The Time Monster

You are like a child trying to control an elephant.

I'm a little sad to be posting this. Although I have three stories remaining for me to cover, this is the last of the classic era stories that I have not seen. When I first started this, I'm sure The Time Monster was not the story that I would have picked to finish on, but things just always seem to divert to other stories. My preference for watching four-part stories or longer stories from the black and white era did keep pushing this one further and further down the list. But now the list is empty and here we are.

My expectations for this story are low. Boring is the word I've heard most often to describe it but that's a matter of preference. Of course, it's also a Barry Letts and Robert Sloman script and that gives me pause. I really liked The Green Death but I think my patience for The Dæmons was lower than the standard Doctor Who fan so those balance each other out. I don't think I minded Planet of the Spiders that much the first time I watched it but I need to reserve judgment until I go for the re-watch. So we shall just have to see if this either lives down to its reputation or if I am pleasantly surprised.

Plot Summary

The Doctor wakes from a nightmare where there were a great number of natural disasters and the Master taking command of the Earth using a three-pronged crystal. Unsettled by this dream, he ask Jo to look for any news of recent earthquakes or volcanoes. Jo scoffs a bit as she had read him a news article on such activity happening in Greece only yesterday. He again doesn't pay much attention until Jo notes that the site was in the vicinity where archaeologists believe that the island that inspired Atlantis was. Upon hearing that, the Doctor alerts the Brigadier, though the Brigadier notes that UNIT is already on high alert looking for the Master.

The Brigadier prepares to leave for a meeting at a university near Cambridge to observe experiments being done with time and the transport of matter. The Doctor begs off, wanting to work on looking for the Master so the Brigadier pulls Sargent Benton in. At the university, the experiments are being done by the Master, who is going under the pseudonym Professor Thascalos. He prepares to meet with the observing delegation and leaves the equipment to his two colleagues: Dr. Ingram and Stuart Hyde. While the Master is hypnotizing Dr. Percival, the head of the department who has become suspicious of the Master, Ingram and Hyde conduct a test run of the equipment. They successfully transport an object from one terminal to the other but cause a strange phenomena with time. This phenomena causes a window washer to fall off his ladder though he is not killed.

The tests register on a detector that the Doctor has managed to put together. However, the range is too broad to hone in on the signal. The Doctor and Jo get into Bessie and drive around in the range zone, hoping for another signal that will allow them to locate the Master.

Though he is displeased by Ingram and Hyde's experiments without him, the Master plays it off. Seeing that UNIT has come along on the inspection, the Master sends Ingram off to meet them while he tinkers with the equipment. When they arrive after lunch for the experiment, the Master has donned a radiation suit to hide his appearance from the Brigadier. The Master activates the equipment, alerting the Doctor to his location. The Doctor and Jo race to the college while the Master throws the equipment into overdrive, calling out for the appearance of Kronos.

Ingram rushes to shut down the machine after Hyde collapses. The Master rushes out of the room as the Doctor rushes in, having noticed that time has slowed down outside the room. They manage to deactivate the machine but find that Hyde has aged from his twenties to his eighties in only a few minutes.

After leaving Hyde in the care of Jo, the Doctor and Ingram return to the lab to investigate the equipment. The Brigadier returns to a makeshift headquarters where he takes command of the place, requests that additional munitions be brought up and that all non-essential personnel leave the college. In the lab, the Doctor examines the equipment and discovers the Master’s TARDIS. He also examines the crystal but believes it’s only a temporal projection of the real crystal. The Doctor explains to Ingram that Kronos, as called for by the Master, is a creature known as a cronovore and was trapped in the crystal by the people of Atlantis. This eventually gave rise to the legend of Cronos, father of the Greek gods.

The Master retreats to Dr. Percival’s office where he reinforces his hypnotic control. After working out some calculations, the Master pretends to be the Brigadier to lure Benton out of the lab where he is standing guard. Suspecting the ruse, Benton leaves but doubles back to get the drop on the Master. However, the Master knocks Benton out and reactivates the machine. As it ramps up, a man from Atlantis begins to appear next to the crystal.

The man is Krasis, high priest of Poseidon in Atlantis and is rather put out at the Master's cavalier attitude towards being able to control Kronos. Benton comes to and rushes out to warn the Doctor. The Master lets him go, being more interested in the medallion Krasis gives him when speaking of Kronos. Realizing that the medallion has information imbedded in it, the Master begins to encode that into his machine.

Benton warns everyone as they are outside, loading Hyde on to an ambulance to be taken away. The Brigadier, Benton and Dr. Ingram rush forward to stop him just as the Master reactivates the machine. The Doctor notices that Hyde is regressing back to his normal age while the Brigadier, Benton and Ingram are now running in slow motion. The Doctor runs up and pulls each of them back to the ambulance, out of the bubble of the machine where they snap back to normal time.

Inside the lab, Kronos is released from the crystal and flies about as a glowing humanoid-birdlike creature. It consumes Dr. Percival but is unable to escape the lab. The Master is able to hold off Kronos by using the medallion, which it seems to fear. He steadily powers down the machine and Kronos is sucked back into the crystal. Using this new information, the Master reprograms the machine to allow him to bring other small objects from outside of time.

Unable to get to the lab, the Doctor orders the Brigadier to bring up his TARDIS, to which the Brigadier orders Captain Yates to do. To buy time, the Doctor constructs a device from refuse that interferes with the time bubble the Master is creating. This causes the crystal to power up again but the Master sends a surge of energy which destroys the device.

Aware that the Doctor is having his TARDIS brought up, the Master brings forward things from the past to slow Captain Yates' convoy down. First an Arthurian knight and then a squad of Roundheads. Yates radios about the distractions and the Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier ride out to grab the TARDIS directly. Seeing this, the Master pulls forward a V-1 rocket which bombs Yates' convoy. Yates and his men survive but their trucks are damaged and the TARDIS lands on its side in a pit. Yates and his men begin to haul it upright again while the Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier assess the damage.

The Master makes preparations to leave for Atlantis in his TARDIS, telling Krasis to wait inside. This activation sends a signal to the Doctor's original detector device and he and Jo decide to try and trap the Master within the Doctor's own TARDIS. The Brigadier takes the rest of the men and takes them back to the college.

As the Master grabs the last bit of equipment, he notices the Brigadier and his men preparing to storm the building. The Master activates the device and the Brigadier and his men are caught in a frozen bubble. Just as he is about to leave, Dr. Ingram, Hyde and Benton get the drop on the Master. He manages to throw Hyde in Benton's path, dash into his TARDIS and take off. Ingram and Hyde activate the remaining equipment to at least unfreeze the Brigadier and his men but something goes wrong and instead of them being unfrozen, Benton is age reversed into a baby.

As the Master takes off, Krasis points out the Doctor's TARDIS. The Doctor had made a slight mistake and the two TARDISs are now situated inside each other. The Doctor communicates to the Master via the scanner but the Master turns the sound off. The Doctor tries another way but the Master scrambles the signal. With no other alternative, the Doctor comes out of the TARDIS to try and warn the Master. The Master ignores him and instead extracts Kronos from the crystal. Kronos envelops the Doctor, who disappears. The Master then pushes Kronos back into the crystal.

He informs Jo that the Doctor has been cast into the time vortex and he then disengages his TARDIS from the Doctor's. Jo passes out briefly only to hear the voice of the Doctor. He tells her that the TARDIS has linked with him and can bring him back. He instructs her to pull a lever on the control panel and he materializes within the TARDIS.

The Master arrives in Atlantis as King Dalios is holding court. The Master emerges and claims to be a messenger from the gods with Krasis supporting him. Dalios takes the Master back to his private chambers to question him. The Master attempts to hypnotize him but Dalios is unaffected and laughingly dismisses the Master as a trickster. The Master is further shocked to see the Doctor and Jo being escorted to the king, having been arrested by the guards upon landing next to the Master's TARDIS.

Dalios takes to the Doctor immediately, perceiving his honesty. He sends Jo to the company of his wife, Queen Galleia. Galleia accepts Jo and has her change to more customary attire. She then sends her handmaiden to summon the Master, whom she is attracted to. After the Master arrives, Jo and the handmaiden eavesdrop on their conversation.

The Master convinces Galleia that he should get the crystal and allow her to assume power, taking over from her husband. He also promises to stay and rule by her side. She tells him that while Krasis has a key to the vault, the crystal is also guarded by a monster. King Dalios informs the Doctor that this monster was a friend of his but was transformed into a minotaur. The Master and Galleia devise a plan to send the acolyte Hippias in as a distraction.

The handmaiden, smitten with Hippias, and agrees to help Jo warn him. They follow Hippias in the dark as he approaches the vault where the crystal is held. Jo goes to warn him but Krasis grabs her and shoves her into the vault. The handmaiden runs back and tells the Doctor who knocks Krasis out of the way and runs into the vault.

The Minotaur moves to attack Jo but Hippias attacks it. However, the Minotaur kills Hippias and resumes its attack on Jo. The Doctor however draws its attention and lures it into a wall, knocking the creature out. In the center of the vault, they find the original crystal and go to warn the king. But when they emerge, they find that the Master and Galleia have performed a coup and taken over. The Doctor and Jo are sent to the dungeon.

In the dungeon, the Doctor comforts Jo with a story of his youth when King Dalios is brought in. He resists and the guard knocks him to the floor. Dalios warns the Doctor of visions he has had of Atlantis being destroyed before he dies.

In the morning the Doctor and Jo are brought before the Master and Galleia to be executed. The Doctor asks where most of the council is and if they have been killed like Dalios. Galleia is shocked to learn that Dallios was killed and accuses the Master of betraying her as he had promised that he would be allowed to live. The Master then orders Krasis to activate the machine, releasing Kronos who begins to destroy Atlantis.

The Master grabs the original crystal and runs for his TARDIS. Jo manages to get herself free and jumps on his back. He drags her into his TARDIS and disappears. Galleia frees the Doctor and the Doctor runs to his TARDIS to chase them down while Atlantis crumbles. In the time vortex, he contacts the Master and threatens to conduct a time ram, the merging of their two TARDISs to stop him. The Master doesn't believe he will do it as long as Jo is there but Jo grabs the controls and forces the merger when the Doctor hesitates.

The Doctor and Jo wake to find themselves on the edge of reality. Kronos appears to them as a woman as the time ram destroyed the crystal and freeing her. In exchange, she offers them whatever they want. The Doctor opts to return to Earth with Jo and the TARDIS. Kronos agrees and promises to keep the Master where he will be tormented for eternity. The Master begs mercy and the Doctor asks for him to be freed to the Doctor's custody. Kronos agrees but the Master shakes the Doctor lose and flees in his TARDIS. Kronos refuses to stop him as the Doctor had asked for him to be freed to the Doctor.

The Doctor returns to the lab just as Dr. Ingram and Hyde are finishing repairs to the machine. They manage to free the Brigadier and his men from the bubble as well as return Sargent Benton to his normal self. But without the crystal to stabilize it, the machine is destroyed.

