After a recap of the final scene of part one where the Doctor and Earl Sigma are caught by the Kandyman, part two begins with Ace - once more a prisoner of the Happiness Patrol - who sees some black-clad mannys demonstrating against Mrs Thatcher and the Happiness Patrol. This is very brave because the Happiness Patrol are obviously going to kill them for being "killjoys."
The Doctor tricks the Kandyman into sticking himself to the floor so he can't kill them. Then the Doctor and Earl escape from the Kandyman into some pipes where they meet some aliens. At the same time, in a parallel plotline, the aliens are also helping Ace to escape from the Happiness Patrol (again). Then the Doctor meets Trevor Sigma (again) and trolls him (again). Aside from introducing the friendly aliens, this episode seems to be repeating itself a lot.
Mrs Thatcher decides to let her doggy Fifi go into the pipes to nom Ace and the aliens when she hears about the escape. Fifi chases Ace and an alien until they blow her up with some of Ace's Nitro Nine. Ace is, as usual, very quick to resort to explosives to solve a problem.
Trevor takes the Doctor to see Mrs Thatcher where he trolls her for a bit by pretending to be too important to answer any of her questions (such as who he is or whose side he is on), then he goes off to meet up with Earl again.
The way the Doctor moves from scene to scene, to meet with the required supporting characters in turn, makes the world of Terra Alpha feel very small - but deliberately so, as though attempting to make a plausibly realistic alien planet within the confines of a television studio was not even being attempted by the makers of this programme. Either that or all establishing shots of the Doctor travelling from place to place had to be ruthlessly edited out to make room for more scenes of Ace escaping from and being recaptured by the Happiness Patrol.
When Earl hears the Doctor is on his way back to the Kandy Kitchen, he says
"Not the Kandy Kitchen."
in a very similar way to
I think this may be a deliberate reference, as this era of Doctor Who is notorious for its many gratuitous callbacks to the earlier years of the show - another example of this here is the Doctor telling Trevor his name, or rather his "nickname," is "Theta Sigma", which is a reference to The Armageddon Factor from season 16.
Two Happiness Patrol mannys are waiting to shoot the demonstrators from the start of the episode, but the Doctor sneaks up on them and trolls them into throwing away their guns. This is another demonstration of the Doctor's moral philosophy, similar to the bit when he said
"Weapons: always useless in the end."
back in Remembrance of the Daleks Part Three. (Although, as in that story, this is somewhat undermined by how effective Ace's Nitro Nine continues to be.)
Mrs Thatcher wants to execute another prisoner, Ace's friend from earlier (whose name has still not been given on-screen), using the Kandyman's "fondant surprise" but the Kandyman is still stuck to the floor. The Doctor comes in and offers to release him if the Kandyman will stop the fondant surprise.
Ace tries to rescue her friend and ends up getting captured (again) (again) instead, but at least they don't get killed by the fondant surprise because the Doctor is successful. Trevor tells Mrs Thatcher that the rules say she has to use a different method to execute them next time, but this doesn't worry her too much as she has plenty. Mew and hiss, Mrs Thatcher is a pantomime baddy.
The Kandyman, who is no longer stuck to the floor, wants to kill the Doctor so the Doctor sticks him to the floor (again) and then leaves to find Ace. He meets up with Earl (again) and they see a poster of Ace, who is going to be appearing at "the Late Show at the Forum" - this is obviously going to be Mrs Thatcher's next attempt at executing her, although we will have to wait until next time to see it, as it is the end of the episode.
This episode contains a lot of repetition, and so feels like it is mostly padding. Escapes and recaptures, and revisiting earlier locations and characters, are so frequent (and so quickly reversed) that it is tempting to view this as deliberate commentary upon the padding often seen in the middle of a typical Doctor Who story.
While Ace has been continually moving from captive to escapee and back again ever since she parted company from the Doctor in part one, the Doctor has been more proactive in this episode - since (easily) escaping from the klutches of the Kandyman, he has been acting like a force of nature, sweeping into scenes with Trevor, Mrs Thatcher, the Happiness Patrol snipers, the Kandyman, even Earl, and taking them over effortlessly - none of them know how to deal with the Doctor because he does not fit into their view of how the world of Terra Alpha functions.
While many baddys (and some friends, for instance Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) have experienced this of the Doctor over the years, here it is particularly fitting because of the allegorical nature of The Happiness Patrol. Terra Alpha is like the Village, it stands for all that is worst in manny society, and all that is worth fighting against. The Doctor has fought against plenty of power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermannys, and the like before now. This time he is up against Mrs Thatcher.
Happiness will prevail!
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