Planet of Evil

Four episodes
Aired between 27th September 1975 and 18th October 1975

Written by Louis Marks
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by David Maloney

Synopsis

On a distant jungle planet known as Zeta Minor, a human science team works near a deep pit in the bowels of the jungle.  They collect strange crystal deposits until they get a radio call from their ship stating that night is falling.  The caller, Braun, is nervous at this prospect, as is Baldwin, the guy who receives the call.  Baldwin tells his companion, Professor Sorenson that they need to go as something apparently stalks the jungle at night but Sorenson is adamant that he wants to stay as the crystals are the purest form of a mineral that he has sought for some time.

It seems that they've found similar veins before, but according to Sorenson, the planet took them back and killed their crew.

Baldwin eventually leaves Sorenson and heads back, only to find that whatever stalks the jungle has been and killed Bruan.  It attacks Baldwin in the ship too and he disappears, screaming just after he manages to send a distress signal.

The Doctor picks up on the signal from the TARDIS console as he's trying to explain to Sarah-Jane how he could overshoot London by 30,000 years.

He becomes interested in the call and using a small tracking device, heads out of the ship with Sarah to find the source of the distress.  They too find themselves in a deep, alien jungle.

After searching for a while, Sarah gets momentarily transfixed by a sound she hears in the distance.

In the orbit of Zeta Minor, a human spaceship approaches, it too catching the distress call.  The ships commander, Salamar orders his deputy, Vishinsky to head up a search party and go down to the planet.  Vashinsky questions some of Salamar's processes, such as not scanning the surface before going down there, but ultimately obeys orders.

Back on the planet, the Doctor and Sarah find the science team's ship.  They discover the bodies of Braun and Baldwin, both mummified.

The ship is dark and abandoned and the Doctor theorises that they're months too late.  The Doctor decides to do some tests, for which he needs a Spectromixer.  Sarah volunteers to go back to the TARDIS and find it whilst he waits there.

Unusually, she gets back to the TARDIS without incident and finds the equipment the Doctor needs.

 Unknown to her however, Vishinsky and the search party have found the TARDIS and Salamar orders it to be teleported back to the ship.  Strange clamps are placed around the blue box and the TARDIS is taken away with Sarah in it.  Once it's gone, the party encounter Professor Sorenson hiding in the jungle.  He claims he's found something magnificent and important to Earth.  He takes them to the base, believing Baldwin to still be alive. Vishinsky questions Sorenson on the way, who is more than a little apprehensive to reveal details, confirming that some of his former crew are dead but he stresses that the important thing is is breakthrough.

When they get to the ship, they discover the Doctor working on the controls and they immediately suspect that the Doctor has killed Braun and Baldwin.

Sarah meanwhile exits the TARDIS to find herself orbiting the jungle planet.  Salamar puts her under arrest and contacts Vishinsky.  He orders him to keep an eye on the Doctor whilst he questions Sarah about how they got there.  He ignores their protests on stumbling over the distress call, as Zeta Minor is at the very edge of the known universe.

Salamar's crew take the ship down to rest next to Sorenson's small craft.

Sorenson explains to Vishinsky and Salamar that they'd only been working there a few weeks when the killings began, always at night.  Salamar immediately suspects enemy interference and warns the Doctor to confess before he's interrogated.  When he finds out that there's no sign of life anywhere else on the planet, he immediately sentences them to death.  They are put into a room to await execution and manage to escape just as a semi-transparent creature approaches and attacks.

The guards fire at it, but it begins killing them systematically.  They disappear screaming, only to reappear as the mummified husks.

Salamar discovers that the Doctor and Sarah have escaped and orders his men to shoot at them as they flee into the jungle.

The creature disappears as the sun breaks the horizon, leaving the crew to regroup.  They send out the occuloid tracker after the fugitives.  It catches up to them as they reach a huge pit.

Back at the ship, Sorenson exclaims that the creature was obviously what killed his old crew, but insists that the only thing that matters is his discovery of the crystals as a potential new energy source to replace their dying sun. He demands the crystals be taken aboard immediately and they get off the planet, but Salamar is adamant that he wants the Doctor and Sarah re-captured.  He sends out another patrol after them and they catch them at the pit.

