familiar with some of the better written stories. But once you've been exposed to either the tighter plotlines or devious, intelligent nature of the Doctor in other stories, it's hard to not see the warts that are freely visible in this story.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5

Terror of the Zygons

You've got to come out on to the balcony sometime and wave a tentacle.

Like much of the Philip Hinchcliff era, Terror of the Zygons is based on earlier material, in this case: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was originally slated to close Season 12, which is very apparent in the goodbye scene with Harry and the lingering acceptance of Sarah to continue with the Doctor, but problems behind the scenes pushed it back to the start of Season 13. It also is somewhat notable for being the last story released to DVD (baring any missing episode discoveries) supposedly just to screw with someone the 2Entertian execs didn't like and had said that this was his favorite story.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Sarah and Harry land in Scotland after being summoned by the Brigadier. They land in the moors and are given a lift to UNIT headquarters by the local laird, the Duke of Forgill. The Brigadier informs them of several oil rigs that have been destroyed around the area in perfect weather with only a strange signal captured over the radio. The Doctor is a bit put out over being summoned for such a trivial matter but agrees to help. The three split up with the Doctor and the Brigadier heading to see the oil drilling company manager, Sarah to interview the locals and Harry to explore the seashore looking for other evidence.

Sarah interviews the local innkeeper, Angus, who warns Sarah of strange things on the moors and also claims to have a bit of "the second sight." Meanwhile, Harry spots a man stumbling around the shore and rushes to him. The man survived the destruction of the latest oil rig and tells Harry what happened. While talking, they are spotted by a bearded man in Scottish dress who produces a rifle and shoots them both. The rig survivor is killed but the second bullet glances Harry's head, only wounding him.

The Doctor and the Brigadier return from speaking with Mr. Huckle, the oil company manager who told them of a fourth attack. They also find a section of concrete with large holes poked into it. They receive a call from the hospital and drive over there with Sarah to check on Harry who is sedated. Knowing that he will recover, the Doctor and the Brigadier return to the inn while Sarah stays at the hospital.

Back at the inn, the Doctor makes a plaster mold of the holes to reveal two very large teeth punctures. They receive a call from Sarah stating that Harry seems to be coming around and is eager to tell them something, although he is still too groggy to articulate it. Sarah is suddenly attacked from behind by a Zygon. Overhearing her scream, the Doctor and Sargent Benton head over to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, they find both Sarah and Harry missing with the nurse suggesting that Harry escaped through the open window. The Doctor sends Benton out to search the grounds while he looks through the building. He finds Sarah in a decompression room and the Zygon who attacked her seals them in and activates the chamber. The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah into a minimal breathing state to preserve air while he goes into a trance himself. Benton and another soldier return to the hospital, find the Doctor and Sarah and pump air back into the chamber. The Doctor then brings himself and Sarah out of their trances.

Mr. Huckle arrives at the inn and finds the Brigadier and his staff passed out due to gas. When the Doctor, Sarah and Benton return, they rouse the Brigadier and the rest of the village, suspecting that they were gassed to hide the movement of something. Huckle produces an alien object that was recovered from the latest oil rig destruction and the Doctor recognizes it as something to lure the creature that is attacking.

The Zygon leader, Broton, observes all this through a camera hidden in the inn and sends one of his men to recover it, having morphed into the form of Harry. Benton calls the Brigadier and the Doctor away, having found one of the soldiers crushed to death outside the village, leaving Sarah alone. The fake Harry enters, takes the summoner and runs off. Sarah runs after him and finds him hiding in a barn. He attacks her with a pitchfork but he falls off while attacking her and is impaled on a hayrack. Broton, detecting the death of the Zygon, vaporizes the body remotely, leaving Sarah unable to show the Doctor the alien's true form.

Fearing discovery, Broton activates the summoner and sends the large mechanical plesiosaur-like creature towards the village. Suspecting what's happening, the Doctor grabs the device and drives out on to the moors. His car breaks down and he runs on foot, the creature steadily catching up to him. The Doctor dives out of the way as the creature lunges at him and the lunge knocks the tracker from the Doctor's hand. Thinking that the Doctor has been killed, Broton recalls the creature. Having triangulated the creature's origin to Loch Ness, Sarah and the Brigadier ride out after the Doctor. They find him walking the moors and they drive onward to the castle of the Duke of Forgill.

While they are away, Benton runs a search of the inn looking for the bugging devices. Broton becomes worried and orders that the camera in the eye of a mounted deer head be removed. After Benton leaves, Angus notices the camera and works to try and dismount the head, which was a gift from the Duke of Forgill. A Zygon in the form of the nurse, Sister Lamont, arrives, kills Angus and takes the camera. Benton hears Angus cry out and rushes to the scene to find Angus dead. His men fan out and see the creature fleeing through the woods. They open fire, wounding it. The wounded Zygon transforms back into Sister Lamont, knocks out a soldier and steals his jeep.

At the Duke of Forgill's castle the Doctor, the Brigadier and Sarah fill in the Duke with they Doctor's theory that the creature is a cyborg creature which allows the Zygons to control it. The Doctor suspects the aliens crashed hundreds of years ago and are making moves know as the oil drilling threatens to expose them. The Duke is skeptical but allows Sarah to stay behind and research his books while the Brigadier and the Doctor head back to the inn after receiving a call from Benton about the attack.

Sarah reaches up for a high book and accidentally triggers a door to a hidden passage. She sneaks down and discovers the alien ship with holding slots where the real Duke of Forgill, Sister Lamont and the Caber are in suspended animation. She also discovers Harry in a holding cell. Sarah rescues him, though they are forced to hide when the Zygons return helping a wounded comrade disguised as Sister Lamont.

The Doctor and the Brigadier learn of what happened from Benton and the Doctor realizes that the Duke has been taken over as well. They return to the castle just as Sarah and Harry emerge from the hidden passage. The Doctor heads down but is captured by Broton and taken into the ship. Broton warns off the Brigadier but the Brigadier gives his own warning.

They leave the castle and the Brigadier has depth charges launched into the loch, alarming Broton. Broton then orders the ship to launch and it rises out of the loch and into the sky. It flies south and lands in an abandoned quarry outside of London, jamming all radar instruments to aid its camouflage. Despite this, the Brigadier orders Benton to keep an ear out for any signals while Sarah and Harry comb over the Duke's library for any information.

The Doctor is placed in a cell and learns that the ship has cut it's power to half to avoid detection. He observes Broton resume the form of the Duke and head out on a mission to implement the next phase of the plan, which will terraform the Earth over the next several centuries before the Zygon refugee fleet arrives. The Doctor then forms a short link between two terminals using himself as the bridge. This sends out signal from the ship but also electrocutes himself.

