Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Mutants Episode Four

They all get rescued by the spacemanny from earlier, who turns out to be Professor Sondergard

Sorry, I mean "Professor Sondergaard." Even though he has saved them (and Jo twice now) Ky suspects him of being behind the mutations, accusing him of "experimenting on my people." But the others see him as a friend. He helps the Doctor piece together some of the mystery of what is going on on Solos, including that Jaeger's experiments are accelerating natural changes. The Doctor and Ky show Sondergaard the tablets and he does indeed recognise it, as Ky predicted.

With all of the goodys assembled in one place, they are in serious danger of sorting out the plot way too quickly, so the Doctor sends Ky, Jo, Stubbs and Cotton away while he stays to help Sondergaard translate the writing. Is it just me or was the Doctor suspiciously quick in wanting the others to leave him alone with Professor Sondergaard? Naughty Doctor.

I don't usually comment on these things because I don't usually notice them, but there's a TV camera being used in the scenes set in Sondergaard's lab that distorts the picture in a strange way, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it, especially as the other camera's picture looks normal and the scenes cut between the two quite regularly.

The Doctor figures out that the tablets are a calendar. Sondergaard says that one Solonian year is 2,000 Earth years, so the Doctor deduces that each season must be 500 years long. Long seasons are long! He also thinks that one of the tablets depicts radiation, so he gets Sondergaard to take him to the cave with the most radiation, and therefore (in accordance with the need for the visual medium of television to depict invisible radiation visually) the most SFX.

The others escape from the mines and find their way to Varan's village. Either this is because Solos is a small world or it's because they already had the set built. Varan has found some of his warriors who have not fully turned into mutants yet, and they ambush and capture Ky, Jo, Stubbs and Cotton.

In the SFX cave, Sondergaard decides he wants to have sleeps, so the Doctor goes on without him until he finds a glowing statue holding something.

The Doctor pinches the thingy and legs it like he is Indiana Jones (Indiana Who?), although all that chases him is some electric effects, not a giant boulder. He picks up Sondergaard on the way out and they escape together.

On the spaceship, the Marshal hears that an "Earth Council Investigator" is coming to visit. This is almost the exact same point as the Master arrived in Colony in Space pretending to be an Earth Adjudicator, so we are presumably being led to expect that the same thing is going to happen here.

Varan forces his captives to help him attack the spaceship, because Stubbs and Cotton are themselves "overlords" they give Varan the element of surprise, so they all teleport up and start surprising the Marshal's guards. Doctor Who stories are often divided between action plots and investigative or mystery plots, but I've seldom seen such a clear divide between the two as here, where on the one paw we have the Doctor and Sondergaard sitting around puzzling out the mystery, while on the other paw Jo and the rest of our heroes run around getting into fights.

Back at Sondergaard's lab, the Doctor now deduces that the Solonians are supposed to mutate along with the seasons, and the green "crystal" he has stolen taken has something to do with it. Sondergaard doesn't have the equipment required to analyse the crystal, and says "there's only one place." They have already developed such great rapport with one another that the Doctor is able to finish his thought for him:

"Skybase. Jaeger's lab."

Surely the Doctor would have the necessary equipment in the TARDIS as well? It doesn't matter, as the point (from a narrative point of view) is that this means the Doctor has to get back to Skybase, which is where the TARDIS is anyway.

The Marshal demands that Jaeger start his experiment to make the atmosphere breathable for mannys, and so begins a countdown. This makes the scenes of Varan's attack more suspenseful, as they wander around Skybase to the sound of the countdown counting down.

Finally Varan and the Marshal encounter each other. The Marshal shoots the wall behind Varan and, like the window in the plane at the end of Goldfinger, it shatters and depressurises the room, with Varan suffering Goldfinger's fate of being 'shucked into outer shpace' - literally.

The others are all James Bond in this metaphor, holding on and trying to stay inside as the episode ends - a considerably better cliffhanger than the last one!