The Ark in Space

Four episodes
Aired between 23rd January 1975 and 15th February 1975

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Rodney Bennett

Synopsis

Something inhuman drifts through space towards a space station.

Once inside, it approaches a capsule containing a man in hibernation...

Some considerable time later.

The TARDIS materialises on the space station into a darkened room.  The ship is far from the moon as Harry stupidly twisted the helmic regulator on the console, causing them to go massively off course.

It turns out that it's not just the immediate room that's dark and empty.  The station appears to be abandoned without power.  The TARDIS crew begin to look round for a way to get the power and air supply back on.

The Doctor manages to fix the emergency power, but in doing so, allows Harry to unknowingly trap Sarah-Jane behind an electronically sliding door as he's fiddling with a bank of buttons.

Luckily, the Doctor forces Harry to retrace his steps when they realise Sarah is missing and he opens the door again, finding her collapsed due to lack of oxygen.

As they go to help her, the door closes again, sealing them in with the likelyhood of them suffocating to death too.

The Doctor works against time, finding that the power cables have been sheared clean through.  With his last breaths, he manages to fix the main power cables and gets the oxygen running again

Harry and the Doctor lift Sarah-Jane and place her on a nearby couch whilst they nip back out to the TARDIS.

As they step outside, they're attacked by a remote guard that descends from the ceiling.

The Doctor and Harry dive to cover as the electronic guard fires a bolt of electricity at them, frying Harry's shoe.  The Doctor warns Sarah not to enter the room, unaware that she has mysteriously disappeared.

In only a couple of moments, the Doctor figures out that the guard attacks organic matter and is controlled by a panel on the wall.  Again using his Sonic Screwdriver, the Doctor unbolts the desk they're hiding behind and begins to shuffle round towards the control panel.

Meanwhile, Sarah has found that the couch she was on is a transportation couch.  She has been teleported elsewhere in the station into a small chamber.  The recorded voice of a woman comes over the speakers.  The woman indicates she is a leader of Earth and the station is an ark, sent out into space carrying the last vestige of humanity before a terrible catastrophe befalls the planet.  As she stirs, the stations automated systems come online and act as they would with the colonists who belong on this station.

Back in the control room, Harry manages to distract the guard by throwing his other shoe, whilst the Doctor flips the guards activation switch, sending it back up into the ceiling. They go to recover Sarah and find that the couch has a short range matter-transmitter.

With little option left, they go off deeper into the station to find Sarah-Jane.  It's not long before they come across a slime trail on the corridor.  Harry's insistent that he saw the thing that made it just before it disappeared into an air vent.  The Doctor looks worried, but dismisses it and continues on.

They come to a large octagonal chamber containing hundreds and hundreds of human beings in suspended animation, along with vegetable and animal life.  The Doctor figures out that this is an ark.

Harry opens some of the capsules, dumbfounded to find that Sarah-Jane is in one.

The Doctor tells him that there must be a resuscitation unit nearby so Harry goes to find one whilst the Doctor examines Sarah.  Harry opens a nearby cupboard and is confronted by a giant insect that looms towards him.

The insect falls to the ground, obviously dead.  The revival machine is in the cupboard and the Doctor encourages Harry to forget about the creature for now and concentrate on reviving Sarah.

They take the kit to Sarah's pod, but neither are familiar with how it works.  Behind them, one of the capsules glows to life and the woman inside it begins to stir.  The Doctor and Harry take a look at her and she points to one of the devices.  They hand it to her and she revives herself.

Once recovered, the woman looks shocked at the Doctor and Harry's presence on board the ark.  She calls herself Vira and is Nerva Station's First Med-Tech.  She says that Earth was about to face destruction by solar flares.  Knowing their fate was sealed, the Government put a chosen few up into space on the Nerva Station in hyper-sleep to re-populate the Earth once everything had cooled down.
The Doctor explains to Vira that their metaphorical alarm clock didn't go off as it should have and they've overslept by several thousand years because the station had been infiltrated by a giant insect that cut the power supply.  It then took one of the bodies (a guy called Dune) through a nearby air vent.  He shows her the body as proof.  He goes on to explain that their presence on the station is just a mistake and Sarah's been put into hibernation by accident.

Vira is about to deal with Sarah-Jane when another capsule glows to life.  Vira diverts her attention to this and starts to revive Noah, the stations leader.  As she does so, the stations power goes down again.  The Doctor thinks its a problem in the solar stacks so goes to have a look.

Once revived, Noah is less understanding of the Doctor and Harry's situation.  He orders them to be thrown off the station before they contaminate the gene pool.  He grabs a gun and goes off to find the Doctor.

