The Robots of Death

4 Episodes
Aired between 29th January 1977 and 19th February 1977

Written by Chris Boucher
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Michael Briant

Synopsis

The Doctor has wrestled control of the TARDIS back from Leela.  The ship takes them to a sand miner, a huge machine that captures precious ore from the storms on a desolate planet.  After nearly getting buried by all the sand,

they discover that some of the crew are dead, with the rest being picked off one by one by a mysterious murderer.

The crew think that the Doctor and Leela did it, but the Doctor thinks it's the robots, mechanical servants of the humans.  That however is impossible, seeing as how all robots from Dums (manual labour bots that can't talk) Vocs (ones that can talk) and the super voc (that coordinates robot task work) are all hardwired with a programme that inhibits them from harming any human.

As the death toll rises, so do the stakes.  Whilst Leela discovers  a secret agent "Dum" robot that can actually talk,

the Doctor finds out that Taren Capel, a mad scientist who grew up with robots is onboard and is bent on starting a robot revolution onboard, masquerading as a late replacement crew member.

Thanks to the Doctor's quick thinking, he comes up with a plan to secretly pour helium into Taren Capel's lair, so that his voice changes and he won't be able to command the robots anymore.  The robots, looking for humans to kill, ultimately find Capel and strangle him to death.

D84 (the secret agent Dum) sacrifices himself to send a virus code to every robot and destroy them.

With the crisis finally averted, and the Doctor's hatred of filling in all the messy paperwork afterwards, he and Leela head back to the TARDIS and set off on another adventure.

Trivia

• After a story scheduled for this slot fell through, Bob Holmes suggested using Chris Boucher as he did such a good job on the previous story.  Phillip Hinchcliffe agreed and asked that the story incorporate something about robots as he'd wanted a story like that for a bit.

• The problem was, Bob Holmes hated those kind of stories, as he felt there wasn't much you could do with them, just like historical stories.  Regardless, he gave the job to Chris

• Funny enough, Tom Baker didn't like the script for this story and took every opportunity to complain about it.  Rather mischievously, Michael Briant invited Tom to go on one of his rants, just as the new producer came to visit the set!

• As noted in The Deadly Assassin, Phillip Hinchcliffe's card had been marked and so, he was to be sent off at the end of the series to work on a show called Target, a programme that had been created and developed by a Producer called Graham Williams.  It just so happened that Williams was coming to replace Hinchcliffe on Doctor Who.  Williams did come and visit the set on this story to get a handle on things and meet with Hinchcliffe.

• Chris incorporated a lot of things into the story from elsewhere.  For example, the robot stuff was very similar to Isaac Asimov's stories, the murder mystery was similar to Agatha Christie's "And then there were none", but it reached further than that.  Uvanov is meant to be a similar name to Asimov, Poul's name was based on sci-fi author Poul Anderson, and Taren Capel was a call to Karel Capek, the guy who came up with the word Robot.

• This is the last story that uses the wooden panelled control room.  The reason for this was that the wood warped whilst it was in storage.  

• Grimwade's syndrome was a reference to Peter Grimwade, Production Assistant who often moaned about robots in the scripts.

• There's an audio series called Kaldor City that develops the world shown in this story (http://kaldorcity.blogspot.co.uk/) as well as a further book written by Chris Boucher called "Corpse Marker".

The Review

You might have noticed something different on this post.  Simple terms, I'm finding less and less time to produce these blogs, and the pilgrimage of watching every Dcotor who episode sequentially is becoming more and more laborious because of the recap I'm doing.  So, I thought I'd switch it up a bit, and in the process enable myself to do a bit more of a free form review and, well...just see what happens.  Let me know what you think of it.

Ok, on with the review.

A Second Gem?
Given that such a good story preceded this, and given that it was the same author that did it, can we really expect lightning to strike in the same place twice?

It turns out that yes, we blummin well can!

Chris Boucher is great at world building.  I mean, no other story in this show has really reached this pinnacle.  The Robots of Death, although borrowed heavily from other literature, does the impossible. In the first twenty five minutes, it gives us a pretty excellent explanation of transdimensional engineering, it shows a multi-cultural society and even helps to point out sub-cultures of the servants of that society and how something is very wrong.

The World and Setting
The world feels new, it feels odd, and that's partially because Boucher went to the effort of thinking about it, even if the results of his thoughts were to simply mash up Dune, Agathatha Christie and I Robot.  But it's not only Boucher that can take the credit.  Michael Briant compounded the strangeness of the story by having it created in an art deco style, with lots of curves and sparkly material.  It should be horrible, it should be about as realistic as anything seen in Patrick Troughton's era, and don't get me wrong some of it is, I mean, you just have to look at Toos' head dress to see that..

but the most important parts, the bits that really matter do work. I'm talking about the odd custom of face paint on each of the crew, like it's futuristic cosmetics, and of course, I mean the robots themselves.

