Mawdryn Undead

Four episodes
Aired between 1st February 1983 and 9th February 1983

Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Peter Moffatt


Synopsis

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart has retired from UNIT and is now a maths teacher at an all boys public school.  One day, he has his car stolen by a very mischievous boy called Turlough (who just happens to be an alien, stranded on the planet Earth).

Having stolen the car, Turlough drives the car recklessly, until he inevitably crashes it.  Whilst unconscious, Turlough is contacted by the Black Guardian who offers him a way off the planet, provided that he helps him kill the Doctor, someone who the Black Guardian insists is evil. Turlough agrees and is brought back to consciousness.

As this is happening, the TARDIS is caught in a Warp Elipse and ends up materialising on board a spaceship that's close to a space liner.  The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan all go to investigate.

Turlough awakens back at the school in bed. He finds a crystal by the bed which allows him to communicate with the Black Guardian.

The Guardian instructs Turlough to go into the gardens near a monument where he finds a transmat. He is taken onboard the space liner.  He soon meets up with the TARDIS crew and introduces himself.

The Doctor discovers that this liner is like a ghost ship, abandoned, but trapped in a perpetual orbit.  He thinks that the transmat signal is what's trapping the TARDIS in place and he goes down to Earth with Turlough in the transmat to try and repair the signal and thus free his ship. Whilst he's busy working, Turlough picks up a rock and is about to kill the Doctor, but the transmat electronics explode and throw them both back.  The resulting blast shifts the TARDIS to a different time.

Seemingly stranded, the Doctor heads to the school. Having missed his opportunity, Turlough follows.  They eventually me the Brigadier, but he has no recollection of the Doctor, and confirms this is 1983.  It turns out there is some kind of trauma that caused him to block out his memory and he eventually comes to recognise his old friend. To his surprise though, he remembers Tegan, a girl he's never met before.

Leaving the TARDIS, Nyssa and Tegan find the transmat capsule has a wounded man in it.  Nyssa strongly believes that it's the Doctor and whilst she looks after him, she sends Tegan to go and get help.  Tegan goes to the school and finds the Brigadier, but discovers that they've jumped back to 1977.

This revelation revealed to the Doctor from the Brigadier's retelling shows him that the girls and the TARDIS are safe, they just have to find out where they went.

The man, now in the TARDIS claims he's the Doctor, but looks different - Nyssa believes he's regenerated.  The "Doctor" says his body's failing and the regeneration isn't working and they need to get to the Space Cruiser so he can stabilise.  Tegan doesn't believe it is the Doctor but Nyssa and the Brigadier overrule her. 

Back in 1983, the Doctor, Old Brigadier and Turlough use the transmat signal to bring them in alignment with Nyssa, Tegan and the young Brigadier, by effectively going to the Spaceship in 1977. The Doctor warns the Brigadier he must be careful not to see his younger self and especially not to touch him as it could cause a paradox.

There's a lot of running around corridors and missing each other. Turlough finds a bunch of ring wraiths in stasis chambers and discovers that the man pretending to be the Doctor is one of them. He is called Mawdryn, and they were a bunch of scientists, trying to steal the secret of regeneration from the Time Lords.  All that happened though was that they became immortal, but frequently mutated and condemned themselves to a lifetime of suffering.  They now travel on the ship. It approaches a new location every few years and they resume their search for a cure.

The Black Guardian says that the Doctor is about to die from the circumstances, and instructs Turlough to stop the Brigadier's from meeting.

He attempts to do this by trapping him in the secret stasis chamber that the scientists slept in.

The scientists have obviously left the room by then. They all gather by the Doctor and tell their tale of woe.  Mawdryn begs the Doctor to help them die by providing enough energy to power their regeneration machines. The Doctor refuses however because it would drain him of all his remaining regenerations and he would no longer be a Time Lord.

The Doctor tries to leave in the TARDIS, but soon discovers that Tegan and Nyssa are infected by the same condition as Mawdryn and the other scientists (through physical contact with him?)  The Doctor has no choice but to return to the cruiser and agree to help. 

The young Brigadier manages to find his way out of the stasis chamber and finds Mawdryn and the crew.  They try to send him to Earth in the transmat, but it fails and he returns. 