The Doctor checks the solar stacks and finds a giant green grub inside them.  He locks the access hatch to the stacks, sealing the thing inside and then rushes back to tell everyone.

He comes face to face with Noah on his way and Noah uses the gun to stun him.  Noah then goes to the stacks to see if the Doctor has sabotaged anything.

Back in the main chamber, Sarah is successfully revived.

Noah gets to the stacks and investigates the broken hatch door.  He's attacked by the grub that slimes part of his hand, causing him to go unconscious.

Harry and Sarah go after the Doctor and find him knocked out.  As they revive him, Noah returns.  He is still angry and keeps them covered with his gun, but oddly, his other hand remains firmly in his pocket.

Noah takes them back to the main chamber where Vira is reviving a guy called Libri, who initially mistakes Noah as some kind of monster.  Noah looks non-plussed and insists that Vira stop reviving the crew.  Vira argues against it, pointing out that somethings on the station and it took Dune.  Noah smiles and says "but I am Dune" before he storms out.

The Doctor tells Libri to go and stop Noah who's obviously affected somehow by the larva of the dead insect.  Once Libri has left, the Doctor takes a closer look at Dunes empty capsule and determines that the insect must have been a queen and laid her eggs in Dune's body before she died.  Once the larvae hatch, they absorb the knowledge of their host, thereby passing this knowledge to Noah when he was clearly infected.

Libri meanwhile catches up to Noah in the control room.  He threatens Noah but when it comes to it, doesn't believe that Noah's not in control of himself, therefore he cannot bring himself to kill his commanding officer.

Noah however has no such compunction and easily kills Libri.  He looks pained afterwards though, and raises his hand out of his pocket, revealing it to have been transformed into a green slimy stump.

Noah uses the controls to contact Vira over the intercom.  He is clearly fighting the alien influence in his body and struggles to tell Vira that she must revive the humans and get them down to Earth as quick as she can.  He reveals that the alien insects are called the Wirrn and their goal is to absorb the humans.

The Doctor and Vira go to the control room to try and help Noah whilst Sarah and Harry are given the resuscitation kit to awaken two more colonists - Lycett and Rogin.

Before they can get to the control room, the Doctor and Vira encounter Noah in the corridor.  The green gelatinous substance has spread over his face and torso now.  He warns them that the Wirrn larvae are approaching adulthood and they should get away.

He seals the blast door in the corridor, shutting them both out.  Vira is clearly upset as Noah was "pair bonded" with her when they were chosen for the ark.

Needing more information, the Doctor leads Vira back to the main chamber and with Harry's help, they do an autopsy on the Wirrn Queen.

Turns out they are a species capable of flying through space and as such, they don't need oxygen to survive.  This means it's only a matter of time before the Wirrn cut the air supply.  Vira wants to revive more colonists, but the Doctor advises against it, no point having more people take up the oxygen until the Wirrn have been dealt with.

The Doctor wracks his brain to think of a way to discover the Wirrn's weakness, deciding in the end to use the membrane from the Queens eye to hook up to the stations telepathic circuits and see the last moments of the creatures life.  This doesn't work until the Doctor "boosts the mental power" by linking his own mind to it.  Before he does, he warns Sarah not to interrupt the experiment part-way through or it will likely fry his brain.

He links to the membrane and on the video monitor, a faint image of Nerva Station forms.  It's the Wirrn Queen's eye view.  They watch as it enters the station.

Outside, in the main chamber, the grub gets in via the broken vent and attacks Lycett, killing him.  It moves towards the room where everyone is, forcing them to try and keep the door shut.

They intend to wake the Doctor up, but hold off when they're reminded that doing so will kill him.

The Doctor struggles mentally with the images as Harry, Sarah, Rogin and Vira struggle physically to keep the grub outside the room.  Harry and Rogin leave the struggle to Sarah and Vira as they rush off to the armoury to get some Fission guns.  On their way back, they are attacked by an even more insect-like Noah.

They fire on each other, Noah is a crap shot and the Fission guns hit but seem to do little other than sting him.  They close another blast door in the corridor and race back to help the ladies. Once there, they fire at the grub but it seems to have little effect.

By now, the memory sequence has finished and the Doctor revives just in time to suggest aiming for the bottom of its body.  The fission blasts do indeed hurt the grub and it scurries off back into the vent.

The Doctor explains to the group that the Wirrn Queen was fatally wounded by the automatic guard, and limped to Dunes capsule before it died.  Therefore, large volts of electricity are a definite weakness of the Wirrn.  They come up with a plan to electrify the main chamber walls and therefore create a protective ring around the humans.  It requires moving to other parts of the station though.

The Doctor uses the trans-mat couch to send Harry and Rogin back to the control room, and is about to send Sarah-Jane when the power is cut.