The robots look fantastic.  They are aesthetically pleasing as far as machinery goes, but their lifeless eyes and droning voice give out all the creepiness you'd ever want in a villain.  I'd even go as far as to say that they work better than the Cybermen, because they just have that slight edge of humanity to them, that's cruelly ignored when it's time for them to kill someone.

Acting
The crew themselves aren't amazing acting wise, with the exception of Russell Hunter as Uvanov, but he more than makes up for it, as does Tom Baker.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the characters you understand, but take Zilda for example, when she's arguing with Uvanov, the dialogue feels so scripted it's painful.  And robot or not, the guy who delivered D84's lines made his scenes hard to stand.

Louise Jameson doesn't shine here, but that's alright because the script sadly doesn't allow her to.  There's the bits about her noticing body language but for the most part, she's totally reactive, and never really recovers beyond a "what's that doctor?" situation.  All I can guess is that they were still sorting out in their heads how she would be developed as a character.

The Murder Mystery
I liked the fact that the Robots of Death made a murder mystery in an unusual location.  It adds tension, and because it's on a remote location, it ramps up the drama, just like the base under siege stories of the Second Doctor's era.

The thing is though, in this particular murder mystery, there's not much of character justification in it.  What I mean by that is there's not much reason for the characters to do what they do.  I understand that the story needs the characters to start questioning each others motives, so that we as viewers are drawn in and start to engage in the investigation itself, but...as soon as the Doctor is taken to the crew, the coincidence of him being on board as bodies start appearing seems too good to just brush off on the Doctor's insistence.  Plus, they escape and low and behold, are captured again right at the scene of another murder, yet, Poul suspects Uvanov?!

And that's not all.  Zilda clearly hates Uvanov too, yes, but when the murders start to happen, she never once mentions the fact that her brother was killed on her captain's first tour of duty.  Don't you think that information might just be relevant rather than making pouty faces and coming across like you're the one with the problem?

Then there's Uvanov himself, who doesn't seem to be happy with Zilda suspecting him for no reason, so he starts to give her a reason by explaining that he's incredibly likely to be the killer (before the Doctor comes on the scene) because with every crew death, he gets a bigger cut of the profits.  This bit would have worked far better if someone else, even Zilda, had pointed it out to him rather than him bringing it up himself.

The Real Killer
Then there's the real killer.  The alibi's for Dask seem pretty good at the start as he's always the voice of reason and kept out of the limelight.  Conventional TV detective wisdom now tells us that he should be an obvious suspect because of this, but as this is 1977, I'll give the benefit of the doubt.

If it continued like that, or maybe even faked his death, then that would have been great, but for everything that Michael Briant got right in this story, he failed on two major accounts in regards to keeping the villains identity.  First, he shows the killer meeting with a robot via only his feet.  Nothing wrong with that, except that we see his striped trousers  in full view, and this is directly following on from the scene before, when he was pottering about on the command deck in a striped outfit.

In the very next episode, we see him commanding SV7 via a video link.  Even though it's a top of the pops style effect that masks him, you don't have to look too hard.  It wouldn't be as bad if the remaining crew looked something alike, or even better, just have him relay the instructions by audio instead.

Then there's the killers motives.  If you're going to start a robot revolution, why there?  It's like saying you're going to overthrow the government and then starting by attacking the workers at the local coal mine, and that's without even looking at the age old argument of destroying his fellow humans and then what?  How will he eat etc?

The End Result
So, for me, the Robots of Death is a lot like The Sea Devils.  On the surface of the story, it is great. The mystery, the creepiness the witty one liners.  It has it all.  When you start to look a little harder at it, there's tons of plot holes and inconsistencies that niggle at you, but ultimately, do they really matter?

Fans for decades have scored this story high.  It's consistently in top tens when the stories are ranked.  I agree with the masses.  This story has downsides, yes, but none of them matter because at the end of the day, there's not many TV shows that are like this.  Take ANY era of TV.  There's not many shows that go into so much detail to build a world and a story as the Robots of Death.   This story is immersive.  Not even the Daleks had multiple layers of society at their inaugural outing.  It's different, it's interesting and the killer's identity takes a back seat to this wonderful world Chris Boucher created.  We're more concerned with Poul and the implications of Robophobia.

The Robots of Death is a top class Doctor Who story, worthy of being set amidst some of Tom Baker's best work.

Rating

10 out of 10 

Characterisations: poor, story: ok, setting: beautiful

Rewatchability Factor

8 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Daleks

• The Sensorites

• The Power of the Daleks

• The Moonbase

• Fury from the Deep

• Frontier in Space

• The Impossible Planet (Doctor Who Series 2)

• The Voyage of the Damned (2008 Christmas Special)

The Face of Evil

4 Episodes
Aired between 1st January 1977 and 22nd January 1977

Written by Chris Boucher
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Pennant Roberts


Synopsis

Leela, a female warrior from a tribe known as the Sevateem is exiled from them for blasphemy against their god, Xoanon.

