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First Transmitted
Cast Crew
The Inferno is the nickname given to a project to penetrate the Earth's crust to liberate pockets of Stahlman's Gas at its core, which is theorized to be able to provide massive amounts of energy. Professor Stahlman himself is ill-tempered and obsessive about any interference with the progress of his work. Sir Keith Gold, the project director, is concerned about this and tells Petra Williams, Stahlman's assistant that he is calling Greg Sutton, a drilling expert, to consult on safety issues. UNIT is overseeing security at the project, and the Third Doctor is here too, for his own reasons. He is using the output of the project's nuclear reactor to power experiments on the TARDIS console, hoping to end the exile on Earth imposed on him by the Time Lords (The War Games). The project, however, has its own problems. Slocum, a worker repairing one of the drill pipes encounters a super-hot green slime seeping out of the pipe that rapidly mutates him into a feral creature, which goes berserk and kills one of the other workers. While the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton investigate, the Slocum creature enters the reactor control room and attacks Bromley, the technician there, then pushes the reactor power to maximum. At the same time, the Doctor is using the TARDIS console, and the energy rush shifts the console and the Doctor into a dimensional limbo, from which he is barely saved when Liz manages to cut the power. Alarms go off as the drill is in danger of shutting down due to the overload. When the Doctor reaches the reactor control and starts to lower the power output, Slocum attacks… The Doctor tries to calm Slocum down while he screeches horribly, but a UNIT soldier, Wyatt, tries to shoot Slocum and is attacked. Slocum eventually collapses, as does Wyatt, and the former's body is so hot that it scorched the wall where he fell. The Doctor voices his concern that Slocum's mutated form seems to be filled with some strange power. He has also heard the screeching before — during the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa. Benton informs the Brigadier that Bromley and Wyatt have gone missing, and the Doctor encounters Wyatt, who is in the process of mutating, on the cooling towers. Wyatt tumbles over to his death, but the Doctor does not notice the mutated Bromley on the towers as well. The drill has been bringing up more quantities of the green slime, but Stahlman dismisses any connection between that and the incidents at the project. When a jar of the slime starts to bubble over, he impulsively grips it, superficially burning his hand. Stahlman places the jar in a box which he orders frozen, and secretly sabotages the project computer, which was predicting disaster. He also orders that the power be cut off to the Doctor's hut, so that the drilling can be accelerated, with penetration occurring in 49 hours. The Doctor, in the meantime, sends Liz away on a wild goose chase while he hooks up the console again. Noticing the power drain, Stahlman cuts the power to the console just as Liz and the Brigadier rush back to the hut. As they look on, the Doctor, his console and his roadster Bessie seemingly fade out of existence… The Doctor arrives in a parallel universe. On this world, a Republic of Great Britain exists, and is run by a fascist regime after the execution of the Royal Family. The Inferno project is also ongoing, but the security is provided by Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, a sinister man with an eyepatch, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, and Platoon Under Leader Benton. The project is also much more accelerated, with only a few hours before penetration… The Doctor, captured and under interrogation, tries to convince the parallel versions of his friends that he is from another universe, but they believe he is trying to feign insanity. Here, Director Stahlman has also been infected with the green slime, and is mutating. The Doctor is placed in a cell with a sedated Bromley, but the alarm is raised when Bromley awakens fully mutated. Escaping, the Doctor makes his way to the main control room to stop the drilling but is discovered. The Doctor pleads for them to stop, telling them that the screeching is the sound of the planet "screaming out its rage," but to no avail… As Stahlman holds a gun on the Doctor, penetration is achieved, an explosion is heard and an earth tremor rocks the installation. The temperature rises rapidly as more green slime oozes out of the cracked pipes. As the Doctor and the parallel Sutton try to contain the explosion, Stahlman, now fully mutated, attacks them. They manage to escape, leaving Stahlman behind a heat shield with the bodies of the unconscious workers. Stahlman rubs the slime on their faces, mutating them as well.There are seismic disturbances all over the country, and the Doctor explains that now that the crust has been penetrated, the planet will soon revert back to the gases it sprung from. The Doctor tries to convince the others that he can stop this from happening in his own universe if they will help him to return, and shows them the TARDIS console. The Brigade Leader demands that the Doctor save them, too, but the Doctor says that they do not belong in the other universe. Refusing to accept this, the Brigade Leader orders everyone back to the control room, where