The Doctor hypothesises that the Wirrn must be pupating into adults, therefore they don't need power.   He intends to cheerily just walk back down to the solar stacks and turn the power on again as all the Wirrn will be in a chrysalis form.   When he does though, he encounters a fully formed Wirrn version of Noah.

Vira turns up with a stun gun and shoots Noah, allowing the Doctor to get back to the entrance.  Noah calls them back and gives them a preposition.   He will let the Doctor, Harry, Sarah, Rogin and her go if they get in the station's shuttle and leave the rest of the humans to them.  They intend to absorb the sleeping humans and become a technologically advanced race.  Noah explains that the Wirrn happily lived in the Andromeda Galaxy until the humans came and destroyed their colonies, forcing them to drift in space like nomads.  This absorption of the humans will be a kind of poetic justice.

Vira and the Doctor return to the main chamber and go back to square one with their plan.

She refuses to leave the colonists and the Doctor refuses to take everyone away in the TARDIS.  With no main power, their plan is a bit redundant, but there's shed loads of power in the shuttle that Noah mentioned.  As the Wirrn are hatching by now, it's too dangerous to run the power cable openly through the corridors though.  Not to worry, Sarah-Jane volunteers to take the end of the power cable and pull it through the service conduits from the shuttle bay to the main chamber.

The survivors begin to put their plan into action, with Rogin, Harry and Vira setting up the shuttle to transfer the power, and Sarah taking the cable through the conduit that runs perilously close to the solar stacks.

The Wirrn tumble to the human plans and send a couple of them to the shuttle.  Rogin scolds them with a quick blast of the shuttles engines and they don't bother to try a second time.  They decide to assault the main chamber instead, again sending just a couple to break down the door to the room.

The Doctor seals the door off and crosses his fingers, hoping Sarah won't be too much longer.

Sarah gets close to the finish line, but gets stuck in the conduit.

The Doctor uses reverse psychology on her, lecturing about how she's only a girl and complaining about her whining all the time.  Sarah gets mad and sure enough, wrestles herself free, completing the journey.

The Doctor connects the cable just as the Wirrn are breaking through the door.  The voltage is turned on and the Wirrn at the door get a huge shock.

The two groups are seemingly locked in a stalemate.  Noah uses the intercom to try and convince Vira to leave, but the Doctor speaks for her, insisting that the Wirrn should be the ones to leave the station and just go and inhabit a different planet.  Noah refuses and threatens to cut off the oxygen supply.  The Doctor appeals to Noah's human side and encourages him to lead the swarm into space.

The intercom goes dead and Rogin spots the Wirrn crawling around the outside of the station, heading towards them in the shuttle, presumably to kill the power.  Vira comes up with a plan and sets it to self-take off.  They abandon the shuttle and hope that the swarm of Wirrn all go into the shuttle thinking they'll get the survivors.

The plan works and the Doctor catches up with Rogin as he is disengaging the synestic locks that stop the shuttle from taking off.  It comes to the final lock and they both know that the shuttle will start ignition when it's disengaged.  The Doctor tries to be the heroic one, but Rogin knocks him unconscious and pulls him to safety before disengaging the lock and sacrificing himself.

The Wirrn reach the shuttles bridge as it takes off into space, heading to a new destination.

The Doctor comes around and joins Sarah, Harry and Vira.  He ponders that maybe Noah did lead them to the shuttle after all.  As if in response, Noah's voice comes over the intercom and simply says "goodbye, Vira" before the shuttle detonates, killing the Wirrn.

In the aftermath, Vira vows to revive everyone else and get them back to Earth. Now the shuttles gone, she will have to use the transmat which can only send three at a time.  The Doctor takes a look at it and says that the transmat receptors on Earth are faulty and volunteers to beam down and take a look at them first.  He grabs a big coat just in-case the weather is a bit off and Harry and Sarah, after a quick change, go with him.

Trivia

• As noted in the trivia for Robot, this was the first story to be undertaken by the new crew, headed up by new Producer, Phillip Hinchcliffe.  Barry Letts was still around, making sure that the transition went very smooth.

• One telltale thing to note is that Elizabeth Sladen's hair is longer in this story compared to Robot, due to the sequence of filming after a break

• The original version of this story was actually submitted by John Lucarotti (see Marco Polo and the other historical stories of the First Doctor's run).  Holmes accepted the script and paid Lucarotti, but changed a few things around including the aliens encountered.  They were originally called the Delc and were ball shaped.  Another thing that was changed was that Vira was supposed to be from Hati.  The Director changed that though.

• Locarotti hadn't written a Dr Who script since the days of the First Doctor, so when he submitted this script, it had individual episode titles!