After a minor struggle, one of the men falls into the pit and finds it bottomless.  The others look to rescue him, but the Doctor warns them all to stay away from the pit as they're tampering with the balance of the planet and it could already be too late.  He and Sarah are taken back to the ship. Once there, the Doctor tries to explain to Salamar that he thinks Zeta Minor is on the threshold between two dimensions, and that the pit is a gateway between matter and anti-matter universes.  He says that if they try to take the crystals off the planet, then the planet will stop them.  Salamar dismisses them and locks them up in the ship's cargo hold where the TARDIS is also.

Sarah suggests just leaving in the TARDIS, something that the Doctor admits is tempting but says that it wouldn't just be Salamar and the crew that would buy it, it would potentially be the entire universe.  Looking around, he finds Sorenson's crystals and puts a few in an old toffee tin.

As the Doctor predicted, the ship tries to take off, but the controls don't respond quite as expected.  The creature shows up again and Salamar sends his men out to fight it whilst also putting up the force field.

Neither of them do any good and the creature begins working its way through to the ship.  The Doctor implores Salamar to connect the force field with the atomic accelerator, but Salamar is reluctant due to their limited energy reserves.  Vishinsky grows impatient and yells at Salamar to do it.  Low and behold, the boosted force field does the trick and drives the creature off.

With renewed hope, the Doctor tries to reason with Sorenson and the crew once more, asking them to dump the crystals and look at another way of fueling their home.  He suggests making it obvious that they've left the stuff behind and that he could go back to the pit and re-negotiate with the creature on their behalf.  Salamar eventually agrees but only if the Doctor goes with another occuloid tracker following him.

The Doctor sets off as the soldiers dump the crystals and makes his way to the pit.  Once there the creature rises from the pit and engulfs the Doctor, sending him careering into the blackness.

knowing the Doctor is dead, Sorenson begins to argue with Salamar to keep some of the crystals onboard.  This debate allows Sarah enough time to escape into the jungle once more.  She goes to the pit and finds the Doctor climbing back out of it, half delirious.

On the bridge, Vishinsky sees the Doctor alive again and disobeys Salamar to go and retrieve him.

In the chaos, Sorenson goes to the hold and takes one of the canisters of crystals away.  A short time later as he's making notes on the substance, he doubles over in pain and goes to the mirror, terrified to find that his eyes are glowing bright red.

He scrambles to his desk for a flask of odd smokey liquid which he drinks and is cured.

The Doctor is taken by Vashinsky and Sarah to the ships sick bay and they set off.

The Doctor comes around and begins to panic, but Sarah assures him that all they crystals are off board and he relaxes.  As the ship starts to malfunction again however, he realises that he still has the crystal samples in the toffee tin in his pocket (apparently the only thing that stopped him from being killed in the pit of anti-matter).

The Doctor still weak, passes the tin to a crew member called Morelli.  He goes to fire it into space but is attacked by something clearly anti-matter and drained to a husk.

Sorenson returns to his room, looking more feral and sick.  He drinks more of the liquid and returns to normal.

The crew find Morelli dead and deduce that one of them must be the murderer.  On the advice of Soernson, Salamar goes and accuses the Doctor and Sarah of being the ones to kill him.  Vashinsky objects but is told to tow the line and they take the Doctor to the TARDIS and demand that he open it up or be shot.

Their discussion is cut short as the ship stops moving.  The Doctor tells them that they've reached the end of their 'elastic' and will begin to head backwards towards Zeta Minor, picking up speed until it crashes into the planet.

As this discussion is taking place, Sarah sees Sorenson beginning to change and goes into a trance again.  When she wakes up, he is gone.  She tries to find him but only finds another dead crewman.

 The Doctor hears her cry and rushes to her, punching Salamar to do so.  When Salamar gets to them he again believes them to have killed the crew and orders them executed.  They are taken to the ejector tubes and strapped into them despite Vashinsky objecting again.  He refuses to obey Salamar and ends up fighting him, accidentally throwing the ejector switch in the struggle.  The Doctor and Sarah slide from view, as a scream is heard over the intercom.  The scream indicates another crew member being attacked.  Salamar rushes off with the rest of the men to help his crew, leaving Vishinsky to retrieve the Doctor and Sarah just in time.