Benton picks up the signal, triangulates it, informs the Brigadier and the whole group drives down from the inn to the ship. The Zygons manages to break into the Doctor's cell but think he has been killed by the electric shock. He revives after they leave and sneaks through the ship, freeing the real Duke, the Caber and Sister Lamont. The Doctor then sets off an alarm to pull the Zygons off the bridge and the group barricades themselves in there. Once on the bridge, the Doctor sets the self destruct and they flee the ship in the escape hatch. They run away just as the Brigadier's column arrives and they all dive for cover as the ship explodes, killing all the Zygons except Broton.

They receive word that the Loch Ness creature, called by the Zygons a Skarasen, has been swimming down from the sea and is now moving up the Thames. Pooling their information, they deduce that Broton is heading to a major energy conference disguised as the Duke and will attack the multitude of dignitaries there. The Doctor and UNIT head to the conference to stop him.

The Doctor and Sarah discover Broton planting the luring device for the Skarasen in a storage room. Broton attacks the Doctor and Sarah runs for the Brigadier. The Brigadier and two of his men enter. Broton turns his attack towards one of them but the Brigadier shoots Broton down. The Doctor scours the room and finds the luring device. He runs to a balcony just as the Skarasen emerges from the Thames. He throws it out over the river and the beast catches and eats it. With it's summoning device destroyed, the creature drops below the water and swims back up to Scotland.

The entire group returns to Scotland and the Duke helps the Doctor locate the TARDIS in the marshes. He offers Harry, the Brigadier and Sarah a lift back to London but both the Brigadier and Harry decline. Sarah hesitates for a moment, asking if he can get her back to London. The Doctor smiles and assures her he can. The two then enter while the other watch the TARDIS disappear.

Analysis

I had been avoiding this one for a bit as I had this odd feeling that I wasn't going to enjoy it as much as it's reputation stated I would. I'm not sure how I got that in my head because I know I enjoyed it the first time I saw it and this time I enjoyed it just as much. In a way, I had actually forgotten how well filmed and performed the story actually was.

First, all praise and honor to Douglas Camfield who does excellent work here. There is a lot of nice location footage on film and a really good use of lighting and mood to give this story a profound sense of creepiness. It would have been very easy to overexpose the Zygons and make them look rather silly, but this story keeps them as monsters in the dark and it does wonders. Kudos also goes to his work with the Skarasen in keeping it to the minimum of exposure. It could easily have gone into Invasion of the Dinosaurs territory with too much shown of the stop motion. Here you get just enough, leaving the majority of the action to be filled in by the viewer's imagination. It's just good work all around.

The Doctor is very good in this story with a very nice balance of comedy and drama. He shows annoyance at being called in for what seems a trivial matter but then gets very serious when figuring the real threat. When drama and tension are called for, such as the decompression scene, you can feel the tension coming from the Doctor. But at the same time, he's not so grim as to not crack jokes on occasion. His near mocking of Broton is quite funny and deflates the Zygons from the scary monsters they had seemed over the first three episodes to just another batch of aliens the Doctor needs to dispatch. The drama gets you invested but the humor gives you little payoffs while you wait for the overarching story to reach its climax.

Sarah is of course her normal proactive self and actually shows a bit more moxy than the Doctor, given that she is able to sneak on to the Zygon ship and rescue Harry without being caught while the Doctor is caught as soon as he walks into the tunnel. Ultimately it’s a nice balance but Sarah does get some dramatic action here and there and is very enjoyable to watch.

I wish the same could be said for Harry. Harry is his normal, affable self but with being injured halfway through Episode One and the Zygon using his body print killed in Episode Two, Harry is left without much to do. He serves as a small fount of exposition in Episodes Two and Three but just stands around and watches before deciding to stay at the end of Episode Four. It sums the problem the writers clearly had with Harry for most of Season 12 in that he was designed to be an Ian-like man for an older Doctor but the Fourth Doctor was young enough to make him superfluous. Harry really only shines when Sarah is cut off (like in Genesis of the Daleks) but here, Harry is the one who is cut off and he plays the damsel in distress for a short period of time.

The Zygons are pretty good villains with an interesting character trait of taking on the forms of others. However, there were points where they were written oddly. In both Episode Two and Episode Four, there's no good reason why Broton should go on expositionary rants to either Harry or the Doctor. It's useful for the audience but hard to imagine that any character would do such a thing to an enemy. There is also the question as to why they keep Harry and the Doctor alive. The other three prisoners and Harry initially make sense as they are using their body prints to disguise themselves. It could be argued that they intend to go back and give a different Zygon Harry's blueprint and they are keeping him alive for that purpose but what about the Doctor. Broton still thinks the Doctor is human at the start of Episode Four and the launch of the Skarasen attack on the nuclear conference renders the need for subterfuge irrelevant. So why keep the Doctor alive if you don't believe he has useful information or intend to use his body print to make a disguise? It's just one of those things that niggles in the background.

As far as the overall plot goes, the story works fairly well. There is some runaround but mostly in a tension building way. I actually appreciated that the Zygons were susceptible to conventional weapons as that made their dependence on deception more necessary. I also liked how there was a certain amount of paranoia that started to creep in, especially with Sarah and her reaction to Harry. Had this been a six-part story, I would imagine that paranoia would have been a high feature but there just wasn't time to incorporate it further. But as a thriller it does quite well. There are some genuine scare moments and the reveal of the Zygons at the end of Episode One is rather impressive.

What I would have liked developed a bit more is what Broton's ultimate plan was. They way it left off, it seemed as though Broton expected the Skarasen's attack on the nuclear conference to kill or scare enough people to cow the governments of the world into giving their authority to him, allowing him to terraform the planet. However armored the Skarasen was, there are things that would be able to destroy it and unless Broton had a fleet of these things on standby, just one was not going to be enough to subjugate all the peoples of Earth and sheer volume of numbers would have crushed Broton eventually. So there is an element of the story falling apart at the end, but it's still a good ride up to that point.

Overall, there is a reason this is one of the classics. It is well acted, well directed and a pretty good thriller of a tale. There are some small holes here and there and the technology of the day definitely does limit things with the Skarasen (much like the dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinosaurs) but those are small points compared to the quality of the overall story. It can easily be watched at any time and actually would make a decent story to introduce someone to the Fourth Doctor.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5

The Horns of Nimon

How is it where ever I go in the universe there are always people like you pointing guns or phasers or blasters... now don't do anything hasty, it's just a flying visit. Take me to your leader.

The Horns of Nimon was the unintentional end to Season 17 when Shada ended up being cancelled due to a technician strike. It has a reputation of being a prime representative of the Douglas Adams era with a lot of jokes but also a lot of unintentional silliness. The acting is said to be very over-the-top as well but with everyone doing it, it supposedly makes the whole thing feel like a farce. I'm nervous when it comes to farces so we shall see.