• Knowing that the budget was going to be tight, the team planned to re-use the Nerva station set

• Apparently they tried to experiment with different tints on the title sequence, but the colour ended up being distinctly brown so they abandoned that idea after the first episode.

• There is believe it or not, a tenuous link between Doctor Who and Ridley Scott who directed Alien in 1979.  I'm not saying he stole the idea, but who knows, maybe he was influenced a little by Ark in Space?

What worked

• The mysterious case of the deserted space station worked very well

• The interaction between all three characters is great too

• Well, it's not just the main characters.  Noah's wrestle with his own arm is a bit cheesy, but the noises he makes seem to add pathos to it

• Monster effects and model shots notwithstanding, the set for the main chamber looked pretty impressive

• The grub in the solar stack also looked quite good, certainly better than when they did the same thing in Spearhead from Space

What didn't work

• The prologue bit at the beginning makes it feel like Dune's only just been killed, when it's probably meant to be much later

• The model work for the station

• The bubble wrap slime trails are laughable. 

• Come to think of it, why does everyone ignore the really obvious slime trail leading to Dune's capsule, or the smashed vent for ages?

• How come the Earth Government didn't get on Nerva Station first?  Must have been on a different colony ship

• The model shots of the Wirrn crawling across the outside of the station,  I'd have thought they'd have re-worked that on the DVD for definite.  

Overall Feelings

Okay, lets get it out there: I love this story.  I watched it as a kid in high school so I have far better recognition of it, and it worked its magic on me.

I remember that I got it as a gift, and one that I never asked for. I loved Doctor Who, but I'd never seen anything of the Fourth Doctor.  To be honest, the cover looked a bit knaff and on the first watch through, the Wirrn put me off a bit, but not being one to be ungrateful I thanked my parents for the gift.  Now, here's the odd thing.  I didn't have to go back to it, I could have left it to gather dust, but I didn't.

The truth is, for every god awful shot of sausage shaped Wirrn dancing on wires across a space stations surface, for every sheet of green painted bubble wrap that's meant to be a slime trail, there's a scene with actors doing what they do best.  Liz Sladen is great, Ian Marter makes you think that Harry really is a bumbling idiot, and Tom Baker, well, he just looks so natural it's like he's been doing it for decades.  Grand gestures and speeches, grim looks and a great toothy grin all come together as the very epitome of his character and it's captivating.  The plot is great, the music is great, the lighting is great.  The biggest testament I can give is that part one is entirely about the set up.  We don't see a single monster until the closing moment and you know what, it never once feels like filler.  Like the Sea Devils, I love this story warts and all and I'm confident that I would say that even if I came to it for the first time.

Rating

10 out of 10!

Just like the Sea Devils, there's a couple of things wrong with the plot, but the atmopshere, the feel of it is just amazing.

Re-watchability Factor

9 out of 10

Watched this when I was 11 years old and it's still as good today as then,  I watched it so many times, I could practically quote it word for word.

Watch this if you liked...

• The Sensorites
• The Web Planet
• The Ark
• Tomb of the Cybermen
• The Wheel in Space
• The Seeds of Death
• The Stones of Blood (Key to Time Story 3)
• Frontios
• The End of the World (Doctor Who, Series 1)
• The Doctor's Daughter (Doctor Who, Series 4)
• The Beast Below (Doctor Who, Series 5)
• Alien (the 1979  movie)

Consulting the matrix

Could you look past the special effects or was this one bubble-wrap too far?

Robot

Four episodes
Aired between 28th December 1974 and 18th January 1975

Written by Terrence Dicks
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Chris Barry

Synopsis

Having recently regenerated from his encounter with the spiders of Metabilis III, the "new" Doctor is quite disoriented.

The Brigadier calls in Harry Sullivan, the medical officer, and has him taken to the sick bay.

That night, something large and mechanical breaks into a Ministry of Defence advanced research station.  It's clawed mechanical hand kills a guard and smashes its way into the facility, stealing top secret documents.

The next morning, Sarah Jane finds the Brigadier having to deal with the aftermath of the theft.  He tells her whoever it was has stolen the secret plans to a Disintegrator gun.

She asks him for a pass to visit to the National Institute for Advanced Scientific Research a.k.a. "Think Tank".  She's heard of a rare opportunity for journalists to get in and see what's happening and wants a scoop on a story.  The Brigadier agrees and takes her to get a pass.

Whilst they're gone, the Doctor sneaks out of the sick bay back to the TARDIS.  He recovers his key from his shoes, but before he can sneak off, Harry Sullivan catches him and orders him back to the sick bay.  The Doctor bamboozles him and gets him to play jump rope with him to prove he's not ill.

