Doctor Who: "The Time Meddler"

But that means that the exact minute, the exact second that he does it, every history book, the whole future of every year and every time on Earth will change, and nobody will know that it has?--Steven Taylor

The Viking scouting party land in England

"The Watcher", 3 July 1965
"The Meddling Monk", 10 July 1965
"A Battle of Wits", 17 July 1965
"Checkmate", 24 July 1965

Written by Dennis Spooner
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Script editor: Donald Tosh
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki (latest extant appearance)
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor

The Doctor and Vicki are in the TARDIS control room, commiserating about how much they miss Ian and Barbara, when they hear a noise from the interior rooms--someone's back there! They take up position on either side of the door, prepared to attack whoever it is when they come out, but it's Steven Taylor who emerges, and as soon as he does, he collapses from exhaustion.

Once he's come to, Steven explains that after escaping from the Mechanoid city, he searched through the forest for our heroes, eventually coming upon the TARDIS and stumbling inside. He's grateful for finally being rescued from his captivity on Mechanus, but he's openly scornful of the Doctor and Vicki's assertions that he's now on board a time machine.

Vicki gets him new clothes and apparently gives him a thorough shave, and by the time that's finished, the TARDIS has landed. The crew head outside and find themselves on the shore of an angry sea, at the foot of imposing English cliffs. The Doctor finds a horned Viking helmet on the beach and shows it to Steven as proof that they've travelled not only through space, but also through time.

"Well, maybe," Steven concedes doubtfully.

"Maybe?" the Doctor says. "What else do you think it could be? A space helmet for a cow?"

Unbeknownst to the team, the TARDIS's arrival has been witnessed: a monk was watching from the clifftop. He hides until our heroes walk off, then inspects the TARDIS. But he can't get in, because it's locked.

The Doctor finds an easy, gentle path up to the top of the cliffs, and in a fit of pique he declares that he will take this route, while Steven and Vicki can take the harder, steeper path and meet him at the top.

But once he gets to the top, it's not his companions that he meets. He finds himself at a mediaeval peasant's cottage. The man of the house is away, but his wife, a friendly woman named Edith (played by Alethea Charlton, who previously played Hur in "An Unearthly Child"), gives him some dinner and a flagon of mead.

In conversation with Edith, the Doctor is able to ascertain just when they've landed. Harold Godwinson is the new King, having succeeded Edward the Confessor at the beginning of the year. This news instantly alerts the Doctor that he's landed in 1066, one of the two most famous years in the history of the English-speaking world.

I'm sure it's alerted you of that, too, but nevertheless, I'm going to insult your education and give a brief recap. Harold Godwinson was the last of the Saxon Kings of England. Shortly after his accession, England was invaded by two different armies. The first of these was led by Harald Hardrada, King of Norway and the last great Viking. (He's only ever referred to as Hardrada in this story, presumably to avoid confusion with Harold Godwinson.)

Godwinson defeated and killed Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, then immediately had to march south to meet a second invasion, from William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. His exhausted army was defeated by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in October, heralding the Norman Conquest and ensuring that William the Bastard would be known to history as William the Conqueror.

The Doctor calculates that it's currently midsummer, and Edith informs him that they're in Northumbria. This means that Hardrada's army will be landing soon, not too far south of here, at the Humber.

All the time they're talking, the Doctor and Edith have a soundtrack playing behind them: monks from the nearby monastery, chanting. But as they're listening to them, the Doctor hears an abrupt glitch in the singing, like it's not actually live singing, but rather a recording.

But of course, here in the eleventh century, that's ridiculous.

The Doctor leaves Edith and heads up to the monastery to investigate. He finds it apparently abandoned. He enters, and in a small chamber off the main hall, he finds a twentieth-century phonograph, playing a record of Gregorian chants. But then wooden bars slide down, trapping him inside the chamber. He's been captured by the Monk we saw earlier, who now steps out from hiding, laughing.

We cut to the next morning, when the Monk is preparing breakfast--using an electric toaster and an electric griddle. After serving the Doctor breakfast in his cell, the Monk heads back to the cliffs, where he surveys the sea with a pair of modern binoculars. And soon, he sees what he's evidently looking for: an approaching Viking longship. It's not yet the whole army--just a single scout ship.

Out in the forest, meanwhile, Vicki and Steven have spent the night asleep beneath the trees after failing to meet up with the Doctor. Steven is still sceptical that they've travelled through time--especially when he finds a golden wristwatch that someone has lost in the bushes.

The two of them soon run into some Saxon peasants, who capture them and take them to the village. They think that they must be a pair of Viking scouts and want to execute them, but the village headman--Wulnoth, Edith's husband--chooses to believe their story that they're just travellers and releases them. When they tell they're looking for the Doctor, Edith recognises his description and directs them toward the monastery.

They arrive at the monastery and knock on the door, which is answered by the Monk. He tells them, of course, that the Doctor hasn't visited him. But Steven and Vicki are suspicious, and they decide to come back after dark and have a look around.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Viking scout ship have come ashore. They need provisions, so they raid a cottage they come across in the wood--Wulnoth and Edith's cottage, though only Edith is home. After the Vikings have gone, Wulnoth returns home, to find his house sacked and Edith brutalised (but still alive). He collects the men of the village together, and they go hunting the Vikings.

A battle ensues between the villagers and the Viking party. The villagers win, but two of the Vikings escape. They need a place to hide until the main body of Hardrada's army arrives, so they decide to head to the monastery, planning to take the monks hostage.

Once night falls, Vicki and Steven sneak into the monastery. They come across the Monk's phonograph and toaster, and then find the cell where he's holding the Doctor. But they discover the Doctor is no longer inside--he's left his cloak on top of a mound of blankets on the sleeping pallet, to make it look like he's asleep, and has escaped down a secret passage he must have discovered in a corner of the cell.

Vicki and Steven follow the passage; it disgorges them in the woods, near the clifftop. They return to the TARDIS to see if the Doctor has returned, but he hasn't. In the bushes on the clifftop, though, they discover what looks like a modern grenade launcher mounted on a tripod. Someone (the Monk, obviously) has left it there, pointed out to see.

The Monk, unaware that the Doctor has escaped, has headed to the village, where he asks a favour of Wulnoth and the other villagers--because they believe him a man of God, they're always more than willing to do whatever he asks. He asks them now if they would light beacon fires for him on the clifftop, so that approaching ships will know where to land.

The Monk tells Wulnoth that he needs the beacon fires because he is expecting some building materials to arrive by ship. But what he doesn't know is that, after escaping from his cell, the Doctor returned to Wulnoth and Edith's cottage, where Edith gave him dinner. The Doctor told her that soon a Viking invasion fleet would land at the Humber, but that King Harold would defeat it.

