Four episodes
Aired between 23rd February 1984 and 2nd March 1984
Written by Peter Grimwade
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Fiona Cumming
Synopsis
Shortly following Tegan's departure, Kamelion screams in pain. The Doctor and Turlough rush to find him on the floor, connected to the TARDIS data core.
As this is happening, the TARDIS picks up on a distress signal and Turlough seems to recognise it and is troubled by it - so much so that he rips out wires on the console to stop the signal. All for not though, as Kamelion takes control of the TARDIS and heads towards the source of the signal, which happens to be the island of Lanzarote.
On the island, Howard Foster, an archaeologist is returning with his team from bringing their finds up from the sea bed. Amongst the finds is a strange golden object marked with the sign of two triangles. His step-daughter, Perpugilliam "Perri" Brown shows up and explains she's bored and intends to go backpacking in Morocco with a total stranger. Howard is angry at first, but then offers to pay for her ticket to make sure retains her return ticket to New York and thereby making sure she's safe. He convinces her that he's left his money on the boat, but when they get there, he strands her on it in order to make her miss the flight.
Not to be deterred, Perri takes the strange artefact with the intent to sell it, changes into a bikini and tries to swim ashore. For some reason though, she can't swim very well and ends up half-drowning herself until Turlough spots her on the TARDIS monitor and saves her.
Turlough takes Perri to the TARDIS and lays her in bed to recover, and finds the artefact. Again he is disturbed as he happens to have a strange embossed tattoo of the triangle pattern on his arm, the same as the artefact.
The Doctor, having been running all around the island trying to find the source, tracks it back to the TARDIS and uncovers it from Turlough. He asks what the artefact is, but before Turlough can fully explain, the TARDIS doors close and it begins to take off again. Kamelion is controlling the TARDIS once again and has taken form of Howard from Perri's memories. The Doctor confronts him, but doesn't get much sense, ultimately figuring out that they're going back to where the artefact originated from - a desert planet known as Sarn.
On Sarn, there is a community of people who have a faith worshipping Logar, god of fire. That faith is waning as people are starting to question whether he exists at all. The disciple of the high priest Timanov, is a boy who also bears a mark on his arm similar to Turlough. Timanov thinks the boy, Malcon, is a chosen one of Logar and he alone can determine if heretics are burned in fire to appease the god and stop the earthquakes that seem to be troubling their village. The community seem to be ready to overthrow Timanov and Malcon when the TARDIS arrives, and people take it as a sign from Logar.
As the Doctor and Turlough go out to investigate where they've landed, "Howard" turns into the Master and proclaims that he's got control of the TARDIS now.
Following this, Perri runs all over the fire riddled mountainsides of Sarn, being chased by Kamelion who has taken on the appearance of the Master.
The Doctor and Turlough meanwhile find evidence that people from Trion are living on Sarn (the mark on Turlough's arm is called the Misos triangle and it's a sign of his people).
It seems that Malcon maybe Turlough's brother as he and his father went missing when they were very young (implication is that their ship crashed on Sarn). Malcon knows of the ship and takes Turlough there who then finds out off of Perri that the Master is involved. Together, they all race back to the village, but see that the Master has managed to convince Timanov that he is a messenger from Logar and convinces the high priest to try and execute the Doctor by burning him sacrificially.
Turlough finds some technology that disables the flame and then goes to free the Doctor.
Perri is re-captured by Kamelion / The Master and taken into his TARDIS.
The Doctor figures out that the seizmic disturbances are from the volcano that's about to erupt and kill them all. He realises that the fire in the centre of their community is fuelled by Newmismaton gas. which has renown healing properties - he assumes that the Master is after using the gas to rejuvenate himself.
Sure enough, the Master takes Perri in his TARDIS to a central control in the heart of the volcano that was put there long ago and controls the Newmismaton gas flow. He tries to force Perri to work the controls, but she escapes into his TARDIS and tries to destroy Kamelion's control box, instead finding a miniaturised Master within it.
Like a complete idiot, the Master accidentally shrank himself when trying to upgrade his Tissue Compression Eliminator. Now he needs the gas to rejuvenate himself. Perri tries to slap him with her shoe, but he escapes into the innards of his own TARDIS console and is forced to open the doors to free her.
Perri goes and finds the Doctor, takes him to the control room in the heart of the volcano. The Doctor sets up a trap by altering the system.
The Master arrives and uses Kamelion to try and dispose of the Doctor but the Doctor's trap short circuits Kamelion and he ends up being destroyed by the Tissue Compression Eliminator.
The Master, having been put into the blue flames of the Newmismaton gas is returned to normal and starts to gloat, but the Doctor fiddles with the controls and watches the flames turn yellow and the Master is burned up to nothing.
Even though he doesn't want to (because he was a political prisoner and sentenced to exile on Earth), Turlough contacts Trion and gets them to send out a ship to come pick up all the villagers on Sarn. They arrive but tell him that times have changed and he's welcome to return home with his newfound brother.
Turlough does so and asks Perri to look after the Doctor.
The Doctor does seem intent to send her back to Earth, but she convinces him that she was wanting to travel the world anyway, and travelling in the TARDIS for three weeks is much better.
Trivia
- If you don't count the guest starring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Battlefield, this is the last time a male companion has an adventure with the Doctor until the series re-boot in 2005.
- The destruction of Kamelion and departure of Turlough also marked the end of a nearly 7 year run of non-human companions that travelled with the Doctor.
- According to John Nathan-Turner himself, the last words from the Master of "Won't you show mercy to your own..." would have ended in "brother". This was obviously kept secret as they didn't want to be that explicit.
- The scene where Perri is drowning was interrupted by a Norweigian man from a nudist beach who saw her and dove in, swimming to her to help, but finding out when he got there that she was perfectly fine. Luckily, the crew got all the shots of Perri before hand.
As with Terminus, I found The Planet of Fire to be unbelievably boring. Once again, there are minor aspects of Grimwade's stories, mainly the idea at the core of them that are interesting, and Planet of Fire does have these, but they've been done before, and much better.
The civilisation based on a space travelling race is old hat for Doctor Who now, and once the TARDIS lands on Sarn, we're left with little of interest beyond a story that looks at the warnings of following blind faith. That's alright, but it doesn't really focus on that theme, it just has it there in the background whilst we see a lot of messing around by men painted silver.
Indeed, Kamelion is written out in this, and he's made one of the key elements in this story, which is fair enough, but we've not really seen him since the King's Demons, so no viewer is attached to him at all and it's irrelevant how much pain he's in because he's effectively still a robot to us.
The running around Lanzarote and Perri's introduction wasn't too bad, and it did hold my attention for a little bit. I'm not saying I'd like more than one episode of it (like Ark of Infinity), but when this is one of the good bits and it goes away mid-episode 1, then it's going to be missed.
The artefact plot bothers me. I mean, why is it on earth in 1984 anyway? The Master / Kamelion additionally are a source of amusement and frustration as they're so over the top on a constant basis that it is a complete turn off. The less said about the entire shrunken master scenario, the better.
All in all, I would seriously recommend giving this a miss once you've seen Nicola Bryant get her kit off and half-drown. It's such a sad thing too, as Season 21 has been a real upswing in the quality of stories for Peter Davison's run on the show.
Dire production and I'm not planning to watch this again any time in the future.
Rating
3 out of 10
Re-Watchability Factor
2 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
The Time Monster
Death to the Daleks
The Brain of Morbius
Underworld
The Two Doctors
The Fires of Pompeii (Doctor Who, Series 4)
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