While not the best story of the UNIT era, and arguably not even the best story of this season, this is nevertheless the ultimate UNIT story, in which the idea of the 'UNIT Family' achieves its perfected form.
It starts on a dark and stormy night, promising that this will be a scary story. Scary Cat is on standby to help me out if it gets too much.
There's a cat! I detect obvious thematic parallels with the shot of the lions in part one of Terror of the Autons; the last story of the season echoing the first. This also reassures any cats watching that everything will be alright in the end and reminds us that cats are best.
A doggy ventures out into the storm and gets wet. The manny who is with him gets attacked by a sound effect, and in the next scene Miss Hawthorne is trying to convince a doctor (not the Doctor) that "he died of fright."
The story then goes very meta, as there are mannys trying to make a TV show within the TV show we are watching.
We are given to understand from their dialogue that a manny called Professor Horner is going to sit in a corner open a barrow (with or without the assistance of Tom Bombadil we don't know yet, but either way it will probably be cut out) and they are going to film it for a TV broadcast.
The Doctor is despairing of Jo who believes in "the occult. Well, you know, the supernatural and all that magic bit" while the Doctor thinks "everything that happens in life must have a scientific explanation." Bessie then starts driving around by herself until the Doctor gives her into trouble. The Doctor then reveals that he did it to troll Jo using a remote control, which gives us all a lol while at the same time introducing the 'science vs magic' theme for this story.
Mike Yates arrives and tells the Doctor about the TV programme that he and Jo are wanting to watch. Due to the law of conservation of narrative detail it is of course the one we saw the mannys setting up for earlier. When the Doctor hears it is being made near a place called "Devil's End" (lol, sounds a bit rude) he becomes interested as well (naughty Doctor).
The TV presenter Alastair Fergus, who is surprisingly not a real-life BBC TV presenter (Doctor Who was using real BBC personalities playing themselves in the show from as early as 1966's The War Machines) but is played by actor David Simeon, records a spooky introduction for his programme, aided by pretty good acoustics for a studio set.
Benton is already watching the TV when the Doctor, Yates and Jo arrive, and so from this point they are seeing what we are also seeing. Alastair interviews Professor Horner, who is a grumpy and cantankerous manny. He wants to open the barrow at midnight of "Beltane, greatest occult festival of the year, bar Hallowe'en."
Presumably he couldn't be bothered to wait six months to do it at actual Hallowe'en? Or perhaps the BBC didn't want a repeat of what happened back when they broadcast Ghostwatch on the night of Hallowe'en 1992?
No, it is actually revealed that this is a "publicity gimmick" for the professor's new book coming out the next day - although I presume that could also have been held back six months if they had really wanted to?
Miss Hawthorne arrives and protests about the dig, although with her strongest argument being that she is "a witch - white of course" and that she "cast the runes" and "consulted the Talisman of Mercury" she comes across as a loony. Somehow this is enough to convince the Doctor that she is right and they have to "stop that lunatic before it's too late" and he means Horner is the "lunatic" not Miss Hawthorne! At first glance this would seem to be the Doctor going back on all the rubbishing of the supernatural that he did in the earlier scene, but I think he just wanted an excuse to go get involved in the plot as soon as possible.
Alastair says that viewers should "tune in to BBC3" to see the dig finish at midnight. This is a crucial piece of evidence for establishing the dating of the UNIT era - BBC3 began broadcasting in 2003 so it cannot possibly be set any earlier than that. Of course this is contradicted in plenty of other stories, such as Pyramids of Mars or Mawdryn Undead, but for now it is one of the most conclusive arguments for UNIT dating.
The Doctor and Jo drive in Bessie to Devil's End, but the wind blows the sign to point the wrong way. Wait, does this mean that even the convenient signposts and establishing shots are on the side of the baddys in this story, mew?
Miss Hawthorne goes to the church and wants to speak to "the real vicar" Canon Smallwood. But the new vicar who has replaced him is Mr Magister, and when he arrives to speak to Miss Hawthorne he is quickly revealed to be...
The Master! Here he appears in one of his most iconic disguises and aliases. He tries to hypno-eyes Miss Hawthorne but it doesn't work, so instead he sends his henchmanny to follow her.
By the time night has fallen, the Doctor and Jo have found a pub where they ask for directions. They are mistaiken for mannys from the TV programme (if it is a mistaik - it could be the episode being even more meta) with one of them saying to the Doctor
"Forgive me, but I thought... well, the costume and the wig, you know?"
The Doctor is confused and says
"Wig?"
Lol. They do get directions in the end, thanks to Jo asking nicely, but one of the mannys sneaks out of the pub to inform the Master they have arrived.
The Master then changes into a fancy costume and goes to the cavern where he meets with some cultists setting up for a ritual, which has attracted Cthulhu's interest to this story.
A tree falls over and forces the Doctor and Jo to leave Bessie behind. They run to the dig as the TV programme starts again, indicating that they do not have much time left until midnight.
The Master and his cultists do chanting that helps to build up the tension, as we cut between them, the Doctor and Jo running, and Horner talking to the TV mannys. The Doctor runs in but is just too late to stop the professor from opening up the wall at the dig. A hole appears and a powerful wind blasts out of it. Quick cutting ensures that we never see anything for long enough to be sure of what is going on, which is incredibly effective at sustaining the atmosphere by forcing our imaginations to fill in what we don't see.
The Master is happy - he laughs and shouts
"Azal!"
but his mannys are scared because they see Bok's eyes begin to glow.
Scary face!
There are plenty of moments here that would have made great cliffhanger points (truly they were spoiled for choice), but for the final shot we see Jo catch up with the Doctor to find him and the professor knocked out
'Oh noes!'
she says, and I suppose that is as good as any of them. Few Doctor Who stories manage to end their first episodes in as scary and suspenseful a way as this one does.
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