She is sent into the wilds of the alien jungle they call home, and it's not long before she is followed by tribe members on the orders of the tribe shaman, Neeva.

The tribesmen are not the only ones out there however.  Her friend, Tomas follows and kills one of the enemies.  The other pursues Leela.  She manages to defeat him and eventually comes across the Doctor whom she believes has the exact same appearance as the evil one, a fabled enemy of her people.

Enemy tribes people are not the only dangers in this jungle however.  It becomes apparent to the Doctor and Leela that an invisible force is stalking them.  With the aid of an alarm clock, the Doctor works out that the force is a creature that's attracted to sound and vibration.

Using the clock as a distraction, they work their way back to Leela's village, where they soon find an anachronistic sonic disruptor field set up along the perimeter of the village that supposedly keeps the invisible creatures at bay.

His curiosity piqued by the strange finding, the Doctor questions Leela about her folklore some more.  Leela tells him that their great god, Xoanon is trapped by the Evil One behind a great black wall.  Her tribe, the Sevateem are planning to once again assault the wall and the Evil One's minions - the Tesh, in the hopes of freeing their god.  This attack although some think foolish, is being pushed for by a tribesman called Andor.  He wants to unite the tribe under him and decry their Shaman, Neeva, whom he believes is a false prophet.

The Doctor gets spotted and captured by two warriors as they near the village, Leela manages to hide.

The warriors also believe the Doctor is the Evil One and make protective religious gestures, which the Doctor seems to think is strikingly similar to the way one would check seals on a spacesuit.  After unsuccessfully threatening them with a "deadly" Jelly Baby, they take him to the Tribe Elder whom has him imprisoned.

Leela breaks him out, and as they flee, she kills one of her own tribesmen with a Janis Thorn, (a thorn from a native plant that paralyses and kills as there's no known antidote).

The Doctor is horrified at this and commands her never to use another Janis Thorn to kill.

Fleeing from the village, the Doctor and Leela go back through the jungle, where she leads the Doctor to the face of evil, a giant statue in the face of a cliff, that bears his own face, despite his insistence that he doesn't know the Sevateem or the Tesh.

He tells her that they must go back to the village, even though it's dangerous as that's the only way of finding out why his face is in the rock and to work out if he's indeed been on this planet before and just forgotten.

They successfully sneak back into the village and Leela takes him to Neeva's tent, so he can inspect their religious relics.  It turns out that the relics are in fact the gutted electronics from a crashed survey space ship.  The commands of the god Xoanon are beamed to Neeva via a transceiver in a space helmet that is now like a head dress.  As they are there, Xoanon broadcasts commands.  The voice sounds incredibly similar to the Doctor's current voice.

The Doctor tries to communicate with Xoanon whom seems surprisingly happy about it, decrying "at last we are here, at last I shall be free of us".

From all of this, the Doctor is certain that he must have indeed been here before, and the Sevateem are descendants of a crashed survey ship  - Sevateem being a marred name of Survey Team that's been passed down from generation to generation.  He also believes that Xoanon and the Tesh must also be somehow connected.

As they are making these deductions, the Sevateem are preparing to Assault the Wall and are lead by Andor and Neeva.

Leela takes the Doctor to the black wall.  The Doctor recognises it as a time barrier that puts anyone passing through it out of phase with the regular time stream, meaning the enemy can predict their moves. Sure enough they see that the primitive warriors are cut down by laser fire in the assault, losing over half of their warriors before they retreat again.  The Doctor realises that because Xoanon called Neeva to convince Andor to mount the assault, that must mean that Xoanon planned to kill the tribes people.

As the force return to the village, the Doctor and Leela are discovered by one of the tribe elders, Calib.

He is skeptical enough to know full well that the Doctor is not the Evil One, but he intends to use him to dispel the myth of these religious practices and break the power that Neeva has on the tribe, therefore allowing himself to become a powerful Tribe Leader.  Leela forces a fight and Calib stabs her with a Janis Thron.

Tomas turns up to see what's happened and is about to kill Calib but the Doctor convinces him to stand guard over Calib whilst he tries to cure Leela. Using Neeva's relics, the Doctor manages to analyse the poison from the Janis Thorn and artificially construct an antidote. Leela is saved and soon comes around.

The Doctor, Leela and Tomas are brought before the tribe to account for their lives.

Leela tries to convince the tribe that Xoanon ordered the attack, knowing they would be slaughtered, but this doesn't go down well.  Calb plays his hand by stating that the Doctor is not the Evil One like Neeva is suggesting.  He wants to prove this by making the Doctor take the test of Horda.  If he dies in it, then he is clearly a mortal.  Neeva agrees.

