Attack of the Cybermen

Two Episodes (45mins each)
Aired between 5th January 1985 and 12th January 1985

Written by Paula Moore
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Matthew Robinson

Synopsis

Perri is still unsure about the Doctor's mental condition as he is currently frustrated at his attempts to repair the TARDIS' chameleon circuit. 

After a bit of persuading, he agrees to take Perri somewhere relaxing on Earth, but as he makes the adjustments, something pulls him to a specific location on the planet.

On Earth, Lytton, the stranded mercenary who fought with the Daleks has acquired himself a new job. He's now a bank robber, and has got a team together - Russel (an explosives expert), as well as Payne and Griffiths (hired muscle).  Together, they plan to steal 10 million pounds worth of diamonds, and Lytton orders Russel to get the explosives that day as the schedule has moved.

Russel goes to make the arrangements, but informs someone on the other end of the phone what the plan is.

The Doctor meanwhile decides to land and investigate a strange distress beacon, that seemingly pulled them off course.  The Chameleon circuit isn't working 100% and as they land at 76 Totters Lane scrapyard (See An Unearthly Child), it transforms into a french dresser. 

The Doctor starts wandering the streets with a tracker and Perri tries her best to keep up, all the while, they're unaware of two Policemen following them.

Lytton and his men meanwhile go into the sewers from an old access hatch at a garage site and move through the sewers, intending to blow the diamond vault from beneath.  It becomes obvious that they're being followed too, so Payne hangs back to kill whoever it is.  As the group get to the spot, they're surprised and captured by none other than a group of Cybermen (Payne is killed by a black stealth Cyberman in the process).  Russel however manages to slip away.

The Doctor traces the signal to the garage site and is confronted by the Policemen. They are Lytton's goons and are soon disarmed and cuffed. The Doctor and Perri go into the sewers to investigate and find Russel who after also being disarmed, tells them about Lytton's plan. It turns out that Russel is an undercover cop and was going to have them arrested but things went crazy with the arrival of the Cybermen.

Meanwhile, Lytton explains to the Cybermen that he's been looking for them (that was his real plan) and he wants to serve them. They tell him that the Cyber-Controller on Telos will decide his fate.

On Telos, the desert / ice planet, a group of captives work in the desolate landscape, digging rocks.  Three of the prisoners try to escape but one is killed, leaving only two - Bates and Stratton - to get away. Bates is angry and explains that they need 3 men to pilot a ship he knows is close by and they also need the head of a Cyberman to hollow out and use as a disguise. 

Back on Earth, the Doctor takes Russel back to the TARDIS but finds that the Policemen have been taken.  He's confronted in the sewers by a Cyber-Scout (black Cyberman) and kills it with his sonic lance.  Once they get inside the TARDIS, they see that it's overrun by Cybermen.  Russel is eventually killed and the Cyber-Leader orders Perri to be killed too. They are all spared however when the Doctor bargains to take the Cybermen to Telos if they let them live. 

The Doctor, Perri, Griffiths and Lytton are all closed inside an internal room off the console room and the TARDIS gets underway.

The Doctor leans from Lytton that the Cybermen have crude time travel thanks to a ship that crash-landed on Telos (and now the TARDIS). They have big plans for it, but Lytton won't say how he knows so much. 

The Doctor sabotages the trip, and they land in the catacombs of Telos instead of the main control room. 

The Cybermen lead them out, but they're attacked by crazed, diseased Cybermen from the tombs. The attack allows everyone to escape except the Doctor.  The humans run into the Cryons, ancient people of Telos who's cities the Cybermen took over for themselves. 

It turns out that Lytton was hired by the Cryons to help them stop the Cybermen and free their cities.  The Cybermen's plans involve going back in time to 1986 when Mondas arrived at Earth (see The Tenth Planet), and stopping its destruction.  They will then leave Telos and destroy it.

The Doctor meanwhile is placed in a cold room and meets the Cryon leader, Flast. 

She explains that the Cybermen will stop Mondas' destruction by diverting Halley's comet into Earth before Mondas can absorb too much of its energy. 

Lytton and Griffiths go out to find the crashed time-ship and meet Bates and Stratton, joining forces. Lytton is re-captured by the Cybermen along the way though. Ultimately, they do make it to the ship, but Cybermen are inside and they're all gunned down mercilessly.  Lytton is tortured and put into a conversion chamber.

The Doctor escapes his icy prison by using his sonic lance to warm up Vastial, an explosive mineral.  It blows the door and allows him to escape.  He gives his lance to Flast for her to blow up cyber control with the rest of the mineral.

The Doctor then finds Perri and they go to the TARDIS. The remaining Cryons urge them to go, but Perri convinces The Doctor to go back for Lytton, revealing his good intentions all along.  He takes the TARDIS to the conversion centre and finds Lytton but the Cyber-Controller finds him.

