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Production Code: 5X
First Transmitted
At the manor home of a 17th century family, an unwelcome visitor arrives. In the console room, the Doctor is talking with Adric about the events of their previous adventure on Deva Loka (Kinda). The Doctor then notices that there is a fault in the console. Meanwhile, Nyssa is assisting Tegan in getting ready to leave as they are preparing to land at Heathrow right after she left (Logopolis). Tegan and Nyssa enter the console room to find that they have landed at Heathrow… just 300-some years early. Tegan is distressed and storms out of the TARDIS. The four gather outside the TARDIS and immediately smell sulphur and head off to find the source. They are then attacked by villagers, but escape. In the confusion, Adric dropped his homing device to find the TARDIS and the group is separated. A highwayman and proclaimed thespian, Richard Mace next encounters the group and takes them to safety inside a barn. While questioning Mace, they find out that some kind of comet recently landed nearby. The Doctor knows it was no "comet" and takes immediate interest in the necklace Mace is wearing. It is actually a bracelet used for prisoner control. The group begins searching the barn and comes across several power packs, and since they are far more fragile than the necklace, it means there were survivors. And so they set off to the nearby manor of the person who owns the barn. No one answers the front door, so the Doctor and Nyssa find a way
in through a window. While searching the manor, they find more power
packs, gunpowder, and a mark from a high energy weapon. The Doctor
also notices that there is a wall where there shouldn’t be one.
And while he continues his investigation of the wall, Nyssa heads
to the front door and lets the others in. But when they return to
the wall, the Doctor is no where to be found. And as the four stand
there trying to figure out where he’s gone, a figure shuts and
locks the door behind them. The Doctor then appears through the wall and explains it is a holographic energy barrier. The group walks through and joins the Doctor. Once in the cellar, they notice the place smells of soliton gas. Also in the cellar are several caged rats and the device emitting the soliton gas. While the five are searching the room, the figure from before, an android, sneaks up on them. It succeeds in “stunning” Tegan and Adric, while the Doctor, Nyssa and Mace are forced to retreat. The survivor is a Terileptil fugitive and interrogates Tegan and Adric about the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor and the others find the Terileptil’s ship near the manor while they plan on how to deal with the android: A sonic booster set up in the TARDIS might just deal with it. As they leave the ship, a group of villagers, all with the same device Mace found, approach them. They demand that the Doctor come with them, and when he refuses they attack. The three run back into the ship, now under siege by the villagers. The Doctor blasts open the rear hatch of the ship and the group escapes into the forest to find the TARDIS. The controlled villages followed them at a distance. Back in the manor, Tegan and Adric have been placed in a locked room. While Nyssa heads back to the TARDIS to work on the sonic booster, the Doctor and Mace decide to question the local miller - who appears to be able to come and go from the manor with ease. Tegan and Adric eventually escape from the room and head up into the manor proper. Adric succeeds in jumping out a window before Tegan is recaptured by the android. Unable to solicit any response from the controlled miller, the Doctor and Mace decide to join Nyssa in the TARDIS. However, just as they are leaving the mill, they are confronted by real villagers and are about to be killed for being “plague carriers”. The Terileptil still needs the Doctor and sends the controlled Headman of the village in to stop them. The villagers then throw the Doctor and Mace into a room in the mill. At the manor, the Terileptil has placed one of the bracelets on Tegan. And back at the TARDIS, Adric arrives and assists Nyssa in setting up the sonic booster. The Doctor suceedes in disabling two of the bracelets and the Terileptil dispatches the android to retrieve them. Minutes later, the android, in the guise of the Grim Reaper, bursts
into the mill, frightens off the villagers, and takes the Doctor and
Mace back to the manor where they find Tegan under the control of
the bracelet. The Doctor encounters the Terileptil, but his offer
to take him off Earth is rejected. The Terileptil instead plans to
kill everyone on Earth and take the planet over. Mace is also equipped
with a bracelet and the Doctor is thrown in a room where the Terileptil
destroys his sonic screwdriver. The Terileptil brings in a cage with