The Doctor is taken to the pit of the Horda, a hole in the ground covered by moving stone slabs held together by a counterweight.  Beneath the slabs lies hundreds of piranha like insects that react to movement.  The Doctor is given a crossbow and told to shoot a rope that is tied to a boulder.  When the boulder is lowered, the slabs will move and drop the Doctor into the pit if he's not fast enough.

Thanks to some pointers from William Tell, the Doctor succeeds in shooting the rope and much to Calibs chagrin, he, Leela and Tomas are released.

Knowing that the Tesh will attack, the Doctor looks once again at the relics, finds, and repairs an old disruptor gun.  He gives the gun to Tomas and tells him it will be effective against the invisible creatures but only when used in short bursts.

As the tribe prepares for the oncoming attack, the Doctor and Leela go off again to the face of evil, climbing through its mouth where the Doctor suspects is a sort of back door to the Evil One's base.

Sure enough, Neeva is told by Xoanon that the tribe will be crushed and the invisible barrier suddenly fails, allowing the creatures into the village killing many, including Andor, the leader.  Tomas uses the disruptor to fight them back, and the creatures show up as huge heads of energy, bearing the Doctor's face.

Once in the tunnels within the rock face, the Doctor and Leela see a man in a space suit walk through a wall.  Leela believes this man to be a Tesh.  They go to where he disappeared and find a hole in the rock, looking out onto a spaceship some distance away.  The Doctor finally remembers that he had indeed been to this planet before.  He remembers that this was a crashed ship that was part of the Mordee Expedition, a survey team looking into Eugenics.  He'd helped the technicians (through time being shortened to Tesh) to put their faulty computer right.

The Doctor soon works out that the Tesh used some kind of transport hidden behind a false projection of the cave wall to travel to the ship, where Xoanon would be held. They both use this transport and arrive on the ship, where they are met by three Tesh, one of whom is their leader, Jabel.  The Tesh treat them with civility.

Unlike the Sevateem, the Tesh are technologically advanced to the point where they even have telepathy.  Through discussion with the Tesh, the Doctor realises that the computer he repaired is Xoanon and the Evil One combined.  It has a split personality due to him not wiping his own personality print from the data banks of the computer before he left.  Xoanon over time slowly became mad and began carrying out using Eugenics experiments on its own crew, turning them against each other in a battle of survival of the fittest.

The Tesh telepathically subdue Leela and the Doctor, imprisoning them.  The Doctor uses his wits to free them and they manage to find the device that Xoanon uses to speak to Neeva through his helmet headdress.  The Doctor uses the device to order Neeva to lead the tribe through the face of evil.

Neeva tells Calib, the new Tribe Leader who agrees and they go through the mouth of the evil face.

Using a captured disruptor gun, Leela holds the Tesh back, allowing the Doctor to enter the main room where he confronts Xoanon.  He tries to persuade it to shut down, but the computer refuses and launches a mental attack at the Doctor, yelling "who am I?"

Leela risks herself by entering the control room and pulling the Doctor free and out into the corridor.

Xoanon electrifies the walls, and mentally possesses one of the Tesh to try and shove the Doctor and Leela into them.  Luckily, the Sevateem enter the ship, distracting Xoanon from that purpose and forcing it to defend against their new enemies.  The Doctor shoves the Tesh into the electrified wall.

The Doctor and Leela go to try and jury rig the controls to fully repair Xoanon.  The computer tries to kill the Doctor again, this time by mentally possessing Leela.  The Doctor uses counter hypnotism and forces her out of it.

In desperation, Xoanon sets a self destruct sequence into action.  The Tesh, knowing they will die, continue to protect the computer, setting up huge disruptor cannons to slaughter the Sevateem when they reach so far.

The Tesh's plans don't get carried out however as a wild Xoanon seizes control of their minds and the minds of the Sevateem to send them all against the Doctor to try and stop him make the repairs.  The only one to resist is the incensed Neeva, who is in a fury at his god's betrayal.  He grabs one of the huge cannons and races to find Xoanon.  He indeed comes face to face with the mad computer and they fire at each other,

Xoanon turns Neeva into dust with a heavy bout of electrical charge, and Neeva disrupts the computer long enough for the Doctor to complete the repairs, wiping his personality from the data banks.  The control panels explode, knocking the Doctor unconscious.

He awakens two days later, with Leela watching over him.  She tells him Xoanon has been quiet since he repaired it.  The Doctor takes her to the computer to check and is satisfied that it's restored to sanity.  Xoanon explains that all that outside with the tribes was it trying to recreate the world in its own image, a chaotic mess, fighting for survival.

They go to command deck to see Calib and Tomas arguing with Jabel and the Tesh over what happens next.  The Doctor explains that Xoanon is fine now and can help them decide and will support their new society.