Though he doesn't let on to the Monk, Wulnoth now concludes that the Monk wants beacon fires to lure Hardrada's fleet towards the beach. He's right, of course, but unlike us, he hasn't seen the cannon the Monk has hidden there, so he doesn't know that the Monk is only trying to attract the fleet in order to blow it out of the water. He instead concludes that the Monk is a Viking spy.

Failing to find the Doctor at the cliffs, Vicki and Steven have returned back up the secret tunnel to the monastery, which is now deserted. Looking around more, they find an electrical cable which appears to run directly into a heavy stone sarcophagus. Steven presses the side of the sarcophagus, and finds that it opens just like a door. He and Vicki enter--

--and find themselves in the control room of a TARDIS. The Monk has a TARDIS. He isn't just a time traveller: he's a member of the Doctor's own people.

They explore the interior of the Monk's TARDIS. They discover a whole trove of treasures from all periods of Earth's history, as well as what look like projectile grenades, but Steven is able to identify them as neutron bombs. They're ammunition for the cannon on the clifftop.

"What's he trying to do?" Steven asks. "Sink a ship?"

"He could sink a whole navy with one of these," Vicki responds.

They also find a big sheet of paper labelled PROGRESS CHART, on which the Monk has conveniently detailed his entire eight-step plan, including "Sight atomic cannon", "Light beacon fires", "Destroy Viking fleet", and "Battle of Hastings". The final step is "Meet King Harold", which is our indication that he's definitely planning on changing the course of history, since Harold, of course, was killed at Hastings.

The Monk, still under the impression that Wulnoth will help him, is just returning to the monastery when he's apprehended by the Doctor, who presses a stick into his back to make him think he's carrying a gun. But before the Doctor can get an explanation out of him, there's a knock at the door.

The Doctor can't afford to ignore the knocking, as that would alert whoever was there that something was wrong, so he answers the door--to find the two survivors from the Viking scout party. They storm inside and take the time travellers captive, but they're so certain that a pair of old men pose no threat to them that they let their guard down, allowing the Doctor and the Monk to take them captive.

After the Vikings are tied up, the Doctor gets the Monk to tell him his whole plan. He's going to destroy Hardrada's invasion before it can land; that way, Harold Godwinson won't have to march north. His army will therefore be well-rested at Hastings and will defeat the Normans. With England thus spared a line of Norman kings, she will be able to avoid centuries of entanglement in French conflicts like the Angevin Empire and the Hundred Years War. With the country thus stable, the Monk will be able to accelerate technological progress: "Jet airliners by 1320! Shakespeare will be able to produce Hamlet for television!"

The Doctor is horrified by this, but since it's William Hartnell, that horror doesn't take the form of the moral outrage that later Doctors would give us; instead, it's the exasperated berating of a schoolteacher toward the foolish children under his authority. He demands the Monk show him to his TARDIS, where the two of them encounter Vicki and Steven.

As the four of them are emerging from the Monk's TARDIS, however, they encounter the two Vikings, who have managed to escape. The Monk manages to convince them that he's on their side, and they tie up the Doctor, Vicki and Steven. The Monk tells the Vikings that his neutron bomb missiles are "magical charms" that will help Hardrada's army, and gets them to carry them with him up to the cannon at the clifftop.

As they're leaving the monastery, though, they're attacked by the men of the village, led by Wulnoth. They're chased into the woods. The Vikings are surrounded and killed, though the Monk escapes. Edith frees the Doctor and his companions.

The Doctor goes back into the Monk's TARDIS and ties a long piece of string around a piece of equipment inside the control console. It's evidently a very delicate operation: after it's completed, the Doctor exits the TARDIS, then very carefully pulls the string until he also pulls out the piece of equipment. Pleased with himself, he slips the equipment into his pocket.

With the Monk being hunted by the villagers, the Doctor is confident now that he won't be able to destroy Hardrada's fleet, and that the Battle of Stamford Bridge--and the Battle of Hastings--will go off as history says they should. He, Steven and Vicki return to the TARDIS and depart.

The Monk, meanwhile, eventually eludes his pursuers and returns to the monastery. But a nasty surprise awaits him: when he attempts to enter his TARDIS, he discovers it's no longer bigger on the inside. The Doctor has removed his dimensional control, thereby shrinking the TARDIS's interior so that it now fits into its exterior; the Monk cannot get inside. He's stranded in 1066 England, with the country about to undergo successive invasions and the Harrowing of the North.

The Doctor and the Meddling Monk

What Lisa thought

Lisa's word to describe this one was "okay". She did like that she didn't see coming the revelation that the Monk had a TARDIS and was one of the Doctor's own people.

(The part three cliffhanger, with Steven and Vicki entering the sarcophagus and finding themselves in a TARDIS control room, is probably my favourite 60s cliffhanger.)

"The Time Meddler", put in context, is arguably a very important Doctor Who story. It's the first time we've met one of the Doctor's people besides the Doctor himself and his granddaughter; indeed, at this point, there still hasn't been any comment on whether the Doctor's people are, in fact, human.

But even beyond that, it's the first time a historical has had a science fiction component, besides the presence of the main characters. Such a development is approached with real freshness--even though there's science fiction, there's still no traditional "Doctor Who monster", for instance. And it's done in such a way that the audience learns a whole lot about the time period in which it's set, without ever once feeling like they're having a history lesson. Maybe all those reasons are why I love it so much.

(Well, okay. I also love the "space helmet for a cow" line.)

"The Time Meddler" marks the end of season two, but it also marks the beginning of something else: that period of Doctor Who that has been almost eradicated by the BBC's wiping policy. In the first two seasons, we've missed only two stories ("Marco Polo" and "The Crusades"). But we're about to cover seasons three, four and five in only six stories, two of which will have missing episodes.

The next story after "The Time Meddler" is "Galaxy 4", in which the TARDIS team fight a race of militant, cloned interstellar conquerors who all look like attractive twenty-year-old blonde women. I'm particularly upset that it's missing.

Then is "Mission to the Unknown", a one-part prologue to "The Daleks' Master Plan" that contains none of the regular cast. "Mission to the Unknown" was Verity Lambert's last involvement in the programme, after which she was replaced with producer John Wiles.

Then "The Myth Makers", in which the TARDIS lands in the middle of the Trojan War. Vicki falls in love with Troilus during the story, and at the end she leaves TARDIS to marry him and become the mythological Cressida.