Plot Summary

A dilapidated warship from the Skonna Empire is carrying a group of youths from the plant Aneth. Desiring to make good time as this was to be the last tribute ship, the co-pilot overloads the engines, blowing them out and killing the pilot. The ship stalls in space and creates a gravity well.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is attempting to make repairs but has taken a number of systems off-line, including the dematerialization circuit. It gets caught in the gravity well and crashes into the warship. The Doctor extends the shields to create an air tunnel through which he, Romana and K-9 pass through.

They find a set of high energy crystals along with the Aneth youth. The Doctor sends K-9 back to the TARDIS to assess the repairs needed while he and Romana continue. They are detected by the co-pilot, who takes them to the bridge when they offer to help repair the engines before they are sucked into a singularity.

On the planet Skonna, the leader, Soldeed, is overseeing the preparations for the arrival of the youth, who are tribute to be sacrificed to the Nimon, a powerful Minotaur creature living at the center of the city. Upon receiving word of the warship's disappearance, Soldeed ventures into the Nimon's lair to inform him where he is most displeased. He sends Soldeed out with instructions to fulfill the tribute one way or the other.

Romana and the Doctor manage to jury rig something using some spare equipment from the TARDIS. They supply power and tell the co-pilot to ready the ship but not to start until the Doctor has moved the TARDIS onboard the ship. But the co-pilot starts the ship before the Doctor is ready and leaves the TARDIS in the gravity well. The Doctor activates the visualizer and sees a small planet being dragged into the gravity well. The Doctor puts the TARDIS into a spin and uses the momentum of the incoming planetoid to slingshot the TARDIS out of the gravity well.

The co-pilot locks Romana away with the other tributes when she tries to take control of the ship. In with the tributes, she learns that their leader, Seth, has been selected to defeat the Nimon and free Aneth from tribute. Seth however confides in Romana that he was just a traveler and has no plan. It was simply a backstory to feed to the tributaries to give them hope.

The ship arrives on Skonna and when two of the high energy crystals are shown to be missing, the co-pilot tries to claim that he used them to repair the engines. Soldeed immediately sees through the lie, condemns the co-pilot to death and pushes him into the Nimon's maze. Soldeed then pushes both the tributes and Romana into the maze as well, convinced that this will finally fulfill the bargain and the Nimon will bestow them with the technology to rebuild their empire.

After making some repairs, the Doctor steers the TARDIS to Skonna and then lands in the central plaza. He is arrested and brought before Soldeed. The Doctor shows off his technological knowledge but with the reveal that he is connected to Romana, Soldeed orders him taken to the Nimon as well. The Doctor briefly escapes his guard but is recaptured and put into the maze. Once in, he attempts to leave markers to follow back, but the markers disappear and the walls both appear and disappear in random order.

The tributes find the Nimon's lair and find both a desiccated body as well as previous tributes stored in hibernation. Romana realizes that the Nimon feeds on the energy of the tributes and keeps them in hibernation until he has completely used up each one. The co-pilot jumps out with his gun, hoping to fool the Nimon that he was ordered to escort them into the maze. The Nimon, drawn by the noise, sees through this and kills the co-pilot.

The Doctor enters and distracts the Nimon, allowing Romana, Seth and another tribute, Teka, to escape into the tunnels. The remaining five tributes however are too scared to move and the Nimon sets them in hibernation while taking the power crystals they had brought.

The Doctor and his party sneak back into the lab and observe the Nimon powering his equipment. He inflates the black hole that the Skonnan ship and the TARDIS were trapped in and brings in a capsule containing two other Nimon. The Doctor realizes that the Nimon have exhausted the planet they are currently occupying and are colonizing other planets under the guise of bringing a technological revolution.

When the Nimon leave, the Doctor and his group work to see if they can reverse the flow. He summons K-9 from the TARDIS but K-9 is captured and damaged by Soldeed. Soldeed intends to take K-9 apart to see how he works but stops when he sees the Nimon's temple become activated. Convinced that Skonna's new age is about to begin, he enters the maze to converse with the Nimon.

The Doctor experiments with the controls and manages to reverse the direction of the capsule. However, Romana was in the capsule and was transported back with it. The Doctor attempts to bring it back but Soldeed interrupts and damages the equipment with a blast from his staff. He then threatens to kill the Doctor for interfering with the Nimon's plans but Seth stuns Soldeed. He then works to repair the damage done by Soldeed.

Romana emerges from the capsule and finds herself on the planet Crinoth. She is pursued by other Nimon but they are stunned by Sezom, the last survivor of Crinoth and who held a position similar to Soldeed. Having seen how the Nimon consume the resources of the planet without fulfilling their promises, he works only to spare others from the Nimon. He has modified his staff with a mineral to amplify it's power to a level that will actually stun the Nimon. He helps Romana get back to the capsule, overcome the Nimon guards and climb into it, awaiting it's recall by the Doctor.

While the Doctor is repairing the machine, Soldeed awakens and runs off. Seth and Teka run after him but become separated in the maze. Teka is captured by Soldeed who turns her over to the Nimon, though he is shocked to see three take her. Seth returns to the Doctor just as he has finished the repairs.

Meanwhile, the captain of the guard, Sorak, experiments on K-9 trying to figure out how he works. K-9 is reanimated and after shocking Sorak, enters the maze to fulfill the Doctor's call.

The Nimon reenter the control room capturing the Doctor. The Nimon reactivate the device pulling the capsule with Romana to them. Sezom was killed in his defense of the capsule. The Nimon attack Romana and Seth as he reenters the room. Romana gives him the mineral from Crinoth and he places it in the staff. He stuns two of the Nimon while a third is taken down by K-9.

The Doctor and K-9 set about running the calculations to reverse the pull of the black hole while Seth and Romana go to rescue Teka. They find her in suspended animation along with the other Anothians. They start to revive her when Soldeed attacks them. He has gone mad in his refusal to accept that the Nimon deceived him. He runs to the power room and jams the overload switch before Seth shoots him down. With the switch jammed, they have no choice but to flee.

With everyone revived, they are joined by the Doctor and K-9 and K-9 leads them out of the maze. The Nimon also revive and chase after them. The Doctor's group emerges from the maze and orders everyone to take cover as the whole complex explodes, taking the three Nimon with it.

With Soldeed dead, Sorak takes over and sends the Anothians back in a spare ship with Seth in command. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 reenter the TARDIS to continue their repairs and as they take off, they observe a distant explosion. The Nimon trapped on Crinoth had tried to convert the planet to energy to reopen the portal to Skonna but with the receiver destroyed, it backfired and destroyed Crinoth with them still on it. The group then leaves the system to pursue adventures elsewhere.