Analysis

If I had to pick a single word to describe this story, I think I would pick "meandering". It's not to the point of being bad, in fact in many ways the story is fairly entertaining, but it lacks focus and just seems to drift from point to point without much thought to its direction.

Although filled with rather obvious padding, the first four episodes are a fairly direct line of adventure with the Master fooling around in his lab and the Doctor and UNIT trying to breach it. It's actually a reverse base-under-siege story which is somewhat refreshing. There is good interaction between the Doctor and the various UNIT personnel and although peppered with a bit of silliness here and there, it slowly progresses towards an ultimate breach.

The last two episodes leave something to be desired. None of the events in Atlantis make much sense and what little plot there is there seems rushed and poorly developed. Everything in the first four episodes is banished as it just becomes a race for the original crystal which is something you think the Master should have been aware of from the beginning. The intrigue of court politics and battles with mythological beasts is both uninteresting and unengaging.

From an emotional standpoint, this is one of the Third Doctor's best stories. His intimate moment about his childhood in Episode Six is still seen as one of his best moments. He also doesn't go either over-the-top or off-the-handle with the Brigadier as he so often does in other UNIT stories. He has a nice rapport with Jo and seems to have fully developed into a fatherly, caring figure for her. It is rather telling that the Master is correct and that the Doctor is unwilling to complete the time ram because he doesn't want to hurt Jo. There's also very little martial arts from the Doctor which is a nice change of pace, forcing him to think his way out of problems rather than forcing the issue.

Again, from an emotional standpoint, this was quite a good story for Jo. She does very little otherwise but as this is less of an action story, that sort of fits. She is also shown as less dumb than in other stories, needing to ask questions for the audience purposes but also being a bit more intuitive about the answers. There are at least a couple of instances where she gets the answer before other "smarter" people and the Doctor's pleasure at her understanding is quite obvious. Jo is just very pleasant in this story, although I'm not a fan of her yellow go-go boots but you can't have everything.

Most of the rest of the regular cast hits their normal notes. The Brigadier plays dumb and is interested in shooting things, Yates does his "aw shucks" routine and Benton is the loveable doofus. I prefer it when the Brigadier is much more intelligent, as shown in Season 7 stories, but by this point its a pretty standard format for the Brig to be more interested in blowing things up and you just get used to it.

The guest cast of this story left a lot to be desired. Ingram and Hyde are very shallow characters with Ingram being the standard middle-aged white male view of a feminist (man-hater) while Hyde is a late-style hippie. Although, as shallow as their characters are, they are played well. The same cannot be said for nearly all of the Atlantean cast. Both Hippias and Galleia are extremely wooden in their delivery and attempts to flesh them out or give them the remotest sense of character just fall flat on their face. Dallius and Krasis are played better by their actors but they are also dropped after about one episode. Krasis is the assistant in Episode Four but aside from a couple of menial tasks, he is forgotten about. Similarly, Dallius refutes the Master while becoming friendly with the Doctor in Episode Five but then dies early in Episode Six. They are just not given enough to work with to make a stronger impression.

I do like the Master in this story, though he does indulge in a bit of over-the-top-ness. For once, he has a plan that actually works. He successfully manages to unlock Kronos from its prison and manages to control it through the use of the medallion. He also manages to get the original crystal as well as defeat the Doctor twice. It is only Jo's push of his TARDIS into the Doctor's and the resultant Deus Ex Machina that defeats him. Had the TARDIS not seen fit to rescue the Doctor in Episode Five or Kronos not been freed and grateful for it at the end of Episode Six, the Master would have triumphed.

And then there is Kronos. I don't know who came up with the design for Kronos but I'm not sure a dumber one could have been imagined. Greek myth has Cronos as a humanoid titan from whom the Greek gods came. At no point does that inspire the thought of a radioactive, humanoid pigeon. I also don't care for how the freeing of Kronos by destroying the crystal at the end is the magic solution. Everything given about Kronos to that point is that Kronos is a destroyer, feasting upon time. It consumes everything it comes in contact with and yet we are to believe that it was actually a benevolent creature, willing to live peacefully in the voids between time? If that is the case, why was it trapped in the crystal and why did it manifest as a glow-in-the-dark chicken? Something more humanoid and forced to do the Master's bidding because of the medallion would have made so much more sense in the overall context of the story.

From a production standpoint, this isn't a bad story. There was some nice location footage and enough background detail to make it appear that it wasn't completely on a stage. I didn't even mind the bowls used to decorate the TARDIS, though that was a touch jarring when first observed. The overall direction was a bit pedestrian as a few shots seemed badly framed and others did nothing to catch the eye.

The other point that was jarring to me were the moments of silliness that kept cropping up throughout the story. I've already mentioned Kronos but even beyond that there were wild swings in mood. You open the story with this dream the Doctor has of doom and destruction and yet later Bessie zooms off like Benny Hill or the Munsters. The Master poses a dire threat but the Doctor builds a device to thwart him out of junk and makes a joke about tea being the missing ingredient. The Brigadier and his men are frozen in time but we'll make a joke about Benton being turned into a baby. Jo is threatened by a creature yet the Doctor turns into a bullfighter and defeats the monster in the same manner as Bugs Bunny when he faced off against a bull. It's all these little things peppered in where you can't decide if this is supposed to be a dramatic, tension-filled story or a comedy romp. It creates emotional whiplash and satisfies neither side.

Overall, I'm not going to say that this is bad but neither is it particularly good. There are good moments and even with the obvious padding, the success of the Master and the rapport between him and the Doctor draw you in. I just wish this story could have decided what it wanted to be. Once that is down, the rest of it would have popped into place with greater ease. It's not the horrible dreck that I've heard some folks try to make it out to be, but neither is it something I would gravitate towards. I certainly would not select it as something to introduce a newbie to the Third Doctor era as their confusion would probably only irritate them beyond what a regular fan would take.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5

The Green Death

Serendipity

Environmentalism, action and Jo's departure. The Green Death is a highly regarded story amongst fans and one of the few Third Doctor stories that I've seen before. I recall enjoying the first time I watched it but am curious to see how it fares a second time around. I do know that it is generally agreed to be considered the best of the four stories authored by Robert Sloman and Barry Letts, who wrote the season finales for Seasons 8 thru 11. Of course, given the reputations of the other three (The Dæmons, The Time Monster, Planet of the Spiders) that doesn't seem to be too hard.

Plot Summary

At the headquarters of Global Chemicals in South Wales, the director, Stevens, returns from London with promises of government contracts that will provide jobs for a group of miners who were recently put out of work when the coal mine was closed. This is met with cheers by most of the crowd but also derision from the members of an environmentalist commune led by Professor Clifford Jones. He argues with Stevens but both men are interrupted by a whistle from the mine. One of the workers collapsed on the whistle after returning from an inspection and has now died, his skin glowing with green phosphorescence.

UNIT is called in to investigate but the Doctor has already made plans to visit Metebelis III. He wants Jo to come with but she has already decided to visit Professor Cliff Jones' community to help out. As they are near each other, the Brigadier offers Jo a ride while the Doctor takes off in the TARDIS. He manages to collect one of the large blue gems the planet is famous for but has a very rough time while on the planet.

The Brigadier drops off Jo who meets Professor Jones in his lab. She is impressed by the work he and his team are doing and becomes fascinated by his research into the pollution that Global Chemicals is likely dumping into the old coal mine. Curious, but also a little put off by Jones' patronizing tone, Jo leaves to go investigate the mine.

The Brigadier arrives at Global Chemicals and informs Stevens of his task to investigate the situation. Stevens agrees though he assures him that their process is safe. The Brigadier calls back to UNIT HQ and informs them to let him know when the Doctor has returned and to send him there. The Doctor arrives shortly after the call, relieved to be in a safe location again. He drives up to Global Chemicals in Bessie.

The Doctor arrives and he and the Brigadier decide to investigate the mine for themselves. Stevens gives them access but tells one of his henchmen named Hinks that no one should enter the mine and that he is to take care of it. Hinks agrees but is concerned over Stevens' odd manner. Stevens dismisses him but retrieves a set of heavy earphones and puts them on.

One of the old miners named Dai, concerned about the death of the co-worker, heads down to inspect the mind for himself. He calls up for help a while later just as Jo arrives to investigate. She goes with another miner named Bert who is heading down to get him due to her first aid training. As they are being lowered, the Brigadier and the Doctor arrive. The Doctor orders the workers to stop the tram and pull them back up. The worker tries to comply but the brake fails.

The Doctor and the Brigadier, working together, manage to jam the lift controls and stop the lift just before it crashes at the bottom of the shaft. At the bottom of the shaft, Jo and Bert find Dai infected with the same green glow that killed the first miner. They wait for the lift to be repaired but fearing for Dai's life, they decide to travel to another part of the mine that had been shut down to try and find a way out.

To get the lift working again, they need to cut the control cable but the mine lacks the equipment as it had been shut down. They call Professor Jones to ask him but he also does not have the equipment so they go to Global Chemicals. Stevens learns of the request, but receives orders from the director to not give the equipment in order to protect what is in the mine. Stevens orders one of his men, named Fell, brainwashed to ensure this. When the Brigadier comes by, Stevens claims the equipment was removed a couple days ago in preparation for the arrival of updated equipment.

Both the Doctor and Jones are sure that Stevens is lying and decide to find it. The Brigadier however decides to drive to the nearest town to try and find some. Jones and his people stage a protest to distract the guards while the Doctor sneaks into the plant. He is discovered and trapped in a pump room. Stevens comes and shows the Doctor the empty shed and then releases him, having been ordered by the director to let the Doctor go in order to learn of his purpose.

The Doctor and Jones return to the mine to find the Brigadier found cutting equipment at a local gas station and was able to borrow it. They cut through the line and the Doctor heads down with two miners as guides. They find Dai dead and a note on his body from Jo telling them where they went. The Doctor and one of the miners head after them.

They come upon Bert who is nearly passed out, infected with the same disease affecting the first two miners, having touched a trickle of green slime oozing down the side of the mine. The other miner takes Burt back while the Doctor continues to look for Jo. He finds her at the edge of a pool of the same green ooze which is swarming with enlarged maggots. They turn to head back but the tunnel suffers a cave in and several maggots crawl out of rocks, cutting off their escape route.

The Doctor and Jo turn over an abandoned mine cart and use it to ferry themselves across the pool of ooze. Once on the other side, they climb their way through the seam until they come across an access tunnel leading up to Global Chemicals. Near the entrance, they find an enlarged fly egg and the Doctor pockets it to examine later. They proceed to climb the ladder to the drain point.

After Bert and Dai are taken to the hospital and morgue respectively, the Brigadier heads to Global Chemicals to confront Stevens. He tries to impose a UNIT takeover of the investigation but Stevens calls up the Ecology Minister who involves the Prime Minister. Both men shut the Brigadier down and he is forced to leave.

