Mailer runs away, and instead of noming the Doctor and Jo, the Keller machine disappears. The Doctor thinks "it detected a higher concentration of evil in Mailer" and so has gone to chase him like a cat chasing a mouse.
The Brigadier has gotten himself a helicopter - I hope this goes better for him than the last time he was in one! The Doctor and Jo team up with Barnham, and then they wave at the helicopter to get the Brigadier to come and rescue them, but Mailer's henchmannys recapture them.
Mailer telephones the Master to get him to come back to the prison to deal with the Keller machine, and even threatens to tell UNIT where the missile is if he doesn't come back - this is probably not a good long-term survival strategy being employed by Mailer here.
The Master has Mike Yates prisoner. Yates asks why he stole the missile, leading to a nice little exchange:
"Why did I take the missile? I intend to use it."The Master leaves Yates tied to a chair while he goes off to help Mailer at the prison.
"You'll never be able to, it's too complex."
"Nonsense, this is childishly simple!"
With Benton injured, the Doctor, Jo and Yates all captured, and Captain Hawkins still ded, the Brigadier needs another character to talk to, so he gets Major Cosworth to come in and help him. The Brigadier has wrongly concluded that the missile is at Stangmoor prison, so makes plans to go and get it back.
"It's an old fortress. You'd need an army to get in there."It's a good job he has an army then. He says they will use a "Trojan Horse" to get into the prison - do you think the Brigadier knows that the Doctor invented that plan?
The Master enters the cell where the Doctor and Jo are playing draughts, and even though they are prisoners they troll him by shhing him whenever he tries to speak to them. Only when he threatens to have Mailer shoot Jo, the Doctor agrees to try a plan to control the Keller machine.
Yates escapes from the baddys, but that's the last we see of him this episode.
The Doctor and the Master are once again forced to team up as the Doctor tries his plan with the Master assisting him. This is, naturally, a great bit.
The Doctor has to put an electric hula hoop over the top of the Keller machine, and the scene is a lot more dramatic than that sounds, especially when the machine makes the hoop go on fire and sends out images of monsters to try and scare the Doctor (again). All the Master has to do is turn the power on, and even he breathes a sigh of relief when the scene is over.
The Doctor says this "won't hold it for long" so the Master puts him back in the cell to think of a more permanent solution for the Keller machine.
The Doctor and Jo have noms, and the Doctor starts to tell Jo an anecdote about when he met Sir Walter Raleigh. Fortunately we are spared from having to listen to most of this obvious padding, as the scene dissolves to the Brigadier and his soldiers approaching the prison. The Brigadier is in disguise, and he has acquired a van from somewhere off-screen.
They get inside and start a big fight between UNIT and the baddys, which is another proper HAVOC action scene including obligatory stunt of a manny falling off a high place. You know, this isn't nearly as impressive as the show seems to want us to think it is - we cats do that sort of thing all the time and, since we always land on our feet, it's no big deal.
Mailer tries to use the Doctor and Jo as hostages so he can escape by himself, leaving his henchmannys behind to do the fighting. Jo makes an attempt to knock Mailer down, but all it accomplishes is to make him realise "I only need one of you," and he goes to shoot the Doctor - we even see the gun firing (in a cut to extreme closeup), which makes this a much more effective cliffhanger moment than if it had cut to the credits before the trigger was pulled.
This is also a nice change from all the 'Keller machine menaces someone' cliffhangers we have had so far in this story.
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