Then there's "The Daleks' Master Plan", a twelve-part epic. The late Nicholas Courtney makes his first appearance in Doctor Who, though he's not yet Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart; instead, he's evil Earth Security Agent Bret Vyon. (A two-minute clip of his performance has been preserved, because during Peter Purves's long period hosting Blue Peter in the 1970s and 80s, it's the clip that would be played of Steven whenever Blue Peter did a Doctor Who segment.) The Meddling Monk also appears in "The Daleks' Master Plan", having allied himself with the Daleks.

And then we come to "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", in which, unsurprisingly, the Doctor and Steven get caught up in the events leading to the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. New companion Dodo Chaplet is introduced at the very end of the story, and we'll pick up our rewatch with her first adventure, "The Ark".

I

Doctor Who: "The Chase"

Am exterminated! Am exterminated!--A Dalek, upon losing a fight with a Mechanoid

The Doctor and his evil double duel with their wood. Let the slashfic commence!

"The Executioners", 22 May 1965
"The Death of Time", 29 May 1965
"Flight Through Eternity", 5 June 1965
"Journey into Terror", 12 June 1965
"The Death of Doctor Who", 19 June 1965
"The Planet of Decision", 26 June 1965

Written by Terry Nation
Directed by Richard Martin
Script editor: Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton (final appearance)
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright (final appearance)
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor (first appearance)

The Doctor has been tinkering with a time-space visualiser, which he took from the space museum, and he's got it working again. With it, the TARDIS team can watch any instant in all of space and time. They watch Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, an audience between Shakespeare and Elizabeth I, and a performance of "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles on an episode of Top of the Pops. Vicki has heard of the Beatles, has even visited their museum in Liverpool, but "didn't know they play classical music", a description that disgusts Barbara.

The Beatles sequence isn't on the North American DVD of "The Chase" (though it was on the earlier North American VHS release), and, while I understand the rights issues involves, I think that's a shame. That performance of "Ticket to Ride" actually gets used in Beatles documentaries, and it only exists because of its appearance in Doctor Who--the rest of that episode of Top of the Pops has been wiped.

(The story goes that originally, the Beatles themselves were actually scheduled to appear in the programme--made up to appear in their seventies, they'd be picked up by the time-space visualiser while attending their fiftieth anniversary. But Brian Epstein put the kibosh on them appearing in a cheap kids' science fiction show.)

That bit of fluff concluded, the TARDIS materialises on a hot desert planet, boiling beneath the heat of two suns. Ian and Vicki dash off over a dune to go exploring, while the Doctor and Barbara hang back to sunbathe. At this point I kind of wondered in the Doctor would attire himself for sunbathing by pulling swimming trunks on over his frock coats and check trousers, a la Batman and the Joker having their surfing competition, but no, he just remains fully clothed while he lays out.

Ian and Vicki discover a metal hatch in the sand. They pull it open and descend into the crumbling tunnels of an abandoned subterranean city. But soon they're attacked by a large, tentacled creature--it looks a bit like a squid, but moving about on dry land. And it's between them and the hatch, so they have no option but to retreat deeper into the tunnels.

Back on the surface, the Doctor and Barbara are prevented from looking for their friends by a sandstorm, which not only changes the entire landscape but also buries the TARDIS. And it reveals a new threat: a squad of Daleks, hunting the TARDIS team (whom they now describe as "our greatest enemies").

They flee and take refuge with the planet's native humanoid inhabitants, the Aridians, who look like anthropoid silver fish. (I don't mean they look like anthropoid silverfish, but that they wear lycra jumpsuits and swimcaps spray-painted silver, with fins glued on to look like fish.) They explain that this planet, Aridius, was once an aquatic paradise, but that the water burnt away as the planet was drawn closer to the twin suns.

(Which opens the question as to how it came to be named "Aridius". Was it named by the Ironic Planetary Naming Authority, or by the Bad Luck Planetary Naming Authority)?

The Aridians tell the Doctor and Barbara that when the planet dried out, the mire-beasts invaded the Aridians' underground cities. The mire-beasts--one of which is obviously the creature that has cornered Vicki and Ian--cannot be defeated, and so the only solution for the Aridians is to wall off those sections of their tunnels that become infested.

The Aridians take Barbara and the Doctor to their city, but soon enough the city is contacted by the Daleks, who demand that the Aridians hand over the TARDIS team or face extermination. Not wishing to put their hosts in a bad situation, the Doctor declares that he and Barbara will leave, but the Aridians refuse to allow him to do so--the Daleks have specifically told them that if the team escape, they will destroy their city.

Meanwhile, Vicki and Ian have fought off the mire-beast, but in the process Ian took a blow to the head and got knocked unconscious. Vicki runs off in fright, and in her mad dash through the tunnels, she somehow finds a way through into the very chamber where the Aridians are holding Barbara and the Doctor. They make to arrest her, too, but before they can, a mire-beast bursts in, having followed her through the tunnels.

In the confusion, the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki make their escape, and Vicki leads the group back to Ian. He's awake--his wound looks worse than it is. (And it really does look bad--there's a lot of blood flowing from that temple for 1965 television.) While awake, he's found an exit from the tunnels--and it leads right to the TARDIS.

The TARDIS, buried in the sandstorm, was discovered by the Daleks, who captured a pair of Aridians and used them as slave labour to excavate it, then killed them when they were finished. Ian and the Doctor are able to distract the Daleks, and the team escape and dematerialise.

A few minutes after they're in flight, though, the Doctor learns some shocking news from the TARDIS's sensors: the Daleks are pursuing them. They've built their own time machine and are hunting the team through space and time.

Cut to the Dalek time machine's control room. One Dalek gives a report calculating how big a lead the TARDIS has on them, and after he gives this report, the Dalek commander demands he convert the amount into Earth measure. The original Dalek actually stutters as he does the arithmetic. ("Um ... er ... ah ... twelve ... Earth minutes.") This is one of those moments in fandom that's cited as a reason why "The Chase" isn't a very good story--the ridiculousness of a stammering Dalek. But what I'd like to point out is how unreasonable the Dalek commander's demand is in the first place--why on Earth would he need the time units converted to Earth measure? If you're, say, the pilot of an RAF bomber, and your tail gunner reports, "We've got German fighters closing in behind us, skipper! About five hundred yards!", you don't very well respond, "Sorry, Bill! Since our enemies are German, I can't act on that information until you translate 'five hundred yards' into German for me!"

Anyway. We now go into a series of set pieces, where the TARDIS materialises, the crew briefly interact with their surroundings, and then depart; then the Daleks arrive, ascertain that the TARDIS has already left, and pursue it. This includes extensive shots of the time vortex, with a cardboard cutout of the TARDIS chased erratically across the screen by a cardboard cutout of the Dalek time machine, while some very jazzy incidental music played. You kind of wonder if the BBC hired the Dave Brubeck Quartet to do the music for this serial. (In fairness, the cardboard cutouts do get larger as they cross the screen, which does an excellent job of creating the illusion that they're moving three-dimensionally rather than two-.)