Tomas calls for Leela to be the leader of the new society but she refuses and runs after the Doctor as he slinks off back to the TARDIS.  He meets her outside its doors and she asks to go with him.  He refuses.  She asks if he likes her and he says yes, but he likes lots of people so again, refuses.

Leela doesn't give him a chance to refuse a third time, as she runs into the TARDIS.  He follows her, telling her to come out and it sounds like she begins messing with the controls as the TARDIS takes off once again.

Trivia

• The original name was The Day God Went Mad.  Phillip Hinchcliffe protested about this but not on grounds of offending anyone.  It was because it didn't fit with the format of the other titles

• In hindsight, Tom Baker was apparently quite off with Louise Jameson for a good deal of her run.  They eventually cleared the air and are now great friends but for many of her stories, he wasn't particularly welcoming her with open arms

• Leela's character was based on Emma Peel from the Avengers, mixed with Eliza Doolittle, so the Doctor would have to teach her to be civilised.  And yes, part of the reason for her outfit was so that the Dad's could Oogle at her after Grandstand

What worked

• The story concept
• The Doctor's jokes
• The scene with Leela's use of a Janis Thorn
• The scary image of Tom Baker as an evil computer
• Leela's refreshing bravery

What didn't work

• The Tesh's uniforms
• The "pipe" trees
• The confusing bit about the tribes attack on the Tesh
• All the messing about in episode 3

Overall Feelings

The Face of Evil is as ambitious as it is intelligent.  We start off with a great mystery concept of how can the Doctor's face be engraved in the side of a mountain as the Evil One on a planet he reckons not to have seen before?  Even when we get answers, nothing is dumbed down.  We're shown aspect to Doctor Who.  For much of the show's run, the Doctor's been gallivanting across time and space, fixing problems and moving on.  I love that they tried to show what happens after his intervention isn't always perfect.

Sure, there's problems with the story if you look beyond the glaze, such as the situation he's left it in after Xoanon being less than ideal, or the fact that some of the story is weird like the chaotic plan of the computer.  Perhaps though, these flaws are part of the appeal.  They were trying to get away from the image of the Doctor as a goody too shoes and show some serious consequences to his actions, even if for only one story.  That then is the true flaw for me, The consequences are laid bare, but the Doctor doesn't seem to care very much beyond an oops!  He just goes and fixes stuff and tootles off again, where we could have had some grade A angst like we saw in Genesis of the Daleks.

A fine effort of a story and one that doesn't get praised perhaps as much as it should

Rating

9 1/2 out of 10 

Marked down not for all the points above, but because we spend ages messing about in episode 3 and 4 to fill up some time

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Great concept but drawn out in the presentation.  A must see, but it'll be a while before I watch again

Watch this if you liked...

• An Unearthly Child
• The Rescue
• The Mutants
• The Green Death
• The Planet of Evil
• Full Circle
• State of Decay

Consulting the Matrix

Would you like to see more episodes dealing with the consequences of the Doctor's earlier involvement?

The Deadly Assassin

Four Episodes
Aired between 30th Oct 1976 and 20th Nov 1976

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by David Maloney

Synopsis

On his way back to Gallifrey, the Doctor has a premonition about the Time Lord President being assassinated by his own hand from a balcony with a rifle.

He is naturally concerned about this and does all he can to speed the TARDIS onwards to his home planet.

As it happens, the President of the High Council of Time Lords is at that very moment preparing for his final ceremony, to step down from his role and elect a successor.

The Doctor's TARDIS lands in the underground security area of the citadel (the city where Gallifrey's Time Lords reside).  It's not long before it's noticed by security.  Commander Hildred calls it in, noting it especially unusual as the TARDIS is a Type 40, a rather obsolete model.  His boss, the Castellan, orders the TARDIS to be breached and the inhabitant arrested.

The Doctor sees the guards going about unlocking his door and writes a quick note for them, managing to sneak past as they enter the TARDIS.

The guards search for the Doctor and one of them finally finds him, but is shot dead by someone skulking in the shadows as he is about to apprehend the Doctor.  The figure runs off before the Doctor can discover who it is.

The Doctor capitalises on the dead body by leading the remaining guards on a false trail, buying himself time to sneak back to the TARDIS and plan his next move.

Meanwhile, Castellan Spandrell reads the Doctor's note, warning them of an upcoming assassination, and orders Hildred to transduce the TARDIS to the capitol for further analysis, unaware that he's giving the Doctor a free ride.

From a secret hiding place, two shadowed figures watch on security monitors with interest...

The resignation ceremony begins to get underway, with the High Council donning their official robes of office and gathering in the Panopticon, an amphitheatre where the great announcement will be made.