The Black Guardian screams at Turlough to find the Brigadier and stop him, but ultimately, the Brigadier does encounter himself and as they touch hands, there's a blinding discharge of energy and what would otherwise be catastrophic, is instead transferred into Mawdryn's machine and provides the energy to kill them, rather than draining the Doctor.

The paradox it turns out was responsible for the Brigadier's loss of memory. The Doctor uses the transmat to return the unconscious Brigadier's to their respective times. As he's doing this, Turlough (who ran away when the Brigadier met himself) sneaks on board the TARDIS and tries to hijack it, but the crew catch him in the act. He passes it off non-nonchalantly as wanting to join the crew. The girls aren't impressed but they agree to take Turlough with them.

Trivia

• This was Peter Grimwade's second attempt at writing for Doctor Who after the disastrous story (in my opinion) Time Flight. It took the place of a story called the Space Whale (not dissimilar to Series 5 episode, The Beast Below). It was a story that was long anticipated, but never seemed to get everything in place.  Turlough was meant to be a colonist on the ship.

• As with all stories in Season 20, this one featured a key aspect of the shows past - actually it had 2 - the Black Guardian and The Brigadier.

• The Brigadier was actually the production team's third choice however.  They first approached William Russell to reprise his role as Ian Chesterton (a much better fit as a maths teacher), and when he was unavailable, they went to Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan). Ultimately, it came down to Nicholas Courtney and he jumped at the chance.

• A future Eastender's regular was the girl who played young Nyssa

• Mark Strickson (Turlough) had blonde hair at the time. The production team didn't want him to clash with the star of the show so they proposed that he shaved his head. Strickson refused unless they paid him a ton of money in compensation, so they came to a compromise of dying it ginger

The Review

This is a Doctor Who story that I want to love, but always has something there that disappoints. It's got a spark of something but never seems to reach the highs that it should.

The plot itself is a little bit complicated, but that's okay because it tackles something that is glaringly obvious for a show such as this. It heavily features the intricacies of time travel and the implications that might have.  The 1960's audience of the show would not have been ready for that - they were revelling in the Dan Dare space adventure feel of the show.  The Third and Forth Doctor's runs helped us get to this place, but ultimately this was a good indicator that the needs of the audience had grown beyond that of a children's show.

Similarly, a character that's effectively a boy being manipulated by the forces of evil to become an agent of the Doctor's destruction is really interesting.

The music has never been as innovative and enhanced the scene it's in since the Sea Devils (the Visitation may be an exception).

Finally, the nostalgia of the Brigadier after him being away for seven years is welcome. The black guardian less so, seeing as he appeared like, once, for five minutes in the show. Still, his utter blackness and ruthlessness should be akin to the devil himself and the Doctor pitting himself against something so powerful should be monumental.

The execution of all of this though is quite frankly clunky at times. The acting is waaaay overboard. The costumes are a put off, and the music, whilst great (with the exception of the car driving music) is so overused that it becomes downright annoying, almost annoying as Turlough himself.

Eric Saward knew the problems in hindsight, but I'm not sure they would have been able to fix the big issue of Turlough constantly trying to kill the Doctor and failing without writing him out altogether.

This is a story that's definitely worth a watch, and if you can filter out all the repetition and really invest in the character's struggles, then you'll enjoy it.  For me, it shows promise, but it's a bit of hard work.

Rating 

7 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Chase

• The Ark

• Inferno

• The Ark in Space

• The Armageddon Factor

• The Two Doctors

• Father's Day (Doctor Who, Series 1)

Snakedance

4 episodes
Aired between 18th January 1983 and 26th January 1983

Written by Christopher Bailey
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Fiona Cumming

Synopsis

Even though she's safely back on the TARDIS, Tegan begins to have awful dreams.  The Doctor's curiosity is piqued and he begins to investigate. 

Tegan dreams of a cave with a snake head carved into it.  She's somehow sleepwalked into the console room previously and changed the course of the TARDIS to go to a planet called Manussa, once home of a barbaric Sumaran Empire.

Concerned that it's the Mara somehow directing her thoughts and actions, the Doctor rigs up a hypnotic device that stops Tegan from dreaming until he can figure out if the cave in Tegan's dream is on Manussa.

It just so happens that the Manussan people were formed as a society when 500 years previous, a man came and overthrew the Mara, leader of the Sumaran Empire.  The Manussan's celebrate this overthrowing annually and this years celebrations (very soon to take place) mark the 500th anniversary. 