The first stop on the chase is atop the Empire State Building, where the team meet Morton Dill (played by Peter Purves), a tourist from Alabama who's just gosh-darned amazed at everything he sees in the big city. When the TARDIS dematerialises a few moments later, he concludes he must have stumbled across the production of a movie, something he thinks gets confirmed when the Daleks show up a few minutes later. He examines the Dalek he meets by walking in a full circle around it, and the Dalek's eyestalk follows him, tracking 360 degrees to keep up with him--it's a really cute moment. (Morton Dill survives the encounter--the Daleks murder no one on their visit to the Empire State Building. Well, not on this visit.)

Next, the TARDIS arrives at and quickly departs from the Mary Celeste. The Daleks also arrive and depart, but not until their appearance has so frightened everyone aboard that they've jumped ship into the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the Mary Celeste deserted, with its famous half-drunk cups of coffee and breakfasts in the middle of being eaten. A Dalek falls overboard, too, and actually screams in terror as he falls.

The TARDIS's next destination is the front hallway of a spooky, dark, deserted mansion, which the Doctor identifies from its architecture as Central European. The Doctor and Ian head upstairs to explore the house, while Barbara and Vicki wait by the TARDIS.

While, they're waiting, a figure in a dark cloak approaches them, introduces himself as Count Dracula, and then departs. The Doctor and Ian discover a laboratory with a shrouded body lying on a slab; they pull back the shroud to reveal Frankenstein's monster, and quickly flee the lab.

The Doctor theorises that somehow, the TARDIS has transported them into the recesses of the human mind, a dream world. This excites Ian, because surely the Daleks can't possibly follow them into the human subconscious. But he's wrong, because soon enough, the pepperpots do indeed arrive.

A battle ensues between the Daleks, Dracula and Frankenstein, with the Daleks' guns having no effect on the monsters. In the commotion, the Doctor, Ian and Barbara pile into TARDIS and dematerialise, and not until it's already too late do they realise that they've left Vicki behind. The Doctor insists there's no way to go back and get her; he simply doesn't have sufficiently fine control of the TARDIS.

Vicki, though, manages to dart inside the Daleks' time machine and hides there; the Daleks withdraw from their battle and take off in pursuit of the TARDIS. After the spooky house has once again fallen quiet, a camera shot shows us its front entrance, where a large sign identifies it as a carnival fright house, part of the "Festival of Ghana, 1996; admission $10" (yes, dollars). But a sticker placed over the sign tells us that the festival has been "cancelled by order of Peking".

While hiding aboard the Dalek time machine, Vicki is able to watch the Daleks hatch their next stratagem: they construct a robot duplicate of the Doctor, identical to the original in every way save for the fact that he's played by an actor who doesn't really resemble William Hartnell at all, and programme to "Infiltrate and kill!" the TARDIS crew. (That phrase is repeated a good eight or ten times during episodes four and five.)

I can't really think of a better way they could have done the duplicate-Doctor, given the constraints under which they were operating, but I've got to say, it's pretty unsuccessful. The production team make a valiant attempt to have William Hartnell play the duplicate whenever possible, but most of the time, they have to use the unconvincing double. And I don't just mean that happens the Doctor and the robot have to appear in the same scene; I mean it happens whenever they appear in consecutive scenes (which happens for most of the robot's time in the programme).

1960s Doctor Who was shot "as-live", meaning that as near as possible, a thirty-minute episode was recorded during a thirty-minute block of time at the studio. So when the camera cuts from a scene between Ian and the Doctor in one location, to a scene between Barbara and the robot in another location, there simply isn't time for William Hartnell to run across to the other side of the studio to play both scenes.

In the robot's first appearance, at the cliffhanger for episode four, the double is used for a long shot, surrounded by Daleks; we then cut to Hartnell for a closeup, still stood on the TARDIS set from the previous scene, with a Dalek eyestalk extending into frame to make us think we're still aboard the Dalek time machine. But that really doesn't work: neither Hartnell's posture nor the background match the double's.

Still, two things do work. First, William Hartnell dubs all the robot's lines as the double mimics them; sure, there lip syncing's slightly off, but that's forgivable given that, once again, this was being done live. And second is the scene where the Doctor and the robot finally meet. Hartnell will speak a line playing one character (of course, by that point, we don't know if he's the Doctor or the robot) facing off to camera left; we then cut to a shot of Ian or Barbara or Vicki, during which, Hartnell turns around; we then cut back to Hartnell, now facing off to camera right, and Hartnell delivers a line as the other character.

So. The TARDIS now arrives on the planet Mechanus, a jungle planet. (No doubt it was named Mechanus by the same Ironic Yet Creepily Predictive Planetary Naming Authority that named Aridius.) But it's a jungle of large, extremely aggressive fungi that are more than happy to eat whatever human-sized creatures come near them. The TARDIS team are trepidatious about walking off into the jungle, but then suddenly, a path lights up along the ground. They follow it, and it leads them to a cave where they take refuge.

Meanwhile, the Daleks have landed and sent their robot off to find the team. Vicki waits till all the Daleks have left, then heads off into the jungle to try to rejoin her friends. From their cave, the others hear her calling for them, and Ian and the Doctor head into the jungle to find her.

While they're gone, the robot arrives at the cave and rather callously tells Barbara that Ian is dead, killed by the fungi. She doesn't believe him and insists they go look for him, so the robot accompanies her into the jungle. As soon as they're isolated, the robot attempts to kill her, but he's stopped when Ian comes upon them--Vicki has by now told him and the Doctor about the robot.

The robot Doctor runs off into the jungle, and the team split up to find him. Of course, the endgame for this is that Ian, Barbara and Vicki are all gathered in a clearing, and the two Hartnells enter from opposite sides at the same time, so that neither we nor the team know which is the real Doctor.

One of the Hartnells orders Ian to get out of the way so he can thrash his double with his cane. Ian says, "And if I don't?" to which the Hartnell responds, "Then I'll give you the same treatment!" and takes a swipe at him. Ian and this Hartnell, supposedly the robot, grapple, while Vicki, Susan and the "Doctor" watch on. Ian throws the robot to the ground and picks up a large rock, preparing to brain him.

The "Doctor" with Vicki and Susan then forcibly turns Vicki away, saying, "Susan, I don't want you to see this." This lets Vicki and Barbara know that this "Doctor" is actually the robot. Ian is stopped from braining the real Doctor by Barbara's scream. The robot runs off, and the Doctor follows him. The two of them then duel with their wooden canes, and while they're locked together, the Doctor is able to pull the robot's wiring from its chest, destroying it.