Local media is being coordinated by a weedy looking guy called Runcible, who clearly loves the pomp and pagentry and is happy to speculate live on air about the High Council society.

During all the preparations, the Doctor sneaks out of the TARDIS and manages to steal a couple of high council robes.

He gets into the Panopticon, where he meets Runcible who turns out to be his old class mate at the Time Lord Academy.  Runcible is a bit dismissive of the Doctor, seeing him as a bit of a reprobate, but passes the time civilly whilst he waits on his camera operator giving him a signal from the gallery above.  The Doctor looks towards the gallery to see a staser rifle in place on the railings (staser rifles kill Time Lord's outright).  The Doctor rushes towards the stairs, alerting Chancellery guards who give chase.

The President puts on the final bit of his gown and remarks that the presidential pardon list, a tradition to be read out at the end of a President's reign, will certainly shock some of the other Time Lords.  The doors open and he walks towards the Panopticon.

The Doctor manages to loose the guards and reaches the balcony.  The camera is left unmanned, and so is the staser rifle.  As the president descends the stairs...

...the Doctor suddenly picks up the rifle, aims and shoots.

The President falls to the floor, dead and the Doctor is quickly arrested and imprisoned.

The High Council call an emergency meeting, as the Presidents death is made all the more serious seeing as he was killed before he could name a rightful successor.  The protocol dictates that there must be an election as soon as possible, but Chancellor Goth (who was tipped as the favourite for succeeding the former President) calls for the Doctor to be destroyed as soon as possible to stop the presidential pardon from making him exempt from execution.

The Doctor is put on trial with Chancellor Goth overseeing the prosecution.  They don't take long to determine the Doctor's guilty and go to execute him when he invokes article 17, claiming his right to stand as a candidate for the Presidency.

Cardinal Borusa accepts the claim and the High Council give the Doctor 48hrs to prove his innocence otherwise he will be executed.

A short time later, the two shadowed figures meet again.  The first informs his colleague, a skeletal husk type figure, about the Doctor's claim to candidacy.  The husk seems unsurprised, and hints that he knows the Doctor well.

With time ticking away, the Doctor goes with Castellan Spandrell, Hilred and Runcible to the Panopticon.

There, he tries to convince them of his innocence by demonstrating that he saw the rifle on the balcony, went up to it and saw the assassin in the room below - one of the High Council.  He aimed the rifle and fired at them, but the shot went wide.  It seems that the sights of the rifle were intentionally put out of line.

Sure enough, the Doctor's original blast mark is there on the wall.  The Doctor speculates that the Video Camera belonging to Runcible's crew would have caught a picture of the assassin.  Runcible goes to look at the camera and finds his cameraman, shrunk down and hid inside it.

Runcible is distraught, having never seen anything like it, but the Doctor has.

He explains it's a hallmark of the Tissue Compression Eliminator, a tool the Master is known to employ.

They send Runcible off to get the backup video tapes but he returns a short time later with a knife in his back.

To check the Doctor's story, Castellan Spandrell takes them to see Coordinator Engin who manages the APC Net, also known as the Matrix.

It is a vast collection of Time Lord minds that act as a huge database of knowledge and can even predict the future.  All Time Lords are linked to the Matrix by data extracts taken from them at the time of death.  The Castellan asks Engin to check for records on the Master, but comes up empty handed.  The Doctor says that the Master simply altered the records, but Engin is adamant that the Matrix cannot be wrong and there will always be records.

The Doctor speculates that Master somehow accessed the Matrix from a different location, found that the President was about to be assassinated and beamed it into the mind of the Doctor in order to manipulate him to turn up on Gallifrey and thereby get framed for the assassination.

The Doctor decides that if he hooked his own mind up to the Matrix, then he could find the whereabouts of the Master's back door and therefore reveal his hiding place.  Engin protests as it's normally hooked up to dying minds and the results on healthy Time Lord tissue cannot be known, but the Doctor is insistent.  Despite a momentary bout of pain, the Doctor's transfer is complete and he leaves his body behind on the table, whilst his mind goes into the Matrix...

...The Matrix looks just like a quarry on earth, but the Doctor finds that it's full of dangerous things like bombs and samurai,

It turns out the real assassin is currently in the Matrix too, and is able to manipulate the environment like a nightmare.

The Doctor runs from the assassin but is eventually trapped on a train line, as the assassin drives a train, full speed, at him.

 He cannot get his leg out and braces for the worst, but the train never arrives, it's an illusion like the rest of the Matrix.

The Doctor spends a long time running away from the assassin nonetheless, dodging:

clowns,

doctors

strafing biplanes

and a big game hunter.  Each one of them is the Assassin in disguise.

Outside the matrix, the battle of wills is taking its toll on both the Doctor and his hunter who are both hooked up to machinery, feeding their Artron (Time Lord) energy into the machine.