On this planet, there is a nobility - it is part of a federation of three planets, and Lon, son of the Federator is visiting with his mother, Tanha, to enjoy the festivities.  Lon is bored however and only reluctantly agrees to go to visit the old Sumaran sites with the chief professor of history on the subject. 

Meanwile, the TARDIS arrives in the city and whilst the Doctor goes off looking for the cave, Nyssa and Tegan mingle in the streets.  Tegan is eventually taken into a fortune tellers booth and loses her hypnosis headphones, giving the Mara opportunity to take possession of her after appearing inside the crystal ball.

The now possessed Tegan begins running and hiding from Nyssa and starts to put her / it's plans together to reincarnate. Nyssa spends her time trying to find Tegan.

The Doctor meanwhile finds the cave and sees Lon, Tanha and Ambril, the Professor inside it, speaking of a great crystal that was once placed in a carving of the Mara.  The Doctor tries to warn them, but is thrown out. 

The Doctor goes to the palace and tries to convince Ambril again, but is thrown out.  Ambril's assistant, Chela however is curious and passes the Doctor a blue stone and is convinced it's a miniature version of the great crystal. The Doctor  tries it back at the TARDIS and finds that it is receptive to mental energy. 

Meanwhile, Tegan / The Mara takes control of a showman called Dugdale and uses him to go to the palace and fetch Lon to it.  When Lon arrives, he is curious enough to approach the Mara, who then possesses him too.  All three of them go to the cave and open a secret entrance, available only to the Mara.  It contains lots of dead artefacts from the Sumaran race. 

Convinced everything is in danger, the Doctor goes to the palace again, interrupting a dinner.  He is thrown in jail for his efforts, leaving Nyssa alone to do the running around.  Chela visits the Doctor and hands him an old diary from the previous Professor - Dojjen.   He says Dojjen went mad and went into the foothills to join a bunch of religious fanatics who do something called the snakedance that was outlawed by the federation centuries ago.

As the Doctor is studying the diary, Lon returns to the palace and brings Ambril down to the secret entrance, showing him some of the "priceless" artefacts.  He and the Mara promise Ambril that they will allow him credit for the discovery if they hand over the great crystal and use it in the ceremony the next day.  Ambril's greed gets the better of him and he agrees.

Having read the diary, the Doctor is convinced that Dojjen knew the mara would return, and he would use the crystal somehow to stop it. 

Nyssa tries to help the Doctor escape, but they are caught by Tanha, and placed in jail again. 

Ambril and Lon return to the palace and announce that they will use the great crystal, something forbidden even for the Federator's son. 

Chela is so alarmed that he goes and frees the Doctor and Nyssa.  They all try to flee but Lon and his guards capture them again.  He orders them executed but his mother disagrees.

As they debate, the showing of the great crystal provides enough of a distraction for the Doctor, Nyssa and Chela to escape.

Once outside the city, near the cave opening, the Doctor muses that Tegan is in great danger and they travel into the wastes to use the small crystal so they can summon Dojjen.

They do so and through psychic connection, Dojjen tells the Doctor that the only way to beat the Mara is to find the stillness within himself.

Back in the city, Lon and Ambril prepare for the ceremony, and the population begin a winding march towards the cave. 

The ceremony continues until, by using the actual great crystal, Lon allows the Mara access to the physical world and it leaves the carving on the wall and becomes a giant snake again, subjugating everyone.

The Doctor and co. burst onto the scene, just in time to see Tegan mind-melding with the snake.

Everyone is forced into submission, but the doctor calms his mind enough to become immune to it's power.  He removes the great crystal and destroys it, thereby killing the Mara.

Everyone is grateful that the Mara is dead and they are free of it's influence.

Trivia

• This was the last televised story that Chris Bailey did for Doctor Who

• This was also the first TV role that Martin Clunes ever had. In future years, numerous talk shows would wheel out the pictures of him in the ceremonial outfit and embarrass him

• There were rumours in the Doctor Who magazine for many years that it was in fact Kate Bush who wrote Kinda and Snakedance as a pseudonym. 

The Review

I have to hold my hands up here and say that I was pleasantly surprised by how good Snakedance was.  I remember watching it for the first time around 2007, and I was as frustrated with it as I was with Kinda and other kitsch Doctor Who stories.  It just didn't do it for me. 

