Lupton once again has to bluff the pider queen that he knows where the blue crystal is, claiming he hid it on Earth. In this he is shown to be more devious than his pider friend, who was on the verge of giving up trying to fool the other piders. This may be more evidence that his role was originally planned to be taken by the Master, who was used to being one step ahead of his alien allies of convenience (except when he wasn't). The queen plans to visit "the Great One" to ask for approval to attack Earth, which leads to the piders chanting
"All praise to the Great One! All praise to the Great One!"
while Lupton makes a face.
Sarah is taken to see the queen of the piders, and after she has been taken from the cell the Doctor escapes using a trick he learned from
"Houdini. Yes, that was it. Harry Houdini."
The queen tells Sarah she wants "only peace with you and all two-legs" and is opposed to the invasion of Earth. The pider isn't very good at lying, and even Sarah can tell she is just being told what the queen thinks she wants to hear in order to enlist Sarah's collaboration. The pider wants the blue crystal, and Sarah extracts major concessions from the queen when making a deal with her, such as freeing all the two-leg slaves - easy concessions for the queen to make when she has no intention of keeping her side of the bargain. Sarah probably even realises this, but doesn't have a lot of choice herself since she doesn't want to be pider noms.
Back on Earth at the meditation centre, Mike Yates offers to team up with Lupton's henchmanny Barnes. Mike Yates teaming up with a baddy? Surely not!
Barnes: "Why should you help?"Mike: "Because of Sarah Jane Smith, of course. I want her back just as much as you want Lupton."Barnes: "Yes, yes, of course. But how do I know it's not just some sort of trick?"Mike: "Oh, for Pete's sake, of course it isn't! Come on, untie me."
Say what you like about Yates, he has Barnes sussed out, and isn't going to waste any clever arguments on him when simply browbeating him will do.
With the queen away, Lupton plots with the other piders, but they disagree about what to do. He tries to force them to agree to his plan, but the combined psychic might of all the pider council overwhelms him and he is forced to say
"I shall obey."
This would have been more powerful it had been the Master, since we would have seen the dramatic irony of him humbled and forced to say what he normally makes other mannys say - his own catchphrase turned against him.
Tommy is beginning to figure out how some of the pieces of the plot which he has come into contact with fit together, with the help of some flashbacks to earlier episodes. He can't understand it all by himself so goes looking for help.
The Doctor hears Sarah calling for help and follows her voice into a cave full of CSO radiation. Then he hears a pider voice calling out
"Stop! If you come any further, Doctor, you will die! Oh, not at once, but gradually every cell in your body will be irretrievably damaged by the crystal rays. And I need you alive."
This pider was just imitating Sarah's voice. The Doctor asks
Doctor: "Who are you?"Pider: "The new Number TwoThey call me the Great One."
The Great One also wants the blue crystal.
"You took the one last perfect crystal of power. I searched all time and all space for it. I must have it!"
The Great One starts to use its hypno-eyes on the Doctor to force him to obey her.
"Is that fear I can feel in your mind? You are not accustomed to feeling frightened, are you, Doctor? You are very wise to be afraid of me. Go now. You must hurry back and fetch the crystal. I must have it, don't you understand? I must have it! I must! I must! I must! Go, now. Go! Go! Go, now!"
In trying to Om Mani Padme Hum contact Lupton the henchmannys and Yates end up opening a bridge for the piders to travel along to Earth. The piders cheat by not arriving on the mat but instead arrive secretly behind the mannys.
Tommy has found Cho-Je to help, and has obviously spent the last few scenes telling him the story so far.
Cho-Je: "Tommy, you go and get this crystal, and I will go down to the cellar and see what these naughty chaps are about. Now off you go now."Tommy: "Yes Cho-Je. Cho-Je?"Cho-Je: "Yes?"Tommy: "You don't seem very surprised to find me changed."Cho-Je: "When everything is new, can anything be a surprise?"
Cho-Je is supposed to be all serene and enlightened (one might even say inscrutable), but his smiling throughout the scene comes across as sinister, like we are about to discover he has been the real baddy all along. This might even be deliberate, so that when he later doesn't turn out to be the baddy all along it counts as a clever twist. Also his calling the baddys "naughty chaps" is hilarious in its understatement.
He runs into the cellar and tells the henchmannys to stop their Om Mani Padme Humming, and immediately after gets pewed by a pider. Then Yates gets pewed as well. Tommy sees what happened and runs to tell K'Anpo.
The Doctor and Sarah meet up, just as Arak and Tuar are trying to rescue Sabor from the cell. Sarah teleports herself and the Doctor to the village where the TARDIS is, explaining this sudden ability away as
"The queen taught me. Nothing to it, really."
Given that he doesn't question this, the Doctor probably just thinks Sarah meant she learned it from the queen of the mannys at some point. They get in the TARDIS and leave.
Instead of getting pewed, the henchmannys each get piders on their backs. For all that this story was happy to proceed leisurely in its first few parts, such as indulging in an irrelevant 10-minute-long chase, it suddenly feels the need to waste no time at all, and so the TARDIS materialises right into the cellar where it is most needed for the current plot.
The Doctor and Sarah see Yates and Cho-Je having sleeps, then the henchmannys attack them. The Doctor has a stone to absorb the lightning attacks, but when Tommy tries to help them escape he gets pewed. He isn't knocked out, though, and is able to help them run away.
Tommy: "We'd better get out of here."Sarah: "But, Tommy, you're normal... You're just like everybody else."Tommy: "I sincerely hope not."
Lol, Tommy was already well on his way to being the standout character of this story, and with that wonderful line he easily reaches it. They trap the henchmannys in the cellar and go to see Abbot K'Anpo, who is having sleeps in his chair. Now that's dedication to sleeps - even us cats would have a tough time sleeping all the way through an exciting action scene like the one before this.
K'Anpo is played by George Cormack, last seen by us playing King Dalios in The Time Monster. From almost his first line K'Anpo intimates that he knows the Doctor already, though this is mistaiken for him just being friendly. The Doctor starts telling K'Anpo the story so far - being as we are almost at the end of part five there is rather a lot of it, especially if the Doctor decides to include context such as explaining about how he first got the crystal back in The Green Death.
Tommy stands outside the room as the four henchmannys try to get in. Tommy resists a lightning pew from Barnes and then fights off all of them at once, until they all start to pewpewpew him at the same time.
It is a measure of how strong a character Tommy is, and how much we have come to care for him, that him being in peril here makes for as good a cliffhanger as if it had been the Doctor or Sarah in danger. This is also a helped to be a good cliffhanger by the increase in pace in the latter part of the episode, because now it feels as though events are accelerating towards their conclusion.
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