Yes, that means that the real Doctor, while aware that his fellows didn't know whether or not he was a robot sent to assassinate them, attempted to beat Ian with his cane purely for not getting out of his way fast enough. The sad part is that I can't actually say, "This is a horribly contrived, out-of-character action for the Hartnell Doctor to perform," so much as I can say, "This actually isn't all that big a stretch, character-wise, for the Hartnell Doctor."

So with that all taken care of, our heroes retreat back to their cave. But they're soon found by Daleks, who surround the cave and prepare to exterminate the team. The Doctor attempts to impersonate the robot, exiting the cave and telling the Daleks that they've all already been killed, but the Daleks see through the ruse easily. The Doctor narrowly escapes extermination.

(It's actually Ian who suggests he try it. Barbara objects immediately, and while Ian, Barbara and Vicki argue about it, the Doctor slips out at the back of the frame. They're all just agreeing it's an unworkable plan when they hear the Doctor's voice speaking to the Daleks, telling them the mission has been completed. The Daleks respond with a gunshot, and the Doctor darts back into frame, looking rather frazzled. It's a cute little scene.)

Before the Daleks can storm the cave, however, a door opens at its rear and a robot emerges. It's a giant metal sphere with bits and bobs attached, and it speaks with a droning intonation not unlike the Daleks' voices. It ushers them into the door from which it has just emerged, with turns out to lead to a lift.

They ascend in the lift. The Doctor attempts to make conversation with the robot, but it ignores him. The lift takes them to a magnificent city of what spires, built on a platform high above the fungal jungle. (Man. "Fungal jungle". I'm calling that one. You want it, you pay a royalty.)

They're ushered through the city's corridors--populated only by more of the spherical robots--to a sleeping chamber, where they meet another human being. This is Steven Taylor, who's played by Peter Purves, the same actor who played Morton Dill back atop the Empire State Building. He was a space pilot in Earth's interplanetary wars, but his ship crashed. For two years, he's had no one to talk to but his cuddly toy panda.

Steven explains that the robots are Mechanoids. Earth had intended to colonise Mechanus and sent the Mechanoids as an advance party, to build the city. But when the wars came, Mechanus got forgot about. Now the robots will only think that arriving humans are the colonists if they know the Mechanoids' code; since neither Steven nor the TARDIS party know the code, they're trapped here as the Mechanoids' prisoners.

Their cell contains access to the roof, where Steven goes to exercise. On the roof is an extensive length of electrical cable; now that there are five people here, instead of just one, they can use the cable to lower each other the fifteen hundred feet down to the ground. Vicki, terribly acrophobic, has to be forcibly held down while the others tie the end of the cable around her, then holds her eyes shut in terror as they lower her to the ground.

Meanwhile, the Daleks have ascended the lift chute and demand the Mechanoids hand over the TARDIS team. When the Mechanoids refuse, a battle ensues, and soon the whole city is ablaze. The battle is actually very well done, a montage of model shots and shots of the two different robot forces rolling around and firing (the Mechanoids are equipped with flamethrowers), framed by flames licking at the edge of the screen.

When smoke starts billowing onto the city's roof, Steven, panicked, dashes back inside, to rescue his cuddly panda. When he doesn't re-emerge, the TARDIS team assume he's been killed. They themselves finish climbing down to the ground, and they make their way through to the jungle to the Daleks' time machine. They discover it's been abandoned--all the Daleks, like the Mechanoids, have been wiped out in the battle.

Now Barbara realises that, with the intact guidance mechanism on the Dalek time machine, she and Ian can use it to travel back to 1963 Earth, if only the Doctor will show them how to use it. He angrily refuses, calling them both utter idiots, but really, of course, he just doesn't want them to leave him. It's really a terribly sweet moment, such a very true portrayal, especially for someone of Hartnell's age and generation, conditioned not to show soft emotions.

But thanks to Ian and Barbara's entreaties, he agrees, and next thing we know, the two schoolteachers have landed in London. It's 1965 instead of 1963, but as Ian says, "What's two years between friends?" There's then a lovely montage of Ian and Barbara frolicking through London; playing with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square; Ian expressing mock horror upon discovering a police box on the Thames Embankment.

At the end of the day, they climb aboard a bus, speculating about whether they'll be able to get their old jobs back. The conductor comes along to sell them their tickets, and Ian reaches into his pocket, asking for two threepennies.

"Two threes?" the conductor exclaims. "Where you been, the Moon?"

"No," says Ian, "but you're close!"

Vicki and the Doctor watch the whole thing through the time-space visualiser. Vicki is overjoyed to see them so happy, but the Doctor is still grumpy. As he shuffles off, he murmurs the truth: "I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them."

What Lisa thought

"Well," she gruffly conceded, "maybe I'm sort of sorry they're gone. But only because I don't get to complain about Barbara anymore!"

All gruff on the exterior to hide how much she cares on the inside. Sort of like William Hartnell, is my wife.

I, on the other hand, am pretty happy. With "The Web Planet", "The Space Museum" and "The Chase", we've now finished a run of sixteen episodes that I think are pretty dire, broken only by the first episode of "The Space Museum". And next up is one of my favourite Hartnells, "The Time Meddler".

I

Doctor Who: "The Space Museum"

Doctor, why do you always show the greatest interest in the most unimportant things?--Ian Chesterton

The TARDIS team: exhibits in the Space Museum

"The Space Museum", 24 April 1965
"The Dimensions of Time", 1 May 1965
"The Search", 8 May 1965
"The Final Phase", 15 May 1965

Written by Glyn Jones
Directed by Mervyn Pinfield
Script editor: Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki

We start with the team gathered round the TARDIS console, still in their mediaeval costume from the previous (missing) story, "The Crusdade". Some force has frozen them, and they stare unblinkingly at the control column. The camera (unusually) actually moves slightly, panning slightly up and to the right, and that's a lovely touch--it adds three-dimensionality to the shot, and it shows us that the actors really are standing there, motionless, rather than a still image being used. (Later on, the moment will be recreated, and it's painfully obvious at that time that a photograph is being used to do it.)

There's a fade to black, and then we find the TARDIS team blinking awake--only they're no longer wearing their mediaeval clothing, but instead, their everyday clothes: twentieth-century gear for Ian and Barbara, frock coat and check trousers for the Doctor, and deeply age-inappropriate pinafore and kneesocks masquerading as twenty-sixth-century garb for Vicki. Ian, Barbara and Vicki are greatly concerned at the unexplained change, but the Doctor, in a genuinely amusing moment, dismisses their worries and declares how pleased he is that the crew have been saved having to take the trouble to change their own clothes.