The Doctor palms a scalpel to Lytton who stabs the Controller when he reaches him. This is enough of a distraction for the Doctor to grab a gun and kill them, but not before Lytton himself is destroyed.

The Doctor mourns the loss of Lytton and escapes just in time for the Vastial to blow up and taking the time ship and the Cybermen of Telos with it.

Trivia

• The main thing to say about this story is that there's a lot of contention about who actually wrote it.  The simple answer is that Eric Saward wrote it.  The longer answer is that he wrote it, but Script Editor's couldn't usually commission their own work, so he got his ex-partner - Paula Woolsey to put her name to it (but called herself Paula Moore).  Not contentious so far, but... Ian Levine, continuity advisor to the show claims to this day that he had a lot of input into the story but goes un-credited.  Eric Saward strongly disagrees and says he had very minor things to contribute to the story.

• This is the first story of this season that intentionally shifted to using the 2x 45min format for episodes. The production team liked this format as the 25min format didn't allow much time for character or plot development.  

• The keen eyed of you will have spotted Terry Molloy playing the part of Russel. For those of you who don't know, he is the 1980's Davros. He got the part after the Director promised to find him a non-costume roll in one of his productions. 

•  Interestingly enough, Donald Plessence was down to play the part of Griffiths, but that fell through and Brian Glover got the part instead. He was supposed to play it cockney, but after two days of rehearsals, he managed to convince the Director to let him play it northern instead.

• The scene with Lytton getting his hands crushed was actually gorier, but was cut as a result

The Review

Being written by Eric Saward, the Attack of the Cybermen is similar in style to Ressurection of the Daleks, but whereas I feel that the Daleks story is innocent of much that is levelled against it, this is undeniably guilty.  The story is convoluted and far too complicated for its own good and big parts of it feel clunky and shoehorned in just to satisfy some need that they feel fans will have.

Case in point, there's no need to go to Totters Lane, but we do anyway. There's no need to mess around with the Chameleon Circuit, but we do anyway.  Was there ever a point in Lytton being there at all?  Yes, there's some small aspect of an arc there, but lets face it, his police goons barely feature in it and by the nature of the fact that he's a mercenary, there's no real personal stake in this for him at all.  Redemptive arc, fair enough, but it barely does anything to move me and make me lament his death even a quarter as much as the Doctor and Perri seem to.  You could just as well slip anyone into that role and it still work as well.

The biggest thing that this story is guilty of is trying too hard. It goes far above and beyond to cram in as much continuity references as humanly possible but manages it all awkwardly.  In a big way, this was meant to be a sequel to Tomb of the Cybermen, but seeing as it wasn't anywhere in the archives in 1985, the production of it doesn't even vaguely resemble the ice tombs of Telos that we now all know and love. The costumes are too up to date and you wouldn't use the old ones in a modern story even if you had them.  There's no Cyberman logo on the walls, and where did the Cryons and all these prisoners come from.  Come to think of it, what is all this about a crashed time-ship?! 

Is there anything good about this story then?  Yes.  The mood lighting is spot on. The music, when not having a god awful comedic theme for the criminals, is quite striking and the sections with Bates (as pointless as he was) is quite brutal and nicely raises tension.  The story as has been pointed out by others, is effectively cut into two.  The first part is a mystery - exploring seedy locations and building up horror, but the second part near enough destroys all of that with bonkers plot twists and confusing run around's for reasons that make little sense.

I want to like Attack of the Cybermen, and in individual scenes, it works, but as a whole, it's just very, very messy.

Rating

5 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Tenth Planet

• Tomb of the Cybermen

• The Invasion

• Earthshock

• Resurrection of the Daleks

The Twin Dilemma

Four Episodes
Aired between 22nd March 1984 and 30th March 1984

Written by Anthony Steven
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Moffatt

Synopsis

The Doctor is unhinged.

He is arrogant to the last, thinking that his new regeneration is superior in every way, but his personality keeps shifting. On top of that, his dress sense is appalling as he chooses a god-awful jacket that must have come from the biblical Joseph.

One outburst even results in him choking Perri half to death.

Whilst this is happening, two twin math geeks - Romulus and Remus are abducted by an old man called Edgeworth and taken to a spaceship thanks to a narcotic patch.

Edgeworth contact a slug like creature called Mestor and reports he has the twins.  He's ordered to go to the asteroid Titan III.

The twins father calls the cops and Lieutenant Hugo Lang takes on the job of hunting them down.

The Doctor being told about his violent attack on Perri realises he's not in his right mind. He declares that he wants to live in isolation for a thousand years in penance (even though Perri is with him).  He decides on Titan III as the perfect place to serve his atonement.

As they get there, they hear a ship crash landing.  They check it out and find an unconscious Lieutenant Lang in the wreckage. 

They take him back to the TARDIS but when he recovers, he accuses the Doctor of destroying his fleet and taking the twins.