Fell is sent to purge the tanks but another employee, Elgin, has become increasingly concerned over his and Stevens' odd behavior. He follows Fell and asks him what he is doing. Fell hypnotically responds that he is dumping into the mine. They are alerted to the Doctor and Jo climbing up and Fell completes the automatic dump process which will flood the tube in thirty seconds. Elgin appeals to Fell who fights off the control long enough to tell Elgin how to open the hatch. He does so and pulls the Doctor and Jo out just before the tube floods with the same green ooze seen below.

Fell returns to Stevens' office in a state of confusion. Stevens puts him under the headphones again but Fell does not respond and the director comes on to recommend self-disposal. Stevens is uncomfortable with this but the director insists and sends a signal through the headphones. Fell gets up and walks out of the office, passing Elgin, the Doctor and Jo in the hall and throws himself off a balcony, killing himself.

Elgin escorts the Doctor and Jo out the back entrance and they reunite with the Brigadier at Professor Jones' compound. Over dinner he introduces them to the other members of the commune and notes his plans to go up the Amazon river to do research in creating fungus that can be grown and used as a meat substitute. The Doctor gets along with Jones and they plan to dissect the fly egg in the morning. Their dinner is unfortunately cut short with the news that Bert has died.

Jo cries over Bert, comforted by Jones. The Brigadier and the Doctor decide to head back to the pub to spend the night but Jo decides to stay at the compound and look over a book Jones showed her. She doesn't respond much to a Metebelis III crystal the Doctor shows her and he somewhat jealously pulls Jones away from her for a chat. In the other room, the fly egg hatches and a large maggot crawls across the floor towards Jo.

Hinks heads back to Stevens office to report on the UNIT activities and includes the story about the fly egg. Alarmed, Stevens sends Hinks to steal the egg. He arrives just as the maggot is crawling towards Jo. The maggot, sensing his presence, changes direction and leaps at him and bites him before crawling off again. His and Jo's screams alert the Doctor and Jones who rush back in and take Hinks to the hospital.

The next morning, the Brigadier calls in his forces to patrol the area and blow up the mine entrance. The Doctor protests but the Brigadier is under orders. The Doctor goes to Global Chemicals to see if they will stop the mine sealing but Stevens refuses. He also shows him a representative from the Ministry who is on site to deal with UNIT directly. The representative turns out to be Mike Yates working for UNIT undercover. Yates also goes along with Stevens, not wanting to blow his cover, and they hear the sound of the explosion sealing the mine.

However, the maggots find new ways out. A large group of them burrow up a seam and infest a hillside where they are spotted by Sargent Benton on patrol. Another group come up the waste pipe where they are discovered by Elgin. Elgin tells Stevens that they need to shut down the project but Stevens has Elgin brainwashed to continue to go along with things.

UNIT keeps tabs on the maggots, though they are bullet resistant, while the Doctor and Jones try to find a cure for the ooze. The Doctor wants a sample of the ooze for them to experiment on but Stevens is keeping tabs on Yates and he is unable to get them a sample. The Doctor then disguises himself as the milkman and infiltrates Global Chemicals. Yates slips his watcher for a few minutes and fills the Doctor in on the goings on, including the fact that Stevens reports to someone only accessible through a secured elevator.

Jo assists Jones in his work but accidently knocks some of Jones' dried fungus on his sample slides. Irritated, Jones becomes engrossed in his work and begins to ignore Jo. Jo, wanting to redeem herself, leaves to capture a maggot for them to dissect. She gets up to the hillside where the maggots have manifested but is intercepted by Sargent Benton. Meanwhile, Jones notices that the fungus has neutralized the mutagen in the ooze. He tries to tell Jo but notices a note she has left and runs out after her.

Yates is reconnected with Stevens and his escort, leaving the Doctor alone. The Doctor uses his sonic to access the secured elevator and travels to the top floor. There he discovers that the director is actually a computer called BOSS that was structured after human brain patterns and gone mad with Nietzschean philosophy. The computer summons Stevens to brainwash the Doctor but he is able to resist the conditioning. BOSS initially tells Stevens to kill the Doctor but the Doctor convinces him to hold him as a hostage.

Jo convinces Benton that she's looking for the Doctor and slips away up the hillside, unaware that the Brigadier has called in an aerial grenade attack. Jones arrives, spies Jo on the hillside and runs after her. They meet but before Jones can pull her away, the helicopter arrives and starts dropping grenades. They duck into a cave but the blast of one of the grenades knocks Jones out and damages Jo's radio.

At Global Chemicals, Yates frees the Doctor from his cell and the two men try to escape. They are spotted an alarm is sounded. Yates is captured but the Doctor gets away. He drives up to the hillside to inform the Brigadier and to verify that the grenade strike had no effect on the maggots.

Shortly after the Doctor arrives, Jo manages to repair the radio and sends a weak signal for help. The Doctor and Benton drive up the hill to the cave. The Doctor uses his sonic to stun the maggots swarming outside the cave while Benton carries Jones to Bessie. The four then drive back to Jones' compound where he is diagnosed with a concussion and also a maggot bite. The Doctor gives him an aggressive dose of antibiotics which slows the infection but he heads back to the lab to work on a cure.

In the lab, the Doctor finds Yates who has been brainwashed by BOSS and sent to kill him. The Doctor uses the blue crystal he took from Metebelis III to undo Yates' hypnosis and sends him back to Global Chemicals to pretend he has killed the Doctor and free other employees from BOSS's control. Stevens however catches on to Yates and captures him.

Benton arrives at the compound with the chrysalis of one of the maggots, indicating that they are beginning to change into flies. As they examine it, one of the residents named Nancy discovers the maggot which hatched from the egg earlier. It is dead, having eaten some of the fungus she had prepared for lunch. The Doctor, Nancy and Benton quickly gather as much of the fungus as they can and toss it to the maggots on the hill from Bessie.

The maggots eat the fungus and begin to die. As they finish their rounds, the hatched fly attacks Bessie. The Doctor and Benton duck it's spewing of the green ooze before the Doctor manages to knock it down and kill it with his coat.

Back at Global Chemicals, two guards take Yates from his cell and prepare to take him upstairs for further processing. Yates however manages to get away from them and escape the facility. He runs to the hill where the Brigadier is supervising the lowering of the leftover fungus into the mine to feed to any remaining maggots. Yates warns the Brigadier that BOSS is planning to link up with other computers and move to the next stage of his plan at 4pm.

The Brigadier heads to Global Chemicals while Benton heads to the compound to warn the Doctor, who had gone back to try and find a cure for Jones. As he examines him, Jo relates how she had spilled fungus on some of his slides. The Doctor examines the slides and realizes that the same fungus before has killed the infection. He starts to prepare a paste to treat Jones but turns it over to Nancy when Benton tells him of the situation.

The guards refuse to let either the Brigadier or the Doctor in but the guard collapses when Stevens and BOSS activate the slave controls for pretreated employees. The Doctor rushes in and finds Stevens hooked up to BOSS, who is merging his mind with Stevens'. The Doctor pulls out the blue crystal recovered from Yates and cuts through BOSS's programing of Stevens. Stevens returns to his own mind enough to understand the horror of what BOSS is unleashing and cross wires the computer. The Doctor flees and the computer, along with most of the facility, explodes.

They all return to the compound where Jones has improved greatly. They get a telegram from Geneva proclaiming that Jones' facility will the official UN site for ecological research in the area. This provides funding and Jones makes plans to head to the Amazon to further his research. Jo wants to come along and Jones asks her to marry him. She agrees and an impromptu party breaks out. The Doctor, sad at losing Jo, gives her the Metebelis III crystal as a present, then quietly slips out and drives away in Bessie.

Analysis

One of the best markers of a higher quality six-part story is the fact that you forget that it is a six-part story and start to lose yourself in the overall plot. This story does that very well and even the sections that are clearly designed to string things along have a natural feel to them. Of all of them, I think only Episode Five runs the risk of feeling like padding and a good portion of that comes from the feeling that some of the action in Episode Six could have been spread a little more.

This is a well crafted story that could easily be attributed to one of the deeper writers of the Third Doctor era (such as Malcolm Hulke). The Doctor and Jo are given a great deal to do, there's a decent amount of action but not so much as to mistake this for a Danger Man story, UNIT is involved but not so much as to make it an all military story and you have an interesting and credible villain. All of these elements combine to draw the viewer in with an interesting and well paced plot that has a strong creep factor and even a couple of genuine scares.

The Doctor does very well in a nice balance of intellectualism, action and also comedy. His less than subtle cock-blocking of Cliff just after dinner is a bit amusing as well as seeing the Doctor pose as the cleaning lady. In fact, you almost think that the Doctor is talking to the audience when he warns off Yates from making a snide comment to his appearance. It's also nice to see that the "keep the Doctor away" trick of sending him to Metebelis III for most of Episode One actually has a payoff with the use of the blue crystal to break BOSS's control. If the Third Doctor were as balanced in other stories as he is here, I think I would enjoy him a bit more. Not that I don't like him, but for me he may be one of the least engaging Doctors and it is more the stories he's in that I like rather than him personally.

This is also one of the better companion send offs. Jo is given a lot to do and is genuinely engaging, even if she does indulge in most of her tropes. She is clumsy, she is proposed to and she finds herself as the damsel in distress due to her own folly. But she also pours her passion into things and she does have a nice rapport with Cliff. I'm not sure I buy the romance completely on his end but I believe that for this particular marriage proposal Jo would accept as she clearly has an established admiration for this man. That passion carries over to her performance, so much so that you actually cringe a bit when Cliff is dismissive, to the point of being mean at times when she tries to help. But it was a good send off for Jo and the Doctor's reaction at her leaving is fittingly poignant.

There was a nice balance in how UNIT was deployed in this story. I liked that the Brig was almost acting in an undercover role for the first couple of episodes given his civilian dress. I especially liked that Yates was given the useful role of being a mole, even if it wasn't a particularly good one. At the very least, it expanded their scope a bit. I did question why they kept trying bullets and explosions against the maggots. My first thought was flame throwers and it seemed odd that the Brigadier never thought of that.

The maggots made an excellent secondary villain. They were quite creepy and I think most people have had enough experience with flies and maggots to be thoroughly disgusted by them. On top of that, they are simple enough that the puppet work was quite believable, which made them more unsettling. The unfortunate contrast is the fly that the one maggot turns into to. That was not a believable puppet and the CSO work on it's attack looked particularly bad, especially when cut with the on location film work with the maggots.

Stevens and BOSS make for a good overall villain. A megalomaniacal computer is nothing new (see WOTAN) but there is the nice mystery of what BOSS is which draws the viewer in for the first four episodes. But unlike WOTAN, BOSS is given a large personality and his evoking Nazi-style buzzwords just makes him even more engaging. Stevens himself is slimy enough that you can see him as the villain until you get the slow reveal of BOSS. What's more, you get the seeds of Stevens' eventual repentance sown throughout as even he hesitates about what they are doing throughout the story. The fact that it takes the Doctor using the dehypnotizing crystal to bring that side of Stevens out long enough to destroy BOSS adds to the humanization of Stevens in his villain role.