Analysis
The Horns of Nimon is very similar to Underworld in that you have a potentially interesting story with a science fiction spin on a Greek myth, only to have it undone by production values and poor acting. I think The Horns of Nimon did it better than Underworld but it's still a case of looking at what could have been versus what is actually there.

One of the most frustrating things is that the potential of this story shines through. The tale of the Minotaur is a wonderfully dark story and a number of the people in this story do a good job of playing the tale straight, giving it a slightly creepy edge. That even works with the Douglas Adams style one-liners that intercut the story, giving it a gallows humor edge. But there are three characters that take all that potential and squander it. If a minor character is off, that can be overlooked, but in this case it's the Doctor and Soldeed that throw the tone off and never get it back on track.

By Season 17, it's obvious that Tom Baker has decided that the Doctor should be light-hearted and funny. He adds a serious tone here and there when required but he still feels that this is a show for children and that if the Doctor doesn't show fear, the kids won't be scared either. This can work in stories like Nightmare of Eden but the Doctor usually has to be balanced out by some gravitas on the other side. Here, the actor playing Soldeed has dialed it up to eleven in the idea that this story is a complete farce. Tom Baker either goes along with that or decides that he will not be upstaged by anyone and also dials it way up so that his performance is just as over-the-top and silly. He controls it better than Soldeed but when contrasted with the tone of everything else, it just doesn't fly.

I would love to know what the actor playing Soldeed was either thinking or got in terms of direction because his performance is absolutely terrible. You might think the character was already completely crazy or stoned out of his gourd based on the way he reacts to everyone around him. There is no moment of quiet or dialing it back. It's just up at eleven all the time. He has a moment when with the Doctor towards the end of Episode Two where he comes back a touch but that moment is so fleeting. Then you have his final scene in Episode Four where goes another notch up and the performance is almost painful to watch. Having already seen as crazy, trying to go extra crazy just makes the performance go to pieces.

The third character who is a bit of a loss is Teka. As a minor character that is mostly just an annoyance. She does absolutely nothing other than talk incessantly how Seth is going to be this great hero and save them all. Even when tasked to do something she ends up doing effectively nothing. I don't mind a bit of play up about the hero but a little balance would have been nice. Heck, showing her competent at anything other that verbally fellating Seth would have been an improvement.

Now that we've addressed the bad, let's hit the good. Romana is excellent in this story. She is competent, daring and even gets a few sharp barbs in here and there. The Doctor does very little in this story other than get himself captured and repair the Nimon's equipment. Romana is the one running about, trying to keep the Anothians alive and free. It is she that brings back the weapon to hold off the Nimon when they rise up. She also seems to actually care about the people around her. The Doctor seems to only care about Romana until the end of things.

Seth was pretty good too. In many ways, he was a less cocky version of Adric. I wouldn't be surprised if the interaction Seth had with Romana and the Doctor broached the idea of having a teenage boy as a companion. Unlike Adric, he is grounded in the limits of his abilities, clearly worried about not being able to perform what has been set before him. Yet he doesn't whine about it. He confides in Romana and puts Teka off a lot, but you don't see him curling up in a corner going "woe is me" as we so often have in fake heroes. Instead, he works as best he can and does step up when forced to do so. It actually makes for a nice arc for him.

Probably the best performance in the whole story lasted only five minutes and that was Sezom. He is in the same role as Soldeed but unlike that over-the-top performance, Sezom is reflective and quiet. He says more in a quiet look of despondence than Soldeed does with any of his ravings. Sezom's story is more tragic as well given that his planet was not interested in conquest but instead looked for peace and knowledge. His compromise of allowing a small evil (the tributes) led only to great evil rather than the peace and comfort that they wanted. It's an excellent performance and wonderfully underplayed. I'm glad that it was with Romana as well, who played off that well rather than going for an easy joke as the Doctor might have.

I like the idea of the Nimon a bit more than their execution. A minotaur race that act like locusts but that have real technological abilities is interesting. I even thought the costumes weren't that bad though the constant need for the actors to walk on tip-toe to simulate a hoof was probably jarring. What I didn't like about them was the constant arm movement. It was always like they were doing a free expression dance while simply walking around. I also would have liked some padding on arms. The loincloth covered the legs well enough, but the arms looked so skinny compared to the head and torso that it drew me out of the story. It was much easier to see it as a man in a costume rather than a creature. Padding would have added the illusion of musculature which also would have made the Nimon just that much more threatening.

I also enjoyed the sets for the most part. The clanking grates outside the maze were not good, but within the maze and the lab itself, I thought they did a good job. I could easily imagine that the hibernation chamber was recycled from The Ark in Space set while the computer equipment was probably gotten off some salvage yard. Both gave extra touches of realism when the budget would probably not have allowed that. I also appreciated the dim lighting. It hid what would have been imperfections in the set and costume and added an air of creepiness that might have otherwise been lost.

One small thing that was a bit odd was the pacing. The story had a slow start with a lot of hijinks in Episode One. It moved fairly steady after that, though it did slow down a bit in Episode Three. Then you have things all over the map in Episode Four. Many plot elements are stuffed in giving it a very crammed feeling, yet at the same time, there is a long segment of the Doctor's party following K-9 down various corridors with the Nimon doing the same. It kills several minutes that could have been used elsewhere. You then have a very hasty summary where three different storylines are summarily ended in a TARDIS coda that feels tacked on. It's very odd pacing with fast and slow elements throughout the whole story.

As stated earlier, this story is more of a reflection of what could have been. It has a number of good elements and even having dark or silly humor here and there are not a problem. The problems come from the contrast in performances and the up and down pacing. It's not quite the same but it's easy to see how the second attempt at this story in the form of The God Complex worked much better if only due to a consistent tone throughout. This story is not bad to sit through but there are going to be several roll your eye moments. If you can set those aside, it can be enjoyed just fine, but I doubt I will make much of an effort to come back to this one.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5

The Leisure Hive

Arrest the scarf then.

The Leisure Hive is the first story of the Christopher H. Bidmede era and if there is any story that defines his era, this may be it. David Fisher wrote this story in the vein of the silly Douglas Adams overseen Season 17, going so far as to envision the Foamasi as Jersey Shore style villains. Bidmede came in and slashed nearly all the comedy out of the story and reworked as much scientific techno-babble as he could. He also cut anything out that he saw as story padding. As such, this story has episodes almost as short as The Mind Robber and that includes reprises that last for 1-2 minutes. But does this slash and burn style help or hurt the overall story?

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Romana relax on Brighton Beach when K-9 short circuits himself by chasing a beach ball into the water. Romana takes him back to the Doctor and requests to go to a place with legitimate entertainment: the planet Argolis, which was turned into a recreation planet after a devastating nuclear war.