In light of the new evidence, Salamar is forced to admit that the Doctor couldn't have done it.  Vishinsky relieves Salamar of his command and steps the ship up to red alert.

Back in the ejection room, Sarah explains to the Doctor the peculiar feeling she'd had when confronting Sorenson.  This allows the Doctor to conclude that Sorenson is the attacker and is somehow influenced by the anti-matter crystals.  The Doctor decides to go after Sorenson and leaves Sarah to go and tell Vishinsky about what they discussed and tell him to close all section airlock doors.

Once on his own, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to enter Sorenson's room, finding the crystals and the flask of solution.  Sorenson arrives and allows the Doctor to spell out his theory that Sorenson thought the solution would protect him from the crystal's anti-matter radiation, but it only help it to interact with him in strange ways, precipitating the change in his DNA instead.

He says the next time he changes, it could be the last, as he is slowly transforming into an anti-matter creature. He gives Sorenson one last chance to save everyone by ejecting the anti-matter.   Sorenson does take the crystals but change into "anti-man" before he can flush them out into space.

On the command deck, Salamar breaks free from custody and takes the atomic accelerator, exposing himself to radiation.  He intends to find Sorenson and shove it at him, probably killing them both but solving the problem.

The Doctor finds the crystals abandoned, and runs into Salamar, hunting Sorenson with the accelerator.  The Doctor calls Vishinsky and tells him to open all the hatches again and rushes after him.  He's too late however.  He finds that not only has Salamar been drained to a husk like the others, but also, the "anti-man" has fed from the radiation and is now even more powerful and can duplicate itself!

The Doctor, surrounded by "Anti-men" manages to ward them off with the crystals and fight his way to the command deck.  He fills in Sarah, Vishinsky and the rest, nothing that they only have 15 minutes left before the ship crashes, then rushes off again with a pistol.  He finds and stuns the real Sorenson with the gun and then takes him to the TARDIS and sets off into the time vortex.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS back down to Zeta Minor and takes Sorenson and the crystals to the giant pit.  There Sorenson wakes again and begins attacking the Doctor.

Meanwhile, the ship is accelerating towards the planet and the duplicated "anti-men" are burning their way through the crew and the hull doors towards the command bridge.

Back on the planet, the Doctor eventually bests Sorenson as he slips and falls into the pit.  The Doctor throws the canister of crystals in after him and the duplicated "anti-men" all disappear, leaving the ship to slow and then climb back out of orbit, away from the planet.

To his surprise, the Doctor sees a newly restored Sorenson climb out of the edge of the pit, suffering from amnesia. The Doctor takes him back to the TARDIS and they leave again, flying back to the ship.

Sorenson begins to ask for an update on the crystals, but the Doctor fools him into thinking that he was going down another, more feasible answer of research that would help his people.

The Doctor ushers Sarah back into the TARDIS after a short goodbye with Vishinsky and says they're late for an appointment in London, by over a thousand years.

Trivia

• The production team originally worked on this story to have the actual planet killing people (hence the title name), but through revisions etc. the idea shifted more towards aliens linked to the planet

• The jungle set was so good that the BBC used photos of it in training manuals as an excellent example of set design

• Tom Baker was asked to work without his scarf for most of episodes 3 and 4 so that the filming of him falling into the pit would work easier.

What worked

• The jungle set WAS fantastic

• I liked how the Doctor suddenly got a bit more serious as it offered more gravitas to the threat they were facing

• I think they deserved points for trying to make different futuristic guns, even if they did look like flashbulbs on a piece of wood

• The scene where Sorenson's eyes glow red is pretty cool

• The shape of the creature is also pretty good I think

What didn't work 

• The "Anti-man" looked crap

• The logic of anti-matter in your pocket protecting you

• The overacting of Salamar and many of the other cast

Overall Feelings

You don't need to be a genius to see that this story was a hybrid of ideas.  It's widely regarded that the Planet of Evil was a re-imagining of The Forbidden Planet.  The invisible energy creature being a big give away.  The other aspect, of course, is Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  The latter has been tried before in the Third Doctor's run (see Inferno) with some degree of success but when they coupled that with an alternate universe yarn, the two ideas were mutually exclusive so neither made a big impact on the other.  The Planet of Evil is different.

