The Claws of Axos

"In case things should go wrong, I am making this recording as a record of what not to do."--the Doctor

Axons!

Episode One, 13 March 1971
Episode Two, 20 March 1971
Episode Three, 27 March 1971
Episode Four, 3 April 1971

Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Directed by Michael Ferguson
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Barry Letts

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
Roger Delgado as the Master
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Katy Manning as Jo Grant
Richard Franklin as Captain Yates
John Levene as Sergeant Benton

Axos crashes in southern England.  Axos turns out to be a spaceship, but not as we'd think of one--a carefully crafted hulk of metal and technology.  Instead, the science of the Axons--the crew of Axos--has followed a biological path, and Axos is a living, organic being.

The Axons aboard Axos are the last of their kind, and now they're dying.  In order to survive they need to replenish their energy supplies by drawing from the Earth's, and they're willing to pay for the privilege by sharing with humanity the secret of axonite, "the chameleon of the elements".  Axonite is the basis for Axon science--it mimics whatever organism it comes into contact with, instantly becoming a perfect copy of them.  If Earth had access to axonite, it would eliminate at a stroke all organic scarcity, and therefore all world hunger.

The Brigadier, as an official of the United Nations, attempts to accept on behalf of all humanity, but xenophobic government minister named Mr Chin steps in, arresting the Brig and the UNIT personnel and instead securing exclusive rights to axonite for the British government.  But what neither the Doctor, Mr Chin nor the Brigadier know is that the Master is aboard Axos.  The Axons captured him as he was fleeing the Earth following "The Mind of Evil", and he led them back to the planet, promising it to them in exchange for them allowing him his freedom.

Whatever the Axons' real plan is, it requires worldwide distribution of axonite.  So the Master leaves Axos and contacts the United Nations, to let them know of the secret deal Mr Chin has struck for Britain.  When news of that becomes public, the uproar causes the British government to agree to immediately distribute axonite to every country in the world.

It turns out that Axos, the Axons and axonite are all a single living organism.  Once that organism has been distributed around the world, it will activate itself, feeding on the Earth--and leaving nothing behind but a dry, lifeless hulk.  The Doctor concludes that now the situation is hopeless, so he joins forces with the Master and takes his TARDIS aboard Axos, offering to show the Axons the secret of time travel if they'll let him escape from the doomed Earth.

Of course, that's a trick, and when the Axons allow him to link Axos to the TARDIS, he traps them in a time loop, forcing them to live the same ten seconds over and over for eternity, thereby freeing the Earth from the axonite.  The TARDIS then returns him to Earth, rather against his will--the Time Lords have set its controls so that it will always take him back to the place of his exile.  "It seems," he says, "that I am some sort of galactic yo yo!"

What Lisa thought

It's unfair, I think, to dismiss "The Claws of Axos" out of hand as just another UNIT story.  There are a couple of really neat ideas here.  For instance, there's the way we automatically side with UNIT and against Mr Chin.  Of course axonite should be distributed freely to the whole world, and of course Chin is despicable for wanting to horde it all for Britain.  But then it turns out that hording it all in Britain would have foiled the Axons' whole plan, and it's the distribution of axonite all over the world that puts the whole planet in mortal danger.

And then there's the parallel of the Axons' plan to destroy the Earth alongside how the Doctor defeats the Axons in the end.  In both instances, the party with knowledge of a spectacular technology got access to the lesser party's resources by appealing to their greed, and then once they had that access, they betrayed the other party for their own gain.

But it's undeniable that this has been our seventh consecutive story set in Cold War Britain, and it's starting to wear.  Certainly it's wearing on Lisa, who could summon up no real reaction to this story at all.  A good thing, then, that the next story in our rewatch is "Colony in Space".