Where is Måns Zelmerlöw when you need him? He's not scared of dancing with demons, like when he won the Eurovision Singing Competition for Sweden in 2015. Oh, he's probably too busy with Eurovision to help the Doctor today.
The Doctor captures Mordred with his own sword but Mordred knows the Doctor won't kill him and he's right, it is a bluff.
Then Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart comes and points a gun at him and Mordred practically poos himself because he knows that, unlike the Doctor, the Brigadier isn't bluffing. Don't mess with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a manny who will never just cap you once when Five Rounds Rapid is an option.
Morgaine is prepared to sacrifice Mordred and orders her henchmannys to attack again - cue another battle scene, and another HAVOC somersault.
Morgaine still cannot get into the magic circle, and although the Destroyer claims to have enough might to break into the circle, he is still bound with silver chains and so cannot act unless Morgaine releases him.
The Destroyer makes some explosions and, in the confusion, Mordred escapes. Ace and Shou Yuing give Excalibur to Morgaine in between scenes, because the baddy finally acquiring the MacGuffin they've been pursuing for several episodes isn't the sort of thing we need to see, and Morgaine escapes through an "interstitial vortex" (a magic door, in other words) back to her base in the ruined castle.
The Doctor and the Brigadier follow, and Ace a moment later with the scabbard and UNIT's silver bullets (they did have some after all!) thinking these might be useful against the Destroyer what with his vulnerability to silver.
The Brigadier shoots the Destroyer (with normal bullets) and they have no effect, then the Destroyer throws the Brigadier through a wall with his magic green special effect. With Ace's help the Doctor gets Excalibur back from Morgaine, so she releases the Destroyer and grabs the sword back while the Doctor is surprised.
"But I thought she was bluffing."Mordred comes in and surprises Morgaine by being still alive, allowing the Doctor to grab Excalibur back again. Morgaine and Mordred teleport away while the Destroyer is still taking off his silver chains and getting ready to nom the world.
The Doctor, Ace and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart run away for a bit. I'm not sure why when the Destroyer is threatening to nom the whole world, maybe they just wanted to do the next scene on location? The Doctor knows Ace has the silver bullets, and he puts them in the Brigadier's gun with the intention of going back to shoot the Destroyer, but the Brigadier says
"Good lord, is that a spaceship?"and karate chops the Doctor (he must have picked up some Venusian Karate from the Doctor back when he was being played by Jon Pertwee) so he can go back instead.
It is time for the Brigadier's heroic sacrifice, the one that the entire story has been building towards.
"Little man. What do you want of me?"
"Get off my world."
"Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as its champion?"
"Probably. I just do the best I can."
He shoots the Destroyer and its head explodes like a Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark, only green. The Doctor and Ace think that the Brigadier has been killed in the explosion but... he hasn't. He's fine.
Wait, what?
He's fine. He doesn't sacrifice himself at all. This doesn't make any sense - thematically, the whole progression of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's character arc since the very first scene of the story has been towards his laying down his life to save the Earth. It feels like a terrible cheat to then go "nah, I'm fine." Unlike cats and Time Lords, mannys aren't supposed to get up again after they've died - not until they appear in another story as a different character. Nicholas Courtney managed this back when he played Bret Vyon, so he ought to have understood what was expected of him. And considering that season 26 was the final season of Doctor Who, it's not as though they needed to keep the character of the Brigadier alive for him to come back again after this, is it?
Mew mew mew. I just don't understand this plot development, and neither do any of my friends, and it is spoiling our enjoyment of this otherwise excellent story. It has put me in a bad mood even though the Eurovision Singing Competition is on TV later on, and I didn't think that was possible.
Oh well, I suppose I should carry on with the review.
Mordred captures Brigadier Bambera and Morgaine uses her mind-reading powers to find out how to launch UNIT's nuclear missile. The Doctor, Ace, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ancelyn take Excalibur back to where King Arthur is and they find out King Arthur is dead, which is a surprise because I thought this fact was obvious from the first time we saw him.
There is a note from the Doctor to the Doctor warning him that Morgaine's words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
Ancelyn has a swordfight with Mordred while the Doctor goes in to face Morgaine and try to persuade her to abort the nuclear missile launch. Meanwhile Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart doesn't do very much, almost like he is superfluous to the plot now that his one opportunity to self-sacrifice has been and gone.
"All over the world, fools are poised ready to let death fly. Machines of death, Morgaine, are screaming from above. A light brighter than the sun. Not a war between armies nor a war between nations, but just death. Death gone mad. The child looks up in the sky, his eyes turn to cinders. No more tears, only ashes. Is this honour? Is this war? Are these the weapons you would use? Tell me!"The Doctor's speech to Morgaine is good enough to distract me from how annoyed I am that the Brigadier is not dead. Morgaine aborts the launch, then says she wants to see King Arthur again. The Doctor tells her that Arthur is dead and she doesn't believe him at first, but then she has a sad. Jean Marsh nails this scene, and makes us feel sympathy for a baddy who was only a minute ago trying to wipe out the world by starting a nuclear war.
Mordred defeats Ancelyn but the Doctor saves him. He tells Brigadier Bambera to arrest Mordred and Morgaine. I would love to have seen a courtroom drama based on their trial, or that of some other aliens captured by UNIT, but the BBC have never been very good at picking the subjects for spinoff series.
Look, there's a dog!
Back at Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's house we see that he has a doggy. This vital piece of information changes everything - now we know he would have never gone out to self-sacrifice when he had a doggy waiting for him at home, that would just be too sad. Suddenly it all makes sense!
In the final scene, the Brigadier returns to retirement and domestic life, while Mrs Lethbridge-Stewart goes off with Ace, Shou Yuing and Brigadier Bambera in Bessie, leaving Alistair, Ancelyn and the Doctor to W-word in the garden. The Doctor once again proves he is a master manipulator by offering to make noms for them all instead.
The final shot of the story is questionably framed, with the camera panning from a two-shot of the Brigadier and Ancelyn...
...to a two-shot of Ancelyn and the Doctor...
...but this means that we don't see the Brigadier and the Doctor rightfully placed together. Either the camera angle should have been wider to view all three at once, or else Ancelyn should have been on the left so the final image was a two-shot of the Brigadier and the Doctor. Here, let me show you what I mean with a quickly composited picture:
Battlefield is a triumphant sendoff for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as he goes off to live a well-earned happily ever after with Mrs Lethbridge-Stewart and his doggy, in which he definitely doesn't get turned into a cybermanny because that would be the stupidest idea imaginable, on a level with killing off Captain Kirk or not getting Peter Woodthorpe to play Gollum. These things would never happen.
It is also a great story in its own right, with a superb baddy in the shape of Morgaine, who is sort of like Lady Peinforte done right in that she is a powerful, knowledgeable opposite to the Doctor and with an unseen shared backstory with him. Mordred is also a solid, Richard-like henchmanny for her, and neither of them got killed off or turned good so they could maybe have come back if only the show had not been cancelled.
On the other paw there are certainly some... controversial directing choices in this story ("Boom!") but these are superficial flaws and for the most part they do not detract too much from what is an exciting, fun adventure story, one of the classics of the Sylvester McCoy era.
Purr.
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