Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part Six

One: Aggedor needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to the TARDIS. Two: Whenever Aggedor's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking 'Where's Aggedor?'

-- Excerpt from Brian Hayles' original pitch for The Monster of Peladon, rejected by Producer Barry Letts and Script Editor Terrance Dicks

Where's Aggedor? He's clearly the best character in the story, but he's hardly been in it. I know the saying 'less is more,' but this is getting ridiculous. As a six-parter, by rights there should be at least 50% more Aggedor than in Curse of Peladon. I'm beginning to think this lack of Aggedor explains this story's poor reputation in fandom. Aggedor fandom, I mean. Oh well, there's still hope that Aggedor will make his presence properly felt in the final part...

After quite a long cliffhanger reprise to build the tension back up, the Doctor turns the Aggedor statue upon the Ice Warriors, pewing two of them and causing the third one to shit his costume and run away.

Eckersley turns his mind-pewing device on the Doctor and Sarah, so the Doctor sends her away while he stays and tries to resist it.

He makes a face, but is otherwise able to carry on.

Doctor: "Sorry, old chap, I can't stop and talk now. I'm rather busy."

Eckersley: "Obstinate devil."

The Doctor sets the statue to pew more Ice Warriors, which convinces the miners that Aggedor is on their side now. They invade the citadel (again).

Sarah finds a phaser (Chekov's gun?) lying on the ground and with it forces Eckersley to turn off his mind-pewer. He claims the Doctor is already ded but Sarah doesn't believe him, perhaps because this is at least the third time the Doctor has seemingly been killed in this story alone. In spite of this, she is then convinced he is ded when she sees him on the TV set, where he is definitely ded and not simply unconscious or anything like that. Mew. Eckersley grabs the gun from Sarah but doesn't pew her, instead opting to run away.

Azaxyr threatens to kill Queen Thalira if Gebek and the miners don't surrender. They pretend to give up, but then start a big fight that ends when Azaxyr gets stabbed and goes

Once Gebek and all the miners have left the throne room, Eckersley runs in and captures the queen, taking her as a hostage while he tries to escape to his "space shuttle."

Sarah wakes the Doctor up by crying on his face. He says

"Tears? Anyone would think you thought I was dead."

Sarah: "Well of course I did. You looked dead."

Doctor: "Well even I couldn't stand the row from Eckersley's patent alarm system any longer, so I put myself into a complete sensory withdrawal."

Sarah: "What?"

Doctor: "Well a sort of trance. I shut myself off."

Sarah: "You did it on purpose? You mean I had all that worry for nothing?"

Doctor: "Well don't sound so aggrieved. Anybody would think you prefer me dead."

There's a lot of "well" in the dialogue for this bit, is it just to emphasis that the Doctor is... well, well?

Gebek and Alpha Centauri tell the Doctor and Sarah about Eckersley's kittennapping of the queen, and the Doctor quickly thinks of a plan to track them through the many secret tunnels: he gets Aggedor to help him!

With Aggedor leading the chase they soon catch up to Eckersley and the queen. In fact so quickly that we don't even pause to see the Doctor's recruitment of Aggedor to his plan on screen, as though this story had better things to spend its screentime on, mew.

Eckersley: "So that's how you found me."

Doctor: "Oh yes. Aggedor may be getting on a bit but he can still sniff out a trail. I'm sorry, old chap, but it's all over."

Aggedor wrestles with Eckersley. Aggedor should win easily but Eckersley, a snivelling, cheating coward to the bitter end, pews Aggedor with his gun so that they both go

Oh noes! Still, Aggedor dies like a hero (or at the very least like Gan), saving the day for the others.

The final couple of scenes wrap up the story in the usual 'tea and medals' sort of way, ending on the Doctor and Sarah slipping away in the TARDIS, but, honestly, who cares? The second story of the Jon Pertwee era killed off the handsomest character, Captain Hawkins, and now the second-to-last story kills off Aggedor, the cutest. You can take symmetry too far, you know.

What's so good about The Monster of Peladon?

For a story with a lot going for it on paper, there ought to be plenty to choose from: the revisiting of Peladon, the return of the Ice Warriors, Alpha Centauri and Aggedor, some great and memorable cliffhangers including the false regeneration (a stunt that wouldn't be repeated by the show until 2008), biting (and very topical in its day) social and political commentary, all climaxing with a heroic sacrifice by a beloved character that foreshadows a similar event for the following story.

Yet the realisation on screen ends up being so much less than the sum of these parts. Featuring repetitive attacks on the citadel, multiple escapes and recaptures of every major character, and so-called secret passages that everybody knows about - if you were trying to write a parody of the first Peladon-set story you couldn't exaggerate its tropes more than this plot tries to play straight.