Louis Marks (or perhaps even Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe) has combined the ideas in such a way that they don't really make a lot of sense.  Granted, this is family viewing and as a TV show, it's passable if you do want to switch your brain off and just enjoy, but the second you start to consider the logic, it starts becoming a headache.  The least of which is how can matter and anti-matter exist in the same place, why does the crystals protect the Doctor at all, why doesn't Anti-Man just go straight to the control room seeing as nobody can stop him etc.

Overall, there's elements of this story that are good, but this is a rare occasion where you'll see me saying it comes more from Tom Baker and Lis Sladen and the cool jungle set than it does from the actual story.

Rating

6 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Inferno

• Frontier in Space

• Planet of the Daleks

• Kinda

• Snakedance

• Survival

Consulting the Matrix

Do you think this story would have worked better without Sorenson and the "anti-man"?

Terror of the Zygons

4 episodes
Aired between 30th August 1975 and 20th September 1975

Written by Robert Banks Stewart
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Douglas Camfield

Synopsis

On an off-shore oil rig, a worker radio's in reporting a strange bleeping sound.  Not long afterwards, the oil rig is destroyed, almost as if the sound broke it apart,

The next day, the TARDIS arrives in Scotland.  The Doctor emerges wearing a Tartan Tam 'o Shanter and leads Harry and Sarah Jane off to find the Brigadier and find out the source of his distress.

It's not long before they get a lift into a nearby village from the Duke of Forgill, a Scottish Laird.

When they arrive, they see that UNIT have set up in the small village.  The Brigadier has been talking to Mr Huckle, a representative from Hibernian Oil, the company looking after a ring of oil rigs just off the coast.  Huckle has been complaining that three rigs have been destroyed in the last month, with no clue as to how or why.  The Brigadier assures him they're doing what they can and sends him packing.

When the Duke of Forgill arrives in the village, he goes to the local inn and takes the opportunity to complain to Huckle about all the Hibernian men trespassing on his land.  He warns him that any found trespassing from this point on will be shot.  The Duke questions the Brigadier as to UNIT's presence, but the Brigadier gives him the "it's classified" rebuke.  He has no other option but to storm off, leaving the Doctor, Harry and Sarah time to get filled in as to what's happening.

On the shore, a lone survivor of the latest destroyed rig washes up on shore and is found to be alive.  The Brigadier takes the Doctor etc. to Hibernian Oil with Huckle so they can be appraised of the details.  Huckle is baffled by it all, stating that the rigs were made to be unsinkable and the sea was calm and empty before the destruction of each.  The Doctor quips that so was the Titanic and the sea is never empty.

Harry decides to look at the dead men's injuries in the sick bay, whilst Sarah Jane goes to speak to the locals, hoping to maybe sell the story to her newspaper.  She goes back to the inn and speaks to the landlord, Angus.  Making small talk, she admires the Stag's head that is mounted on the wall.  Angus tells her it was a gift from the Duke of Forgill, given to him just this past week.  Sarah Jane can't believe it as he seems so brusque, but Angus said he's really a nice bloke, but admits that he's changed a little since the oil companies came.  His castle was once thriving but many of his servants have since left to work for the companies, leaving it cold and empty.  As they speak, they are being watched from a distant, alien control room, unknown to them,

Harry meanwhile is driving back and notices the man who washed up, staggering from the beach.  He goes to help him, and finds out its a survivor.  He's about to tell Harry something important, a shot rings out from the Duke's ranger, Caber.  The shot kills the oil worker.  Harry looks around a second shot skims Harry's head, knocking him unconscious.

Being filled in about the strange sounds before the oil rigs are destroyed, the Doctor returns to the inn and starts working on a device to jam radio signals.  They are told about Harry's attack and both he and Sarah rush to the hospital where Harry's been taken.

Meanwhile, another rig is attacked after a series of bleeps that summons a deep sea monster, caused by the same alien presence that was watching Sarah.

The Doctor and Sarah arrive and briefly speak to the nurse, Sister Lamont who tells them that Harry's stable but unconscious.  It's not long after that the Brigadier turns up and tells them of the next rig attack.  The Doctor goes to investigate, leaving Sarah with Harry.

Once near the shore, the Doctor spots some of the wreckage with holes in it and orders a plaster cast to be made.  It's not long  before he comes back with a mould of some very large teeth.  The aliens watch him from a monitor screen and determine that he knows too much.