It does make you wonder if Stevens created BOSS as a noble experiment and BOSS simply overwhelmed his mind or if there was actual malicious intent from the beginning. Of course, until the maggots actually appear, there is nothing that says that they are doing anything wrong so it's easy to see how BOSS could have gotten through Stevens' defenses and made him the coldly logical man we see through most of the story. His pitch to the miners seems heartfelt in that he is expanding his company and is promising them jobs. What person is going to say no to that or think that what he is doing is evil. It is only when a man dies and a deliberate cover up is made that you could even argue that Stevens is in proper villain territory and by this point he is clearly under BOSS's control.

One of the best scenes in the story is the final scene with the Doctor leaving Jo. It's somewhat obvious that Jo is going to be leaving in this story and the Doctor clearly makes attempts to thwart Cliff in the way you might expect an overprotective father to do. But the Doctor's sadness at the end is very touching. He knows he has to let Jo go but you still see the pain at losing a friend. But it is done in such a simple way. He keep focus in the foreground as everyone else mixes in the background party and he quietly leaves. He doesn't say a word and just drives off into the evening with that expression that shows that while he should be happy for her, he can't help but miss someone he cares about. It's quiet and an absolutely perfect bit of acting by Jon Pertwee. It's also an excellent bit of camera work to leave the Doctor in silhouetted shadow as he drives away, leaving that previously seen expression as the lasting memory as he drives away. It's just very well done.

A lot of the direction is very good in this story. Obviously there is a lot of straight camera work but the director clearly maximized his location opportunities with some nice improvised angles and different views when he actually had the chance to stretch the palate. Of course, this excellent work also drew further attention when things went off-kilter. I've already mentioned the fake fly work but there are some other scenes with the Doctor in Bessie where it's a stationary model against a green screen. There are a couple of other shots of the Brigadier or other UNIT members supposed to be at the base of the hill but are clearly done with CSO. I suspect these were pick up shots and they weren't able to go back to the location for them. Unfortunately they just stick out and look so much worse because of how good the other stuff worked. Some shoddy effects you expect and forgive, such as the mine cart ferry ride through the maggots and ooze. That would have to be a studio shot and it's fairly easy to let go. But seeing the same scene cut from location film to studio with CSO just clashes the eyes and is hard to forgive.

By my count, I've got four Third Doctor stories left but I think there's a very good chance this will end up as my favorite. It zips along, is acted well, has credible villains and is generally well shot, to say nothing of the fitting send off for Jo. It sags a touch around Episode Five and the effects of Episode Six drag it down a notch, but I'd easily call it the most entertaining of all the Third Doctor stories I've watched, though I could entertain an argument for Carnival of Monsters. In a way, this stands on much the same ground as Invasion of the Dinosaurs and I think my score should reflect that.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5

Day of the Daleks

Try and use your intelligence even if you are a politician.

Day of the Daleks is one of those stories that gets referenced a lot by fans in context of other stories. I've been meaning to get around to this one but just kept putting it off in favor or other stories. From what I've heard, it is generally regarded as the best of the Third Doctor Dalek stories but given that Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks are average stories, that's not a tremendously high bar to clear.

Plot Summary

In a government country house, Sir Reginald Styles, British representative to the UN, is working late when he notices the wind blowing the drapes. He gets up to close the window but is attacked by a man in guerrilla fatigues. He knocks Styles down and prepares to shoot him but disappears before he can. His yells attract the attention of the staff who come to his aid. One of them calls UNIT to report the incident.

The Doctor and Jo are in the lab with the Doctor playing around with the TARDIS controls again. As he does so, another version of himself and Jo appear in the doorway. The other Doctor reassures him that it's alright but the TARDIS shorts out before he can explain further and they disappear. The Brigadier enters shortly afterward with the report of what happened with Styles. Styles it seems is a critical negotiator in the peace talks with the Chinese so an assassination attempt is taken very seriously.

The group heads to the house but Styles is dismissive of the whole thing, having convinced himself it was a dream. The Doctor is unconvinced as he has found footprints near the window. They search the grounds and find the man unconscious, having been knocked out by a couple of Ogrons shortly after rematerializing on the grounds. UNIT puts him in an ambulance to take him to a hospital. They discover an advanced ray gun and a strange box which they give to the Doctor for examination.

The Doctor takes both objects back to the lab where he verifies that the ray gun is from Earth but must be from the future. He also determines that the box is a crude time travel device. He fiddles with it and it reactivates. As he does so, the man in the ambulance disappears. The power surge overloads the box and it stops working. The use of the box is picked in the future by a group of people in a control room. They try to locate the coordinates of the signal but can't lock on before it fades. This is reported to a Dalek who enters the room.

With the failure of the box, the Doctor and Jo opt to spend the night at the house to see if anything happens. The night passes quietly although a squad of futuristic soldiers do appear on the grounds. As the sun rises, they vaporize two UNIT patrolmen and invade the house. They attack the Doctor just as he is finishing repairs on the time travel box that had malfunctioned earlier.

The soldiers are prepared to execute the Doctor but he points out that he is not Sir Reginald. They hesitate and then take the Doctor and Jo into the cellar to hide from Yates and Benton who are looking for the two missing patrolmen. They tie the Doctor and Jo up and head back upstairs to discuss their plans. They decide to keep the Doctor and Jo as hostages and wait for Sir Reginald to get back.

They pull the Doctor and Jo out of the basement and have the Doctor answer the phone when it rings. It is the Brigadier who had been alerted by Yates of the Doctor's disappearance. The Doctor plays it cool but slips a message in that alerts the Brigadier and he heads down to the house to investigate.

Shortly after the call, Jo manages to slip out of her bonds and grabs the time travel box, threatening to destroy it. The soldiers urge her to put it down but it activates and Jo is pulled forward to the 22nd century and into the control room. The controller convinces Jo that the three soldiers were criminals and he will do what he can to arrest them, rescue the Doctor and return her to her own time. He dismisses her and then passes the coordinate she gave him to the Daleks.

With Jo gone, the soldiers elect to retreat. One heads to the bridge tunnel they arrived at to check on their device and is attacked by an Ogron. He kills it and runs back to the house to warn the others. They tie up the Doctor once more in the cellar and conduct a fighting retreat against the squad of Ogrons that has appeared. The Doctor manages to cut through his bonds against the wine rack and comes up just to disarm an Ogron that has invaded the house.

The Doctor kills an attacking Ogron while several others are killed or driven off by a machine gun fired by the Brigadier. The Doctor thanks him and then runs to the bridge tunnel without explaining things. As the Doctor enters the tunnel, a Dalek appears. He dives to avoid it and runs into the soldiers as they activate their time travel device, pulling him into the future.

In the future, the soldiers head to a quiet spot to wait and potentially try again. The Doctor leaves them to go look for Jo. He heads out into the fields and approaches a complex, avoiding Ogron patrols as he does so. He observes humans working at sifting ore in slave-like conditions but is spotted and captured by the Ogrons.

The Doctor is taken to an interrogation chamber and roughed up as the security detail believes him to be a part of the resistance. The security chief is interrupted by the factory manager who asks to speak to the Doctor privately. Once alone, he urges the Doctor to tell him who he is with in the resistance as the manager is also on their side. The Doctor insists he is not part of the resistance and further communication is cut off when the Controller enters and take the Doctor to Jo. The Controller also informs the manager that his quota is to be raised per the orders of the Daleks. The manager signals the resistance about what is going on but is knocked out before completing the message.

The Controller supplies Jo and the Doctor with food and luxury but the Doctor fills Jo in on the conditions in the factories. Once alone, they overpower the guard and try to escape. They manage to get out of the complex but are recaptured by the Ogrons. During the pursuit, the Daleks identify the Doctor and order him brought to them to verify his identity via brainscan. After capture, he is tied to an examination table where the Daleks confirm their suspicions. Before they can kill him, the Controller intervenes, wanting to get information from the Doctor about the guerrillas. The Daleks reluctantly agree.

The guerrillas decide that they can use the Doctor to attack Styles better than they can and execute a raid on the Dalek city. They sneak through an abandoned railway and overwhelm the Ogron guards. They even manage to destroy a Dalek. They burst into the room where the Controller is trying to persuade the Doctor to help him but the Doctor is both unwilling and unable. He does however insist on the guerrillas sparing the Controller's life as they leave.

Back at their base, the Doctor is told that the war began when a bomb went off at the peace conference killing everyone, including Styles. The history books assumed it was a ploy to gain power and Styles was accidentally caught in the blast. The rage over the incident sent the world powers into a frenzy and they launched a nuclear war, leaving the planet devastated and easy pickings for the Daleks, who enslaved the surviving population. The Doctor realizes that one of the guerrillas, Shura, was left behind in the last raid and is probably going to detonate the bomb that actually starts the war.

The guerrillas agree to send the Doctor and Jo back if it means stopping the war. They head back to the bridge tunnel where the Doctor and Jo find the Controller and a squad of Ogrons. The Controller intends to arrest the Doctor but when the Doctor promises to free all of them from the Daleks, the Controller dismisses the Ogrons and allows the Doctor to leave. This is overheard by the human chief of security who informs the Daleks. The Daleks execute the Controller for treason, promote the chief of security to Controller and assemble a squad of Daleks and Ogrons to ensure the conference ends in the death of the delegates.

The Doctor and Jo materialize back as the conference is about to begin and they are taken to the house by Sargent Benton. Once inside, the Doctor insists that the Brigadier evacuate all the delegates from the house. Styles protests but once gunfire is heard between the UNIT soldiers and the Ogrons, the Brigadier steps in and orders everyone out by force.

The Doctor and Jo head to the basement where they find Shura and a bomb of Dalekanium. He thinks it a trick but upon hearing the firing and knowing the Daleks are here to ensure the conference fails, he insists the Daleks be allowed into the house where he will set off the bomb. The Doctor agrees and tells the Brigadier to pull his men back and have the Daleks take the house. They do so and Shura sets off the bomb, destroying the Dalek and Ogron invaders. With the timeline now changed, the Doctor tells the Brigadier that he hopes the conference will go much better now.

Analysis

I think a person's appreciation of this story is going to depend heavily on how much one enjoys the Third Doctor in his James Bond moments. This story is very James Bond with a time travel edge to it. Given that I like James Bond, I found this story rather entertaining. It is not without it's flaws but if you don't pursue those too hard, this is a very enjoyable story.

