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Production Code JJ
First Transmitted:
CAST
On unnamed planet in Earth’s colonial future the images of a festival at which all have fun are in contrast to the behaviour of Medok, a half-crazed colonist, who makes contact with the TARDIS crew when they arrive. The Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie are concerned because the TARDIS scanner has shown them a man being attacked by a giant claw. The Doctor is also unhappy when Ola, the Chief of Police for this holiday camp colony, captures Medok and arrests him with unwarranted ferocity. He remains sceptical of life at the camp itself, unnerved by the seemingly fake nature of the society, and unconvinced by the promises of the Colony Pilot and the well-wishes of the mysterious Colony Controller, who appears on a television screen to welcome the new guests to the colony. Meanwhile, Medok is paraded before the colonists, including many of his old friends, as an example of deviation for losing his joy. Medok tries to warn the colonists of horrible creatures which infest the colony at night with their hideous claws. The Doctor hears this and begins to suspect there may be a connection with the image on the TARDIS scanner, and sets about freeing Medok from the cell in which he has been placed. Medok is freed, but he runs away from the Doctor, who is charged by the Pilot and Ola with abetting a criminal. He is released on condition that he and his friends do some hard labour in the nearby mine and they travel there. The mine is used to extract a gas which is poisonous to humans but yet is alleged to be vital to them. The Doctor slips away and finds Medok for a third time. This time the colonist explains that the colony is infested with giant insects with big claws which appear at night. When others have seen them they have been hospitalised and brainwashed into erasing such memories, but Medok hopes to escape this fate. As if on cue, a night curfew begins and the Doctor and Medok use the opportunity to investigate while the other time travellers retire to their rest quarters. As expected, they find the giant crab-like Macra roaming the colony at night.
The pair are soon captured and brought before the Pilot, but Medok claims the Doctor was only trying to get him to turn himself in and the situation is once more mollified. When alone, the Pilot is then told by the Controller to adapt the minds of the four new arrivals so that they begin to think like the others in the colony. This process is a form of deep hypnosis and Polly, Ben and Jamie are all subject to the silken voice of the adaptation process but only Ben seems to succumb. When he awakes, Ben is an enthusiastic worker for the colony’s mines and has turned against the Doctor, whom he thinks should be arrested for crimes against the colony. Ben fetches Ola and has the Doctor arrested again. When Polly does some investigating she is captured by the Macra herself and only her screams of peril seem strong enough to break Ben’s conditioning and he rescues her. When they are reunited with the Doctor and Jamie their story is enough to persuade the Pilot that the four are a dangerous influence in the Colony and must be controlled. He calls on Control to restore order but when the screen is illuminated it is not the handsome young Controller who speaks, but an aged and terrified old man who is dragged away by a giant claw. It is clear the Macra are the real Control on this planet.
The Pilot is briefly disturbed but regains his composure and has the time travellers arrested once more – though Ben’s reconditioning has reasserted itself and he is allowed to go free. The Doctor and his companions are now sentenced to the mines for their crimes, to work as hard labour on the Danger Gang in the most treacherous part of the mine. Medok has also been confined to this area, his hospitalised processing having failed. He warns that the mortality rate is high in this part of the mine. The Doctor is left topside while the others venture into the deeper workings of the mine. Down there they effect an escape from the chain gang, with both Jamie and Medok being successful, but the latter is soon seized by a Macra claw and dragged away to his death. Jamie meanwhile comes face to face with a giant Macra which seems to be drugged or sleeping until there is a burst of the deadly gas, which rejuvenates the creature. Others soon appear and Jamie is in real danger.
Back on the surface the Doctor uses his guile to sew seeds of doubt in the minds of the colonists regarding the truth of the planet, and certainly seems to be having the desired effect on Ben, whose condition is weakening. The Doctor has worked out the gas flow seems to be the key to the situation and cleverly reverses the gas flow from the mine control area. Polly has reached the surface, but the Doctor calculates that with this neat trick he can buy Jamie some time to escape from the mine too – a good deduction as the improved oxygen flow enables Jamie to evade the Macra and escape. Deciding to find out more, the Doctor and Polly invade the control area and find it over-run with Macra. He establishes the deadly gas is vital to the Macra and that the entire colony is a front to enable gas production to take place, with the human colonists duped into serving the Macra through its elaborate Control strategy. The Pilot now faces a show-down in his office – his security chief Ola demands harsh punishments for transgressors of colony law; Jamie appears with his tale; and then the Doctor and Polly, who persuade the Pilot to accompany the Doctor to the Control centre. Once there his conditioning is broken and the suppressed memories of abuse flood back into his mind. In a last gamble the voice of Control has Ola arrest the Doctor and the Pilot and placed in an area of an imminent explosion. Ben, whose conditioning is also ended, frees them, and some manipulation of the gas pipes sends the combustible mixture to the Control Centre. When the gas explodes there, the Macra are all killed. As the colony reverts to happy mode, the time travellers make their exit.
The fact that the BBC’s own website can describe the plot in
one paragraph doesn’t bode well for a four parter. Lots of padding,
running about, extended dialogue and so on seems inevitable. |
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