Lang points a gun at the Doctor but faints again before he can pull the trigger.  The Doctor starts to act selfishly by refusing to help the man after being threatened, but Perri shames him into it.

Once they've treated Lang, the Doctor looks outside and finds a building on the isolated asteroid.  He and Perri check it out and get captured by two bird like aliens. The Doctor acts cowardly, begging them to kill Perri, not him. 

They don't kill them though, instead, the aliens take them to Edgeworth.

The Doctor recognises Edgeworth as an old Time Lord known as Azmael - lord of Jaconda.  They used to be friends. The Doctor realises that Azmael has abducted the twins and that he is using them to carry out complex math problems. They discover that someone else is ruling Jaconda now and forcing Azmael to do his bidding. Azmael looks sorry to do so, but he traps the Doctor and Perri inside his lab.  The Doctor isn't worried though, he thinks he can find the combination for the door lock in a day or two.  Unfortunately, one of the bird aliens has planted a bomb in the lab and it's ticking down.

Working fast, the Doctor uses some of Azmaels technology to teleport himself and Perri back to the TARDIS a little earlier in time.

Back in the TARDIS, Lang recovers and changes his tattered top.  Perri arrives and he holds her prisoner.  The building on the asteroid explodes and Perri thinks the Doctor's dead, but he turns up a short time later, alive and well.

They take the TARDIS in pursuit of Azmael to Jaconda.  The planet is not the jungle paradise as expected though, it's delsolate and rocky and full of giant gastropod trails.  Perri suggests going to the Palace to save Azmael and the planet ,but the Doctor doesn't want to as he fears for his life.  He finally agrees to, but decides to go underground, beneath the palace instead.  As they emerge, they find old cave paintings that depict a story of giant gastropods coming to Jaconda as retribution from a sun god. The gastropods were supposedly defeated, but the Doctor points out that clearly they weren't.  They see two of the gastropods go by but as they attempt to sneak away, Lang gets his foot stuck in their hardening slime trails.

Elsewhere, the twins come face to face with Mestor.  It becomes clear that Mestor has usurped Azmael's rulership of Jaconda and part of Mestor's plan is revealed to the twins. He intends to draw two planets into the same orbit as Jaconda. The kids are needed to stabilise their orbit.

The Doctor gets fed up of waiting for Lang to free himself and rushes off ahead to Azmael's lab, confronting him (and trying to strangle him).  The only friendly Jacondan left and the twins restrain the Doctor long enough for him to regain his senses.

Perri gets captured by the Jacondan's and taken to Mestor who intends to kill her. 

Lang, who managed to hide, rushes to tell the Doctor.  Turns out though, even Mestor finds Perri attractive and decides to keep her alive for a little while.

The Doctor is brought to Mestor and he suggests that the giant slug let him help move the planets, especially since these planets will then be moved into different time zones using technology stolen from Azmael.  He also bargains for Perri to be his assistant.

Mestor agrees and as the Doctor is snooping around the lab, he finds lots of gastropod eggs, engineered to withstand extreme heat.

He works out that the point of the planets is to put the eggs on them and send them to a time when the sun explodes. The eggs will be unharmed but will be shot into space to continue the gastropod's cycle of life and conquering of other planets.

Mestor uses the mind of Azmael's Jacondan friend to overhear their discovery, and knows that his game is up.  The Doctor sends Perri, Lang and the twins back to the TARDIS, whilst he and Azmael gather some supplies from the lab and confront Mestor. 

Mestor refuses to give up his plan and the Doctor hurls acid at him, but finds that Mestor is protected by a force field.  Mestor shows his power by possessing Azmael. The Doctor then destroys Mestor's original body with a second vial before the slug can return to it. 

Whilst Mestor is still alive, the ace up their sleeve is that Azmael was on his last regeneration, and therefore, when he forces himself to regenerate, the body dies and kills Mestor.

The Doctor takes a second to mourn his old friend and then goes back to the TARDIS.  Lang decides to stay on Jaconda and help the bird people rebuild and the Doctor agrees to return the twins home. 

Perri is still not happy with the Doctor's current regeneration, but he say's that he's the Doctor whether she likes it or not.

Trivia

• As you've probably seen, the story doesn't actually contain a dilemma about the twins

• Colin Baker was an odd choice to be a Doctor.  Rumour has it that John Nathan-Turner saw Baker's exuberant and erratic side at a party and decided he'd be fun to have.  Indeed, JNT modelled this Doctor somewhat on his own tastes and sensibilities - hence the bright coloured coat (he himself was a lover of gaudy Hawaiian shirts).

• Eric Saward thought that Colin Baker was not the right choice for the Doctor, but was forced to go along with it anyway.  