The Third Doctor is his usual pompous and self-assured self in this one but he doesn't get as much focus as he does in other stories. The story here is heavily split between a number of points of view so the Doctor and Jo find themselves as only one cog in the whole machine. I rather liked that for the Third Doctor as he self assuredness can get a bit grating at times and it puts him on the wrong foot for a good part of the story. We also get to see the Doctor morally outraged with the Controller and it's nice to see him with that level of dander up. As much of a rabble rouser as he can be, the Third Doctor does seem to feel more comfortable with the establishment than other Doctors and it's good to see him in more of an openly defiant role.

Jo is good but only because she's her more competent self here. She actually does almost nothing in the entire story. She's a prisoner of either the guerrillas or the Daleks for pretty much most of the story and plays complete second fiddle to the Doctor in the few moments she is not. About her only strong moment is after she and the Doctor get out of the basement, she is able to work her way out of her bonds while the Doctor does not. Of course, this leads to her being captured by the Daleks so it's not a great moment for her in the grand scheme of things either. But at least it requires cunning by the enemy to capture her rather than her own incompetence.

As for the Daleks, they are rather wasted in this story. You really could have substituted the Daleks with any alien race. Heck, you could have made this story with all humans and just have a Salamander type figure running things and it would have worked just as well. Arguably it might have even worked better because of the shortcomings of the Daleks. It is rather obvious that the producers of the show were going on memory of what the Daleks were like because they talk in a very robotic, halting voice. There are a couple of moments here and there where they seem to pick up in personality and start to speak a little more like they used to, but they stick to the robotic monotone for most of it. This probably wouldn't have bothered anyone at the time, but with all the Dalek stories at our fingertips, it is jarring and out of place to hear them like that. I also have a hard time believing that the Daleks would have listened to the Controller in sparing the Doctor's life. It seems more likely that the Daleks would have ignored him and just killed the Doctor once he was properly identified.

As for the other characters, I thought they were all well played. Some of the guerrillas were a bit wild but Anak was a tempering presence and that helped when they were on screen. I thought the Controller was quite good as a quisling who was openly conflicted, thinking that he was doing what was best for the survival of humanity but also knowing deep down that what the Doctor said about him and the Daleks was true. It was a solid performance and more engaging than might be expected for a middle place villain.

I've already noted the problem with the Daleks. The second issue I had was one that I suspect came from editing. The Doctor and Jo see future versions of themselves appear while the Doctor is working on the TARDIS console. We never see that scene again from the future perspective. I kept expecting them to make a jump to the wrong time and place and that be the future moment. I suspect a scene like that was written and perhaps even filmed but was cut as Episode Four was pretty jammed as it was. It's not a big deal, but it was annoying to never get resolution to that little incident.

On the direction front, it was pretty good. This was a very action oriented story and the director did a decent job on that front. Of course, they screwed up royally when it came to the reprises as the opening to the subsequent episodes included the sting as it lead in to story. It was very jarring and off-putting when trying to get in to each episode. Then on top of that, they realized their mistake in Episode Four and did not include the sting. That made the mistakes of Episodes Two and Three stand out even more. They might as well have stuck with the mistake and claimed it a style choice rather than demonstrate that they made a mistake. So a mixed bag in direction.

The big thing that I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around though is the resolution to the paradox. The guerrillas come from a future where a bomb had been set off killing all the delegates. That bomb ended up being from themselves thus creating the future they tried to prevent. I'm fine with that as events shown would have continued on that path. Where I get hung up though is how the Doctor is able to prevent the time loop from completing this time.

You would think that the Doctor would always be involved in the other iterations of the timeline and thus there in trying to stop the bomb. Of course, if you assume the Doctor wasn't there the first time, the Ogrons would still have come and forced Anak and Boaz to flee with Shura left behind before Styles returned. With no warning, Shura detonates the bomb and creates the future. So you must assume that the Doctor is a wild card that has been inserted into the timeline and thus able to prevent the events from happening. Just how his inclusion was accomplished to break the paradox is a mystery and one that I doubt will ever be clarified outside of better head cannon than mine.

So again, if you don't think too hard, it's a pretty enjoyable story, especially if you like action romps. I think I do agree with fan sentiment that this is the best of the three Third Doctor Dalek stories. The other two are fine and fun in their own right, but this story contains all the things that really draw people to the Third Doctor and then you throw in a bit of time travel and Daleks on top. Maybe not the best to introduce the Third Doctor or the Daleks but certainly a good one for established watchers.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

The Sea Devils

I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow.

The Sea Devils is a follow up to Doctor Who and the Silurians but with the Master thrown in as an added antagonist. The general opinion amongst fans is that it is good but not quite as good as Silurians. There is also one rather famous scene where the Doctor deprives Jo of a plate of sandwiches and eats them himself. Something comical I guess but it has really fed in to the idea of the Doctor being a bit abusive towards Jo at times. So I'm curious to see how this compares to the rest of Malcolm Hulke's work.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Jo arrive at the island where the Master is being held prisoner. They meet the commandant, Colonel Trenchard, who shows them to see the Master and also mentions the sinking of several ships recently while making small talk. The Master makes an outward show of being penitent but also refuses to tell the Doctor the location of his TARDIS. He also asks that the Doctor return to see him for more stimulating conversation.

Curious about the sinkings, the Doctor talks to the man who ferried them over. He tells of a lifeboat that was recovered with strange markings and was taken to a naval base nearby. The Doctor bribes the man and takes his boat over the naval base where he finds the lifeboat with scorch marks. The base's guards find the Doctor and take him to see the commander, Captain Hart.

Discovering the Doctor's little adventure, Jo borrows a motorcycle and arrives at the base with their UNIT passes, which satisfy Hart's demand for regulation. Looking on a chart, the Doctor notes that at the center of the attacks is an old naval fort. He learns that a two-man maintenance team has been assigned to upgrade the fort to use as a SONAR station. Hart however, refuses to send a team out as he's had no complaint from the maintenance crew.

The Doctor and Jo head out to the station on their own and explore the fort. They find one member of the crew dead. The other member comes out of the shadows in a state of panic. They get him back to his bed and the Doctor sedates him with supplies from the medical kit. They also find that their boat has been sunk by the gas tank being exploded.

The Doctor thinks to radio for help but finds the radio destroyed. He instead goes to find a transceiver which he can modify to send a distress signal. In the corridors he is attacked by a creature similar to the Silurians. He rushes back to the room and barricades the door. The creature uses a heat ray to burn a hole through the door and tries to unbar the door. The Doctor electrifies the door, giving the creature a nasty shock. It retreats and dives out a window into the sea.

When the Doctor and Jo fail to report in, a notice is sent to Captain Hart. He tries to raise the fort but gets no response. He then dispatches a rescue helicopter to investigate. As the helicopter approaches, it receives a signal from the Doctor, who managed to rewire a transceiver, and takes all three of them back to the naval base.

Back in the prison, Trenchard and the Master leave with the Master disguised as a naval officer. The Master is slightly annoyed with Trenchard for having mentioned the sinking ships to the Doctor but they press on anyway. Trenchard enters Captain Hart's office, interrupting his meeting with the Doctor and Jo to discuss a replacement for the weekend golf match. Meanwhile the Master sneaks into the store room and steals parts for SONAR equipment. He is met by the manager of the store room and when he fails to hypnotize him, the Master knocks him out.

Trenchard finally leaves but when Jo walks over to the window, she sees the Master walking below. She alerts the Doctor and a moment later, Hart is informed of the attack on the equipment room chief.

The Doctor and Jo, suspecting Trenchard's involvement, head back to the prison. Trenchard is caught off-guard and asks the Master what to do. He tells Trenchard to let him see the Doctor. He then knocks out a guard and takes his gun and knife from him.

The Doctor tells Jo to head back and then goes to see the Master himself once Trenchard returns. The Master tries to hold him with the gun but the Doctor knocks it out of his hand. They each grab a sword from a rack nearby and fence. The Doctor disarms the Master but the Master throws the stolen knife at him. Trenchard enters at the last minute, throwing off the Master's aim and he misses. Trenchard believes the Master's accusation that the Doctor attacked him and has the Doctor arrested.

Trenchard orders that Jo be arrested as well but she gets past the guards at the prison entrance and takes cover on the grounds while the guards search for her. She doubles back around to the exterior of the prison as the Doctor is taken in to the Master's room and handcuffed to a chair. The Master admits that he is making contact with the aquatic Eocenes and intends to assist them in retaking Earth and destroying humanity.

Back at the naval base, Captain Hart dispatches one of his submarine commanders to investigate the waters around the island fort. Officer Blythe enters informing him that Colonel Trenchard reported the Doctor and Jo leaving in a cab rather than their supplied transport. He also states that they immediately left for London rather than returning to the base as they had originally intended. Suspicious, Hart heads over to the prison to talk with Trenchard.

Upon learning of Hart's arrival, Trenchard summons the Master to observe from behind the scenes. Jo takes advantage of the situation and, having signaled the Doctor through the window, gets past the guard at the door as the Doctor distracts him. She undoes the handcuffs and the Doctor knocks out the guard, allowing them to flee the prison.

On the submarine, as they approach the island, they begin getting SONAR pings. The system is then overwhelmed and the whole sub begins to lose power, despite no apparent damage to any system. The sub sinks to the bottom and several Sea Devils enter through the escape hatches and attack the crew. One breaks through to the bridge where it forces the crew to drive the sub to a specific point.

Trenchard is able to allay Hart's suspicions and dismisses him. The Master enters with his machine that he tells Trenchard will allow him to communicate with the Sea Devils. Trenchard has been fooled by the Master into thinking they are enemy agents and can be dealt with by normal means. They are alerted to Jo and the Doctor's escape and follow them down to the beach where the Doctor and Jo are caught between armed guards and a minefield. The Master activates his machine and a Sea Devil rises out of the ocean and walks on to the beach.

The Sea Devil attacks the soldiers first, driving them off. The Doctor and Jo dash into the minefield to escape with the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to detect the mines. The Sea Devil tries to follow them at the urging of the Master but the Doctor detonates several mines behind him with the sonic, driving the creature back into the sea. The Doctor and Jo continue on while the Master and Trenchard retreat to the prison.

Back at the prison, Trenchard is stunned as he thought they would be fighting enemy agents. The Master tries to calm him and tells him that the creatures are intent on taking back the Earth. Trenchard wants to call the authorities but the Master persuades him to wait until he has finished his communication device. He then sets on tweaking it and making it more powerful.

The Doctor and Jo make it back to the naval base on foot where they tell Captain Hart of the creatures. He doesn't believe them at first but he comes around to the Doctor's thinking as the ships sent out to find the missing sub are recalled due to darkness. Hart is then alerted by a SONAR technician that a blip has been picked up nearby. They watch as it approaches the shore and then holds steady.

Summoned by the Master, a group of Sea Devils wades ashore and breaks in to the prison. The guards are quickly overpowered as they approach the Master's cell. Trenchard, who had been trying to get a hold of government ministers, seizes his gun and stands against the Master's door, fighting off the Sea Devils. They kill eventually kill him and take the Master back with them.