The result is that in both look and feel it is like a close copy of Curse of Peladon, despite having a very different plot and, in some cases, reversing or subverting any similarities between the two stories (such as the Ice Warriors actually being baddys this time). When that happens it is hard for the mind to overrule the emotional 'gut' reaction, even for the most rational of cats.

One rod the writer made for his own back was to hold the Ice Warriors back for a surprise entrance, which meant the first half needed other characters to take their place as baddys or potential baddys. Ettis, Ortron and Eckersley all filled this role, with only Eckersley proving to be a 'real' baddy in the end. The script actually paws these pretty well for the most part (despite Eckersley's duplicity being really bloody obvious from very early on). That is until it reaches the point where it has to kill off this abundance of superfluous characters, which leads to Ortron getting killed in a most perfunctory way, before his subplot of antagonism with the Doctor had been satisfactorily resolved - he dies before the Doctor is even aware he had swapped sides, making closure on their philosophical disagreement impossible.

Having multiple baddys, both minor and major, begs the question which is the main baddy - is it Eckersley or Commander Azaxyr? Eckersley seems more like a henchmanny to Azaxyr for most of their time W-wording together, but it is he that lasts longer and only dies at the climax - somewhat like a James Bond henchbaddy who outlasts the mastermind so that Bond has one last surprise fight in the final scene. But if that is the case, Azaxyr's demise is even more unsatisfying than Ortron's, since the Doctor isn't present for that one either.

And, of course, if it wasn't obvious by now, the real "Monster of Peladon" was greed for material wealth. No wonder the Conservatives lost in the 1974 elections - they killed Aggedor, the bastards!

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

Perhaps we have been spoiled by the pacing of the last couple of Pertwee Six-Parters, so that this seems so much worse by comparison? No, I think it really is that bad - when Doctor Who fans think of a typically padded and glacially paced Pertwee Six-Parter, this is one of the stories that most readily comes to mind.

Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks thought they had solved the problem of how to properly pace a six-part story by splitting it into distinctive sections of two or three episodes each, as used to great effect in the likes of The Mutants and The Time Monster (sure they're neither of them purrfect, but just imagine what they could have been like if they hadn't applied this technique, mew!), but The Monster of Peladon seems to prefer instead the older way, whereby the writer just padded out their plot to fill as many episodes as required.

It might have been perfectly serviceable as a four-parter, and maybe even almost as good as Curse of Peladon, but when stretched out to six episodes the cracks are more blindingly obvious than those that appear in the Matt Smith era.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part Five

The Terry Walsh era of Doctor Who doesn't last any longer than the cliffhanger reprise, as the Doctor turns back into Jon Pertwee - a Time Lord regenerative trick that would not be used again until David Tennant's Doctor in Journey's End.

Having seen the explosion on Azaxyr's TV set, Sarah thinks the Doctor has been killed, although she tells Queen Thalira

"I still can't believe it. I can't believe that he's dead. You see, he was the most alive person I ever met."

They are both being held prisoner in the throne room, along with Ortron and Alpha Centauri. Sarah has a plan to escape, and at this point hasn't been in enough stories to realise what a cliché the old get-the-queen-to-pretend-to-be-ill-to-fool-the-guard plan is. When the lone Ice Warrior guard comes in, Sarah gives him a shove and then yells for them all to run. Things go wrong when Ortron gets pewed and goes

The queen stays behind with him, so only Sarah and Alpha Centauri get away. It is unusual for such a main character as Ortron to be killed off like that, especially considering his antagonism with the Doctor earlier in the story, and then he didn't even get to share a scene with the Doctor after his partial redemption, i.e. when he sided with the goodys.

The Doctor meets up with Gebek and they go to try to thwart Azaxyr's latest plan. He has made Eckersley turn off the "ventilation system" for all the mines, so the miners won't have the air they need. The ventilation system is controlled from "the refinery" which makes it sound more sophisticated than the mine has been shown to be - this story can't make up its mind if the mine is technologically advanced or not, and seems to switch between them as required by the plot.

The Doctor and Gebek overhear, while simultaneously Sarah and Alpha Centauri (and the viewers at home) see on their TV, Azaxyr and Eckersley plotting together, which confirms what we have already suspected known for some time - they are both baddys. Alpha Centauri exclaims

"They are both traitors!"

The traitors are worried that their ventilation system plan is taking too long, so Eckersley wants to use the Aggedor pewpewpew SFX to "smoke them out." 

He dramatically pulls back a curtain to reveal a statue of Aggedor that we hadn't been paying any attention to up until now. He activates the controls, which makes the statue disappear, then a moment later it appears and pews a miner, before returning to its original position. This panics the other miners, then Eckersley does the same thing again and this time pews a few of the soldiers.