• Much of the "messed up Doctor" was JNT's idea, as was the decision to end season 21 with a sixth Doctor story to get people used to him

• Colin Baker himself had different ideas, wanting to be dressed pretty much as the 9th Doctor would end up.  He was overruled and had to wear the awful costume instead. He however did come up with the idea of the cat badge. This was intended to tie in the theme of a cat having 9 lives 

• In 2009, when Dr Who magazine asked fans to vote on their favourite stories from the classic era, The Twin Dilemma came in dead last, whereas The Caves of Androzani came in first place

The Review

The Twin Dilemma is a different Doctor Who in all the wrong ways.  John Nathan-Turner's vision for this Doctor was to shake things up, make him more edgy and unpredictable - almost a return to the crotchety old days of the first Doctor. He also wanted to get a story into the end of season twenty one so that the fans would get used to him before the next season started in the autumn.  The theory behind all that is okay, but the reality was something much different.

You see, to make it work, for a start, the Doctor has to come full circle so that he's redeemed and back to "normal" by the end of the story. As you see by the end remarks (and will see by future stories) this crotchety regeneration gone wrong will carry on for most of his next season. Given the ballsy move to actually try to choke Perri out on screen too, this Doctor just comes across as a complete tw@t!  I mean, there's very little in the way of redeeming qualities about him, and this is still the case by the end of the story (if you discount the brief glimpse of sorrow at Perri nearly dying or the actual death of Azmael). This would have undoubtebly left people at the end of the series looking in stunned disbelief and thinking - wow, this IS the new Doctor whether WE like it or not. Many would stop viewing because of this.

Also, the budget had been blown on the previous stories, so this is laughable in realisation of effects. Not something you want to put your new star into is it? 

All this is before we even get into the baffling and pointless use of the twins.

Many people take the mickey out of the Jacondan bird people, but that is one aspect that I do actually like. They did a decent job of them, in light of the budget.

I would fully recommend watching just to the point of the Doctor getting his new clothes and then switch off.  Switch it off, eject the disc (if that's still a thing) and throw it in the bin.

Rating 

4 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Web Planet

• Frontios

• Vengeance on Varos

• Mindwarp (Trial of a Time Lord Parts 5-8)

My Time with the Fifth Doctor

Nineteenth Season
As dictated in the trivia for the episodes, Peter Davison had his stories first four stories shot out of sequence to help him get into the swing of things and decide how the Doctor would be played.  This highlights that not even the production team knew what they wanted from him. Tom Baker had been such a character as to drown out everything around him.

I think for the nineteenth season, Peter Davison did a good job of holding his own for the most part, but left a character that was for the most part shall we say a little mild mannered. 

The quality of stories in this season are dubious to be kind, but there are some real gems in here when Eric Saward gets to play around - namely The Visitation and Earthshock. Many fans like Kinda, but for me it misses the mark and tries to be a little bit too intellectual and hits this side of boring.  Still, it was a good attempt.

The season rounds off with a wet fart of a story - Time flight. It wasn't necessarily all the writers fault that it ended so bad, but with time and budget pressures, this was a definite anti-climax to the death of Adric in the previous story.

Twentieth Season
This is the runt of the litter as far as Fifth Doctor stories go.  The aim of this season was supposedly to bring back classic monsters in each story, but for a lot of it (because of script issues and strikes) they got altered and shifted.  The reality of what we saw was a lack luster resurgence of B list monsters and lots of redundant attempts at suspense.

The majority of these stories were poor, with barely anything to keep the viewer drawn in and engaged. One notable exception was the introduction of Turlough and his treachery, but that was resolved (or rather, should have been) by the end of Mawdryn Undead, so we got eight more episodes of him stupidly trying to sabotage the Doctor and the hollow threats of the Black Guardian when he failed.

If you thought things couldn't get worse, there was the hairbrained scheme of John Nathan-Turner to introduce an actual robot to the cast. It wasn't any worse than the disastrous Time Flight and it was only two episodes, but by god, it's not any better either.

Thank heavens then for the Twentieth Anniversary Special!  This was a cheesy ball of nostalgia, but it was done in the right way.  It succeeded in every way where Season Twenty had failed abysmally.  We got old favourites in abundance, and Peter Davison was more than happy to share the limelight with them. This was the turning point.

Twenty First Season

After the slow burn of a start with Warriors of the Deep, this season finally got to where the Fifth Doctor stories should have been from the start.  Only Planet of Fire was a miss, the rest were more or less slap bang in the middle of the target. The stories were gritty, engaging and raised the stakes with the Doctor in a way that hadn't been seen since Season Fourteen.  This was a sign of great things to come as The Caves of Androzani heralded in a new Doctor.  Or at least, so we thought at the time...

The Doctor
Much to his credit, Peter Davison, whether by design or accident, ended up underplaying the Doctor.  For me, his mild mannered persona served to highlight his kindness.  He was in a way, much more relateable than any Doctor before him.  Now, some would say they don't want to relate to a 500+ year old Time Lord, but to me, it helps with audience engagement. 