On Argolis, the chairman of the board, Morix, is trying to get additional investment from his human banker Brock. Brock is unwilling to invest himself but has an offer to buy the planet outright from the reptilian race, the Foamasi, with whom the Argolans had their nuclear war. Morix refuses to sell but dies before negotiations can continue further. Morix's wife, Mena, takes over as chairman and plans to revitalize their facilities by using anti-aging techniques developed using their expertise in tachyonics with an Earth scientist named Hardin.

The Doctor and Romana arrive on Argolis as Mena's son Pangol is giving a demonstration of their experiments in tachyonics. A member of the audience is curious and he is invited in to test it but something goes wrong and he is mortally injured. The Doctor rushes forward to help but is pulled away by a guard who mistakes him for Hardin. He and Romana are taken to Mena who suspects them of being spies (as they have no identification) and orders their arrest.

The Doctor and Romana run back to the main hall unaware that a group of Foamasi have infiltrated the hive. Romana gets back to the TARDIS but the Doctor is drawn to the Tachyonics machine where he appears to be pulled apart. Romana yells for him, alerting the guards. The Doctor emerges having used his sonic screwdriver to escape, but still revealing that it was an illusion by the machine. When brought before Mena, the Doctor and Romana reveal that they are very familiar with tachyonics and Hardin, who has just arrived, is eager for assistance, not wanting to reveal to Mena that he falsified his data and hasn't made the experiment work right yet.

Even with their help Hardin thinks about confessing the whole thing but his financial backer, Stimson, compels him to try and make it work. Stimson goes to talk to Brock in his quarters but finds them empty. He does however find a human mask and suit in the closet. Panicked, Stimson runs away into the main hall where he is strangled with the Doctor's scarf.

The Doctor, Romana and Mena all review the layout and plans for the rejuvenation techniques but encounter technical problems due to Foamasi sabotage. Mena briefly collapses due to accelerated aging brought on by the fallout of the war, but she recovers. The Doctor goes to look for the source of the sabotage while Romana goes to assist Hardin. The Doctor enters the main hall and finds his scarf around Stimson's neck. He is arrested by the guards and brought before Mena for trial. As none but circumstantial evidence can be found, Pangol suggests trial by test. Mena scoffs at this but changes her mind when Hardin and Romana enter stating that they've made the process work but only require one more test.

The Doctor is put into the tachyon machine while Hardin transfers the information from his lab. Romana goes back to the lab and discovers that their experiment reverted itself in a bad way. She runs back to stop it but Hardin has already begun the process. They stop in the middle but the Doctor emerges having turned into an old man. Pangol has the Doctor and Romana placed under house arrest and confines them to an empty suite.

Pangol does a little investigating and determines that Hardin faked his results. Mina confronts Hardin and he admits to fudging the final results but that he and Romana did make the process work. He requests and is given leave by Mina to have access to the lab to continue working. She does deny his request to have Romana assist him. Hardin however sneaks into their quarters and frees the Doctor and Romana to determine what went wrong.

With guests leaving rapidly, Brock brings up the Foamasi offer once again. Mina is still hesitant but agrees to look at the offer. Pangol suspects forgery as the documents are not issued by the government and the Foamasi government owns everything. Brock demurs, suggesting that a form of private enterprise still functions. Pangol becomes incensed and informs Brock that he is not actually a biological child of Mina (the Argolans having become sterile after the war) but a clone produced by the generator. Showing off a view of the generator, he sees the Doctor sneaking around and alerts the guards.

The Doctor, Hardin and Romana had snuck into the generator room to investigate what went wrong. Romana snuck in while the Doctor and Hardin took care of the guards. They are forced to flee when Pangol enters with his troop. He observes someone in the generator and activates it, turning the aging up to 10,000 years. However the generator is empty as a Foamasi had pulled Romana out before Pangol activated the machine.

The Foamasi takes Romana back to the lab with the Doctor and Hardin. It speaks with the Doctor and the whole group heads to the conference room. Pangol has returned to the conference room where Brock is still trying to get Mina to sign the papers. As the Doctor and his group enter, Brock panics at the sight of the Foamasi. The Foamasi grabs Brock and pulls off his mask to reveal that Brock is actually another Foamasi in disguise.

The original Foamasi reveals himself as a government agent while the fake Brock and his associate were representatives of a crime family attempting to gain control of Argolis to use it as a base of operations. The agent arrests the two and takes them to his shuttle with the intention of taking them back to the home planet for trial.

Pangol, now having whipped himself in to a frenzy with Mina's impending death, refuses to let the Foamasi go and orders the shuttle destroyed when it attempts to take off without clearance. He then sets up the tachyon generator to create a clone army of himself, prepared to go to war with the Foamasi and any other system that would oppose him.

While Pangol is setting this up, the Doctor, Romana and Hardin try to figure out how to both stop Pangol and fix the generator. The Doctor takes the randomizer out of the TARDIS and sneaks into the generator to counteract the previous sabotage. Romana realizes what the Doctor has done and tries to stop it but Pangol enters the generator and begins to make his clones. The clones, masked, step out and take her away. Once they are down the corridor, the clones take off their masks to reveal a rejuvenated Doctor. Since he had been in the machine, his essence was replicated while taking on Pangol's outfit. However, the clones are unstable and they disappear, except for the original Doctor.

Hardin discovers Mina passed out and dying in the conference room. He picks her up and decides to try and put her in the generator as a desperation attempt to keep her alive. Pangol sees what he is doing and runs into the generator after Hardin places her in and the door closes behind them. The Doctor arrives, noting that he left the generator in regeneration mode and it begins to work on both of them. The Doctor smashes the controls and a youthful Mina emerges holding Pangol, who has been reduced to a baby.

Mina vows to raise Pangol correctly this time and asks to contact the Foamasi to avoid another war. The Foamasi agent emerges, noting that the destroyed shuttle was launched by the fake Brock before the agent could board in an escape attempt. The two go to discuss arrangements between their two planets while Hardin looks after Pangol. The Doctor and Romana slip away in the TARDIS with the Doctor dismissing the threats of the Black Guardian and refusing to reinstall the randomizer.

Analysis

Despite some flaws, I rather like this story, although I can't say that much of that credit goes to either David Fisher or Christopher Bidmede. The plotline, for the most part, is fairly good but I think it is the overall atmosphere and tone that really help sell it and credit there must be given to Lovett Bickford. I also think they got a rather good cast for this story as nearly everyone sells themselves in a very believable way.

This story kicks off the season of entropy and nowhere is that better exemplified in the form of the Doctor. The producers actually got somewhat lucky in that Tom Baker had a bad case of illness in the period between seasons and came back looking rather badly. It ties in rather nicely with the way things worked out for this whole season and even beyond that, you can tell that he's pulling in his A-game. After running with just about whatever he wanted in Season 17, Tom Baker is heavily clamped down and it suits him. He presents himself in a serious manner and that adds a level of gravitas that might have been lost given the changes that were made. It also adds a bit more punch in the few and far between instances of comedy. If Bidmede made one major error, it was in cutting out the comedy completely. A few jokes sprinkled here and there (such as the scarf line) would have lightened things a touch and made the story much more palatable to regular viewers.