Inside the Matrix, the Doctor hides in the jungle and manages to sneak over to the assassins equipment, taking some of it to set a booby trap whilst the assassin goes off to poison the local water supply, denying the Doctor use of it.

The assassin goes back to his equipment and sets off the trap, narrowly avoiding the explosion, with only minor injuries.  He continues to hunt the Doctor but the explosion has bought him time to fashion a blow dart so he can use poison needles that grow in the jungle.

As the hunt draws to a climax, the Doctor shoots the assassin in the leg with the dart, but the assassin wounds the doctor by shooting him in the arm.

Outside the Matrix, both of their bodies are in danger.
The Master, fearing defeat, sends one of the Chancellery guards to the APC room to sabotage the equipment.  The guard goes to the room, pretending to report some information, and dallies in the room whilst the Castellan and Engin fret over the Doctor.

They manage to spot the guard going for the controls and kill him just in time.

Back in the Matrix, the Doctor flees through a swamp full of marsh gas and hides just the other side of it.  The assassin follows him but the doctor tricks him into stopping in the swamp and revealing himself.  The assassin is Chancellor Goth!

Goth calls for the Doctor to show himself.  The Doctor creates a distraction that makes Goth shoot.  The shot sparks the marsh gas and sets Goth on fire, disabling him.

The Doctor goes to make sure Goth is finished but they end up in a big brawl, with Goth holding the Doctor's head under water, in triumph telling him he's finished.

Oddly though, he seems to be suffering from a drop in power, and releases the Doctor who rises from the water and promptly clobbers Goth over the head with a big stick!

Goth is thrown out of the Matrix, much to the Master's annoyance.  In fury, the Master works to increase the power and trap the Doctor in the Matrix.  Goth, still connected to the Matrix himself, begs for his Master not to do it as the feedback of energy could kill him.  The Master goes ahead anyway, causing a fire to break out near Goth and burns him alive.

Over at the APC room, the circuits begin to spark and Engin is frantic with worry that the Matrix will be lost, but Spandrell won't let him shut it down whilst the Doctor is inside.  Lucky for them, the Doctor manages to escape and tells them both about Goth and tells them they must find him quickly.

Using the logic of tapping into the Matrix somehow, the Doctor gets Engin to show him and the Castellan the service ducts and old tunnels underneath the APC Net.  They soon find the pirate Matrix couch with goth blistered and burnt on it, next to the dead husk of the Master.  Shockingly, Goth is still alive.  Whilst the Doctor asks him about the Master's plan, Goth goes into the back story of how he found the Master on the planet of Tersurus. He was at the end of his regeneration cycle and desperate to get to Gallifrey.  He told Goth that if he got him there, he would help him get the presidency and share his knowledge.

The Doctor questions why Goth agreed to do this, seeing as he was going to be named successor.  Beside the fact that the Master had hypnotised him into it, Goth was power hungry anyway and was told by the President himself that he wouldn't be named successor, so he went along with the plan to kill him.  With that information off his chest, Goth dies, leaving the bigger question of the Master's plan unanswered.

Castellan Spandrell, Engin and the Doctor go to see Cardinal Borusa and tell him of what had happened, clearing the Doctor's name.  Borusa is unhappy at how the truth sounds as he believes the people of Gallifrey will start to distrust the High Council if Goth's betrayal is revealed.  He concocts a story that the Master did it and Goth died a hero, taking the Master with him.  To cover up the truth, Borusa instructs Spandrell to have the Master's body shot with a staser, and the Doctor is to go with Engin to put some data into the Matrix on the Master.

The Doctor obeys, but is uneasy about not knowing the Master's plan.  He is certain that the Master wouldn't just accept death.  He follows his logic on why he would use Goth to claim the presidency.  Engin is baffled, saying all he would gain are the ceremonial relics of the President's office, the Sash and Rod of Rassilon.

Elsewhere, Spandrell calls Hilred and delegates the order to shoot the Master to him.  Hilred agrees to do it, but passes Spandrell a syringe that he found in the tunnels below the APC net as they were searching them.

The Doctor learns from Engin that Rasillon, like Omega, was a great Time Lord scientist and managed to tame a black hole in its infancy.  This black hole, on the brink of a super nova, affectionately called the Eye of Harmony, was stabilised so it gave off unlimited energy and placed at the heart of Time Lord Society, in the Citadel underneath the Panopticon.

Spandrell turns up and show the Doctor the syringe and things fall into place.  The Doctor realises that the Master used the syringe to inject a neural inhibitor into himself, stopping all signs of life for a bit to fool them.  He intends to gain the sash and rod of Rassilon to unleash the energy in the Eye of Harmony thereby renewing his own regenerative cycle.

Knowing this, they rush to the tomb, where they find that Hilred has been reduced to the size of an action man and the Master is very much alive.  He shoots the Doctor and Castellan with his staser and forces Engin to give him the sash of Rassilon from the dead President's body.