The best case for this is the final story, The Caves of Androzani.  If Colin Baker's Doctor would have been in this story, he would have buggered off and left Perri to die!  If Tom Baker's Doctor had been in it, he'd have swanned about, wise cracking jokes left, right and centre and come up trumps with very little consequence of feeling of danger.  The fact that Peter Davison's Doctor was genuine and kind hearted, helped to sell the scenario and brought the tragedy of his death home in a way that woul have been impossible to do otherwise.

The fifth Doctor for me will remain one of my favourites and I think it's a crying shame we didn't get at least another season from him in the shape of the Twenty First.  The possibilities would have been amazing.  I will have to content myself with Big Finish for that.

Favourite Moment

As mentioned above the final scenes of The Caves of Androzani.  The fact that this man, this Time Lord gives up his own life for a girl that he's only just met - not to save the universe, but to save one person.  It is supremely powerful and sums up the Doctor's persona to a T. 

Worst Moment

There are so many, but most of them are entire story's long.  None particularly stand out over others, so I would say the worst for now would be the point in Time Flight when the Khalid is killed and looks dead with gunk and everything, only to be inexplicably revealed to be the Master. I mean, why go to all that length with the goop just to say "surprise!"?

Favourite Story

The Resurrection of the Daleks

Caves of Androzani comes in a very close second. This story I guess sneaks into number one because I grew up watching it again and again. I was captivated by all of it. The policemen with sub-machine guns, the terrifying voice of Davros, the ways that the Daleks are shown to be as ruthless as they always should be... It's just great even if it's a mess with all the plots

Worst Story

Time Flight

If it was hard to choose a best story, it is downright near impossible to pick a worst one.  Peter Davison was seriously let down by the quality of stories that he was given. A few of them, as is the case with Time Flight actually, were okay on paper, but the realities of constrained budgets and time meant that the realisation of them was truly god awful.  I shudder at the thought of ever having to watch this story again and with the grace of god, I won't ever get the feeling to.

Favourite Companion

Nyssa

Nyssa is my favourite. She sparks memories of Liz Shaw to me, and whilst there was always a danger of having a "smart" companion on board the TARDIS, Nyssa was always pitched at just the right level. She was smart, but never left the viewer behind.  She was kind and thoughtful and cared about the people around her. It's just a shame that they picked such an awful story for her to go out on - she deserved a better ending.

Worst Companion

Kamelion

Aha!  You thought I'd pick Adric didn't you?  Well, as whiny and spoiled as he was, we did get to see glimpses of how great it would have been to have him when he was alone with the Doctor in Keeper of Trakken.  Plus, we got a great ending when he was written out of the show.

Alas, Kamelion the malfunctioning robot was as pointless as he was irritating. From the very start it was an ill conceived attempt to bring in a strange new companion after the flop of K9 and Company (which coincidentally, I liked, but so did JN-T).

The robot never worked and was quickly abandoned in a storage cupboard onboard the TARDIS until it was time to write him out again.  Everything about him is just redundant and even if it had worked exactly like it should have done, my guess is that it would have been as overpowered as K9 ever was and would have been abandoned anyway.

The Caves of Androzani

Four Episodes
Aired between 8th March 1984 and 16th March 1984

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Graham Harper

Synopsis

The Doctor takes Perri to Androzani minor, a sister planet of Androzani Major and it's little more than a ball of dust, filled with caves that occasionally spew hot mud. The Doctor's interest is piqued when he sees signs of a craft recently arriving and a mono-skid unloading something in the caves.

As they investigate, Perri puts her foot into some kind of sticky web.  The doctor clears it off from her and they continue, eventually getting captured by a bunch of human soldiers. Things escalate quickly as they take the Doctor and Perri to be gun-runners, supplying illegal weapons to a renegade called Sharaz Jek, a man who hides in the tunnels.

Despite the Doctor and Perri's protests, they are sentenced to death by a ritual shooting known as the red cloth.  Their sentence is passed by Trau Morgus, a ruthless businessman who is funding the expedition of soldiers on Androzani Minor to find and kill Jek.

The pair are tied to stakes and shot, but it turns out that somewhere along the line, they were switched out for android duplicates. The real Doctor and Perri are taken to Sharaz Jek's hideout and told they'll remain with him for all eternity.  Jek is a madman, driven mad by isolation in turn caused by hideous disfigurement that forced him to wear a mask at all times.

Whilst they are prisoner, the Doctor and Perri discover one of the soldiers, Salateen, has also been captured and duplicated. His android is currently infiltrating the command, finding out every action that General Chellak makes and reporting back to Jek.  Salateen explains to them that they've been poisoned by raw Spectrox (the thing Perri stepped in) and that they'll be dead in two days from Spectrox Toxaemia if they don't find the milk of bats that hide very deep caverns under Androzani Minor.