In the meantime, Harry wakes up, and Sarah rushes off to call the Doctor at the inn.  Unluckily for Harry, it turns out that Sister Lamont is one of the aliens in disguise.

She attacks Harry whilst Sarah is gone and then moves onto her, grabbing Sarah as she is on the line to the Doctor.

The Doctor hears Sarah's screams and rushes to the hospital.  When he gets there, Sister Lamont tells him that she also heard Sarah's screams,  but she only found Harry's bed empty and Sarah gone.  The Doctor finds her monotone manner a little curious and decides to snoop around the place, rather than taking her word for it.  He's proven right to do so as he soon finds Sarah Jane unconscious in a decompression chamber.  When he opens the door to check on her, the alien closes it behind him, sealing them both in and begins to pump the air out.  Incapable of escaping, the Doctor uses hypnosis to slow down both of their breathing and waits for help.

Harry meanwhile is taken by the alien to their base.  He soon learns that they're in a spaceship underwater.  The Aliens are a race called the Zygons, and they crashed on Earth centuries ago.  They were waiting rescue when they found out that their home planet had been destroyed in a stellar explosion.

Homeless, they now intend to claim Earth as their own.  When asked how, they explain that they've cybernetically altered a sea monster to obey their commands . They will use said monster to force the leaders of the world to give them control. Harry ponders the simple answer of just destroying the monster, but the Zygon leader, Broton boasts that nothing can kill their monster, the Skarasen.

Sgt. Benton and his team are sent by the Brigadier to find the Doctor.  They manage to do so just in the nick of time.  The Doctor revives quickly, but warns them not to touch Sarah.  He brings her round gradually and then thanks Benton.  He smiles and says it was a trick he picked up from a Tibetan Monk.

When they return to the inn, they're surprised to find that the entire village (including the UNIT troops) have been knocked unconscious by some kind of gas.  The Doctor suspects that this happened so something could pass by them, unseen.  Huckle arrives and gives the doctor a strange organic device that he found in the latest wreckage.

The Zygons see this on their monitor and identify it as the source of the beacon they use to summon the Skarasen.

Broton knows that if the Doctor is allowed to study it, he'll eventually figure out what's going on, so he orders it recovered at all costs.  Harry is taken away to another part of the ship, where he sees the Duke of Forgill, Caber, and Sister Lamont all hooked up to strange alien capsules.  It becomes clear that these are the real humans.  They're hooked up to the ship so they can provide the Zygon's with "body prints" so that the aliens can shape shift into them.

Back at the inn, the Doctor has already worked out that the device mimics a mating call for whatever beast was used to destroy the oil rigs.  As they discuss things, a report comes in of a UNIT solider being attacked on the moors.  They go to see what's happened and leave Sarah Jane behind, just in case Harry turns up.

As it happens, "Harry" does turn up, but it's actually the Zygon named Madra using his form now he's hooked up to the ship.  He callously retrieves the beacon and storms off into the village.  A confused Sarah gives chase, getting some help from Benton and his crew.

 As they search the village, Sarah finds "Harry" in the hay loft of a nearby barn.  Harry jabs at her with a pitch fork, but Sarah steps aside at the last moment, sending him falling from the rafters and ultimately impaling himself and turning back to a Zygon.

Sarah rushes off to get Benton.

Back at the Zygon ship, Broton realises that Madra has failed and quickly presses a self destruct button on the console, destroying Madra's body before the UNIT soldiers can see it.  As he does this, Harry is freed from the capsule.

In the aftermath, Sarah ponders how the aliens knew that they even had the beacon.  The Brigadier orders a search on the inn.

Broton meanwhile reverts to plan B and activates the beacon, causing it to bleep continuously.  The Doctor returns from examining the dead UNIT guy and warns them that the monster will be summoned by the bleeping.  He takes the beacon and says he;ll draw the monster off if they can trace the signal back to its source.  He jumps into a UNIT Landrover and sets off onto the moors.

It's not long before the Skarasen finds the Doctor and chases him across the land.

The UNIT landrover breaks down and the Doctor is forced to flee on foot.  To his horror, the Doctor discovers that the beacon has attached itself to his hand like a barnacle.