As the blip departs from the shore, Hart calls in more naval personnel to fight with the creatures. The Doctor decides to examine the sea floor around the island fort and the party travels to one of the vessels to use it's diving bell. The Doctor heads inside and is lowered to the bottom. On the bottom, he spies something coming up against the glass but communications are cut off. Hart orders the bell drawn up but when opened, they find it empty.

The Doctor has been taken prisoner by the Sea Devils and is taken back to their base. He appeals to them to discuss a peaceful solution with the humans, allowing the humans the land while the Sea Devils live in the ocean. He also suggests that they release the sub as a measure of good faith. The Master objects to this but the senior Sea Devil overrules him and tells the Doctor that he will think about it.

Back at the naval base, Undersecretary Walker arrives and orders ships into position to fire on the Sea Devil's base. Jo and Captain Hart object, thinking it will endanger the Doctor and the sub crew, but Walker overrules them and orders the ships to fire.

The attack causes superficial damage to the base but the chief Sea Devil becomes angry and refuses the Doctor's offer. He orders him taken to another room and executed. However another blast causes a minor cave in, allowing the Doctor escape his would-be executioners. He take a gun and uses it to free the sub commander and his lieutenant. They make their way back to the sub, kill the guard and launch the sub from it's pen as the rest of the crew had been kept on board.

The Master suggests floating the bodies of any dead Sea Devils to the surface to lull the humans into thinking they've won. They also activate a force field around the sub to keep it from escaping. But the sub fires a torpedo into the side wall, damaging the field enough to allow them to escape. With the humans having escaped, the chief Sea Devil orders the Master to continue to repair the hibernation unit that will allow him to reanimate the rest of his people. The Master agrees but states that he needs equipment from the naval base and suggests an attack.

Arriving back at the base, the Doctor first berates Wilson for ruining his negotiation and then appeals to him to allow him to fix the mistake. Wilson is nonplussed but agrees to allow the Doctor to talk to the Sea Devils once more. As they leave the building, they discover the base under attack by a squad of Sea Devils. One prepares to attack the Doctor and Jo, but the Doctor disarms it. However, another grabs him from behind and knocks him out. The Master arrives and prevents the Sea Devils from killing them and instead take the Doctor, Jo, and Hart back inside as prisoners. They are soon in control of the whole base.

The Master takes the Doctor into the store room and has him help him build a machine that will provide power and awaken every hibernating Sea Devil around the ocean. As the Doctor works, he makes modifications to the Master's design, both improving it and letting the Doctor booby trap it.

In the control quarters Jo, Hart and Wilson are locked in but Hart is able to loosen the grate to the ventilation shaft. He helps Jo through and she climbs up to the roof of the building. She then climbs down and signals the Doctor through the window. He tells her that he is going to create a distraction and she must use it to get the others out. She then slips back to just outside the building where Hart and Wilson are held to wait.

Upon completing the machine, the Doctor activates it and a high pitched squeal emits from it, sending the Sea Devils into fits. Jo rushes in and frees Hart and Wilson, although Wilson takes one look at the flailing Sea Devil and seals himself back in the room. Hart grabs a machine gun and he and Jo run down to the beach where they grab a hovercraft and launch away from the base. The Master, seeing one of the Sea Devil's writhe about, turns off the machine and demands to know what happened. The Doctor states that he must have switched the input and output by accident. They run a couple of final checks and then prepare to leave.

Hart and Jo return in the hovercraft with several squads of heavily armed seamen. They overrun the Sea Devils patrolling the coast and free the rest of the captive soldiers. The steadily wipe out the Sea Devils, who are preparing to retreat into the sea. The Master grabs the device, stows it on a jet ski and takes off for the island. The Doctor, having verified that Jo was okay, takes off after him on another jet ski. The humans have secured the base but the Doctor is captured upon arriving at the sea fort as a group of Sea Devils are waiting for them as he and the Master arrive.

The Doctor and the Master take the machine below and hook it up to the main power supply. The Doctor appeals to the chief Sea Devil once more to consider peace through negotiation but the chief says no. The Doctor then quietly shifts a lever just before the Master activates it. With the machine active and slowly powering up, the chief Sea Devil orders them to be taken away and locked up. The Master protests but his usefulness is over.

In the prison, the Doctor informs the Master that he sabotaged the machine and that when fully powered or if the Sea Devils try to deactivate it, it will explode, destroying the entire base. With a race against time, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the prison door and he and the Master grab two underwater suits left by the submarine crew when they were imprisoned. They leave through a hatch and float to the surface.

Wilson calls the ministry to get authorization to detonate a nuclear warhead at the base to destroy the Sea Devil's base. While he is on the phone, Hart, at Jo's request, sends out the hovercraft to sweep the area in case the Doctor escaped. The hovercraft spies the Doctor and the Master and picks them up, though shortly after they board, the Master collapses with chest pains.

As the hovercraft approaches the shore, the device reaches full power and detonates, sending a massive explosion though the water. The hovercraft lands and an ambulance approaches, having been radioed for for the Master. The Doctor disembarks and tells Hart and Jo what happened. The medical team also leave with a patient but the Doctor discovers that it is the pilot of the hovercraft in a mask. He turns around to see the Master getting away in the hovercraft.

Analysis

I think I would be a bit hard pressed to say if I liked this one or The Silurians better. The Silurians had several great scenes but did have periods of dullness while The Sea Devils didn't have any great scenes but was more consistently good across the board. At the very least, the show certainly got a nice effort out of the British Navy in this story.

One of the best things about this story was that it had a natural flow to it. It's more just bad luck that the Doctor learned about the sinking of the ships and got involved. But once he is, there is a nice escalation and it's easy to see how you get from point A to B to C. That has the added advantage of making the story seem a bit more natural to be six parts, although I think a bit of tightening wouldn't have diminished anything in this story.

One the great ironys of this story is that it has one of the most remembered scenes of the Doctor being an ass to Jo and yet he is generally respectful towards her through the rest of the story. In fact, the Third Doctor as written by Malcolm Hulke almost always had a good relationship with Jo and it was other writers that made him more of a jerk towards her. But it's still this scene (clearly meant as a joke) that is plucked for the Doctor's attitude towards her.

Jo actually rescues the Doctor twice in this story which would seem to make her a bit more resourceful than him. Jo is actually very likable in this story and at near top form as a companion. I think the only real fault she has is that she runs out of things to do once the battle is fully joined in Episode Six and just mostly stands around insisting that others do things for her. You also have to give Jo mad props for crawling through a ventilation duct in a white pantsuit and emerging with it perfectly clean. That's a near superpower there.

The Doctor is pretty good in this and while he does continue over with his negotiation first strategy as seen in The Silurians, he also gives way to pragmatism and open blows the Sea Devils up at the end. There is no fretting about sealing them off or working with them later. They rejected him twice and he finishes the matter. Which probably means that the Brigadier has had a bit more of an effect on the Doctor than vice versa.

Of course, the Doctor is still a pompous blowhard at points. Probably the most gratuitous moment was the sword fight at the end of Episode Two. First, what prison keeps swords by the prisoner's cell? Then, he is disdainful of the Master throughout the fight but is so clearly enjoying it that he returns the Master's blade once he has disarmed him just so they can keep fighting. You can almost see the justification of how the Master's greatest fear is the Doctor laughing at him as seen in The Mind of Evil. I actually wish the Master had hit the Doctor when he threw the knife at him just to knock some of the wind out of the Doctor's sails and treat the Master with a bit more seriousness. I also find it ironic that the Doctor chides the Master by telling him that violence never solves anything but the entirety of Episode Six is demonstrating how violence was the only way to end the threat of the Sea Devils.

This story has only furthered my believe that the best writer for the Master was Malcolm Hulke. The Master's plans are not overly complicated, nor are they deeply involved. He wants revenge on the Doctor and has decided to take advantage of the Sea Devil awakening to get it by destroying humanity. It's petty but understandable. But he also carries out fairly well. It is slips by others that mostly ruin him, although, ironically, it is his trust in both the Doctor and the Sea Devils that fully finish him.

But it's his repartee with the Doctor that is the most enjoyable. It's clear that the Master enjoys witty banter and only the Doctor is his intellectual equal, although other stories indicate that he does enjoy Jo to a lesser degree. But the back and forth between the Doctor and the Master is quite stimulating and you only wish there could be more scenes with them just interacting.

Most of the side characters are pretty good too. Trenchard is actually somewhat sympathetic, although why he fell for the Master's deception is unexplained. But his weakness is patriotism which is strangely noble. He also at least dies with honor attempting to undo the wrong he has done. Hart is also quite good. He plays the Brigadier role in being somewhat skeptical, but unlike other stories where his unbelief would be allowed to linger and compromise the situation, he is refuted within a few moments, often to something of a comedic effect. By the time things roll around to Episode Five, Hart doesn't even bother to object, he just goes along with it because what's the point. He's been proven wrong too often as it is.

The most annoying character is Walker and you can't help but get the feeling that Hulke inserted him in as a means of getting at least some political satire in. Walker is a coward, rude and an outright pig. The director goes one better by emphasizing this by zooming in on Walker's mouth as he stuffs his face while opining that lives must be sacrificed in war. The most annoying part is that for a character so odious, nothing actually happens to him. He hides during the Sea Devil invasion and tries to conduct a nuclear strike on the Sea Devil's base later. Presumably this is called off after it's destroyed by the Doctor, but he's likely to head back to London and be rewarded in some fashion for handling the crisis. Even his exposure as a coward doesn't net much other than a small chuckle and it's nothing that's going to hurt him long term. I just wish that he could have been punished in some fashion at the end of the story.

The direction was quite good as were all the action scenes, although there were some gratuitous points. I noted the sword fight already but there were a few other scenes that didn't make much sense. Why does the Master permit the sonic blast to go on so long when it's obvious the Sea Devil is in pain? He should have stopped it immediately rather than the thirty seconds it's allowed to go. How did Hart and Jo return with so many soldiers so quickly? Were they on the auxiliary base just down the beach? How did the Master have a mask of his face on hand to make his escape? These are just little plot points that just stick way out there and bring you out of the story.

I must also say that I did not like the music in this story. I don't mind a bit of Avant Garde here and there (see 2001) but the music in this story was particularly jarring and off-putting. Music should enhance the story and be more or less unnoticed. This music however is screaming to be noticed at the expense of whatever is going on screen. It was just an unfortunate choice and application.

I'm still a little unsure of how to properly stack it against The Silurians. As mentioned earlier, there are no real slow or bad moments. It hums along nicely as a fun action/adventure. But I was always hoping for a real ratchet up moment like Episode Six of The Silurians. That was just excellent and the lack of anything like that made this story feel a little disappointing, even though it was more consistently good. In the end, I think it's going to depend on your mood. A good action story would favor Sea Devils while a bit more of a think piece would favor Doctor Who and the Silurians. But both are good and readily watchable.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

Colony In Space

I'm offering you a half-share of the universe.

