The Doctor and Varan then teleport to the planet. I'm beginning to wonder if every cliffhanger in this story going to be resolved in this way.
The Doctor finally remembers to use some Venusian Karate on Varan, and they become friends. Varan warns the Doctor that he "will not be able to breathe the air on Solos. No Earthman can." This gives the Doctor the opening for the response
"Did I say I was an Earthman?"
Ky is still giving Jo exposition about Solos and the Solonians. He says of the creatures:
"They're people. My people. Or at least they were before the Marshal's experiments."
A creature derps up to them and Ky scares it off with some fire on a stick. There are more of them further into the cave.
The Doctor and Varan also see a creature. Varan doesn't want to go into the cave so the Doctor tricks him, asking
"What, is Varan, the great warrior, afraid of the dark?""Varan fears nothing!""I'm delighted to hear it. Come on then."
They find Ky surrounded by creatures, each more derpy than the last, and rescue him using fiery torches of their own. The story does a good job in this episode of directly showing as little as possible of the creatures - either we only see them in shadow, or only see parts of them, or when we see their faces it is for quick shots before cutting away. This makes them more effective and mysterious, if not actually scary (they're too derpy for that), and they remind me of, if anything, the ancient Martians from Quatermass and the Pit.
Jo has already run away and she encounters a groovy special effect and a spacemanny.
The Doctor gives Ky the Time Lord box and it opens for him (again). Inside are tablets with writing on them. Both Ky and Varan are disappointed it isn't weapons, which must have been what they asked Time Lord Santa for - at least I think that must be what happens, mew.
Varan leaves to fight the overlords even without more weapons. Ky thinks he recognises the writing - he cannot read it because "it is the language of the old ones" (this line piqued Cthulhu's interest) but he thinks a manny called "Sondergard, a man of learning from Earth" (which begs the questions of why they kept mistaiking the Doctor for an overlord earlier if they were already familiar with friendly scientists from Earth) may be able to, except that this Sondergard was disappeared by the Marshal. The Doctor's first priority is to find Jo, especially when she turns out to not be where Ky left her.
Jaeger tells the Marshal that 'summer is coming.'
"Ever since we've been here, five hundred years, it's been spring. Now, summer."
The Marshal is more concerned with wiping out "the Mutts," so he teleports down to the planet to take charge personally. He orders Stubbs and Cotton to look for the Doctor, and they find him just after he and Ky have found Jo. There's a lot of getting separated and back together again going on, but these stories don't make themselves six parts long without help, you know.
The Marshal has bugged Stubbs and Cotton to hear what they are saying, so he knows when they have met with the Doctor. Then he has his mannys fill the mines with smoke and blows up the exit so nobody in the mines can get out.
Varan reaches his village to find that everyone except one old manny has become a mutant and gone "to the mines" then he sees that he is also starting to mutate. This is an interesting development as the plot is unfolding to us a bit at a time.
Stubbs and Cotton finally get around to telling the Doctor the Marshal's plan to gas them all, but it is too late for them to escape because by then he has already blowed up the exit and trapped them in there with the gas. While undoubtedly a moment of peril for our heroes, this makes for an oddly undramatic cliffhanger because there is no sudden action or twist. The episode just sort of... ends.
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