By the time Sarah and the Brigadier return, they find Harry trussed up in a cabinet whilst the Doctor is about to run off in the TARDIS.  Sarah Jane manages to convince the Doctor to stay and help the Brigadier find the plans for the Disintegrator gun.  He isn't inclined to help them until he eventually recognises Sarah Jane.

Sarah leaves for Think Tank, leaving the Doctor and Brigadier to sort out their investigation.  The Doctor is prepared to leave in a hospital gown but the Brigadier makes him change.  Typically, he tries on a host of outrageous outfits before it's pointed out to him that he might just attract attention unless he wears something reasonably sensible.

The Doctor eventually emerges in a red velvet jacket with an extra long scarf, still eccentric, but it will do.

Elsewhere, the mechanical thief breaks into another compound, this time taking some material components.

The Doctor, Brigadier and Sgt. Benton go in Bessie to the sites of the thefts and look around.  They find large square footprints with dandelions crushed to powder under immense weight.  The Doctor deduces that whomever it is, will be creating the Disintegrator gun and they should find out the rest of the components needed so that they can lay a trap.

The last component is a focusing generator, and UNIT place it under heavy guard and lie in wait.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane is shown around Think Tank by Hilda Winters, the Director and her counterpart, Arnold Jellicoe.

They explain that Think Tank's job is to come up with ideas and then hand them out to other agencies with the funds to realise them.  It turns out that the initial work on the Disintegrator gun was done by Think Tank.

Sarah is a bit disappointed as she's looking for a scoop.  On their way round, she sees a door marked "No Admittence" and barges her way in with a feeble cover story.  Ms Winters smiles and allows it.  The room beyond is empty.  It used to belong to Professor Kettlewell, a remarkable inventor that left Think Tank in the midst of sentient machine research when he turned against it.  Ms Winters says it was because he decided that conventional science wasn't for him.  He allegedly destroyed his work and is now dedicated to alternative energy research.  Sarah looks around and slips on something dark and wet, but is forced to accept that nothing of interest is in there and she leaves under the escort of Ms Winters and Mr Jellicoe.

Back with the Doctor, UNIT are still laying in wait.

The Brigadier is confident that every direction is covered, but the Doctor points that below isn't.  Just as he predicted, the mechanical thief burrows into the compound and takes the final component, killing a guard to get it.  They search the area and find the exit to the tunnel, but curiously, there's no props in it, meaning that whoever burried through couldn't breathe.  The Doctor says that they didn't need to breathe, highlighting another giant, square footprint.

With her interest piqued, Sarah goes to find Professor Kettlewell.  He confirms that he destroyed his experimental robot and left there, making it very obvious that he doesn't like Think Tank.

Making the connections between the robot and the recent thefts, Sarah goes back to Think Tank and sneaks back into Professor Kettlewell's lab.  She inspects the wet patch in the lab and realises it's oil, just as the doors open and a giant, menacing robot approaches her.

She legs it to the door but is stopped by Ms Winters and Mr Jellicoe.  They stop the robot with a command and tell her that since Sarah Jane was so intent to snoop around, they used the robot as a kind of joke to give her a bit of a scare.  They relent that they have indeed rebuilt professor Kettlewell's robot and allow her to question the robot.

The robot identifies itself as Experimental Robot K1 but is very compliant with Sarah's questions.  When she asks if the robot can be dangerous, Ms Winters says we'll find out and orders the robot to kill Sarah.  Again, they robot advances on Sarah, but it begins to squirm as if it's in pain when it tries to kill her.  Ms Winters reveals that it cannot harm humans due to the programmed prime directives inside of it.  Sarah apologises to the robot for the cruel demonstration and strides off back to the entrance.

When she's gone, Jellicoe tells Winters that it was a risk ordering the robot to kill Sarah, as the directive had only just been reset.  Ms Winters sees it as a win / win situation.  They change the prime directive again and show the robot a picture of Cabinet Minister Joseph Chambers and tell it that Chambers is a threat to humanity and must be killed.  The robot goes off to kill the Minister.

Sarah Jane goes back to UNIT HQ and has a rendezvous with the Doctor and the rest.  She tells the Brigadier what's gone off but he can't do anything without some hard evidence.  They ponder what to do, ultimately sending Harry Sullivan into the centre, posing as someone from Whitehall.

The Doctor and the rest decide to go to see Professor Kettlewell again.

Once at Kettlewell's, he admits that he did build the robot from living metal, a substance he created, but he reluctantly ordered its destruction when it began to learn.  He disputes the fact that Winters and Jelicoe have re-made the robot because they don't have the expertise, but says if they are doing what UNIT accuse them of, then the robot will be driven mad by the orders conflicting with it's prime directive.