Colony in Space is the fourth installment of the Master centric Eighth season. It is an obvious take off of the Western genre where a town is threatened by a large corporation, such as a railroad (or in this case, mining), which is something that would have easily been up Malcolm Hulke's alley. I know very little about the story outside of that, except that it is one of the lower rated Hulke stories and is frequently overshadowed by Frontier in Space as the other main off-world adventure that he wrote.

Plot Summary

The Doctor is attempting to create a new dematerialization circuit for the TARDIS. He finishes his latest attempt and shows Jo the inside of the TARDIS. He starts to install it when the TARDIS door close and the TARDIS takes off without his operating the controls. The Doctor figures the Time Lords have hijacked him for a mission.

The Doctor and Jo land on an alien planet that has been settled by a small group of colonists from Earth. The Doctor and Jo leave the TARDIS and the Doctor begins to examine a set of rocks nearby. Jo looks around and finds one of the colonists pointing a gun at them.

They are taken to the central building where they are originally thought to be mineralogists sent by a large mining corporation. The settlers had been looking to settle down on a quiet area and just farm but were wary of a large corporation coming in and seizing their land. The settlers are also worried as recently a large lizard had been spotted nearby that had never been seen before in any of the previous surveys.

The Doctor does manage to convince the people that he is not from a mining company and he further ingratiates himself with the leader, Ashe, by observing that their crop yields are below sustainable levels. He offers to help find a solution and Ashe warms to him. Jo meanwhile is taken by Ashe's daughter Mary into the canteen where she observes how little food their actually is.

As night falls, the settlers return to their individual dwellings. Martin, the colonist who discovered the Doctor returns to his place but heads back out when he hears a noise. He sees a giant lizard and runs back to get his gun while his wife radios for help. Martin shoots but is killed. His wife observes someone entering the home and then she too is killed.

The radio message summons Ashe and the Doctor goes with. He finds scratches that suggest a large lizard creature but also observes that the doorway is undamaged, meaning that no 20 foot creature could have entered. They return to the central dome where Ashe is trying to allay the fears of the colonists. The Doctor also steps in to offer his help in salvaging their crops. This seems to allay the people when a stranger is brought in by a passing patrol.

The stranger is nearly dead on his feet and collapses against a wall. He claims to have come from another colony elsewhere on the planet. He also claims that his colony was destroyed and the people killed by an attack of giant lizards. His story unsettles the colonists and they again mutter among themselves about abandoning the planet.

The Doctor and Ashe head back to the attacked hut to look for evidence. They find two natives poring through the wreckage, looking for things to take. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, they have already taken his TARDIS. Ashe asks the natives to leave and they comply. He tells the Doctor that although they don't speak they seem to understand him. They also have developed a coexistence with the colonists where each more or less leaves the others alone. Ashe is called away and the Doctor examines the hut some more when a large robot enters and attacks the Doctor.

The robot is called off by it's controller, a man named Caldwell. Caldwell is an engineer on an expedition from the mining company and is shocked when the Doctor tells him that two colonists were killed. He takes the Doctor back to his ship to speak with his captain. The Doctor declines at first but Caldwell insists. During the journey to the ship, the Doctor notices that the TARDIS has gone missing as well.

Back at colony headquarters, Jo is engaging herself in the camp and getting along better with them, especially Mary. The lone survivor, Norton, is also recovering although he is now adding that the natives slaughtered those that survived the lizard attack and gets hostile when Ashe brings a native in to give his people food. Norton is disarmed and ordered to avoid the natives when they come into camp.

The Doctor and Caldwell arrive at the ship and the Doctor is put in a waiting area. Caldwell informs Captain Dent about the colonists who were killed and is appalled but it, as their robots and tricks were only to scare the colonists into leaving. Dent is annoyed with Morgan, who was in charge of the scare, but Morgan states that he was seen and had to protect himself. Dent goes to see the Doctor and becomes convinced that the Doctor is a government agent from Earth who will side with the colonists and force the mining corporation off. He assigns Morgan to take the Doctor back and to arrange an accident as well.

Norton discovers during a tour that the colony has only one source of electrical power and that it is being run by an aging engineer and a native who assists him. Norton claims fatigue and leaves to rest but sneaks into the electrical room. He knocks out the native with a blow to the head and then kills the engineer with the native's spear. He then destroys the electrical system. When the other colonists come to see what the problem is, Norton claims he saw the native kill the engineer and then sabotage the system. He claims to have defended himself by knocking out the native.

The Doctor and Morgan are accosted by three natives during their drive back but the Doctor knocks them all out. They return to the scene of the attack where Morgan sets a mining robot with clawed hands on the Doctor, intending to make it look like he was attacked by the same creature as before. The Doctor however disarms Morgan and smashes the robot controls. He then walks back to the colony meeting house.

While the Doctor is walking, Captain Dent flies in his spaceship, pretending to have just arrived. He meets with Ashe, claiming to be unaware that a colony had been established. Both me agree to send for an adjudicator from Earth to settle the law as Dent claims that the IMC has mineral rights to the planet. As Dent prepares to head back to his ship, the Doctor arrives and exposes Dent's scheme to scare the colonists away. Dent denies it and Norton protests, claiming the lizards to be real.

Ashe notes all this but begs the Doctor help repair the power grid to which he readily agrees. Meanwhile, Jo and a colonist named Winton attempt to sneak aboard the mining ship to find evidence but are captured. Dent has then taken to the primitive ruins and tied to a bomb. When the Doctor comes to see Dent after fixing the power grid, Dent informs him of the hostage situation and threatens to kill Jo unless he recants his testimony to the adjudicator when he arrives.

In the hut, Winton finds a spot of grease on the bomb and uses it to lubricate Jo's wrists, allowing her to slip out of her cuffs. She uses a rock to break the chain holding Winton and they make a run for it. The noise attracts a guard and Jo is recaptured. He shoots at Winton, hitting him, but he still is able to get away. The guard radios the situation to Dent who dispatches men to corral Winton. Winton finds refuge with Caldwell, who has established a mineralogy shed nearby and pretends he killed Leeson when the guards approach. He takes Winton inside and patches his wounds.

Winton returns to the meeting house, telling the Doctor about his escape and Jo's recapture. Winton then organizes the colonists into a force to take over the mining ship. The Doctor goes to Caldwell for help. Caldwell refuses to take an active part but does assist with inside details. The Doctor also manages to talk Winton out of a direct frontal assault and instead to take the ship by subterfuge.

As the Doctor and Winton prepare their attack, Jo and her guard are preparing to move to a different location. They are set upon by natives. The guard shoots one and they respond by killing him and taking Jo captive. She is lead out of the ruins and into an underground passage hidden in the rocks.

The Doctor and Winton knock out two guards and take their uniforms. They sneak aboard the ship and take Morgan hostage while the colonists sweep aboard the open door. The Doctor and Winton go to Dent and order his immediate surrender. Dent complies but claims the adjudicator, who is on his way, will side with him. Winton searches through the ship and finds the projector of the giant lizard and the claw hands for the robot to make it look like the lizards were real.

The Doctor and Ashe learn from a guard that the IMC guard for Jo has been killed by the natives and Jo is gone. The Doctor is determined to go after her. Ashe tries to get the Doctor to stay and wait for the adjudicator but he refuses. Ashe then tells the Doctor that he will offer food in exchange for Jo as it is a bargain they have made with the primitives in the past. The Doctor thanks him and leaves.

The Doctor follows the trail from the captive hut to the entrance of the underground city. There he is set upon by the natives who take him below and place him with Jo. The Doctor tells the creatures that he will offer food in exchange for Jo but they do not respond. In the locked room, the Doctor and Jo observe a pictorial chronicle of the natives who once had a great civilization. It collapses after a disaster and they have reverted to a more primitive form.

One of the native elders, who appears to be of a different species, sentences them to be sacrificed. The Doctor and Jo try to escape but are recaptured. They are then taken to a room where a third creature emerges. He tells them that entrance to the city is punishable by death. The Doctor protests, noting that he and Jo were brought unwillingly. He appeals to the creature's logic and morality. Intrigued by the Doctor's intelligence, the leader orders them released, but warns them that they will be killed if they return.

As the adjudicator's ship arrives, Morgan is able to pull a hidden gun and get the drop on Winton. They expel the colonists from the ship and destroy the projector and the claw arms. The adjudicator emerges from his ship and assembles both sides to present their case. Unknown to either group, the adjudicator is actually the Master. Without the evidence from the ship, both sides simply advocate their claims from Earth.

At the end of the hearing, the Doctor and Jo return. The Master is surprised and annoyed to see the Doctor here as well but glosses over it. He rules in favor of IMC but calls Ashe into his office where he asks if he knows of any historical artifacts that may allow the planet to be registered for preservation and allow them to stay as colonists. Ashe tells him of the native ruins and the two work together, despite the Doctor's warnings about the Master.

Winton, angry with the ruling and knowing their ship won't survive another trip, bands the colonists together to rebel and take the IMC weapons. Norton, the IMC plant, tries to warn Dent but he is discovered by another colonist. Norton kills the colonist but his communicator is destroyed in the process. They take positions in the main building and trick Dent into coming with his men by pretending to be the adjudicator.

As Dent and his men enter, Norton calls out that it's a trap. Winton shoots Norton but the warning gives Dent and his men time to grab cover. A shootout ensues and the Master prepares to use it to shoot the Doctor and Jo under the cover of crossfire. Ashe however enters and the Master is forced to refrain to avoid blowing his cover. Winton sneaks out and takes Dent from behind, forcing him to surrender. They remove all the weapons and explosives from the ship and force Dent to take off.

Dent complies but holds in a parking orbit above the planet. He checks records and determines that the Doctor's claims about the adjudicator were correct and that he is an imposter. Dent then orders the ship to land 50km away from the settlement, behind a ridge of hills and retake the colony in a raid.

While the Master has resumed his talks with Ashe, the Doctor and Jo sneak aboard the Master's TARDIS, which is disguised as the adjudicator's ship. While there Jo accidently sets off an alarm and the Master floods the control room with knock out gas. Ashe informs the Master that the Doctor and Jo have been to the native city and the Master tells Ashe that he will consult with the Doctor. The Master returns to the TARDIS where he revives the Doctor and Jo. He locks Jo in a containment tube and then forces the Doctor to take him to the entrance of the native city.

Winton appeals to Ashe to distribute the confiscated guns to the colonists but Ashe thinks it better to keep them locked away. Dent and his forces sneak in to the main building and take back the store of guns and take Ashe hostage. When the colonists realize they are back, they begin fighting but surrender when they realize Ashe is being held hostage.

Using the adjudicator's ruling as cover, Dent proclaims himself governor of the planet and sets a quick show trial. He finds Norton and Ashe guilty of treason and orders their execution. He then stays that execution if they abandon the planet. The two men protest but in the face of execution, they have no choice but to try their luck in their old spacecraft.

