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Production Code: 4Y
First Transmitted
Cast
Crew
In the history of the Time Lords, their involvement with the Minyans of Minyos is regarded as a disaster. The Minyans looked on them as gods but, having learnt much from their science, later expelled the Time Lords who thereafter adopted a policy of non-intervention. The Minyans resented the Time Lords for their dominion over Minyos. Subsequently, the Minyans engaged in a civil war, using the advanced weapons the Time Lords gave them. In the final conflict, the Minyans destroyed their world. Two ships left Minyos before the final conflict, one carrying the race bank of the Minyans, the other intended to find the race bank and bring the Minyans to a new homeworld - Minyos II. The Minyan civilisation retained some Time Lord gifts, not least cellular rejuvenation and the use of pacifier guns to alter the mental state of the aggressor. At the edge of expanding universe, the TARDIS materialises on one of the Minyan ships called the R1C. The Fourth Doctor, Leela and K-9 visit the bridge of the spaceship. The crew of four – Jackson, Herrick, Orfe and Tala – are on a quest (“The Quest is the Quest”) that has taken many millennia and they have rejuvenated many times. Their aim is to find the missing ship the P7E which disappeared en route to Minyos II while carrying the genetic race banks of the entire species. They have, however, finally traced the P7E’s signal and head into a nebula to locate the missing ship. In the process the R1C is nearly destroyed, and is almost transformed into a planetoid as small space rocks are attracted to it. A similar fate actually seems to have happened to the P7E which is found at the centre of a small planet. The R1C crashes into this planet. Civilisation on the P7E planetoid has taken a curious turn. Most of the population live as slaves digging rock for fuel and sustenance, but they are culled and killed in rock collapses called Skyfalls. This situation is overseen by guards who are in turn responsible to two robots called Seers. In overall control is the Oracle, a powerful super-computer which has shaped the perverse society. Evidently the P7E became trapped in the planet millennia earlier and the entire basis of the mission was lost over time. The Doctor and Leela venture into this perverted society and encounter Idas, a young man nearly killed in a Skyfall, learning how the local population is managed and terrorised. The Seers and Oracle exist in a protected Citadel at the heart of the planetoid (clearly the P7E) and the Doctor, Leela and Idas venture there, in the process rescuing Idas’ father Idmon who was due to be sacrificed to the Oracle. Other slaves are freed too, and flee to the R1C where Jackson makes them welcome. However, the crucial race banks remain in the control of the Oracle. The Doctor, Leela, and Idas venture to the Citadel again to get the precious cargo. However, the Seers have meanwhile captured Herrick and give him what he thinks are the two race banks to take back to his ship. Jackson, Orfe and Tala are overjoyed, little realising that their friend has actually brought fission bombs back to the R1C. The Doctor has meanwhile made it to the core of the Citadel and confronted the Oracle. He succeeds in locating and stealing the real race banks and then heads off with Leela and Idas to get back to the probe ship. The guards try but fail to defeat their flight. The Doctor gives the real race banks to Jackson, and then takes the fakes out of the craft. Idas takes advantage of the situation to round up the other slaves or Trogs and lead them to the safety of the R1C while the Doctor engineers the fission grenades are returned to the Oracle. With moments to spare, the R1C blasts away, loaded with the slaves and the race banks, and is pushed outward from the planetoid by the explosion of the fission grenades. The TARDIS crew depart, wishing the Minyans well as the journey on to Minyos II, their quest complete.
In the Minyans we discover something we didn’t know before about the Time Lords. They were once the Minyan gods and taught them to use technology. Having reached a level of sophistication that included being able to regenerate themselves using machies, unlike the Time Lords for whom it is a natural process, the Minyans rebelled against the Time Lord Dominion – apparently accounting for their policy of non-intervention – and then all but destroyed themselves in civil war. Thus we learn rather more about the Time Lords than we have for quite some time, including the fact that they are regarded as gods elsewhere in the universe. No surprise there, really. No surprise either, that the former dominion messed up. It is a matter of history that former dominions of strong empires invariably fall into civil war after independence. This allows imperialists to suggest that they are inferior races incapable of thinking for themselves, but it has more to do, usually, with the empire not allowing them to think for themselves, with imposed culture and imposed government. The Time Lords seem as guilty of this as Britain in India or Ireland in the past couple of centuries. But the Minyans The Doctor meets are more than just former colonials. They are a people on a quest that has gone on for so long they have almost forgotten what the quest was about. The ship they were pursuing, the P7E, has become almost a mythical thing and there is almost a sense that, when they DO find it they will not only be disappointed, but also without any purpose. The quest has become their entire Raison D'être. As it happens, finding the P7E is not as simple as it seems. It has become the heart of a planet, rocks and debris from a nebula having been drawn to its gravitational field. This was much the same process as we saw being repeated with rather nicer CGI effects in the 2006 Christmas episode, Runaway Bride, in which the Earth was formed around the Racnoss incubator ship. For the time, though, the graphics of the planet and the R1C almost becoming buried as well weren’t a bad as they might be. The idea of the relatively new planet having a soft surface that the ship ploughs through to the core is possibly taking liberties with what is known about how planets are created. I rather think that the ‘soft’ stage is also the ‘molten lava’ stage. But ignoring that, the story then becomes one not unlike the previous, with the robotic ‘seers’ of the Citadel (the missing P7E) lording over the ‘trogs’ who live in the caves at the heart of the planet. Revolution is imminent surely. It also has some similarities to Face of Evil, where we encountered Leela’s Seveteem tribe, descendants of a crashed ship’s crew. The Trogs, of course, are Minyans, descended from the DNA samples in the race bank that the P7E was carrying. The revolution goes more or less to plan. The Trogs and the Minyans escape with their race bank, alls well that ends well. It isn’t a bad story. It has some sparks of brilliance. The idea of a world inside a planet is far from original. It goes back as far as Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, taking in C. S. Lewis’s Underland in The Silver Chair episode of the Chronicles of Narnia. The latter, perhaps, being something of an inspiration here. There was some criticism of the fact that ALL of the underworld caves were CSO and the actors worked against blue screens. It was tacitly admitted that it was GOOD CSO, the mistakes of the past being rectified. The reason given for this use of CSO in huge chunks of the four episodes was inflation. This apparently meant that CSO worked out cheaper than any set building or location alternative. Doubtless the makers of this story would have drooled over the lavish work done in real caves for the Sycorax ship in the 2005 Christmas Invasion or the quarry used for the core of the Impossible Planet in 2006. K-9, was almost redundant in this story, and this is one reason why I thought even at the time that his introduction as a character was a bad idea. If professor Marius had given him hover capability it might have been better He is ludicrous in any terrain other than smooth corridors.
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