The Doctor is determined to find that milk, and he works out that the androids Sharaz Jek left to guard them are keyed to kill humans. He has two hearts (which the androids can detect) and therefore is not human and does not activate them.  Using this trick, he helps Perri and Salateen escape. Together, they go through the tunnels, but a patrol comes along and Salateen grabs Perri, taking her instead back to the soldiers to inform Chellack about his duplicate.

Where is Sharaz Jek you may ask?  He's gone to meet with the real gun runners and he's displeased at the number of weapons that have been seized by the soldiers. He offers a pitiful amount of spectrox (when he's sitting on tons of the stuff) to the mercenaries. They begrudgingly agree and Jek goes to get the spectrox.  The mercenaries follow, intending to kill him and take the tons, but they run into a magma beast, a creature that hunts in the caves. 

The Doctor is caught up in this and is forced to hide as the mercenaries engage the monster and kill it. They find and capture the Doctor.

Jek tells them they were fools and that he knew they were following him. He gives them the Doctor to take back to Androzani Major and promises them 8 kilos of Spectrox if they deliver the next shipment correctly. 

Salateen meets up with Chellak and tells him Jek's plan.  Together, they try to deceive the android, sending men in the wrong direction so that they can stealthily get to Jek's base, but the android sees them through walls and informs its master. 

In response, Jek changes the frequency of the identifier tags, meaning that the androids don't believe they are friends when they approach.  The soldiers are massacred and Jek gets hold of Perri once more (who is significantly weaker from the Toxaemia).

The Doctor is taken on board the mercenaries ship and discovers that Trau Morgus is in fact their employer, playing the army and Jek against themselves to drive profits of Spectrox through the roof. Morgus orders the mercenaries to take off and stay in orbit as he's on his way to the planet.  Before he can get there though, the Doctor breaks his bonds and takes the ship back to Androzani Minor, determined to find the milk of the bat to save Perri.

The ship crash lands, giving the Doctor enough time to run off.  The mercenaries chase him, but are forced to turn back as a mud-burst begins to tear through the tunnels. 

Morgus arrives and gets an update from his mercenaries, only to find that his aide, Frau Timmin has double crossed him and made him a wanted man after revealing that he assassinated the President of Androzani Major.  Morgus has to re-negotiate his position with the mercenaries to go into the caves, kill Jek and take all the Spectrox.  Only the mercenary leader, Stotz agrees, and kills the rest of his men to make sure they don't betray him.

The Doctor finds Perri in the hands of Jek, and vows to get some bats milk.  Jek gives him the remaining oxygen cylinder he has to do it.

Chellak however survived the android attack and fights his way to Jek. He tears off Jek's mask, but is trapped outside when a mud-burst comes and is killed in it.

Morgus and Stotz reach Jek, but Jek kills Morgus, is shot by Stotz and Stotz is killed by one of the remaining androids.

The Doctor gets the milk and makes it back to Perri. He scoops her up in his arms and makes it out of the caves, just as the big mud burst explodes out of them.  He drops some of the milk in the escape, leaving just one dose left.  This dose he gives to Perri, saving her, but dooming himself. 

He regenerates, with the faces and phantom voices of all his companions urging him to survive, but the overriding voice of The Master cursing him to die.

The Doctor regenerates before Perri's eyes and when she asks what's happened to him, he proclaims that he's changed, and not a moment too soon.

Trivia

• Following the disastrous attempt to get Robert Holmes in the Five Doctors, Eric Saward put his foot down and insisted they needed him to write this story.  John Nathan-Turner did not like Robert Holmes in the least, but eventually relented.

• Learning from his past mistakes, Saward gave Holmes carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, so long as he killed the Doctor at the end.

• The regeneration sequence had specially filmed segments for Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) and all the rest.  This involved getting them separately and filming the sequences alone

• This is a special ending sequence in episode 4, as they used Colin Baker's face in the end credits.

• The way Morgus looks at the camera and delivers exposition or internal thoughts was caused by the actor mis-reading Graham Harper's instructions. Unfortunately, the scene it was first filmed in was shot with 30 seconds to go before the plugs were pulled in the studio, so it stood and everyone said they liked it so he kept it.

• A number of top people were indicated to play roles in this story, including Roger Daltry (lead singer of the Who) and Ian Holme (Bilbo Baggins and Ash from Alien)

• When Peter Davison came on board Doctor Who, he agreed to wear the stick of celery, but only if it's use was explained before he left.  Here, John Nathan-Turner offers that explanation

• For years to come, Peter Davision would always recount at conventions that his triumphant regeneration scene was upstaged by the gratuitous shot of Nicola Bryant's cleavage 

The Review

As explained countless times, I believe that Doctor Who works best when its at it's grittiest. The serious application of TV violence often raises the stakes and highlights the struggles that the characters go through, justifying the victory.  The Caves of Androzani has to be the grittiest of gritty stories in the entire run of the show.

It's one of the few stories in the classic era that is shot with low lighting, lots of smoke and mud. It paints a bleak image from the outset and doesn't get any better.  The characters are all selfish, corrupt and ruthless. The closest to an ally is General Chellak, and he not only orders the Doctor and Perri's death, but he is willing to kill his men, just to hide his own incompetence.

