Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Inferno Episode 3

There's a very short reprise at the start here, as the Brigadier and Liz see the Doctor disappear again. That already suggests there's going to be a lot packed into this episode. Liz says

"Stahlman's cut off the power. Wherever the Doctor is, he's trapped."

Stahlman refuses to restore the power to the Doctor's hut when they ask him to, because he is a dick. He puts on a pair of gloves to hide his increasingly green paws.

The transition from where they are to where the Doctor is is cleverly (but cheaply) conveyed to us by means of a spinning silver ball covered in tinfoil. The Doctor is having sleeps when we first see him, but he soon wakes up and finds that he is in a different place.

There is a poster on the wall which gets a close up so that we know it must be important.

Luckily Bessie has been transported along with him, so the Doctor gets in and drives outside. He is confused by the differences he sees, and then he gets shot at by a soldier so he drives away. The soldiers chase him, and we see that one of them is Benton who you would think ought to know better.
Or maybe not, this is Benton after all, mew.

The chase goes on for quite a while, and is probably our first evar proper Jon Pertwee chase sequence - he even knocks over some barrels with Bessie at one point. The incidental music is an odd choice for an action scene though, being weird and disorientating, as though trying to represent the Doctor's confusion as he tries to escape from soldiers he didn't know were there.

Abandoning Bessie, the Doctor climbs up on one of the industrial buildings where he meets one of the mannys who is turning into a monster. Luckily there is a fire extinguisher nearby (right where the Doctor is, in fact, which is very convenient) that the Doctor can use to spray him with.

Benton and the soldiers see the Doctor and chase him again, and as the Doctor runs away he meets Wyatt. The Doctor tries to get rid of him by throwing a stick, but Wyatt is not a doggy so doesn't chase after it.

The soldiers see Wyatt and, mistaiking him for the Doctor, shoot him. He does a HAVOC stunt and falls off, explaining why it was necessary for this scene to take place up on the high roof so that the stunt would be a lot more impressive.

The Doctor sees Liz but doesn't notice that she has changed her hair style and colour and her costume. Oh wait, I'm wrong, he has noticed, because he says

"Have you all gone mad? What are you doing in that ridiculous get-up?"

So he had noticed, he just didn't think it was anything he should be at all concerned about, silly Doctor. Obviously Liz replies by taking out her gun and capturing him. She summons Benton and the soldiers with a whistle (so maybe they are doggys after all?) to take him back to the studio.

The Brigadier turns round to reveal that he has an eyepatch and no moustache. When he asks the Doctor what his name is, the Doctor finally realises what is going on:

"My name? You ask me my name after all the years that you and I... Well now, wait a minute... Yes, I think I'm beginning to see what's happened here."

He says his name is Doctor John Smith, so even though the Brigadier Brigade Leader is quite clearly a baddy he doesn't feel the need to try and fool him with an alias.

"And where do you come from, Doctor Smith?"
"Yes, well, this is where we come to the difficult bit."
"Well?"
"I come from a parallel space-time continuum."

The Brigade Leader takes the Doctor to see Professor Stahlman, who has no beard here and is dressed like a Bond villain, and who is even more in charge here than in the other universe because, as he tells the Doctor, here Sir Keith is ded. The Brigade Leader tells Stahlman "he gave an obviously false name," which is an amusing moment in a very serious situation, because we know the Doctor has been telling the truth so far only they don't believe him.

This universe also has its own Greg and Petra, but here Greg is finding it harder to harass Petra because she outranks him. He does, however, manage to convince her to take the health and safety situation more seriously than Stahlman, though not enough for her to act against him yet.

We see that this Stahlman is also wearing gloves to hide his green paws, and not just to complement his cool-looking ensemble.

The Doctor tries to warn the Brigade Leader about Stahlman and the danger to the project, but when asked how he knows all this he can only tell them about the other universe. Nicholas Courtney is an underrated actor, as here he does a very good job of playing the same manny as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart but at the same time making him different, more menacing and unpleasant.

We get a classic exchange when the Brigade Leader says they will find out who the Doctor is from their records:

"But I don't exist in your world!"
"Then you won't feel the bullets when we shoot you!"

The Doctor is proved correct when their records contain no trace of him.*

An alarm goes off so the Brigade Leader and Liz go off to investigate, leaving Benton to guard the Doctor. He uses Venusian Karate (as foreshadowed last episode) to knock Benton out so that he can escape. There is an emergency going on and the Brigade Leader has to use his gun and his soldiers to stop all the mannys from running away.

Instead of escaping, the Doctor stops to try and repair the computer, which allows Benton to recapture him. Benton says

"Are you coming with me quietly, or do I shoot you here and now?"

It's not the best cliffhanger, with us having just passed several more dramatic moments, but sometimes the 25 minutes is up when it's up.

* I hope we will get to see parallel universe Captain Hawkins next time, since he would obviously still be alive in this world, what with there having been no Doctor Who and the Silurians here for him to get killed in.