The Doctor shouts after the giant hand
"Hey!"
but, like a guard on the gate of Swamp Castle, he is too late. Vorg (who must have very dirty paws) pulls a tiny TARDIS out of his machine and calls it
"A bit of bric-a-brac lodged inside circuit three."
He demonstrates the machine to Kalik and Orum, two of the official aliens, showing them first the ship, and then an Ogron. He even provides a voiceover narration to accompany the pictures:
"They are of limited intelligence and are used as servants by some race called, er, Daleks, I believe."
This is either a callback to the Ogrons appearance in the previous season's Dave the Daleks, or else it could be deliberate foreshadowing for later in this season. Or both.
Vorg then shows them Drashigs, and calls them "the most evil, the most vicious and undoubtedly the most frightening form of life in the whole of the universe!" This is deliberate hyperbole on Vorg's part, part of his "pitch," we are not meant to take what he says at face value, since the Drashigs look nothing at all like Hoover.
In response to Orum's assumption that the pictures being shown are recordings, Vorg explains
Vorg: "The picture on the glo-sphere is an actual projection of what is now taking place deep down inside."Kalik: "Do you mean that all these creatures are living in there?"Vorg: "Within their own miniaturised environments, of course."
Inside the machine, the Doctor and Jo are trying to escape, but they only encounter Major Daly, Harry Sullivan, and the rest, who have all forgotten that they already met the Doctor and Jo last episode. Vorg uses his machine's controls to adjust "the aggrometer" to make "the Tellurians" (his term for mannys) "behave in an amusingly violent way." It cuts immediately back to Harry wanting to have a fight with the Doctor, who is confused by this behaviour but does agree to it.
After a short punch-up, the Doctor and Jo run away, and get chased by the mannys. The fight and chase scenes are little more than padding, but entertaining enough for that - Robert Holmes was always better at disguising his padding than many other writers, or maybe he was just clever enough to mostly avoid writing six-parters, where that was more difficult to do? The chase ends when the Doctor and Jo are caught and about to be shot, then Vorg turns the aggrometer back down and suddenly the Major and Harry wander off looking for noms, forgetting about the Doctor and Jo completely... quite cat-like behaviour in a way.
The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to open the metal hatch so he and Jo can move from the ship to another part of Vorg's machine.
This part of the machine is all futuristic-looking, with a giant pencil holder in the background. Even the Doctor is impressed:
"And just look at this, Jo. What a magnificent auxiliary capillary pump. Have you ever seen anything like it? I've never been small enough to get inside one of these things before, it's fascinating. It's like walking around inside a wristwatch. It's wonderful. It really is magnificent."
Jon Pertwee is doing his very best to sell this "wonderful" and "magnificent" set to us, and to be fair it is more impressive than Omega's lair from the previous story.
Outside the machine, the aliens have decided that Vorg has brought "zoological specimens" to their planet inside his machine illegally, so they decide to have the machine - and the specimens - "destroyed." Pletrac, the senior official alien, sends for an "eradicator" (a giant pewpewpew gun), and there is a bit of komedy business when he seems to change his mind for a moment, but really he just wants to stand further away from the pewing.
Fortunately for the Doctor and Jo, still inside, the eradicator is ineffective at eradicating the machine, it just makes it a bit hot.
Vorg looks inside the machine and sees the Doctor and Jo. They see his giant eye looking in at them. Orum and Kalik have convinced themselves that Vorg is a spy, and that he is using the machine to send secret messages to their enemies. When Orum examines the machine looking for a transmitter, he picks up the tiny TARDIS and it returns to its full size outside the machine. This convinces the paranoid aliens that it could be a kind of 'Trojan Horse' for mannys to invade their planet - nobody had better tell them the TARDIS belongs to the inventor of that strategy!
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Jo have escaped from one part of the machine to another - this one is on location. As they wander about, we cut back to outside, where Vorg, Shirna and the aliens see that they have got into the same environment as the Drashigs. Shirna wants Vorg to rescue them, but he says
"How can I? They're already as good as dead. Once the Drashigs get their scent, they won't stand a chance."
This line is important in establishing the peril that the Doctor and Jo are in, else when the Drashigs make their appearance we wouldn't know to be scared.
Cliffhanger!
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