Eleven years on, and I can say that time's definitely changed my viewpoint.  Snakedance for the most part, goes away from the heavy metaphors and suggestions and replaces them with some great world building on a par with the excellent background provided in The Ribos Operation.  The people of Manussa have a rich history and culture. You can see epoch's and traditions embroiled in the story in a way that doesn't detract, but enhances it.

If that wasn't enough, the acting is great here, with Martin Clunes clearly stealing the show, even though it's his first appearance.  Ambril does a great job here too and in any other story, he would be the highlight.  A tip of the cap should also be given to the Henry Gordon Jago-esque conman, Dugdale.

When you watch it, although it's super camp, this rich environment and good acting all come together to show something akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially the ending with everyone cowering before the all powerful release of the artifact. 

If there's a downside to be had, it's mainly the costumes which do detract from the story, and perhaps the stupid rubber snake on Tegan's arm.  Other than that, this is a pretty good one to watch.

Rating

8 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Mind Robber

• Planet of the Spiders

• Kinda

• Turn Left (Doctor Who, Series 4)

• Rings of Akhaten (Doctor Who, Series 7)

Arc of Infinity

Four episodes
Aired between 3rd January 1983 and 12th January 1983

Written by Johnny Byrne
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Synopsis

This is a difficult one.  Let's see.  There's a traitor on the High Council of Time Lords who's stealing bio-data extracts from the Matrix to find a new body for Omega - the ancient time lord last seen in The Three Doctors.  Omega is trapped in an anti-matter universe and has been driven pretty much insane by the inability to interact or feel anything.

Together, the traitor and Omega hatch a plan to steer the Doctor to them and aim to use some kind of natural time-space phenomena called the Arc of Infinity to transfer his body to the Doctor's.

Seeing some of this coming, the High Council summon the Doctor's TARDIS to Gallifrey to try and figure out why the Doctor is being targeted.

As this is going on, two back-packers - Colin and Robin end up sleeping rough in a crypt in Amsterdam.

As they are there, they're confronted by a terrifying chicken like alien that zaps Colin.

Robin escapes and tries to go for help but nobody believes him.  With little option, he waits on the arrival of Colin's Cousin who was due to meet them the day after.  Colin's Cousin just happens to be Tegan.

When Tegan gets there, they end up investigating the crypt again, and Tegan sees Colin in a zombie-like state and she's captured by the Chicken creature also.  It turns out that Amsterdam falls under part of the Arc of Infinity.

Back on Gallifrey, the Doctor is met with a bit of a hostile reception.  The guard, Maxil seems to hate him, as does the rest of the High Council, including Lord President Borusa - his old mentor.

Instead of seriously looking into finding out who the traitor on the High Council is, they decide to kill the Doctor as his bio-data is planned to be used and if that happens, and the anti-matter meets matter, then the universe could be destroyed.

They march him to an execution chamber and despite Nyssa's pleas, they atomise him.  The Doctor instead of being actually atomised, is sent into the Matrix (I believe as a result of Hedin's sabotage).

Whilst in the Matrix, Omega contacts the Doctor and uses the captured Tegan as bait to force the Doctor to allow Omega to merge with his bio-data and create a body for himself.

Once this is underway, the Doctor's body is recovered by the Castillan and Nyssa.  They all rush to the high council chamber as Borusa is suspected of being the traitor, but they reveal that Hedin is really it.  Hedin dies as he gives his body energy to Omega to complete the transformation.

The Doctor and Nyssa rush to their TARDIS and head down to Amsterdam, frantically searching and running up and down streets for Omega using a handy little anti-matter detection device.  They find the crypt and find a way of overpowering and zapping Omega's chicken monster - referred to as an Ergon (sort of like a Frankenstein's monster).

They find Omega and destroy a device he was using, but it's not good enough, Omega is transformed and looks like the Doctor.

He runs off into Amsterdam. After picking up Tegan and checking on Colin, they all rush off, racing around Amsterdam to find Omega.

The reason being that the devices destruction made Omega's body unstable and he is likely to cause a huge anti-matter explosion when his body degenerates.  After a looong chase they find him and the Doctor shoots him with the Ergon's gun and sends him somewhere far away.

A short time afterwards, Tegan meets the Doctor and Nyssa and tells them she got fired from her job, so she's happy to travel with them again.  Together, they all set off in the TARDIS.

