Vorton's Revenge

Peri wakes up to find that, as usual, we are starting in the middle of the story.

What had happened? Her eyes told her the indestructible Tardis had crashed, but her mind was completely blank.
A sudden thought flashed rudely into her senses to clear the haziness.

I also sometimes have rude thoughts when I wake up, usually about Avon. I expect Peri, having never met Avon, thought about Tekker instead.

The Doctor thinks "some force" has brought the Tardis to the planet they are on. The Doctor and Peri leave the Tardis and have time to see they are in a dead forest before they get captured.

Four humanoid figures strode towards them carrying awesome-
looking weapons. They were no taller than four feet and each was dressed in a dark blue garment in the style of a tent, with an opening at the front at chest level, from which one grey, spindly arm with a claw at the end poked out. Their heads were completely hidden by helmets of the same dark blue.

They are taken to the aliens' leader.

In front of them was another figure like the others, except for the fact that his robe was red.

Their leader is colour-coded so they know which one he is. With a dead forest outside their city, and the fact that these aliens are short, dome-headed, one-armed and colour-coded, they are like cheap knockoff Daleks. The Doctor speaks to the leader.

"May I ask, first of all, who you are and what this planet is?"
"I am Vorton, and this planet is Exclon," was the reply.

Realisation dawned in the Doctor's mind. "Of course! You and your people were condemned by the Time Lords for your attacks on neighbouring planets and attempts to take possession of these. They launched a full scale attack on your planet and devastated it!"

Do you think the Time Lords maybe had a Time War with the wrong aliens? It looks to me as though in Genesis of the Daleks the Time Lords sent the Doctor to Skaro instead of Exclon by mistake.

Just like Davros, Vorton has a plan to get revenge on the Time Lords for their policy of interference. He has developed "weapons that are strong enough to destroy the most powerful nation" and plans to attack the Time Lords with them.

How... cute.

(I'm using the word cute in that way that doesn't mean cute it means something like a cross between silly and pathetic.)

Vorton wants the Doctor to play a part in his plan by going to the Time Lords and telling them Vortron comes in peace and means them no harm, and then Vorton will attack when they think he is a friend. As silly as this plan sounds, the story wants us to take it seriously - after Vorton tells the Doctor his plan, it says

It was suddenly quiet, and the atmosphere was charged with power.

Which is a book's way of going dun-dun-DUN!

The Doctor asks Vorton a question while he is in a gloating mood.

"How did you manage to pull the Tardis here?"
"Our control chamber is equipped with gravity control, Doctor," explained Vorton. "Anything that comes within 1,000 Earth miles of Exclon can be overpowered by it. You obliged us in a most unexpected way by coming within that limit.

So many questions arise from this absurd statement, but I think they can be answered if we assume the writer of this story thought the Tardis was powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Vorton has the Doctor and Peri kept prisoner in a cave while he puts the final touches to his plan, but when he tests his spaceship it causes the cave to cave in. The guards run away so the Doctor and Peri are free to go looking for the spaceship. They are immediately captured again.

As they ran down yet another tunnel, Vorton and a blue-clad figure emerged, clutching a threatening laser gun.

They all go to the biggest cave where the spaceship is. For no reason that is ever given, the spaceship decides to explode.

The guard is knocked out so the Doctor and Peri run away again. This time they run all the way back to the Tardis.

"Well," said the Doctor, gasping for breath, "the Time Lords have nothing to fear now. Vorton will no longer be a threat to any planet."
"Thank goodness!" replied Peri - and promptly fainted.
"Time for us to leave," the Doctor said to her unconscious form as he carried her into the Tardis.

That is the end of the story. Mew, what an anticlimax! Explosions may be exciting, but they are no justification in and of themselves for having the plot solve itself.

In the end, Vorton's revenge looks like is was doomed from the start, with the Doctor having taken no action to foil it. This makes Vorton look like nothing more than an incompetent mad scientist wannabe; a downmarket Davros in charge of bargain basement Daleks.

For the first half of the story it is as though we should take Vorton seriously as a threat to the Time Lords of Gallifrey, but the rest is unable to sustain the required sense of universal threat. You could make this story seem better by doing some reading between the lines if you wanted to (maybe the spaceship suffered some temporal sabotage rather than just blowing itself up for no reason), but taking it at face value it is terrible.