The Brigadier gets a firm fix on the source of the signal....Loch Ness. This means that the Skarasen is in actual fact, the Loch Ness Monster!

The Doctor trips and falls to the ground as the Skarasen catches up with him.  Broton in his base orders the Skarasen to destroy him.  Luckily, Harry manages to find his way back to the Zygon control room.  He rushes in and starts slapping the organic buttons on the control console.  His actions cause the device to pop off the Doctor's palm, allowing the Doctor to roll away in time.

Harry is subdued and taken away again.  Since the device is crushed, Broton believes that the Doctor must be crushed also and orders the Skarasen back to base.  The Doctor retrieves the crushed beacon and makes his way back to UNIT.

When he catches up with the Brigadier and Sarah, they tell him that the signal came from Loch Ness.  Armed with this info, the Doctor decides to visit the Duke of Forgill as his castle's situated right next to the Loch.

When they meet with the Duke, they get a bit of a harsh reception as the Duke dismisses the Monster as a myth, and certainly doesn't approve of UNIT dropping depth charges in the Loch!

Back at the Inn, Angus the landlord discovers the Zygon surveillance  device in the eye of the stag head that the Duke gifted him with.  As he tries to pluck it out, Sister Lamont arrives at the Inn and as expected, turns into a Zygon, attacking Angus. Benton and his men hear Angus' death screams and pursue the Zygon into some nearby woods.  They manage to wound the creature and Benton calls it in to the Brigadier,

Once they have word of the cornered Zygon, the Doctor and the Brigadier leave Sarah-Jane at Forgill castle to do some research on the monster in the extensive library there, whilst they go to help Benton.  When they get back to the Inn however, they realise that the stag's eye is missing and therefore, the Doctor works out that the Duke of Forgill could be a Zygon.

Back at the castle, Sarah finds a hidden passage activated by a switch in the bookcase.  The passage leads underground to the Zygon ship.

The Zygon in the woods is wounded by UNIT fire, but manages to knock one of the soldiers out and escape in their Landrover.  The Zygon goes to Forgill castle where the Duke and his assistant, Caber take the Zygon to the library, discovering the open passageway.

On the ship, Sarah finds her way to the capsules, and sees Harry and the rest imprisoned there.

She frees Harry and they do make it back down the tunnel to the castle, where they meet the Doctor and the Brigadier.  They explain everything to them and the Doctor decides to go down to the ship on his own.  He doesn't get far before being captured by the Zygon's who appear at the passageway entrance.

Broton says they're leaving with the Doctor as their prisoner and leaves them with a warning that they're going to take over the world and that the "big event" is still to come.  They seal the tunnel and set off in their ship, flying away into the sky.

Once airborne, Broton jams UNIT's radar so they can't be tracked.

The Brigadier is at a loss and prepares to ship out and track the ship.  Sarah and Harry however suggest searching Forgill castle for clue first.  Sure enough, Sarah finds papers that suggest the Duke of Forgill is the President of the Scottish Energy Commission but it doesn't really get them anywhere.

Forlorn, they return to London with the Brigadier.

The Zygon ship lands in a quarry undetected, but UNIT do manage to track the large underwater object that's making its way south along the British coast.

Broton appears to the Doctor as the Duke and once again explains that they intend to conquer the earth.  This is just the end of phase I.  A great refugee ship is on it's way to Earth carrying the remainder of the Zygon race, but it will take some centuries, in the meantime, Broton will work to turn Earth's atmosphere into something more like the Zygon homeworld.

The Doctor is placed in a cell, but manages to rig a way of using the organic technology to send the Brigadier a message to help them locate the ship, but electrocutes himself as he does so.  He falls unconscious, and Broton mistakenly assumes he's human so hasn't survived the current.

When the Zygon's leave the room, he comes to and makes his way to the capsules, once again freeing the Duke, Sister Lamont and Caber.

Broton ignorant of the Doctor's escape, goes off to plant another beacon on his next target, reveling in the fact that the Skarasen will destroy it.  Once it's destroyed, he intends to hold the world to ransom or get the Skarasen to destroy more and more places of importance until they submit.

As Broton goes off, the Doctor sets off the Zygon's fire alarm in the body print room.  As the remaining Zygons rush to find the cause of the fire, the Doctor seals the doors and sets the ship to self destruct before ushering all the humans back out into the quarry to the safety of UNIT who have just arrived in time to see the ship explode, taking all the Zygons with it except Broton.