Trivia

• This is the first of the annual "trips abroad" for the production crew.  John Nathan-Turner liked the visit to France for The City of Death, so he made sure that every year, one story would be done somewhere exotic. That is, until the budgets got too tight

• Janette Fielding cut her hair between contracts as the perms she was made to wear had made her hair so brittle that it was snapping off and she was at risk of becoming bald. It was also because John Nathan-Turner wanted her to be raunchier for the Dad's at home and she rebelled

• This story also sees the return of Michael Gough to the Doctor Who universe as Councillor Hedin.  Previously, he was the signature part in The Celestial Toymaker

• This one as you might guess also stars Colin Baker as Maxil.  He supposedly was reluctant to take the part as he thought it ruled out his chance to be the Doctor in the future.  Wait a bit to see what happened with that.

The Review

The main thought I had following this story was one of confusion.  There's a lot of smoke and mirrors at work here, pure bewilderment with techno-babble and vague pseudo science.  At the core of this, there's very little story here. Some of the elements should work really well - from the political intrigue of the High Council, to the desperate bid of a madman trying to escape purgatory.  But it doesn't. In terms of Omega, it should be able to riff heavily on the previous character of Omega, but it doesn't.

There's a lot of this is off because the justification of the story is shaky.  Omega is desperate for a new body.  He's got a device that will allow him to do that.  Based on this story, why the Hell is the Doctor interfering with that.  Apart from Hedin rushing in and killing people just to sabotage stuff, there's no overwhelming reason to stop him - Omega's body is unstable BECAUSE the Doctor interferes.  So what if he turns out to be a doppleganger?  I could understand it more if it's the rest of the High Council stopping him because they don't want to give up the power.

The other big problem with it is that it's trying to do too many things at once.  It wants to be a horror - mystery with the crypt sub-plot, it's trying to have political intrigue with the high council, it's trying to be a courtroom drama.  Some of these are more successful elements than others, but it just adds to the confusion of it all.

In review, I think there's small bits of this that are interesting as a premise, but taken as a whole, there's just not enough to make this a truly good story.

Rating

4 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Three Doctors

• The Deadly Assassin

• The Invasion of Time

• The Five Doctors

Time-flight

Four episodes

Aired between 22nd March 1982 and 30th March 1982

Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones

Synopsis

Concorde goes missing and the staff at Heathrow airport start freaking out.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa have only just collected and dropped the crew of the freighter and surviving marines off in the 26th Century (see Earthshock).

Nyssa and Tegan ask the Doctor to go back in time, but the Doctor refuses, angrily saying that there's some laws that even he can't break and they shouldn't ask him again.  He tries to take their minds off Adric's death by going to the Great Exhibition of 1851, but instead lands in Heathrow Airport, 1982.

They immediately get arrested, but thanks to the Doctor's UNIT credentials, they come to find out about the missing Concorde.

The Doctor offers to help and they load the TARDIS onto a second concorde, flying it out to the area where the other one went missing.  Whilst on the flight, the TARDIS picks up some kind of strange signal, but they all believe they pass through the area without too much trouble and land back at Heathrow.

It's not long however before they discover that this Heathrow is an illusion (like a perception filter) and they've actually travelled back in time 140 million years.

Once they can see clearly, they notice the second Concorde on a desolate plane, a great citadel in the distance, and the remains of an alien spacecraft.

The crew and passengers of the first Concorde are entranced except for Professor Hayter, a prof. in Hypnosis.  The hypnotised humans are marshalled by blobs of energy known as Plasmatons. As they talk to the Prof. the crew start to take the TARDIS to the citadel and Nyssa gets visions and hears voices.

Meanwhile, at the Citadel, a strange oriental creature known as the Kalid works with a force of psychokinetic energy to entrance everyone. It's the same energy that's affecting Nyssa so strangely.   He can view things through a crystal ball and watches with curiosity and manages to trap Nyssa in a block of the Plasmatons.

The Doctor goes with Hayter and the pilots to the citadel and finds scores of humans trying to gain entrance to a sealed chamber.  He leaves the others there to try and help the humans to snap out of it whilst he ventures further.  The Doctor meets Kalid and finds that he's brought the Concordes back through time so he can use the people on them as a slave force to get access to the sealed chamber.

Kalid manipulates the psychokinetic energies around the area to try and blackmail the Doctor into letting him have access to the TARDIS, otherwise he will hurt Hayter and the crew.

