Another short reprise puts us right back where we left off, with only Benton's last line from episode 3 repeated. Liz stops Benton from shooting the Doctor, and he blathers for long enough to allow him to repair the computer.
When the others see he has done this, Greg realises that the Doctor can help with their current emergency and together they persuade Stahlman to reverse the polarity of number two outlet pipe... or something, I didn't quite follow all their technobabble. I'm a cat, dammit, not an engineer. Purring is not drilling, no matter what any '90s comedians might claim.
Liz reconises that the Doctor is a scientist and he tells her about the other Liz who is a scientist.
"I am a security officer. So there's no possible link, is there?"
"Did you ever think of becoming a scientist? Yes. Yes, I can see that you did."
"I read physics at university."
We are reminded that this is an evil universe when Greg is warned by first Petra and then Stahlman that he can be killed just for being rude to them. While it is never openly stated, it is heavily implied that the mannys in charge in this evilverse are Nazis, or else Soviet Unionesque Communists.
Things get even more serious when we see the Doctor being interrogated by Liz and the Brigade Leader, with a montage of them asking questions in turn before we see the Doctor's face. He tells them
"The TARDIS console slipped me sideways in time."but they think "he's just babbling" because they don't know what a TARDIS is.
Stahlman comes in and the Doctor challenges him over the gloves in front of Liz and the Brigade Leader, so they see that underneath he has bandaged up his paw. Stahlman claims "I scorched my hands," the Doctor counters with
"You touched some of that green substance from that cracked jar, didn't you? Just a little, but it's enough to infect you."
Benton puts the Doctor in prison, then Liz comes in and asks him more questions, but it is clear that they won't believe the truth, they would only accept it if the Doctor tells them something that they are already predisposed to believe, which he won't do because it wouldn't be the truth. Eventually he says
"Your counterpart had some intelligence. I wish I could say the same for you."
We transition back to the original universe with UNIT in it... shall we call it the UNITverse? Here Sir Keith is still alive and he makes one last appeal to the marginally less evil version of Stahlman to be more careful, before he leaves for London to talk to the minister.
While hardly a vitally important scene, it does help remind us that things are still progressing there even with the Doctor away. It also serves to break up the action in the evilverse, so that when we transition back some time has passed and the Doctor is having some sleeps in his cell.
He is woken up by the other prisoner making noises. It is the infected green manny that the Doctor fire extinguished back in episode 3, who has also woken up.
He kills a soldier, and then bends the prison bars to try and get to the Doctor. I suppose it would have been too convenient for there to have been another fire extinguisher right there for the Doctor to use, so instead the Doctor overpowers the manny with a mattress
The Doctor gets back out on location and sneaks around, then puts on a disguise.
In the studio there is a proper voiceover announcing a countdown as they get ready for more drilling. The Doctor comes back in with other mannys wearing the same disguise as him (maybe they are all really prisoners trying to escape using the same plan?) which allows him to get back to the computer.
The Brigade Leader spots him, so the Doctor runs into the middle of the room and shouts out
"You must stop this countdown before it's too late! If you break through the Earth's crust now, you'll release forces you never dreamed could exist!"
Stahlman wants the Brigade Leader to shoot the Doctor here and now, and only Greg speaks up against this, saying it would be "murder."
An alarm goes off and the camera goes mad, zooming in and out on the drill to signify the danger they are all in.
"Listen to that! That's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage!"the Doctor shouts. He's not doing his credibility any favours here, it seems more like a BBC sound effect to me.
Greg makes the Brigade Leader drop his gun and the Doctor runs away, but he is trapped by more soldiers. Stahlman picks up the gun and looks like he is about to shoot the Doctor himself.
This is the cliffhanger, and it is made even more dramatic by the voiceover manny counting down from ten as the action kicks off, and even when the credits start rolling after he reaches "two" he still says "one" over the top of the theme music, in defiance of the normal conventions of how these things are supposed to go.
It's no Blake (what is?) but this more than makes up for the poor cliffhanger we had last time.
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