Romana gets a nice little arc and some good scenes here and there, although I feel like she had more scenes cut for time. Hardin always seems so insistent in working with Romana that you can't help but think they might have had a couple of more scenes showing their interaction while the Doctor did his own thing. But even with those scenes absent, it's nice to see Romana in full scientist mode and especially nice to see her being consulted as the scientific mind rather than the Doctor, freeing him for more intrigue. I do think her K-9 short circuiting reaction was a bit over the top, especially in contrast to how blasé she was when talking to the Doctor while carrying him back to the TARDIS. Still, a strong performance that I enjoyed.

Mina was the standout among the secondary characters. It's actually something of a shame that she had to spend a good portion of two and a half episodes acting like she's dying (which was well acted) because her performance when fully lucid is excellent. She's a hard driven yet compassionate woman, trying to die with dignity and grace. She does fall a bit flat in the final scene where she comes out of the generator. The whole scene is very rushed and both her and the Foamasi representative sound like they are doing a quick run through rather than a proper performance. You have to wonder if the union was threatening to cut the lights in five minutes when they filmed that scene.

I rather liked the Foamasi and I also liked the slight mystery angle where you have two criminals trying to get a deal while being pursued by a government agent. That was the better story and I rather wish that it had been drawn out just a bit longer rather than indulge in the whole bit with Pangol. I liked the design of the Foamasi and the fear that they seemed to inspire in Mina as well as the rage in Pangol. I thought they worked well as the primary villain in the first three episodes.

But then we come to Pangol and the oddity that is Episode Four. Pangol, through the first three episodes, has been shown to be arrogant and chafing for leadership. But in Episode Four, he goes totally off the rails into full totalitarian mode. With the plot revolving around finding about the Foamasi sabotage and their plans to take control of the planet, Pangol's sudden declaration of himself as the next Alexander the Great and the creation of a clone army is just a complete and total surprise.

What's more, the whole thing is a giant fizzle as it is resolved in less than fifteen minutes of show time. They are clones of the Doctor but you get the impression that even if they had been clones of Pangol they wouldn't have lasted long either. So the whole deviation is an exercise in futility. All it does is allow the Doctor to be made back to his normal self and that could easily have been done as a tie in with trying to revive Mina as the groundwork was laid for Hardin's age reversal experiments. Pangol could easily have been left as the skeptic that we've seen in many different stories only to be shocked at the end. I think it was just a very clumsy deviation.

It also might not have been that good but a better stretch would have been trying to save Mina as well as a temporary escape by the criminal Foamasi, destroying part of Hardin's work and adding that much more tension to trying to save Mina. You could have also added that the rapid aging and instability of the original tachyon experiment was causing the Doctor to become weak and die, thus the race becomes to save both him and Mina, which would actually unite Hardin, Romana and Pangol. The Foamasi agent could also contribute as it would be something of an interplanetary incident if it was known that Foamasi criminals acted in ways that led to the death of the Argolan leader. What's more, the interaction between the agent and Pangol would have formed a more natural bridge of the two planets looking to create a stable peace and comradery rather than the patch job that was shown in the last minute of the show.

There was some interesting and arty direction in this story. There was also some very shoddy direction so it's an odd mix there. Any time the story went into noir, especially with close ups and shadows, it looked really good and intense. There are also some very nice long shots from the exterior into the hive itself which I enjoyed. But then there were also other shots where there was too much lighting, giving a harsh appearance to everything. There was also the very bad blue screen of the Doctor and Romana retreating to the TARDIS in Episode One as they passed through the racquetball court. I think Barry Letts would have chided them for that shot.

The other significant problem is editing. Bidmede clearly went through and slashed everything he could that was not part of the bare bones story. That led to a number of transitions where you could just feel that more had been discussed and shot but that we weren't privy to it. In a story like this, because it was so straight-forward, that's less of an issue; but when a man who is supposed to be interested in emphasizing the science can't explain what this magic box is actually doing or why it's doing things wrong, I would say that you can take an extra minute or so to explain it. They could have had even more time by cutting back on the reprise time as well so the slash and burn that was done actually created confusion rather than effectively streamlining the story.

I got rather harsh towards the end but there is still a lot to like in this story. It's just frustrating when you see a story that could have been the stand out story of the season be reduced to a middling state. I think it also says a lot for Christopher Bidmede's approach that the story that I found the best of his season was the story that was leftover from the Philip Hinchcliff/Graham Williams transition days (State of Decay). But I do like this story a bit more than some fans and I could easily watch it again. Even the stupidity that is Episode Four has a bit of entertainment and gives enough of a run around to keep you engaged. Not a horrible start to the JNT era but less than it could have been.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

The Android Invasion

Sarah: So, providing we don't burn up on reentry and aren't suffocated on the way down, we'll probably be smashed to a pulp when we land.
Doctor: Exactly. Sarah, you've put your finger on the one tiny flaw in our plan.

The Android Invasion is Terry Nation's first contribution following The Genesis of the Daleks and only his second (and final) non-Dalek story for Doctor Who. It's something of a divided story among fans with some enjoying it and others referring to it as the worst story of the Philip Hinchcliff era. The first time around I don't remember being overly enamored with it but I'm not sure I would call it the worst story of the era.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Sarah arrive on what they think is Earth. Looking for UNIT headquarters, they run into a group of space-suited figures who start shooting at them. The run away but Sarah slips and slides down an embankment. The Doctor rescues her just as they see a UNIT soldier walk off a similar cliff.

They investigate his body and find that all his money is brand new and of the same year. They run again from the suited figures and into the nearby town, which Sarah is familiar with, having done a story two years prior. The town is empty and also uses new coins of the same year. When Sarah tells the Doctor of a nearby Space Center, the Doctor postulates that an accident may have happened and the town evacuated.

The suited figures arrive with the UNIT soldier who had fallen off the cliff. A moment later, a truck arrives with the townsfolk, who all move to established places within the town. The Doctor decides to head to the Space Center while Sarah stays in town. He gives her the TARDIS key and tells her to wait inside if anything happens. He leaves and Sarah enters the pub. The people all stop and stare at her. The UNIT soldier chases her off when she tries to mingle. As she leaves, she sees that the suited figure is actually a robot of some kind. Sarah heads back to the TARDIS and puts the key in but is distracted by a pod. The act causes the TARDIS to disappear just as the pod opens and a man gets out and tries to grab her.