Knowing Broton is still at large, the group hypothesize that the Skarasen's target must be close to the Thames.  Sarah's discovery comes back into play as they realise that the Prime Minister and delegates from all over the world will be at an energy conference held nearby.

At the conference, Broton, still disguised as the Duke slips the beacon into the basement of the building.  The effect of the body print wears off however and the newly arrived Doctor manages to find the alien relatively easily.  Broton attacks the Doctor himself and ultimately gets shot by the Brigadier.  With the Skarasen approaching mere seconds away, the Doctor and friends frantically search the basement for the beacon, ultimately finding that Broton had slipped it into the Doctor's pocket during the fight.

With no time to lose, the Doctor  rushes to the balcony of the building and throws the beacon into the jaws of the Loch Ness monster as it rises out of the Thames.

With the beacon destroyed, the monster sinks underwater once more and heads back to the Loch.

Returning to Scotland, the Brigadier tells the Duke that this incident will be kept quiet even though loads saw the monster, as they prefer to believe things are hoaxes.

The Doctor leads them all into the woods, back to the TARDIS and offers them all a lift.

The Brigadier refuses, and to his surprise, so does Harry.  The Duke of Forgill doesn't believe the TARDIS is a machine so doesn't indulge the Doctor, leaving only Sarah-Jane, who agrees but only if they go straight back to London.  The Doctor promises that they'll be there before they've even arrived in Scotland.

They enter the TARDIS and the rest watch in astonishment as it disappears.

Trivia

• This story was actually filmed to be the end of Season 12, but the way scheduling changes occurred, it was eventually pushed back to the start of the next season.

• This marks the return of a very successful director, Douglas Camfield, who hadn't touched Doctor Who since Inferno.  His wife was still unhappy about him taking on another Doctor Who story as it was clearly stressful and his heart complaint was still present, but he threw caution to the wind and did it anyway.

• Although this wasn't to be the end of UNIT, this is sadly the last story to feature the Brigadier until 1983.  It showed the end of an era, and the beginning of a new approach to Doctor Who

What worked?

• The Zygons look great
• The organic technology is pretty good too
• The banter between the characters
• Sister Lamont is very good at doing menacing
• The way cultural differences are worked into the aliens e.g. calling the monster a Skarasen

What didn't work?

• The Skarasen puppet
• Why didn't the Zygons try to copy the Doctor's body?
• Why does the beacon work at the end when the ship's been destroyed?
• Why does the Duke give the Doctor and friends a lift at the beginning when he's the bad guy?
• In fact, why does he let Sarah inspect the books, knowing there's a chance she could find the passage?

Overall Feelings

This story could be viewed fondly because it's nostalgic even in 1975.  Most of the tropes from Jon Pertwee's run are here, to the point where this feels very much like a Silurians / Daemons mashup with a dash of Sea Devils put in for good measure.

When looked as a whole, this story isn't half bad, especially the costumes and the creepy nature of Sister Lamont.  Indeed, if this had been shown in 1972 or even 1973, it would have been phenomenal.  What let's this story down is the same thing that highlights it to us.  What I mean by that is this story has taken all the tropes from the Third Doctor's run and diluted them into an improbable mashup.

We have the local myths of the Scottish highlands with ghosts in the mists, but that never comes to anything more than a half and episode romp with nerve gas.  We get the doppelgangers pursued by UNIT but it ends with the Zygon's randomly self-destructing a member of their own species.  We get the underwater base and cool aliens but they resort to a conquer the world plot, almost as if it's just to have something to do.

I like this story, and others must have too, given that the Zygons would remain an iconic villain throughout all the subsequent years, but if you take the Sea Devil / Silurian / Daemnons elements apart, each of these stories do better individually compared to this.

Worth a watch, but I'm sure you wont be rushing back to watch it again anytime soon.

Rating

7 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Doctor Who and the Silurians
• The Sea Devils
• The Daemons
• Day of the Doctor (Doctor Who, 50th Anniversary Special)
• The Zygon Invasion (Doctor Who, Series 9)
• The Zygon Incursion (Doctor Who, Series 9)

Consulting the Matrix

Do you think the Zygons should have made a return sooner?