The Doctor sends Vicki to get him some water. She heads into the back room and fills a glass, but as she's turning away from the TARDIS food machine, the glass slips from her hand and shatters on the floor. But then, instantly, the glass pulls back together, water pours itself back into the glass, and the whole thing rises from the floor and returns to Vicki's hand. It's obviously just a reverse of the film of it shattering in the first place, but again, it doesn't look like they're just rewinding the film, and it's achieved quite effectively. Vicki tells the Doctor about what happened, but again, he just chuckles and dismisses her concerns.

The TARDIS has landed, so the Doctor pulls up their surroundings on the scanner. At first they think they've landed in a spaceship graveyard, but then they realise they're actually in a space museum. It appears deserted right now, so they head outside to explore.

The strangeness continues. The planet's surface is covered in a thick layer of dust, but the team leave no footprints as they walk. And after a few moments, they realise they can hear no sound whatsoever, apart from each other's voices.

As they approach the entrance to the main museum building, the doors start to open, and the team dart undercover to hide from whoever's coming out. A pair of big men in white military tunics emerge. They're only yards away when Vicki can't suppress a sneeze--there's no way they could fail to hear her. And yet they do not react at all, merely walk away on patrol.

The team head inside and start looking at the exhibits. They find the empty casing of a Dalek on display. Vicki, though she's read about the Dalek occupation of Earth in her history books, has never seen one, and--much to Ian and Barbara's amused disgust--she's not impressed: "Why, this one looks quite friendly."

The museum is mostly deserted, but there are a few small groups walking around--and they clearly can't see or hear the TARDIS team, walking right past them. What's more, they're talking amongst themselves, but none of our heroes can hear anything they're saying.

Then Vicki makes the discovery that nothing in the museum, including the walls, is solid to the TARDIS team--they can wave their hands right through solid objects, or even walk right through them.

No sooner have they realised this than they enter a new hall--and come upon the TARDIS. It's not the real TARDIS, though, because they can walk right through it--it's an exhibit in the museum. And on display, right across from the TARDIS, are the team, stood in glass cases, staring lifelessly at the other exhibits, somehow preserved or embalmed.

The Doctor has by now worked out what's happened: when materialising, the TARDIS somehow jumped a "time track", and so the team somehow haven't really arrived yet. What they're seeing is their own future: they're going to end up in the museum. Or rather, it's one possible future: the team must somehow find a way to break the chain that will lead to it.

As he's explaining this, a strange sensation comes over the team, and they once more fall into a trance. Outside, we see their footprints appear in the dust, and the two patrolmen find the TARDIS. Inside the TARDIS, Vicki's glass of water shatters across the floor. Back in the museum, the team once more wake from their trance.

"Yes," the Doctor declares. "We've arrived!" It's an effective ending to a really well-done creepy first episode.

The three following episodes are completely different in tone--it's seriously a disconnect on the same order as that between part one of "An Unearthly Child" and parts two through four. We soon find out that there are two different species of aliens at the space museum: the big, brawny, militaristic men in white are the planet's rulers, the Moroks. The slight young men (they're all about twenty) with blond hair, black clothes and what appear to be Converse trainers are Xerons. The Moroks are the planet's rulers and museum curators, while the Xerons are an underclass. As soon as the Morok governor learns that there are aliens wandering around his museum, he orders them found and caught, so that they can become his newest exhibit.

The TARDIS team decide to try to make their way back to the TARDIS without being spotted, though there's some debate about that--is that exactly the course that will lead to them ending up in the display cases? Unfortunately, they've wandered so far into the museum that they're now thoroughly lost. Much to Barbara's dismay, Ian insists on unravelling Barbara's cardigan, so that they can track their path as they try to find their way out.

The first member to get separated from the group is the Doctor, who lags behind examining a display and is captured by a group of Xeron boys, led by a very, very young Jeremy Bulloch (better known to you and me as Boba Fett). He escapes from them (by hiding in the empty Dalek casing) but is quickly captured by Moroks and taken to the governor for questioning.

The governor interrogates the Doctor about where the rest of the TARDIS team are and where they came from. He has the Doctor hooked up to a machine that displays whatever image enters the Doctor's head when asked a question, but the Doctor is able to defeat the machine, sending it false images. The governor, angry, declares that if the Doctor will give him no useful information, then it's time he was processed for the museum, and he sends him into the embalming room.

The others, meanwhile, have found their way to the museum's entrance (after completely unravelling Barbara's cardigan), where they run smack into a party of Morok guards. The guards pull out their guns, but Ian has lost any fear of death: he rationalises that either the guards will kill him, which will break the chain of events leading to his embalming, or else the chain can't be broken, in which case there's no way he can die.

His fearlessness disconcerts the guards long enough for him, Barbara and Vicki to flee, through the three of them get separated from each other in the commotion. Vicki runs into the group of Xerons who earlier tried to make contact with the Doctor. They take her to a secure hiding place, where they explain the relationship between the Xerons and the Moroks.

The Moroks are a conqueror race, who have an interplanetary empire. This planet, Xeros, is one of their conquests, and the Xerons are a conquered people. The Moroks have turned Xeros into a museum to their conquests; Xerons are only allowed to live on their own home planet until they reach adulthood, at which point they're shipped offworld to serve as slaves. These Xerons would like to start a revolution, but they can't--though there are only a very few Moroks on Xeros, the Xerons have no access to weaponry of any kind.

Ian, meanwhile, manages to take a Morok prisoner by sneaking up behind him and stealing his gun. He has the guard take him to the embalming room to rescue the Doctor. There, he manages also to capture the governor, but he finds the Doctor has already entered "the second stage of preparation", and is as good as dead--no one has ever been revived after being prepared for display.

Ian, of course, nevertheless insists the governor attempt to revive the Doctor anyway, and after a little while he succeeds in doing so. But then another party of Moroks bursts in; Ian and the Doctor are once again taken prisoner. The governor locks them in the embalming room until he has also caught Vicki and Barbara.

Meanwhile, the Xerons have taken Vicki to the Morok armory. It is guarded by a lie detector-computer that asks a series of questions to anyone who wants to enter: "What is your name and rank?", "Do you have the governor's permission?", that sort of thing. The answers must be bother the right answer, and true.

Vicki reprograms the machine. She can't fix the requirement that the answers be true, but she can delete the list of "right" answers. "What is your name?" the machine asks.

"Vicki."

"For what purpose do you want the weapons?"

"Revolution!"

