Four episodes
Aired between 27th September 1980 and 18th October 1980
Written by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Terence Dudley
Synopsis
As the Doctor and Romana tinker in the TARDIS to repair K9, a bunch of space mercenaries land on a desolate planet called Zolfa-Thura. There, they bring a modern day earthman to a strange structure that rises from under the ground.
The mercenaries have been hired by a talking cactus called Meglos to help him get a very powerful artefact called the Dodecahedron from a neighbouring planet called Tigella.
On said planet, the Dodecahedron is supplying power to a community of humans that are split up into two philosophies - the Deons (priests) and Savants (scientists). Both are led by an old man called Zastor.
The Dodecahedron is doing something strange and neither group can decide what to do about it. Zastor has sent an invitation to the Doctor to help out. On Zolfa-Thura, Meglos knows this, and after he uses the human prisoner to morph into a dopelganger,
he sends the approaching TARDIS into a time loop, then morphs into the Doctor to impersonate him.
The Gaztaks take Meglos to Tigella and looking like the Doctor, he manages to steal the Dodecahedron from under their noses.
The Doctor and Romana repair K9 but realise they're trapped in a time-loop. They manage to get their way out of it, only to be split up and be captured by the Tigellans and Gaztaks.
Thankfully, Romana slips the mercenaries and gets back to stop the Doctor from getting crushed under a rock. They rush back to the TARDIS and follow Meglos to Zolfa-Thura. Once there, the Doctor himself takes a leaf out of the alien's book and ends up impersonating Meglos in order to gain access to the Dodecahedron.
It turns out that the power source is being used by Meglos as a type of death-star lazer to destroy other planets.
The Doctor sets it up so that the lazer destroys Zolfa-Thura itself, he rescues the human businessman, and he gets them back to the TARDIS in time to take off, thereby leaving Meglos and the Gaztaks to be destroyed.
The Doctor agrees to take the human businessman back to earth before they continue on with their adventures.
Trivia
- The writers were sitcom writers that Christopher Bidmead discovered and invited to work something up. As they were writing at one of their homes, they noticed a very sorry looking potted cactus on the kitchen table and used that as a template for Meglos
- As part of their writing style (and likely because they weren't veterans at writing sci fi) they used an anagram for one of the character's names. Brotodac is actually an anagram of Bad Actor. They did write other scripts for Doctor Who and the anagrams got progressively ruder.
- A lot of the Gaztak uniforms are from The Ribos Operation
- This story debuted the first use of a revolutionary new technique in special effects. It was called scene sync. It worked by using technology to link the camera focused on the green screened actors with the camera focussed on the tiny model, so that when the characters walked across the room, the other camera panned too, allowing it to look like they were walking across the surface of an alien planet. This doesn't sound great now, but in 1980 it was huge. Look back to Underworld and see if you notice any special effects shot where the camera pans and then compare it to this.
- Because the season's stories were not shot in the same order as they were shown, it's hard to tell, but during this story, Tom Baker was quite ill due to an illness he'd picked up in Spain. He got so bad that at one point, Llala Ward (who was having an on-again off-again relationship with him), had to feed Tom Baker via tubs of baby food. It's speculated that this act brought them back together for a time and we'll see later in this season what that lead to.
- The end credit music for part 4 weirdly is in a different key (and is actually the same key as Delia Derbyshire's original title score)
- Last but not least, this sees the return of Jaqueline Hill, Barbara herself (not the character unfortunately). She spent the time between Doctor Who having kids and raising them. She wanted to get back into acting and her husband pulled some strings to get her this gig
The Review
Meglos is a strange story to summarise in review. As a story itself, it doesn't do anything new. We've got a bunch of primitives who are monopolising planetary resources on jungle planets (creature from the pit). We've got two worlds at war with one a wasteland and another lives in a bunker (Armageddon Factor). Even the dopelganger isn't anything new.
What is new, is the techniques of the story, and whether I want to admit it or not, they do go some way to redeeming this story. Let's start with the obvious one - the make up. I think it's brilliant. Although the concept of an evil cactus is like something straight out of Monty Python, the practical effects are so intricate and painstakingly applied that I can't help but to be impressed. The voice of Meglos is pretty great too, harking back to that gravelly growl of Morbius and hints that this thing is really evil.
The scene sync is also a very welcome addition and up to this point, I never even knew I wanted it. It opens so many doors of potential for the production team that I can't help but get excited about how this will be used in the future episodes.
Then there's the acting. Most of the Tigellans and Gaztaks are very melodramatic, I have to say, and the stupid haircuts and clothes don't help lend any credibility to them. Brotodac is funny and stupid, but he's meant to be. The real gem is that even Tom Baker relishes playing the villain and happily does it well. And this brings us to another point on technique. For the second story running, he's relegated to a side slot, whilst Romana does all the fast talking. Their roles have become reversed. She rescues him now, she gathers companions. It's not necessarily bad, just weird.
I like Meglos, but not because of anything it offers as a story. I would watch this story purely from a fascinated place, where I wanted to see the technological and cultural turning points of the show itself.
Rating
6 out of 10
4 out of 10
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