Caldwell examines the colonists ship and warns Dent that it might explode on takeoff but Dent merely orders that his men stay clear of the ship when it does launch. He is however concerned about the Doctor and the adjudicator and orders Caldwell and Morgan to check the adjudicator's ship. The two men try to force the doors but can't. Morgan however finds the copy of the key the Doctor had made prior and deliberately dropped outside. Upon entering, they find Jo locked in her isolation tube and try to free her.

The Doctor and the Master approach the entrance and are forced to head on foot when their car is damaged by a native attack. Upon reaching the entrance, the Master is alerted by his alarm system of they IMC men entering. He then prepares to release a toxic chemical to kill Jo but the Doctor kicks the trigger out of his hands. Both men are suddenly swarmed by natives who take them below.

Caldwell and Morgan free Jo and she tells them that the Master and the Doctor went to the native city. She is taken to Dent who orders her put on the colonist's rocket. She pleads with Caldwell for help and he hides her briefly before the two of them take a car and drive to the native city entrance.

While the rest of the colonists board the rocket, Winton hides himself, having Mary cover for him when Morgan asks where he is. Once the colonists are fully loaded, fearing the rocket exploding on launch, the guards pull back. This allows Winton to get the drop on one. With the rocket launch delayed, Dent calls over and Ashe responds that they are fixing an electrical fault and are nearly ready. A few minutes later, the rocket takes off and explodes a few seconds after takeoff.

In their cell, the Master tells the Doctor that the natives once had a powerful civilization that built a doomsday weapon able to destroy stars. He is there to take control of it. He sets off a gas grenade when the natives come to collect them and the Master and the Doctor run out into the corridor and further into the city. They find the control room of the weapon and the Master offers the Doctor control of half the universe if he stands with him. The Doctor refuses.

Interrupting their discussion, the ruling creature that freed the Doctor before emerges. He discovers the Master's plan and steals his weapon, freeing the Doctor. Fearing more people coming for the weapon, the creature orders the Doctor to pull the self destruct lever. He does so and the whole city begins to shake and disintegrate. The Doctor and the Master run out and run into Jo and Caldwell, who had managed to sneak into the city by knocking out a guard. Using the Master's map, the four of them run for the exit. They emerge from the city as it explodes.

The explosion catches the attention of Morgan who had come with a detachment of guards to find Caldwell and Jo. They take Caldwell and prepare to shoot the rest. However, the colonists emerge from a ridge and start firing on them. The Master grabs the car and runs off from the firefight while Morgan and most of his men are cut down. They eventually surrender to Winton, who informs the Doctor and Jo that Ashe took up the rocket alone to continue the deception.

The Master returns to his TARDIS and takes off. The colonists return to base and place all the IMC people except Caldwell under guard. With his career over, Caldwell elects to stay as the colonist's engineer while Winton takes over as head of the colony. They signal Earth for a new adjudicator and present the Doctor with the TARDIS, which was discovered in an abandoned native hut. The Doctor and Jo return to Earth in the TARDIS just a few seconds after they had left, leaving the Brigadier non the wiser about their adventure.

Analysis

I think this story is an unfortunate example of potential mucked up by outside requirements. I have no way of knowing, but I would imagine that Malcolm Hulke had an idea for a Old West showdown in space very much in the vein of the later movie Pale Rider. This was accepted by Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks but he was told to introduce the Master. Introducing the Master as the adjudicator works well, especially with the somewhat surprising reveal in Episode Four. Unfortunately, the Master needs a reason as to why he is there and so the concept of the doomsday weapon is introduced. This is like trying to inject Beneath the Planet of the Apes into the story and it has the effect of essentially ruining both stories, despite Hulke's best efforts.

If you break things down by characters, this works very well. If anything, this may be one of my favorite portrayals of the Roger Delgado Master. At it's basic level, the Master's plan is very simple and straightforward. You can almost imagine him working things behind the scenes to get IMC to lay a claim to the planet while also getting the colonists to go there just so he can step in as the adjudicator. Once there, he rules in favor of IMC but gets the colonists to help him find the city by teasing them with thoughts of historic preservation status. Even the Doctor's presence doesn't really play much into it. His only real miscalculation was in how vicious Dent and his crew would be and how much anger this fostered in the colonists.

On the subject of Dent, he is a right bastard. In the Western genre, it's not unusual to have such a vicious character like Dent leading the attack, but Dent gets extra marks for being so cold and detached about it. He brushes off the murder of the colonists as though it's a minor thing and then has the gall to stand before the Master and plead innocent. He knows the colonists rocket will likely explode, killing them all, but he is indifferent about it, knowing that it will mean less paperwork for him. All this makes for a proper villain but where the story stumbles is that there is no closure. Morgan is seemingly killed in the firefight with the colonists but Dent had been on the ship and we never see him after he dispatches the guards. One might assume that he is under arrest like all the other IMC personnel, but after all that has happened, there needed to be a proper bit of closure with him either shown as arrested or simply being shot. In fact, a real good scene would have been him dispatching more guards to assist and then be shot by Mary in the back. It would have been a fitting end for him.

I did like the Doctor for the most part as he was engaged with the story and didn't spend much time being locked in a prison cell out of the action. However, he did have a few points where he was playing dumb because it was a six-part story. The sub-story with Norton is a prime example. Any idiot could have seen that Norton was a plant and the Doctor should have directly warned Ashe and Winton about him being a plant. Instead he only give a vague warning about watching him. This results in at least two colonist deaths. But aside from that, the Doctor does fairly well. I was a bit disappointed in two of the cliffhangers as it held long on shots where I knew the resolution was going to be an action of the Doctor to disarm the person holding him. I think we all know the Third Doctor well enough for that.

Jo is also a bit of a mixed bag in this story. She is finally treated well by the Doctor who actually seems to show compassion for her (which seems to be a quality of Malcolm Hulke and almost no one else). But at the same time, she is given very little to do and spends much of her time being a prisoner and an object of rescue. She actually instigates hostilities as it is her idea to try and sneak aboard the IMC ship, which delivers a major card into Dent's hand. Had she and Winton stayed off the ship, Dent would have been forced to slow play a bit longer and nothing would have actually happened until the Master arrived. She also gets her and the Doctor captured when they break into the Master's TARDIS. So while she is sympathetic and somewhat entertaining in her dialog, she is a major liability as far as the story goes.

Ashe and Winton are also something I don't quite get. If this were a more conventional Western, or perhaps just an American production, Winton would have defied Ashe and shot at least Morgan if not Dent several times in this story. He had the opportunity in Episode Three when they captured the ship. He could easily and probably should have done it when they captured Dent's forces after declaring rebellion. Shooting Dent and Morgan there and sending back Caldwell to deliver the message would have been a very clear message of their intentions as well as doling out frontier justice. But the thing that I really can't get is why Winton surrendered because Ashe was taken hostage. Ashe may have been their leader but he had been proven as rather ineffective in Winton's mind by that point and even with Ashe as a hostage, Dent and his men were cornered in Ashe's office. Any attempt to break out should have been a duck shoot for the colonists. Winton could easily have cut losses and simply told Dent to go ahead and shoot him. They would simply shoot anyone who came out or wait until Dent and his men starved to death.

When you take a broad look at it, Winton was right at every turn. If he had killed Dent and Morgan in the initial raid on the IMC ship, their men would have been leaderless and justice would have easily been served for the murdered colonists. The same holds true for the second time Dent and his men were captured. Winton is proved right a third time when Ashe refuses to distribute the arms to the colonists. In every turn, Winton is shown to have the better option simply because Dent and his men are so cutthroat as to be unreasonable. Violent resistance is the only viable option. About the only instance where Winton and Dent disagree where Winton could be argued to be wrong is in giving the natives food. Supposedly this keeps the natives in friendly relations, but given that the natives are shown in several instances attacking the Doctor, Jo, the Master or the IMC personnel that are away from the main colony, it is somewhat dubious as to how effective that strategy is. It is a policy of appeasement that seems to have limited results. Far more effective is the direct relations as done between the engineer and the native who assists him. That is a demonstration of effective coexistence.

On the subject of the natives, they started as a bit of a let down and then became my biggest annoyance of the story. The natives start the story as an obvious nod to Native Americans and their interactions with settlers in the Old West. Given that Native Americans have vestiges of more powerful civilizations in their past, the allusion to the natives having once been a great civilization that destroyed itself is also not a problem. They were a bit of a let down in their design as their skin was a little too obviously a body suit that had been painted green and their heads were so overdone as to hide any and all trace of their eyes, which would have been useful in displaying emotion beyond the primitive spear throwing and demonstrations of anger you might expect from a Tarzan movie.

But the source of my annoyance came with the doomsday weapon. First, if the soil was being poisoned by slow leaking radiation, shouldn't the colonists have been able to detect that and not necessarily planted their crops in radioactive soil? Second, the destruction of the weapon does not mean that all that radiation just disappears. That radiation would have to go somewhere and the destruction of the device would actually release larger levels of radiation in a short period of time that would linger in the soil. The soil should have continued to be poisoned until the radiation levels had decreased. Third, why does the leader native opt to commit suicide just because the Master has discovered the weapon? The weapon had been in existence for a long period of time and the leaders had felt no need to destroy it in a safe way prior to that. What's more, he had disarmed the Master and could have easily killed him and the Doctor, causing their knowledge of the weapon to disappear. Or a third option could have been considered where the Master and Doctor could have been enslaved to help disable the weapon in a safe manner that would not have destroyed the city. Instead, the story takes the cheapest and laziest way out by having them destroy the weapon via self-destruct which destroys essentially all of the native population. I can't think of any civilization that would ever do that voluntarily.

It is such a shame that there are so many of these flaws because there is some good acting, some well written scenes and also some good action set pieces. The real problem just seems to be the smashing of two stories into one. If it had stayed the colonist's story, Dent would have been the principle villain and the colonists would have set on him in the final confrontation and problably killed him and Morgan in the third battle. Or had the Master's story been the main focus, the Doctor could have arrived on planet with the Master already there, working as the adjudicator. This would have put Dent or some equivalent of him in a side roll that would have been waved aside after an episode or so with the Master being the principle antagonist the whole time. But instead we have the Old West colonist story hijacked in Episode Four to become the Master's story and even then it doesn't take the full focus. Both stories crash and burn as a result. I find this the most frustrating result of all because both stories have the potential of being good. Or even if one had been bad and that had taken the main focus, it would have had a clear delineation and resolution. The mash up gives neither.

Despite my frustration with the hodgepodge, I can't give this story a terrible score as the acting and story elements that are clear are too good. But I'm not going to pretend that I have any desire to pull this story out to watch it again. I think more than anything, I'd like to pull all the Master bits out and just watch a good Roger Delgado highlight reel. That would highly entertaining. But as for the overall story, it's two decent ideas ruined by a bad smash. The end result is tedium at points and outright frustration at others. It might be the best Master portrayal of Season Eight but it's a lot to slog through for that.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5