And the door opens. A small army of Xerons quickly gather, and Jeremy Bulloch distributes guns to them.

Vicki, now armed, heads for the museum, picking up Barbara along the way. But they're captured by Morok guards and taken to the embalming room, where they're imprisoned with Ian and the Doctor. It now appears that the four of them will, indeed, end up on display.

But events have taken on a life of their own, and the Xeron revolution is fully underway. The Xerons storm the Morok headquarters, freeing the TARDIS team and killing or capturing the Morok high command. Morok rule on Xeros is ended. As the Xerons dismantle the space museum, the TARDIS team depart. Before they do, the Doctor identifies and fixes the machinery that caused them to jump a time track--he likens it to when you flip a light switch and have to wait a moment for the light to come on; until that part activated, even though the TARDIS had landed, they hadn't "really" arrived.

What Lisa thought

Rob Shearman, author of the 2005 episode "Dalek", has a monologue on the DVD release of "The Space Museum" speaking in defence of the story, which is, after all, generally considered a low point of 1960s Doctor Who. But "The Space Museum", according to Shearman, is actually rather a good story, only it's let down by three elements--"and those three elements are episode two, episode three and episode four."

After "An Unearthly Child" and "The Sensorites", this makes the third time it's happened, which I guess means we can consider it a theme--though whether it's a theme of the William Hartnell era or the Verity Lambert era, I can't tell, since the majority of the post-Lambert Hartnell era no longer exists. But time and again, the programme during this early period shows a definite talent for opening a story with a wonderfully creepy, atmospheric setup built around a solid science-fictional concept (ordinary things in our everyday lives being camouflage for a wondrous, undreamt-of world; torture by telepathy; "jumping a time track" in this story), which promise is then squandered as the story abruptly shifts gear and becomes a straightforward political morality play with characters in outlandish costume and makeup.

Certainly that's always been my feeling, and at least with "An Unearthly Child" and "The Space Museum", that's generally been fandom's feeling too. (Though I don't know if I've ever seen the dots connected before to point out that it's something the Lambert era does repeatedly.) But here, just as with "The Sensorites", Lisa disagrees.

She really liked "The Space Museum" a lot. She describes it (and I think she's thinking here of parts two through four) as "Doctor Who chick lit", meaning that she found it light and frothy--for parts two and three, she was actually surprised when they ended, because they'd gone by so quickly, she didn't think enough time has elapsed.

I asked her what she thought of the first episode, and she agreed that it was that that carried the tension through the rest of the story. Without the TARDIS team having to worry about whether or not they've broken the chain of events leading to being entombed in the museum, there might not be much left. ("The Doctor and team come to a planet where the peaceful inhabitants have been enslaved by an alien warrior race, and help them overthrow their conquerors. But get this for a twist--the whole revolution happens in the corridors of a museum!")

One thing Lisa picked up on (and really liked) that I hadn't noticed is that the Morok technology itself has a theme, based around an ability to read minds--the televisual mind reader with which they interrogate the Doctor, and the lie-detecting lock at the armoury.

Another thing she picked up that I didn't, and which really annoyed her: Barbara's cardigan. She's wearing it in the glass case, yet by midway through episode two, it's been completely unravelled. But no one comments on this or whether it means the chain of events has been broken--and this despite the fact that just a few minutes earlier, the Doctor had made a huge deal about Ian having lost a button on his jacket, and how it's a pity he hadn't noticed whether or not the button was missing in the exhibit case. He makes a big enough deal, in fact, that it very much comes off as an unsubtle piece of setting up having Barbara's cardigan be significant.

The next story is "The Chase".

I

Doctor Who: "The Web Planet"

Hilio, the Menoptra have no wisdom for war. Before the Animus came, the flower forests covered the planet in a cocoon of peace. Our ancestors carved temples like this, for resting places for our dead, but that was all the work we did.--Hrostar

Vrestin surrounded by Optera

"The Web Planet", 13 February 1965
"The Zarbi", 20 February 1965
"Escape to Danger", 27 February 1965
"Crater of Needles", 6 March 1965
"Invasion", 13 March 1965
"The Centre", 20 March 1965

Written by Bill Strutton
Directed by Richard Martin
Script editor: Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki

From a standpoint of production design, the "The Web Planet" might just be the most ambitious story Doctor Who has ever attempted--certainly, the most ambitious of the surviving stories from the 1960s. We get a multiplicity of touches intended to make us feel like Vortis is a truly alien planet: streaks of Vaseline are smeared across the camera to make the planet look like it's bathed in otherworldly light, fog is pumped across the floor, and there's an echo on all the dialogue to highlight the thin atmosphere.

All three of the alien species that inhabit Vortis have had a great deal of effort expended on being made to look as alien as possible, through costume, movement and voice. They're all man-sized versions of bugs: the Zarbi are giant ants, the Menoptra are giant bees and the Optera are giant grubs. The Menoptra even convert the TARDIS team's names into versions pronounceable in their own language, calling Barbara "Harberra" and Ian "Heron".

It's a shame, then, that ultimately, it all fails.

The Vaseline on the camera keeps making you want to squint to bring it all into focus, even though that won't work. The Menoptra's dancing movements and singsong voices become more annoying as the serial draws on. The Optera hopping around (and the Doctor's bizarre attempts at communicating with the Zarbi by gesture) are so comical that it becomes impossible to take anything seriously. By the time you've slogged your way through all six episodes of "The Web Planet", you're really just glad it's over.

Some force captures the TARDIS in flight and forces it to materialise on the planet Vortis. The Doctor and Ian go outside to explore the blasted, rocky landscape, while Barbara stays inside to tend to Vicki, who has been taken faint by some element of Vortis. There's a cute scene where Vicki (who's from the 26th century) reacts with suspicion to Barbara's insistence that she take some aspirin, calling it "mediaeval medicine", and is surprised to learn that Barbara teaches high-school history when history is a subject that should be mastered by small children.

Outside on the planet's surface, Ian and the Doctor have made a few interesting discoveries. Ian pulls out his gold pen to allow the Doctor to make a note, and the pen vanishes out of his hand--the Doctor theorises there must be something in the atmosphere that reacts with gold. They also discover that what appear at first to be springs of water are actually springs of acid.

Back at the TARDIS, Barbara is still wearing the gold bracelet Nero gave her, and suddenly some force takes control of the arm on which she's wearing it. The TARDIS doors open, and Barbara falls into a deep trance. Led by her possessed wrist, she walks out onto the planet's surface.