With everything he needs, the Master mocks that he's only stunned the Doctor and Spandrell so they can see the end of the world, and he shuts them in the tomb so he can release the Eye.

Working quickly, the Doctor finds an old vent shaft leading back to the Panopticon and fights past falling masonry to get there as the Citadel begins to crumble around him.  Once on top, he gets into a fight with the Master, who is trying to remove the restraining bolts from the now risen Eye of Harmony.  The Panopticon cracks into chasms, and the Master eventually falls into one, allowing the Doctor to retrain the eye once again.

In the aftermath, they go see Cardinal Borusa again, who is appalled at the damage done.  He does acknowledge and thank the Doctor however, referring to his days as his instructor at the Academy. He gives the Doctor 9 out of 10 for effort.

The Doctor smiles and thanks him, even though he's been told in no uncertain terms to leave Gallifrey once again.

The Doctor is led by Engin and Spandrell back to his TARDIS. On the way they speculate what could have happened to the Master, but Engin is certain he couldn't have survived, but the Doctor speculates that he might just have absorbed enough energy from the Eye to keep him going for a bit.

As they watch the TARDIS dematerialise, they turn around to see a funny out of place grandfather clock, and alarmingly see the Master's withered hand closing it's door.  He's clearly alive.  Spandrell says that they'll both head off into the galaxy which isn't big enough for the both of them.  The Master's TARDIS dematerialises, with the image of his scarred face laughing.

Trivia

• This story has the first mention of Type 40 TARDIS, the Time Lords as we now know them, Cardinal Borusa, the Matrix, the fact that they have thirteen lives, Rassilon, the Eye of Harmony and Artron Energy

• Talking of Time Lord culture, the symbol used by the Vogons in Revenge of the Cybermen was re-used here as the seal of Rassilon.  It became iconic from this point on and was used by the Time Lords again and again

• Tom Baker said he wanted to do the show on his own, but Phillip Hinchcliffe wouldn't let him.  He did give him this one show however, whilst they finalised the auditions for the new companion

• This is a thinly disguised recap of JFK assassination.  The gothic golden era angle though is The Manchurian Candidate, a story about brainwashing and a patsy assassinating people

• It's interesting to see the scrolling text a year before Star Wars did it, and Robert Holmes invented the Matrix thirty years before Keaneu Reeves entered it!

• The biplane used was also used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The Mummy

• The cliffhanger for episode 3, showing the Doctor being drowned came to the attention of Mary Whitehouse.  The show had considerable complaints about the scene and she used her influence to put pressure on the Doctor Who production team.  In response, Phillip Hinchcliffe was moved to a different show at the end of the season.  

What worked 

• The Time Lord regalia (full)

• The idea of the APC Net

• The look of the Master

• Coordinator Engin

• The history of Gallifrey and Rassilon

What didn't work

• Why doesn't Runcible regenerate when he's stabbed? 

• The tissue compression action man

• Castellan Spandrell

• The fact that all the High Council have metallic makeup on their nose and lips

• The entire idea of Runcible and TV Gallifrey!

• The plot explanations are a little bit convoluted

• The Doctor talking to himself

Overall Feelings

This story was always going to be tough as it notably lacked any companion in it, leaving Tom Baker to do most of the leg work, and also explain everything.  Robert Holmes, as excellent a writer as he is, got off to a tough start by having him skulk around for an episode to hide the fact that he wasn't shooting at the President.  Now, I'm sure even in 1976, even if the end result was shocking, people didn't really believe it.  It's a good payoff, but at the expense of the Doctor talking to himself and stupid comic relief to break up the silence.

By episode 2, we get Castellan Spandrell as a companion, but, I'm sorry to be so personal, he had zero charisma in that role.  It was so lifeless and boring for 99% of the episode.

Episode 3, although we get to learn about the matrix, we also get a full episode of running around in a quarry.  Pointless filler that barely moves the plot along.

Episode 4 is a lot better, but it's like Sherlock Holmes and a very dull Doctor Watson trying to figure something out that needs tons of exposition and people taking it as read that whatever idea the Doctor hypothesises, will be exactly what's going on.

Fandom holds this story as a good one, and if you look at all the Time Lord history, politics and legacies that will be used in the future, then yes, it is good.  Even the story, although a bit far-fetched is okay, but 3/4 of the acting is dire - thank god for Engin who is my favourite in this story by far!

I won't be watching this one again for a long time.

Rating

6 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The War Games

• Terror of the Auton's

• The Three Doctor's 

• The Invasion of Time

• The Five Doctor's

• The End of Time (Doctor Who, The Specials)

Consulting the Matrix

Finally!  You can get the reference! If Goth were to scare you in the Matrix, what would he appear as?