Almost in contradiction to Kettlewell's words, the robot enters the home of Joseph Chambers and kills him.  It breaks into his safe with the Disintegrator gun and takes some top secret documents.

The Doctor and his companions go back to UNIT, and discover that Ms Winders and Jellicoe are part of a radical group of scientists called the Scientific Reform Society (SRS).  Their belief is focused around the word being run by a scientific elite. They look at infiltrating their meetings to see if they are responsible for the robot.

The robot meanwhile seeks out Kettlewell and tells him it's confused after killing Chambers.

The Doctor decides that his next move should be going to Think Tank himself.

He immediately rubs up Ms Winters the wrong way and effectively barges into Kettlewell's old lab.  Ms Winters tells the Doctor that the robot has been dismantled, even though she knows that he knows it hasn't.  He doesn't get much more sense out of them and leaves just as Harry is arriving undercover.

The Doctor returns to UNIT, only to get a call from Professor Kettlewell who tells him the robot is with him, "alive".  The Doctor leaves a note for Sarah and rushes over there, but finds that it's a trap.  He's confronted by the robot who's convinced that the Doctor is now an enemy of humanity and must be killed.

The Doctor does everything from dodging to rolling away but ultimately gets knocked to the ground and the robot prepares to kill him.  Thankfully, Sarah Jane read the Doctor's note and rushed over to Kettlewell's place.  She commands the robot to stop just before it finishes him off.  The robot recognises her as someone who's showed it compassion.

She begins to get through to the machine, but Benton and a unit of men turn up and start firing at it.  The bullets bounce right off it, but it's forced to flee.

The Doctor passes out but Benton and Sarah help him and Kettlewell in a cupboard, tied up.

Kettlewell confirms back at the HQ that Winters and Jellicoe tied him up and altered the robot's programming.  He also confirms that the machine is made from his living metal substance.  on a ramble, he does mention that the living metal discovery also led to the development of an enzyme that could dissolve waste metal, aiding the world in recycling and tipping.

Sarah Jane discovers that Kettlewell is still officially a member of the Scientific Reform Society.  She asks him to help her infiltrate the SRS meeting.  Benton protests, advising that they should wait on the Doctor waking up but Sarah points out that there's nothing he can do to stop them.

When the Doctor wakes up, he realises that the robot was sent to Chambers because of some kind of threat or information he had.

The Brigadier explains that to ensure world peace, Russia, China and the United States gave the launch codes of their nuclear weapons to a neutral country - Great Britain. The idea being that if any of them tried anything, Britain could publish the launch codes.  Chambers was the man holding onto the codes.  The Doctor supposes that if Think Tank are behind it, they now have the codes and can destroy the world (or blackmail it).  The Brigadier says UNIT reckons Think Tank is just a front for SRS, when Benton tells the Doctor that Sarah has just gone to see them at the SRS meeting and they all rush off after them.

At the meeting, Sarah has managed to sneak inside, whilst Kettlewell skulks about in the audience.

 Ms Winters is there ranting about how their plans are all about to come to a climax, and she thanks one man responsible for it all - Professor Kettlewell!  The nutty Professor  steps calmly onto the stage and takes his place by Ms Winter's side, much to Sarah's shock.  Ms Winters then reveals the robot to the audience and activates it,

Outside, the Doctor turns up, emptying his prop-filled pockets onto the desk as he pretends to look for his pass.  The guard gets fed up and advances menacingly towards the Doctor, but doesn't realise he's stood on the long scarf.  The Doctor yanks the scarf up and sends the guard flying, dazing him and allowing the Doctor to rush in.

Back in the room, Ms Winters orders the robot it to seek out the enemies of humanity.  The robot homes in on Sarah and breaks her cover.  The Doctor bursts onto the stage and offers to entertain the scientists whilst UNIT arrives and begins dancing and shuffling fake cards.  Ms Winters yells for them to grab the Doctor, which the freshly recovered guard attempts to do, but ends up toppling over the Doctor as he accidentally drops his cards and tries to pick them up.

The Doctor is eventually apprehended and explains that he knew Kettlewell was the only one capable of re-programming the K1 robot effectively.

He asks him why he did it though.  Kettlewell explains that he's tried for years to ask people to stop harming the environment, and with the help of the K1 robot, he can now make people listen to him.

Ms Winters orders the Doctor and Sarah killed.  Kettlwell protests but she insists they're too dangerous.  The robot prepares to kill them, but UNIT shows up, guns at the ready.  Ms Winters, Jellicoe and  Kettlewell use the robot as cover, taking Sarah Jane hostage as they edge outside.  They get into a lorry and race off as the inept UNIT soldiers rain gunfire down on them, missing with every shot.