The acting is superb on near enough everyone's part. Okay, Sharaz Jek is over the top, but he's meant to be. He's mad. There is an element of melodrama going on, but compare his character to Soldeed in the Horns of Nimon. Jek is genuinely threatening and does little to play the comedy up (with the exception of "even I can't bare to touch myself" line). 

I can't help but marvel at how much information is crammed into this four part story. For example, there's four different plots going on at once here - the Doctor's mission to save Perri, the army's hunt for Jek, Jek's dealings with the mercenaries and Morgus' political manoeuvrings.   All of these are brought to the boil at the same time and none feel rushed or overdone.

The music is haunting and accompanies the scenes nicely - what more can you ask of that.

In fact the only things you can really pick with this story are the physical things. The soldiers uniforms are just as crap as they were in Warriors of the Deep - they look like they belong on the Krypton Factor rather than going to war; the magma beast looks almost right, but its frozen jaw and wobbly talons make it more laughable than threatening, and the less said about the monitor graphics Sharaz Jek uses, the better.  These are all minor points though in a sea of positives.  The magma beast is barely in it, so it doesn't matter. The uniforms were probably stylish at the time, and...well, does it matter about the monitors?

There are many, many layers of things to admire in this story, but the thing I would point out most is the entire reason why this blood drenched, depressing story works so well.  Here, we see the Doctor go to the limit, doing absolutely everything he can, and not to save the universe, not to save himself, but to save one girl that he has placed in harms way.  This girl he's just met, and he's willing to put his life on the line for her.  We never question it, because it's done so well and that's a huge credit to Peter Davison.  The sacrifice truly shows us why the Doctor is so good, and we feel the desperation of it as it goes along. If only more of Davison's tenure would have been like this.

A must see for anyone who wants to watch 80's Doctor Who, and probably Doctor Who in general.

Rating

10 out of 10!

Re-watchability Factor

8 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Three Doctors

• Frontier in Space

• The Talons of Weng-Chiang

• The Sun Makers

• The Power of Kroll

• Earthshock

Planet of Fire

Four episodes
Aired between 23rd February 1984 and 2nd March 1984

Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Fiona Cumming

Synopsis

Shortly following Tegan's departure, Kamelion screams in pain. The Doctor and Turlough rush to find him on the floor, connected to the TARDIS data core.

As this is happening, the TARDIS picks up on a distress signal and Turlough seems to recognise it and is troubled by it - so much so that he rips out wires on the console to stop the signal.  All for not though, as Kamelion takes control of the TARDIS and heads towards the source of the signal, which happens to be the island of Lanzarote.

On the island, Howard Foster, an archaeologist is returning with his team from bringing their finds up from the sea bed. Amongst the finds is a strange golden object marked with the sign of two triangles.  His step-daughter, Perpugilliam "Perri" Brown shows up and explains she's bored and intends to go backpacking in Morocco with a total stranger.  Howard is angry at first, but then offers to pay for her ticket to make sure retains her return ticket to New York and thereby making sure she's safe. He convinces her that he's left his money on the boat, but when they get there, he strands her on it in order to make her miss the flight.

Not to be deterred, Perri takes the strange artefact with the intent to sell it, changes into a bikini and tries to swim ashore.  For some reason though, she can't swim very well and ends up half-drowning herself until Turlough spots her on the TARDIS monitor and saves her.

Turlough takes Perri to the TARDIS and lays her in bed to recover, and finds the artefact. Again he is disturbed as he happens to have a strange embossed tattoo of the triangle pattern on his arm, the same as the artefact.

The Doctor, having been running all around the island trying to find the source, tracks it back to the TARDIS and uncovers it from Turlough. He asks what the artefact is, but before Turlough can fully explain, the TARDIS doors close and it begins to take off again.  Kamelion is controlling the TARDIS once again and has taken form of Howard from Perri's memories.  The Doctor confronts him, but doesn't get much sense, ultimately figuring out that they're going back to where the artefact originated from - a desert planet known as Sarn.

On Sarn, there is a community of people who have a faith worshipping Logar, god of fire.  That faith is waning as people are starting to question whether he exists at all.  The disciple of the high priest Timanov, is a boy who also bears a mark on his arm similar to Turlough.  Timanov thinks the boy, Malcon, is a chosen one of Logar and he alone can determine if heretics are burned in fire to appease the god and stop the earthquakes that seem to be troubling their village.  The community seem to be ready to overthrow Timanov and Malcon when the TARDIS arrives, and people take it as a sign from Logar.

 As the Doctor and Turlough go out to investigate where they've landed, "Howard" turns into the Master and proclaims that he's got control of the TARDIS now.

Following this, Perri runs all over the fire riddled mountainsides of Sarn, being chased by Kamelion who has taken on the appearance of the Master.