Stahlman and his fellow mutants attack, infecting Benton as well… Finally agreeing to help the Doctor, the group fights their way out using fire extinguishers to paralyze the mutants. By this time, the sky has turned red and the heat is overwhelming. The parallel Petra, with Sutton's help, manages to feed power to the TARDIS console. At the last moment, the Brigade Leader snaps and threatens to shoot the Doctor if he doesn't save them, but is gunned down by Section Leader Shaw. As a wall of lava sweeps towards the hut and the others watch the end coming towards them, the Doctor transfers back to his own universe… The Doctor is back but unconscious in a healing coma, and there are only three hours left before penetration zero. When he awakes, the Doctor goes to the main control room and tries to smash the controls. He is unsuccessful and has to be restrained, but manages to tell Liz to put a new circuit into the computer that Stahlman had sabotaged. Liz does so, and the computer advises drilling be stopped at once. In the meantime, Stahlman orders everyone out of the drill head area, then when they are gone he picks up a handful of slime and rubs it into his face, causing himself to completely mutate. The Doctor escapes from the sickbay and returns to the control room, dealing with the Bromley mutant on the way. As Sir Keith struggles with the decision to order a shutdown, the Stahlman mutant emerges and has to be subdued with fire extinguishers. With seconds to go, Sir Keith orders that the drill be shut down and the shaft filled in. Later, Sir Keith informs the Doctor that the project is being abandoned and everyone is leaving. The Doctor announces that he, too, is leaving. The Brigadier and Liz protest, and the Doctor sharply tells the Brigadier that he reminds him of his fascist counterpart. The Doctor activates the console and vanishes, but only makes it as far as a nearby garbage dump. Suitably chastened, he asks the Brigadier to help him retrieve the console, much to Liz's amusement.
Analysis by Cuisle This is considered one of the masterpieces of the early Pertwee era, and deservedly so in many ways. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have problems. Like all of these seven episode stories it suffers from too much dialogue, too long chase sequences, too much obvious padding out. But these things are only criticisms by modern standards. In the 1970s the long dialoque sequences of Doctor Who were not unusual. Nor were the overlong chase sequences. Much of the outdoor sequences of this and the previous stories have the same feel to them as episodes of The Avengers or police dramas of the day. And given that Doctor Who was classed as CHILDREN’s TV it tackled much heavier issues in many ways. It is interesting to note just how many episodes in the late 1960s,
early 70s deal with plots surrounding aspects of British industry
and scientific advancement, and the difficulties of balancing science
and ‘progress’ with the environment. The ultimate example
of this is, of course, The Green Death, but Inferno also has it's
environmental warning. Try to dig to the centre of the Earth and you
will not only release a nasty chemical that turns people into primordial
savages, but you will also destroy the planet. Now, I can’t
help thinking that the latter should be obvious. There is a perfectly
good reason why the Earth’s molten core is at the core and there’s
all these miles of crust between us and it. But in the early 1970s
there was something of a feeling that science could do anything. Men
had gone to the moon. Anything was possible if science was not held
back by cautious politicians or paltry things like budgets. The most surprising thing for modern fans watching this episode, especially if they are new to Doctor Who and backtracking, is the sight of the console removed from the console room. With what we understand now about how the TARDIS works, it is hard to imagine the console would be any use outside of the rest of it. but here we see The Doctor experimenting. The sequence where Liz is transported 10 seconds forward into the future is an amusing example of how time travel works. But we have clues from the start that something isn’t right with the TARDIS functions and that is confirmed when The Doctor is thrown out of his own universe with his console. The sequence in which The Doctor’s face is crazily and apparently painfully distorted may look laughable next to modern CGI effects, but it was imaginative for it's time. And so was the alternative universe. Yes, there is a Star Trek episode
from the same era with an evil Kirk etc. But actually, these are not
evil alternatives as such, rather the same people with the same personalities
but in an environment which has made them behave differently. Sergeant
Benton is even more of a jar-headed NCO in the totalitarian state
where his rank are not expected to think. Brigade Leader Lethbridge
Stewart is a hard man, but not evil as such, only doing what he sees
as his duty. The episode more closely resembles an episode of Stargate
SG1, some 28 years later, in 1998, There But For The Grace of God,
in which an alternative universe faces disaster. The Doctor in Inferno
is helped by the doomed people of the totalitarian world to escape
back to his own in order to save it from making the same mistake.
What goes around comes around in Science Fiction.
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