a rat and explains his plan: he is going to use genetically enhanced
plague carried on the rats to devastate the population. The Terileptil
leaves the room and the controlled Tegan prepares to open the cage. The Doctor manages to disable the bracelets and stop both of them. The Terileptil leaves for his base in the nearby city and sends the android to take control of the TARDIS. The Doctor, Tegan, and Mace escape from the room and search the Terileptil’s lab to find it completely empty. Mace tells the Doctor that the nearby city the Terileptil was referring to was London. The android arrives at the TARDIS but is successfully dealt with by the sonic booster Nyssa finished. Adric and Nyssa then move the TARDIS to meet the Doctor and the others at the manor. Using the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor locates the Terileptil in London. The TARDIS rematerializes there and the five enter the building. With the Terileptil leader are two other Terileptils who get the jump on the Doctor and Mace. They manage to stop them, but of the Terileptil’s weapons become overloaded and detonate. The resulting explosion destroys the building and starts a raging fire. Mace stays behind to fight the blaze as the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa leave in the TARDIS. It is revealed that the fire is at Pudding Lane, the location where the Great Fire of London started.
Analysis by Cuisle Visually beautiful. That is the two word summary of this episode. The use of as much location filming as possible gives light and space and a real feel to the story. Following on from the surreal atmosphere of Kinda, this had a whole different ambiance. Michael Robbins, better known to anyone over the age of 35 for his long-running role in the early 70s comedy On The Buses, played an enigmatic character in Richard Mace, introducing himself as a ‘thespian’ but clearly more of a highwayman and general thief, he is something of a benign rogue, quickly aligning himself with The Doctor’s cause, except for a brief period when he, too, was influenced by the mind-controlling bracelets of the Tereleptil. Good guest characters like Mace have always been a key feature of Doctor Who. As well as recurring ones such as the UNIT personnel, there have been many memorable characters over the years. Duggan in City of Death is another example fulfilling a similar role as Mace does here. Professor Marius in Invisible Enemy is another example. And bringing us up to date, characters like Cathika in The Long Game, Lynda with a Y in Parting of the Ways or Tommy Connolly in Idiot’s Lantern again fulfil a companion role temporarily. Robbins, as an actor mainly known for comedy is one of a long line of such who have played straight roles in Doctor Who over the years. Later choices such as Roger Lloyd Pack and Richard Wilson reflect that tradition in a good light. But there have also been disasters such as Peter Kaye, whose character failed to excite the public imagination. But back in 1982, Robbins managed to carry off his part very well. The plot of this story, when all the villagers behaving strangely and missing Lords of the Manor, was stripped away, came down to an alien who, having crash landed on Earth, decided he might as well do away with the population and take it over for his own use. Pretty run of the mill stuff for The Doctor really. The only complication was shifting the action to London. And that was purely in order to have the last scene in which a devastating fire breaks out, killing the Tereleptil and his plaque rats, take place in Pudding Lane – origin of the Great Fire of London.. Now, it being historical fact that the Great Fire did clear out a lot of the plague carrying rats, and was therefore the beginning of the end of the Great Plague of the preceding years, this is not quite so silly as it sounds. It does ground the events in a little bit of pseudo history. Interestingly, in the beginning of the next episode The Doctor does say the fire would have happened anyway, with or without his intervention, it being historical fact. I’m not sure that actually makes sense, as it means the original cause of the fire has been superseded by the Doctor’s explosion. But it is no worse than the cricket ball in space stunt for messing with the laws of physics or historical causality. Incidentally, there are some famous first and lasts in this story. It was the LAST tine the sonic screwdriver was seen for a long time. John Nathan Turner decided it was too easy a resolution to problems and had it destroyed in this episode. Meanwhile, the Tereleptil mask was the first time animatronics had ever been used in Doctor Who. It was cutting edge technology in 1982 and Doctor Who was the ideal programme to make use of it.
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