Nyssa breaks free of the Plasmatons and heeding to the voices in her head, she and Tegan go to the citadel.  They find numerous visions including one of Adric who begs them not to go any further.  They understand that it's just apparitions though, so they go onwards.  They eventually get to the sealed chamber and they somehow gain access to it.

Nyssa in a trance throws a nearby artefact into a tank and the effects hurt the Kalid who collapses and starts bleeding green slime.

The Doctor is puzzled as they examine the Kalid's crystal ball.  It turns out not to be controlled by psychokinesis, but by electronics.  The Master shrugs off his Disguise as the Kalid and laughs.

Turns out the Master somehow escaped Castrovalva but has found himself stranded in pre-historic England as his own TARDIS needs a new power source.  He found the chamber and equipment and he believes that the centre of the chamber could hold the power he needs.  Now the Doctor is here though, he wants the Doctor to give him his TARDIS so he can get into the chamber another way.

The Doctor has no option but to give him the keys, then they run to the chamber to try and get in it before the Master.  They break the wall down eventually and find Nyssa and Tegan in there.  Through Nyssa, the group learn that the tank like structure contains the essence of a race known as the Xeraphin.  Because of all the souls inside it, it's got a good personality and a bad one, the bad called to the Master, the good to Nyssa.

Prof. Hayter sacrifices his body to become a vessel of the Xeraphin. They use it to appear as an entity called Anithon.  It explains that the Xeraphin came to earth to escape the Vardon-Kosnax war. The Earth contained so much radiation that they built the citadel and shed their bodies to hide in hibernation until the world was safe. The Master's arrival forced the split personality of the Xeraphin however.

Through a couple of attempts, the Master is eventually successful in bringing the Xeraphin sarcophagus onboard his own TARDIS and making it the new power source.  Some of the Concorde crew manage to sabotage his electronics however and the Master is forced to negotiate with the Doctor for equipment so that they can all get off Pre-historic earth.

They do indeed get back to the modern day, and the Doctor reveals that he tricked the Master. He gave him a temporal limiter like he asked for, but set it to arrive slightly after them, so that it pings the Master's TARDIS all the way to modern day Xeriphas, where he hopes the Master will have revenge exacted on him for taking the sarcophagus.

Together, the Doctor and Nyssa fly away as the Law start to ask questions, believing that Tegan is now back where she's wanted to be for months.  Tegan however did decide to run back to the TARDIS, but she's too late. They're gone.

Trivia

• This one required a lot of talking with British Airways to get permission for filming Concorde.  They used stock footage for some things, one of them including a bird that flies past the plane in pre-historic times as it's taking off!

• This story was the brain child of renowned director Peter Grimwade. He wrote the scripts and had to make numerous changes over quite a long time before it was ready for filming.

• The Master was a result of John Nathan-Turner meddling with the script and insisting on bringing him back. The Kalid was originally going to be an actual Arrabian sorcerer

• Matthew Waterhouse was included as a vision in this story, purely so that they could put his name in the Radio Times and nobody know his character was going to die in the story prior to this

• This is actually the first story where the Masters shrinking weapon is named - the Tissue Compression Eliminator

The Review

When you hear the outline of the story, it doesn't sound too bad, but trust me, it is.  That's probably due to the bad execution of a half good idea. The script isn't amazing, and the dialogue is AWFUL, but it could have been salvaged if not for the over-ambitious attempt to realise this story on practically zero budget.

The Masters involvement just makes zero sense, least of which being the fact that he wears the Kalid costume for no apparent reason and dribbles green goo, again, why?!

Watching this story is just tedious as it's slow paced, full of jargon and arguments with an old guy over whether aliens exist.  If it was the first or only story of a drama production, you might get away with it, but rightly or wrongly, it's something that people in Doctor Who tend to just accept and get on with for the sake of the audience watching it.  It's like a companion refusing to believe that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside for at least four stories.

The only redeeming feature of this story for me is the aftrermath of Adric's death (which is incredibly short for the same reasons mentioned above)  and the faux departure of Tegan at the end.  Supposedly, she was always meant to come back, but if you watched it at the time, it was perhaps an additional shock that she'd been left behind.  Ultimately, I would say do yourself a favour and give this one a miss, there's nothing worth seeing at all and you can use your time in much better ways.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Faceless Ones

The Three Doctors 

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Smith and Jones (Doctor Who, Series 3)