Four Episodes
Aired between 25th November 1978 and 16th December 1978
Written by David Fisher
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Michael Hays
Synopsis
The Doctor decides he's fed up of being a pawn in an intergalactic chess match and goes to an Earth-like planet: Tara, to do a spot of fishing, leaving Romana to go off on her own and find the next segment of the Key to Time.
Romana finds the segment relatively easily (it's disguised as a statue), but is captured by Count Grendel, a noble who is seeking to claim the throne of Tara for himself.
He mistakenly believes that Romana is actually a princess on this planet called Strella. He has both of them locked up when he realises the truth and is going to use an android copy of Romana to try and assassinate the Prince, Reynart as he turns up to lay his claim on the crown.
The Doctor meanwhile is captured by Reynart's men and taken to the Prince. He is asked to help repair an android copy of the prince that they will use as a diversion for the real Prince to sneak into the throne room and claim the crown.
The Doctor manages to keep Reynart alive, until Grendel storms their hideout and kidnaps the Prince too, injuring him and leaving him to die slowly in his dungeon.
There's lots of back and forth with the Doctor enlisting K9's help to try and rescue Romana and Prince Reynart from Grendel's dungeons, which he ultimately does.
He faces off with Grendel and the two fight with swords until the Doctor bests him. Count Grendel dives into the moat and swims away into exile, leaving Prince Reynart to claim the kingdom.
The Doctor and Romana recover the segment and go back into the TARDIS with K9.
Trivia
- Let's get the pretty obvious one out of the way. This story is near enough a remake of the Prisoner of Zenda, just on another planet
- The fishing rod the Doctor used was actually an expensive antique, and it got lost in the water when Tom Baker accidentally dropped it in. The production staff had to go into the lake and get it before anyone knew what had happened to it!
- The ending was supposed to be much grander and have a lot more fighting, but filming was cut short as the location was used as a last minute site for some Middle East peace talks
- The fat guy who delivers a message to the Doctor as a trap, is the same guy who played the original Jabba the Hutt in the scene cut from the original Star Wars movie
- Mary Tamm had ridden horses for thirty years but she refused to do a stunt in this show without a helmet as she didn't know how the horse would react
The Review
Now and again throughout this re-watching of Doctor Who, I come across a story that fills me with dread. I have distantly recalled nightmares of the terrible slog it is to go through the 90+ minutes of pain that are these episodes. In those instances, I try to be objective and give the story a fair shot as if I were watching it for the first time. The Androids of Tara was a story I was dreading.
Now that I've watched it and it's fresh in my mind though, it's not as bad as I remember it to be. It's not in the same league as some of Tom's earlier work, and I can't imagine it getting on many popularity lists, but because this is a remake of a classic, it carries with it some hint of appeal.
The first and most obvious is the humour that Tom Baker has been falling back on more and more as the season progresses. The line "if you don't stop burning my scarf, you'll have to kill me" is absolute gold, and it's not on it's own. He does the witty one liners all the way through and this story is fairly camp anyway, so much so that it boarders on farce, so it never feels too out of place.
The plot to assassinate the Prince is a little complex, and it's regrettable that Count Grendel falls back on a Bond-Villain mentality by leaving people alive and in escapable situations for no reason. That's a shame, because as a villain, he is good, charming and charismatic. He has character that we want to see more of, and even has a love interest which is unusual for a Doctor Who villain.
It wasn't until the back end of episode 3 that things started to get repetitive and dull. The escape / capture / negotiate schtick all starts around then and drops the intrigue like a lead weight until it ends in a very drawn out swashbuckling sword fight. Some people like it I guess, but for me Tom Baker isn't Jon Pertwee and it just gets yawn-worthy towards the end.
This story has a few more highlights than the others of this season, but overall I think it's just too long and could do with the ending to episode 4 editing onto the back half of episode 3.
Rating
5 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
5 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
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