Sarah is taken to see Irongron, where there is much confusion because she doesn't know she is back in the past, while Irongron doesn't understand much of what she says because he lives in the past. This is only sorted out when Linx comes in and spots that Sarah is from the future, so he uses his hypno-eyes device on her to find out about the Doctor.
"He is a scientist. He was at the research centre. He said he was very fond of delta particles."
Sarah then sneaks away while Linx is showing Irongron the fighting robot he has built for him, because neither Linx nor Irongron has the greatest of attention spans - and I'm a cat saying this!
Hal the Archer also got captured, and Irongron makes him fight against the robot. He and his henchmannys all lol when Hal's arrows have no effect on the robot, but the Doctor uses a crossbow to shoot the remote control out of Irongron's paws in order to stop it, which succeeds because in this time period they were still using Aristotelian laws of motion. Out of control, the robot turns upon Irongron and, while he and his mannys are distracted by this, Sarah helps Hal to run away.
Irongron goes to get Linx to turn the robot off, and sees him with his helmet off for the first time.
Linx: "Well? What is it you need to say to me? Didn't I tell you you might not find my face pleasing?"Irongron:" Aye, and never was truer word spoken. Are they all so fair of face beyond the stars?"
While Linx is away, the Doctor sneaks into his laboratory and sees the missing scientists, all wearing hypno-eyes headphones (which I suppose Linx may have bought from Global Chemicals). Professor Rubeish is there, and he has resisted the hypno-eyes because
"Oh, didn't work with me. Strong-minded, you see."
Rubeish adds a touch of comic relief to the episode, as with his unfazed, understated reaction when the Doctor tries to explain the situation to him:
Doctor: "Now Professor, listen to me. This may come as a shock to you, so steel yourself. You have been brought back to the early years of the middle ages."Rubeish: "That's interesting. I've always maintained that the loop theory of time shouldn't have been so arrogantly dismissed by Crabshaw and his cronies."
Linx bursts in and catches the Doctor. He zaps him with his baton, which must be the Sontaran equivalent of the sonic screwdriver, it has so many different uses.
Hal has taken Sarah to meet Sir Edward and Lady Eleanor. Sarah has leapt to the wrong conclusion that the Doctor is "helping" Irongron and Linx. As a journalist with an attitude like that, Sarah could easily have had a successful career in the BBC's News and Current Affairs department if she hadn't become a Doctor Who Companion.
"I'm sure the Doctor's the key to it all. He was there when one of the scientists was taken. He has a machine that can travel through time. Well it must be him, and somehow we've got to stop him."
The Doctor talks with Linx. This is the first ever mention of the Sontarans' and the Rutans' "perpetual war" and, when Linx asks where the Doctor is from, the first time the planet Gallifrey is named on screen. It is treated quite casually, but is an important revelation (as befits the story broadcast closest to the show's 10th anniversary) and demonstrates that this wasn't written by Terry Nation, who would doubtless have called the planet of the Time Lords something like Tempura. Arguably the events of The Invasion of Time are foreshadowed when Linx says of the Time Lords
"Ah, yes. A race of great technical achievement, but lacking the morale to withstand a determined assault."
The Doctor refuses to help Linx voluntarily, so Linx puts hypno-eyes headphones on him, obviously forgetting how well that didn't go for them in the last story.
The Doctor keeps trying to persuade Linx not to interfere in history by giving mannys advanced weapons:
"You give them breech-loading guns now, they'll have atomic weapons by the seventeenth century. They'll have the capability to destroy their own planet before they're civilised enough to handle it."
I mean, all the evidence is that this has happened anyway, mew.
The Doctor can't ignore these headphones so easily, but once Linx has left him alone he can get Rubeish to turn them off for him. The Doctor escapes and immediately encounters Irongron and Bloodaxe, does a bit of Venusian Aikido on them and then runs away.
They chase the Doctor (or at least his stunt double) into the courtyard for an extremely unimpressive fight scene filmed entirely in long shot. Eventually the Doctor falls over and Irongron shouts in triumph
"He who strikes Irongron dies!"
Cliffhanger!
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