The Doctor arrives at the Space Center and also finds it deserted except for one man, a former astronaut named Guy Crayford. Crayford tries to arrest the Doctor but he runs off and the chase attracts Sarah's attention. She sees the Doctor finally apprehended and locked into a cell in the facility. She sneaks in and rescues the Doctor, observing a pair of alien eyes looking at her through a panel.

They sneak to the front of the building where they see Benton. As they identify themselves, Benton raises his gun to them. Before he can shoot, an alien named Styggron signals Crayford that the intruders are to be taken alive. Crayford counters the original kill order and Benton tries to arrest the Doctor and Sarah. They elude him and dash out, trying to get back to the town and warn London.

Outside, the UNIT guards begin to track them with dogs and Sarah slips, spraining her ankle. The Doctor takes her scarf and hoists her into a tree. He runs along, creating a false trail and then hides in the water. The dogs lose the scent and the guards double back, thinking they had swam across the river. Sarah unfortunately gets out of the tree just before the guards double back and capture her.

The Doctor gets back to town but finds all the phones dead. He waits in the pub with the barman until he receives a call from Sarah. She tells him she was captured but managed to escape and is now hiding in another part of town. The Doctor leaves the pub, noting that the phone has gone dead again, and makes his way to where Sarah is hiding. After finding her, the Doctor theorizes that they are in a test where she was allowed to escape and given access to a phone.

The two make their way back to where the TARDIS was and find it gone. Sarah doesn't seem to know where it is but the Doctor tells her that the real Sarah must have put the key in the lock which overrode it's brake and it went back to Earth. He points out that the whole town is artificial and that she's not the real Sarah as the real Sarah had given her scarf to the Doctor and didn't like Ginger Pop, which the Doctor had offered the fake Sarah. Fake Sarah draws a gun but the Doctor knocks it out of her hand and shoves her down, where her faceplate falls off, revealing the android circuitry. He runs off as she get up and fires at him.

The Doctor runs back to town where he observes the androids being recollected and taken back to the space center. The aliens, called Kralls, are recalling them and preparing to destroy the fake town, which has been built as a testing ground for their planned infiltration of Earth. The Doctor is captured by Styggron as he is planting the bomb and tied to the monument at the center of the square with the bomb.

Prior to this, Sarah had lain on the bed where she had had her mind scanned, pretending to be unconscious. When Styggron left to plant the bomb, she slipped out the door after him and snuck out another tunnel. She emerges in town and finds the Doctor tied to the monument. Unable to cut through the vines holding him, she uses his sonic screwdriver to loosen them. They then rush back to the tunnel just before the bomb detonates, destroying the town.

They're actions alert the guards who take them to a cell. Styggron is inclined to kill the Doctor outright but Crayford appeals to keep him alive and harvest his knowledge now that the invasion plan is underway. Styggron agrees but does not tell Crayford that he intends to kill to the Doctor after scanning his mind. Meanwhile, the Doctor loosens a panel in the floor with his sonic screwdriver, revealing an electrical cable. He and Sarah devise a plan to short out the android guard with it if they can get a conductor.

Android Harry Sullivan comes in and takes the Doctor away, leaving Sarah with some food and a pitcher of water. Unknown to her, the water has been laced with a biological contaminent that the Kralls intend to use to kill humanity and are going to properly test on Sarah. However, on a hint from the Doctor before being taken away, Sarah pours in on the floor and sets fire to her scarf with the electrical cable. Noting the smoke, the guard comes in and as he steps in the water, Sarah stabs him with the cable. The android shorts out and Sarah leaves the cell.

Styggron hooks the Doctor up to the mind scanning machine but leaves it on after doing it's initial run. He leaves the room, informing the Doctor that the machine will eventually burn out his mind, killing him while Styggron accompanies Crayford in his rocket back to Earth. Sarah frees the Doctor after Styggron leaves and the two sneak aboard Crayford and Styggron's rocket just prior to take-off.

The Doctor and Sarah hide themselves in two android pods which are to be launched to Earth prior to Crayford's rocket landing, unaware that Doctor and Sarah androids are also loaded. As Crayford prepares to descend to Earth, the pods are launched and appear on the scope as a dense meteor shower. The Doctor finds himself alone and makes his way to the Space Center. Sarah also lands and finds the TARDIS. Taking the key, she also discovers the android versions of herself and the Doctor.

The Doctor arrives at the Space Center after Crayford's rocket has landed and as Harry Sullivan and Colonel Faraday have gone up to meet him. The Doctor signals them to come back at once. While he waits for them, he draws out an electrical sketch and gives it to the head technician to configure. He takes Harry and Colonel Faraday to Faraday's office to explain the situation to them. He also pulls out an android detector which goes off immediately. He realizes that Harry and Faraday have already be substituted. The fake Doctor also appears behind him with a gun as androids move in and replace other workers and soldiers, including Sargent Benton.

The Doctor dives out the window and runs away with the fake Doctor ordering a search of premises to find him. The Doctor finds Sarah and tells her he has to get to the control room to stop the androids. He heads back to the control room and bluffs his way past android Benton. Sarah meanwhile sneaks around the gantry and climbs up to Crayford's rocket, hoping to free Harry and Faraday.

The Doctor arrives just as the technician has finished making the alterations. The changes will lower the radar dish and scramble the android's functions. The technician activates the system but before the radar dishes are locked into position, the fake Doctor shoots him in the shoulder and deactivates the radar. Attracted by the sound of gunfire, Crayford enters the control room angry as he had been told there would be no killing. The fake Doctor scoffs at this, informing Crayford of the plague that Styggron is planning to unleash on humanity. Crayford denies this but the real Doctor points out that Crayford has been lied to from the beginning and tells him to remove his eye patch. Crayford does so, discovering that his eye was not lost at all but still there.

The Doctor attacks the fake Doctor while distracted but the fake Doctor throws him back against the panel. This allows the Doctor to reactivate the radar which shuts down all androids in the area. Meanwhile, Sarah has found Harry and Faraday and untied them. Styggron appears with the vial of the virus and threatens the three of them with it. Crayford confronts Styggron and manages to knock the vial of virus out of his hand before Styggron kills him with his anti-android gun.

The Doctor then arrives and attacks Styggron. Styggron shoots him as well with his weapon but not before he is knocked into the vial of virus which swells around his face and kills him. The Doctor falls over, seemingly dead, but the real Doctor appears and informs them that he reprogrammed the android Doctor to attack Styggron.

The Doctor and Sarah walk back to the TARDIS where Sarah informs him that she has plans to go home. The Doctor offers to give her a lift and she accepts, knowing that it will result in more adventures.