The Doctor and Turlough meanwhile find evidence that people from Trion are living on Sarn (the mark on Turlough's arm is called the Misos triangle and it's a sign of his people).

It seems that Malcon maybe Turlough's brother as he and his father went missing when they were very young (implication is that their ship crashed on Sarn).  Malcon knows of the ship and takes Turlough there who then finds out off of Perri that the Master is involved.  Together, they all race back to the village, but see that the Master has managed to convince Timanov that he is a messenger from Logar and convinces the high priest to try and execute the Doctor by burning him sacrificially.

Turlough finds some technology that disables the flame and then goes to free the Doctor.

Perri is re-captured by Kamelion / The Master and taken into his TARDIS.

The Doctor figures out that the seizmic disturbances are from the volcano that's about to erupt and kill them all. He realises that the fire in the centre of their community is fuelled by Newmismaton gas. which has renown healing properties - he assumes that the Master is after using the gas to rejuvenate himself.

Sure enough, the Master takes Perri in his TARDIS to a central control in the heart of the volcano that was put there long ago and controls the Newmismaton gas flow.  He tries to force Perri to work the controls, but she escapes into his TARDIS and tries to destroy Kamelion's control box, instead finding a miniaturised Master within it.

Like a complete idiot, the Master accidentally shrank himself when trying to upgrade his Tissue Compression Eliminator.  Now he needs the gas to rejuvenate himself.  Perri tries to slap him with her shoe, but he escapes into the innards of his own TARDIS console and is forced to open the doors to free her.

Perri goes and finds the Doctor, takes him to the control room in the heart of the volcano.  The Doctor sets up a trap by altering the system.

The Master arrives and uses Kamelion to try and dispose of the Doctor but the Doctor's trap short circuits Kamelion and he ends up being destroyed by the Tissue Compression Eliminator.

The Master, having been put into the blue flames of the Newmismaton gas is returned to normal and starts to gloat, but the Doctor fiddles with the controls and watches the flames turn yellow and the Master is burned up to nothing.

Even though he doesn't want to (because he was a political prisoner and sentenced to exile on Earth), Turlough contacts Trion and gets them to send out a ship to come pick up all the villagers on Sarn.  They arrive but tell him that times have changed and he's welcome to return home with his newfound brother.

Turlough does so and asks Perri to look after the Doctor.

The Doctor does seem intent to send her back to Earth, but she convinces him that she was wanting to travel the world anyway, and travelling in the TARDIS for three weeks is much better.

Trivia

• If you don't count the guest starring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Battlefield, this is the last time a male companion has an adventure with the Doctor until the series re-boot in 2005.

• The destruction of Kamelion and departure of Turlough also marked the end of a nearly 7 year run of non-human companions that travelled with the Doctor.

• According to John Nathan-Turner himself, the last words from the Master of "Won't you show mercy to your own..." would have ended in "brother". This was obviously kept secret as they didn't want to be that explicit.

• The scene where Perri is drowning was interrupted by a Norweigian man from a nudist beach who saw her and dove in, swimming to her to help, but finding out when he got there that she was perfectly fine.  Luckily, the crew got all the shots of Perri before hand.

The Review

As with Terminus, I found The Planet of Fire to be unbelievably boring.  Once again, there are minor aspects of Grimwade's stories, mainly the idea at the core of them that are interesting, and Planet of Fire does have these,  but they've been done before, and much better.

The civilisation based on a space travelling race is old hat for Doctor Who now, and once the TARDIS lands on Sarn, we're left with little of interest beyond a story that looks at the warnings of following blind faith.  That's alright, but it doesn't really focus on that theme, it just has it there in the background whilst we see a lot of messing around by men painted silver. 

Indeed, Kamelion is written out in this, and he's made one of the key elements in this story, which is fair enough, but we've not really seen him since the King's Demons, so no viewer is attached to him at all and it's irrelevant how much pain he's in because he's effectively still a robot to us. 

The running around Lanzarote and Perri's introduction wasn't too bad, and it did hold my attention for a little bit.  I'm not saying I'd like more than one episode of it (like Ark of Infinity), but when this is one of the good bits and it goes away mid-episode 1, then it's going to be missed.

The artefact plot bothers me. I mean, why is it on earth in 1984 anyway?  The Master / Kamelion additionally are a source of amusement and  frustration as they're so over the top on a constant basis that it is a complete turn off.  The less said about the entire shrunken master scenario, the better.

All in all, I would seriously recommend giving this a miss once you've seen Nicola Bryant get her kit off and half-drown.  It's such a sad thing too, as Season 21 has been a real upswing in the quality of stories for Peter Davison's run on the show. 

Dire production and I'm not planning to watch this again any time in the future.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Time Monster

Death to the Daleks

The Brain of Morbius

Underworld

The Two Doctors

The Fires of Pompeii (Doctor Who, Series 4)