The Brigadier and the Doctor get a call from Harry, who tells them that all the scientists at Think Tank are being evacuated to some kind of bunker.  He's hit on the head by Jellicoe before he can say any more and taken hostage too.

The Doctor and the Brigadier jump in Bessie and lead the UNIT troops to an atomic bunker, built by Think Tank in the cold war days.  They quickly realise that it's guarded by automated guns.  As they're held off, Ms Winters contacts them on a loud speaker, telling them she's informed the superpowers of her intent to rule and gives them (and the Brigadier) 30 minutes to surrender, or she will use the destructor codes and lay waste to the world from the comfort of her atomic bunker.

The Brigadier refuses to surrender and uses grenades to take out all the automated guns.  After the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to blow up all the nearby landmines, he then goes to the door and begins to cut through the lock.

Kettlewell begins to get anxious but Ms Winters, as ruthless as ever, decides to buy time by giving the robot the Disintegrator gun and sending it out to wipe out the Doctor and UNIT.  Meanwhile, she demands that Kettlewell arms the nuclear warheads.

The Robot comes out and the Doctor tells the Brigadier to get his men back to safety.

They all obey apart from one guy who gets disintegrated.  The Brigadier sends in a tank to take the robot on, but the Disintegrator gun makes short work of it.  The robot warns them to leave or it will destroy them all.

Kettlewell for his part convinces himself that Ms Winters is bluffing about carrying out nuclear annihilation, until he asks her what they'll do if the governments won't surrender.  He swallows hard and activates the countdown.

Deep inside the base, Sarah and Harry manage to untie themselves and sneak back to the control room where Kettlewell is having second thoughts.  He tries to stop the countdown but Jellicoe points a gun at him.  Harry manages to knock Jellicoe to the ground and Kettlewell opens the doors, allowing them all to escape.  As they rush out, the robot aims the Disintegrator gun at them.  Sarah tries to convince it that Think Tank are the bad guys.  It writhes in simulated pain as it struggles with the dilemma and instinctively disintegrates Kettlewell as he approaches it to give it comfort.  This sends  the robot over the edge with grief and it falls to the ground, seemingly de-activated.

Now the way is clear, the Doctor rushes inside the bunker with the UNIT troops, leaving Sarah to comfort the robot.  Benton removes the Disintegrator Gun as he steps past.

Once inside, they discover that Ms Winters has resumed the countdown.  The Brigadier threatens her with a gun but the insane leader believes he won't shoot her because she's a woman.  Sarah grabs a gun from the floor and tells her not to count on it.  Ms Winters smiles and steps away from the console, believing it too late for them to stop it.  She has underestimated the Doctor's staggering intellect however and he manages to re-programme the computer with seconds to spare. Ms Winters is taken into custody and it looks like the crisis is over.

Nobody however notices the robot re-activating and taking Sarah hostage.  It takes her back into the bunker.

When the Doctor sees the robot gone, he works out that the robot is suffering from an Oedipus Complex, meaning it will try to complete it's "father's" last order and ensure the destruction of the human race,  The Doctor goes with Harry to find Kettlewell's workshop to find a way of defeating the robot whilst the Brigadier and his troops find and occupy the robot.

The robot manages to get back to the control room and resumes the countdown yet again.  The Brigadier has had time to inform all the world governments however, so their fail-safes activate and no warheads are launched.  The robot is forced to kill everyone the old fashioned way so it makes its way outside with Sarah as its hostage.  The Brigadier uses the Disintegrator Gun on the robot believing that it'll be more than a match for the robots living metal shell.

Instead of disintegrating the robot, the machine feeds off the powerful ray's energy, causing it to grow four or five storey's tall.  Enraged, it scoops Sarah up and heads off to a nearby village to stomp it to the ground.

The UNIT Troops give chase and engage it with guns and rocket launchers, but do little more than annoy the robot.

The Doctor eventually turns up with Harry, carrying a bucket full of Kettlewell's metal eating formula that he's managed to re-create.

With Benton driving Bessie, the Doctor carries the bucket into battle like a knight jousting.  He splashes the robot as they drive past, causing the thing to shrink and rust at a remarkable rate until it's rusted to atoms.

In the aftermath, UNIT returns to their HQ.  In the Doctor's lab, Sarah laments the robot's death, but she knows it was the only thing they could do.  After Jelly Babies fail, the Doctor suggests a trip in the TARDIS to cheer her up.

She agrees but questions why right now.  The Doctor sheepishly admits that the Brigadier wants him to go to Buckingham Palace to dinner to explain it all to the Queen.