Analysis

For me, and I think for other fans, The Android Invasion is actually a pretty good story for the first three-and-a-half episodes. It has it's cheesy moments and it's fairly full of Terry Nation tropes but it flows well and has that slightly unsettling vibe that you also get from The Prisoner or Westworld. Then everything comes crashing down at the end. I'd be very curious to know if Terry Nation ran out of time or he got into a corner and then just threw up his hands and said "plot holes be damned." This is a real shame because they are such strong undercuts to an otherwise entertaining adventure.

Let's go ahead and discuss the major flaws first. Some folks gripe about the inconsistency of the realism of the fake town with obvious tells like the single day calendar. Some even complain that the town itself is rather pointless. I would disagree on both counts as I see this as a Krall equivalent to the nuclear bomb test done in the 1950's. The fake towns they built could be highly detailed on one hand but also leave other things in the cardboard cutout stage depending on the needs and time involved. That doesn't bother me and while others might quibble, I think those that do are just going after additional nits when there are greater flaws to examine.

The really big one is the convincing of Crayford because he actually is not missing an eye. This is dumb for so many reasons. First, in the two years he was with the Kralls, he never once took off the eye patch to shower or sleep? That's just ludicrous. Second, if you've ever placed a hand over an eye, you can feel the body of the eye move in the socket, even if you can't see anything. Did Crayford never wonder at all why he could feel something moving under the eye patch? Third, if Styggron wanted to convince Crayford that he had saved his life and that his missing eye was evidence of the extensive work he did to save him, why not cut out his eye from the beginning? Crayford could easily have been knocked out, especially in the mind scanning process since it is painful to begin with. Styggron could have easily performed the surgery and never had to worry about Crayford accidentally discovering the ruse. The whole thing is just the cheapest and laziest way to get Crayford to realize he's been used and to have him attack Styggron for a fight at the end. The holes it creates far outweigh any benefits that it brought in my opinion.

The second major flaw is the fake out of having Styggron "kill" the Doctor at the end. This is doubly flawed and there is no benefit except as a quick gasp moment where the audience might think the Doctor has been killed. The first flaw is timing as Crayford was racing back up the stairs to confront Styggron. When would the Doctor have had time to reprogram the Doctor android? A simple little device or the sonic screwdriver wouldn't do the job in the 15-30 seconds given for when he could have done it. The second flaw is that the Doctor had just deactivated the androids by scrambling their brain functions through the radar broadcast. So how did he isolate the Doctor android so that it could function while all the other non-reprogrammed androids stayed frozen? The benefit of it also is so not worth the pains that it puts the story through. The Doctor could easily have been shown to knock the weapon out of Styggron's hand just as he fires and have the blast go off just past the Doctor's head. It would have been just as exciting and could easily provided the moment where an off-balance Doctor knocks Styggron into the plague. It's a bad bit of writing that is not worth it at all.

There is a third thing and although it's not a major flaw, I would have liked to have seen a resolution and that is what happened to the Sarah android. We see the Doctor android doing most of the threatening with a little thrown in from androids Benton and Harry. But we never see Sarah again after the android Doctor lifts her out of her travel tube. Presumably she is disabled along with the others but it would have been nice to see her around. I frankly would have liked a parallel scene to the Doctor's where Sarah is pursued up the rocket ship by her own android. She could even kick it off the ladder to destroy it or at least explain how it failed to catch up before the Doctor disables all the androids. But again, that's more of a want than a significant flaw in the story.

Outside of those two major problems, there is a lot to like about this story. The location is quite nice and the direction is fairly good. It's not stellar and Barry Letts is still clearly in love with CSO, but there's nothing bad about it either. There were no shots I considered bad and the high number of filmed location shots just makes the story look that much better. Of course, given that most of Episode Four is back in studio, it just makes it look that much worse.

All the actors do well here. The Doctor is quite good both as himself and his evil twin. In fact, the contrast between the two shows how much the Doctor uses natural charm and humor to put people at ease. The coldness he displays in the android version is quite sinister even though its nearly the same characteristic as the regular Doctor. The Doctor also has a number of good lines in this story and the banter between him and Sarah has a real nice balance, which again leads me to believe that Nation either ran out of time or just gave up to have the story fall so flat at the end.

Sarah is good as far as her acting, though her character is a bit up and down throughout the story. On one hand, she rescues the Doctor at least three times in this story and she gives him a great deal of background that he would have been lacking. But on the other hand, she falls badly twice and has several severe brain farts, the leaving of the key in the TARDIS lock being the most egregious. Still, you can't help but enjoy Sarah and her enthusiasm throughout the story.

Crayford was rather odd in this story. I suspect that I know what he was trying for but I'm not sure he carried it off properly. Episode One Crayford is worried about the plan that will get him to Earth so he is more violent there. Once he feels the plan is safe, there is an almost schizoid friendliness towards Sarah and the Doctor that is a bit manic. I suspect that it's supposed to be the reaction of one who is desperate for the company of his own kind and that an overbearing creepiness would be expected. I think the only spot where it didn't quite work was just after the Doctor and Sarah were captured and he asks for the Doctor's life to be spared. They were trying to lay the groundwork for Crayford not being that bad of a guy but it came across as a rather ham-fisted way to keep the Doctor and Sarah alive.

The Kralls themselves were not bad. They were a bit heavy in their design but looked different enough that I didn't have a problem with their design. They did remind me a bit of the Sontarans in their insistence in adhering to the great research being done and to the time tables already planned. I did appreciate that they were fairly ruthless, ordering death most of the time and only delaying it to pacify Crayford and to conduct additional experiments. Of course, Styggron was leaving in the rocket with Crayford so his planned deaths for both the Doctor and Sarah didn't make a lot of sense. The Doctor was at least a planned death but Sarah was an experiment you think he would have liked to have seen the results of. Given that he wasn't going to, having her die via the virus was something of a waste. Why not just shoot her and be done with it? But, I thought they worked better than some other villains who would occasionally make irrational decisions just to ensure the Doctor survived.

The rest of the cast did well but the famous callbacks were rather wasted. There was no real reason that Sargent Benton or Harry Sullivan needed to be in the story and given that they were usually found at UNIT headquarters, it would have made a bit more sense to have the base be completely populated by people unknown to us. Perhaps I might feel differently if the Brigadier was there but clearly Nicholas Courtney was either unavailable or unwilling so his role was given over to Colonel Faraday who played the role with a bit more foolish pomp. It's not bad but it just doesn't have the zip that you expect from the Brigadier.

Overall, I think this a solid and entertaining story that falls apart at the end. It is entertaining but the laziness and contrivance of the ending just leaves a sour taste in your mouth and a feeling like you've been cheated a bit. I think younger viewers would go along with it without any real problem but for older viewers, it's just a bridge too far. For the first three and a half episodes, I could easily give a 4 and even consider a 4.5 based on the witticisms thrown between the Doctor and Sarah. But the flaws at the end are just too large to overlook. More's the pity.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5