Ian and the Doctor hear her scream, but when they return to the TARDIS's landing site, there's no sign of her. Nor is there any sign of the TARDIS: something has dragged it away. That something turns out to be the Zarbi, a race of giant ants who communicate only in unintelligible electronic trills. The actors in the Zarbi costumes all walk bent at the waist to simulate the idea that they're walking on all fours (or all sixes, I suppose). A herd of Zarbi appear and capture Ian and the Doctor, then lead them off.

Barbara, meanwhile, is still walking in her trance across the planet's surface. She's intercepted by a group of Menoptra, who shepherd her into a cave and remove the bracelet from her wrist, breaking the trance. The Menoptra explain that the Animus, the alien being who rules Vortis, can use gold to control other beings telepathically. These three Menoptra are a scouting party, travelling in advance of a larger invasion force who will soon arrive to attempt to destroy the Animus and conquer Vortis.

The Menoptra dance gracefully across the floor, and when they speak, they hold their forearms in front of them with their palms facing upward, and their voices lilt melodically. It's impossible to take them seriously. A debate now ensues amongst them over whether they can trust Barbara; if they can't, she has to be killed. Rather than staying to find out the verdict, Barbara waits till they're not paying attention to her, then dashes out onto the planet's surface.

She's ambushed by a Zarbi patrol, who place a harness made of gold on her shoulders, bringing her back under the Animus's control. So enthralled, she leads the Zarbi straight to the Menoptra's cave, where the Zarbi attack the Menoptra scouts. Most of the scouts are killed. Barbara and a Menoptra named Hrostar are the only survivors; imprisoned, they're led away to be used as slave labour.

Ian and the Doctor are taken to the Carsinome, a dark, twisting warren of tunnels that seems to be the lair of the Animus and the Zarbi--in fact, the Animus's consciousness seems present throughout the Carsinome (a name I love). In a chamber in its bowels, they find Vicki and the TARDIS.

The Doctor is able to communicate with the Animus through communications device that descends from the ceiling, though no one is allowed to see her. She informs him that Barbara has been captured and put to work in the Crater of Needles, and also tells him that she knows of the planned Menoptra invasion, but does not know when it will arrive. The Doctor offers to use his astral map to help her locate the approaching invaders, but tells her that her surveillance of the TARDIS is interfering with the map's functioning. Reluctantly, the Animus turns off her awareness of the chamber where they're being held, and Ian takes the opportunity to escape the Carsinome, heading for the Crater of Needles to rescue Barbara.

On the way, he meets a Menoptra named Vrestin, another survivor of the Zarbi's attack on the scouting party. From Vrestin, he learns that the Menoptra were the original inhabitants of Vortis. The world was a paradise of flower forests then; the Menoptera buzzed above them, while the Zarbi, cattle-like, lived on the ground. The Carsinome appeared and grew slowly, with the Animus at its heart; the Menoptra did not take notice of it until it was too late. Their invasion force is returning now, because if they wait much longer, the Carsinome will cover the whole planet.

Ian and Vrestin are found by the Zarbi, but they escape from them down an underground tunnel. Underground, they encounter the Optera, the planet's grub-like race, who move around by hopping on their single leg. (It's as ridiculous as it sounds.) Ian realises that the Optera are descendants of Menoptra who fled underground, and over the generations evolved to live down there, losing the ability of flight. Though the Optera, suspicious of those who live "in the Light", are initially inclined to execute Ian and Vrestin, they're soon persuaded instead to join the fight against the Animus.

Barbara and Hrostar have been put to work in the Crater of Needles. Hrostar, and all the other Menoptra there, have had their wings torn off to stop them from escaping. It's a wonderful touch: a visible reminder that, even if the Animus is beaten, many of the Menoptra will still be crippled for life.

When the Zarbi guarding over them are suddenly called away (the Doctor has picked up Menoptra radio signals on his astral map and told the Animus that the invasion is about to begin), Barbara and Hrostar are able to escape, climbing out of the Crater and onto the plateau, where the troops of the Menoptra invasion spearhead are starting to land. But the spearhead are ambushed by the Zarbi and massacred; only a handful of Menoptra, including Barbara, Hrostar, and the spearhead leader Hilio, escape, taking refuge in a cave that turns out to be an abandoned Menoptra temple from the days before the Animus.

The survivors are now hopelessly outnumbered, but they have two things on their side: the "isop-tope", a bomb that will destroy the Animus if they can get close enough to her, and a Zarbi that they're able to control telepathically using the power of the Doctor's magic ring. (It's never actually called "magic", but we've never heard of it before, never hear of it again, and the Doctor explicitly refuses to discuss how it works. So. Magic.)

They therefore decide they must attempt to infiltrate the Carsinome and destroy the Animus. They're able to gain entrance using their captured Zarbi, and then make their way to the central lair, where the great, tentacled mass of the Animus is located. There, they find the Doctor and Vicki, who have been imprisoned. But the presence of the Animus somehow mesmerises our three heroes, who all start to fall asleep; and Menoptra, being insects, are drawn insatiably towards its core, because it emits light.

The day is saved when Ian, Vrestin and the Optera break into the ceremonial chamber, tunnelling up from below. This disturbance lets Barbara get enough of a grip back on her senses to drop the isop-tope into the Animus's innards, killing the alien being. The Carsinome starts to disintegrate; the Zarbi return to their normal, bovine-like state; the springs of acid once more become springs of water. With the planet slowly recovering, the TARDIS crew depart.

What Lisa thought

Lisa pretty much agreed with me that the serial ultimately fails as a story. It's unfortunate that narratively, it's essentially a rehash of "The Daleks": the TARDIS materialises in what was once a verdant forest, but is now a blasted landscape. The first episode is spent without alien contact, as our heroes spend their time either in the TARDIS or exploring the terrain nearby. The team discover the carcass of a small animal, which provides them a clue to the nature of the plot: in "The Daleks", it's the creature that's been fossilised into stone by the atomic blast; here, it's the abandoned exoskeleton of a giant larva that has moulted. We ultimately learn that the planet's peaceful, agrarian inhabitants are being threatened by an implacable, industrialising enemy. The final, against-all-odds assault on the enemy is spread out over two or three episodes, as the TARDIS team and their native allies are required to split into groups and approach the enemy stronghold from different directions. There's even the open liquid on the planet's surface turning out to be pools of acid, which, while not from "The Daleks", is from another Terry Nation-penned story, "The Keys of Marinus".

Though, Lisa was willing to concede one thing: through all the screen time Barbara got in this story, she didn't find her annoying. I guess she's finally warming up to her, two stories before her departure.

The next story is "The Crusade", in which Barbara is captured for Saladin's harem and Ian is knighted by Richard the Lionhearted, but two of its four episodes are missing. Therefore, the next story in our rewatch will be "The Space Museum".

I