Together, Sarah and the Doctor head to the TARDIS, but are stopped by Harry who looks like he's going to disapprove of the Doctor sneaking off.  The Doctor is totally honest with Harry about stepping into the tiny blue box and flying off in time and space.  He offers Harry to step inside as proof when he refuses to believe it.  Harry gets bull headed and agrees, stepping inside.  The doors close as Harry exclaims in wonder and surprise.

The Brigadier arrives to tell the Doctor of the arrangements made with Buckingham Palace, only to see the TARDIS de-materialise.  He muses to himself that he'll have to let them know the Doctor will be a little bit late.

Trivia

• Although this story is the first story of Season 12, it was actually filmed at the same time as Planet of the Spiders, using Barry Letts crew.

• Now freelance again, Terrence Dicks decided to give himself a bit of a comfortable barrier by convincing Robert Holmes that there was a tradition for the outgoing Script Editor to write the first story of the new Script Editor's run.  It was totally false, but curiously enough, it became true from this point on.

• Although this was made with Barry Letts still at the helm, it would see the first story in a series of what fans would call the "gothic era of Doctor Who".  This era would see re-imaginings of classic works in a sci-fi horror style.  For any of you who haven't managed to work it out, this is King Kong, but a robot instead of a monkey.

• So, we have a new Doctor.  The same head of serials that pointed out Elizabeth Sladen to Barry Letts also pointed out a middle aged actor who was finding life a bit tough.  Tom Baker had done some theatre work and played Rasputin in a movie.  His latest role was the main bad guy in Ray Harryhousen's Sinbad Movie.  Despite this, he was feeling depressed and dejected at the time and was working as a laborer on a building site to make ends meet.  Barry Letts took his production team to the movies and watched Sinbad.  From that day, they knew Tom Baker would be the next Doctor Who .

• The infamous long scarf came about purely by accident.  A woman named Begonia Pope was handed a load of wool and told to make a scarf.  Unfortunately, nobody told her when to stop so she used every bit of the wool!

• Other potential candidates for the Doctor would have been Fulton Macay (see Doctor Who and The Silurians), or the priest out of Horns of Nimon.  Thank god it wasn't the latter!

• Michael Killgarrif was chosen to be the robot (he also played another "robot" - the Cyber Controller in Tomb of the Cybermen).  He was sufficiently tall, but the suit made him up to 8ft tall.  It was so heavy that he couldn't get up if he fell over, which is why Jellicoe helps him down the steps in Part 3.

What worked

• Yes, it's very 70's, but the robot suit isn't all that bad

• Patricia Maynard's well cast as Ms Winters.  She's very good at being evil!

• The interaction with Tom Baker and Harry in Part 1 is quite entertaining, as is the Brigadiers flustered look as the Doctor tries on all manner of costumes

• Kettlewell is likewise entertaining in a camp, comic book mad scientist way

• The Doctor's final outfit is eccentric and great

What didn't work

• That tank!

• The Doctor stalling for time at the SRS meeting was totally fake and implausible

• The robot looked every bit as clumsy as it really was

• I appreciate the robot's eye view, but it's so restrictive as to be difficult to see anything that's going on

• Sarah getting scooped up by the robot is laughable

Overall Feelings

So far, the show's had a pretty decent run of story's with new Doctors.  The Power of the Daleks was slow to get off the ground, with Patrick Troughton acting so eccentric as to be a jolt to the system.  Spearhead from Space began very well and went off the boil only slightly.  So, should we expect great things from this story, especially as in hindsight we're dealing with many people's (me included) favourite Doctor.

I can honestly say that I did enjoy this story, but not for the story itself.  Troughton was weird in his debut, but the dark tones and menace of the Daleks slaughtering everyone in the final episodes really came to the forefront for me.  In robot, the plot never quite gets there.  Think Tank are overtly evil, so the mystery that's set up doesn't grab you well enough.  The UNIT troops are so stupid that you can't root for them, I mean, what do you expect to achieve once your bullets have bounced off it in the first encounter?

The robot does have it's moments, but these are when it's going down an Asimov line of discussing what it means for a robot to have feelings.  It never feels threatening, just annoying as it feels obvious that we're just buying time until the Doctor figures out a way to kill it.  And when that's the primary feeling, setting up any kind of time-bomb plot is redundant.

So, what did I enjoy?  I enjoyed it for the characters, more specifically, the main casts' interactions.  It's fascinating to see how Tom Baker approaches the role and just how brilliantly well he plays eccentric.  Of course, we know now that he wasn't really acting at all, he's like that anyway, but just to see him command that role from the very first take is great.

Rating 

6 out of 10

Meh.

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch it for the debut of Tom Baker, nothing else.

Watch this if you liked....

• The Brain of Morbius

• The Seeds of Doom

• King Kong

Consulting the Matrix

The robot suit - a success or not?