Azaxyr and Eckersley then leave the room, with one Ice Warrior remaining to guard the door. When Sarah comes in and acts as a distraction, Gebek hits the Ice Warrior on the hed with a rock (it's super effective). The Doctor is then free to do some sabotage before Azaxyr and Eckersley come back.

Azaxyr and Eckersley go to the throne room, where Alpha Centauri tells the queen the truth about their treachery. But it turns out that Alpha Centauri has a big mouth as well as a big eyeball, going on to let slip that the Doctor and Sarah are both alive and on the loose at the refinery. Azaxyr sends an Ice Warrior to go there and "destroy" the Doctor.

At the refinery, the Doctor turns the ventilation system back on. He is just examining the controls for the Aggedor statue when Sarah says

"Something's burning... Doctor, look!"

The Ice Warrior is attempting a classic slow-cutting through the door. Oh good, it feels like it's been ages since we last had one of those.

Alpha Centauri's big mouth must be contagious, since soon Eckersley is spouting exposition about why he and Azaxyr are W-wording for Galaxy Five:

Eckersley: "It's simply a matter of business, ambassador. I'll get a percentage of all the Trisilicate mined on Peladon, just to make me the richest and the most powerful man in the galaxy."

Queen Thalira: "Most powerful?"

Eckersley: "Yes, your majesty. When the Ice Warriors have won, I shall be ruler of Earth."

Alpha Centauri: "And what of Commander Azaxyr?"

Eckersley: "No, it's only military glory he's after."

Alpha Centauri: "But the Ice Warriors have been loyal members of the Federation for many years."

Eckersley: "Azaxyr's head of some kind of breakaway group. He wants to return to the good old days of death or glory."

More Ice Warriors arrive at the refinery door to help with the classic slow-cutting. the Doctor is still fiddling with the controls of the Aggedor statue, while Sarah and Gebek stand around trying to make the scene more dramatic by shouting:

Sarah: "Hurry, Doctor! There's a whole crowd of them out there now!"

Gebek: "They'll be through any minute, Doctor!"

Crash-zoom to the hole in the door - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part Four

The Ice Warriors showing up at the end of part three is one of those expected unexpected moments, like the Daleks making their entrance at the end of part one, or the Master turning up halfway though episode three. There are only two Peladon stories, yet somehow you just intuitively know that the Ice Warriors are in both of them.

The Ice Warrior commander Azaxyr has been paying attention to the story so far, and he recaps it to Ortron and Gebek (though really it is for the benefit of any cats that may have been having important sleeps during the earlier episodes):

"You say that the miners have rebelled against their proper rulers, but Gebek here says that the nobles have cheated them of their rights. You say that the Doctor here is a spy and a saboteur, but the Ambassador says that he is an old and valued friend. You say that your god appears to you because he is angry, but the Doctor here is sure that the appearances are caused by trickery."

The Doctor agrees with me:

"An excellent summing up, Commander Azaxyr."

But he soon changes his opinion about Azaxyr when he threatens to start killing hostages if the miners don't go back to mining Trisilicate for the Federation. Oh noes - a choice between death or W-word, a most terrible dilemma!

Meanwhile, Ettis captures a soldier and does a classic bit of 'shut up and tell me' comic patter while threatening the soldier with a phaser:

"Silence! Now listen, where is Gebek our leader? Speak or you die!"

Ettis and the miners burst into the throne room and are quickly pewed by the Ice Warriors. All the extras are killed and only Ettis (presumably because, as a named character, he has more hit points) survives and runs away.

Do you think Commander Azaxyr's helmet is a bit... Judge Dredd-y?

"Must I remind you yet again, Ambassador, here on Peladon I am the law!"

Yes I thought so too. He wants to execute the Doctor, but the Doctor talks his way out of it by bluffing that he knows all about Operation Grand Slam he is of more use to them alive and mediating with Gebek and the miners.

Queen Thalira, Gebek and Ortron have been united by their shared hatred of the Ice Warriors, and they have teamed up to resist them. The Doctor tells Gebek the miners should "pretend to cooperate" with the Ice Warriors.

Gebek makes a speech where, even with an Ice Warrior there to witness it, he gets his intended meaning across to the miners, one that is different to the words he says:

"We are going to cooperate with Commander Azaxyr, in the same way that we have been cooperating with Ortron. Oh, you remember how we cooperated over the Federation armoury, how we cooperated over the sonic lance? Well, that is the kind of cooperation we are now going to give Commander Azaxyr. Are you with me?"

Azaxyr is fooled and talks with the Doctor.

Azaxyr: "I still do not trust you, Doctor, but I think you have realised that your only chance of survival lies in full cooperation."

Doctor: "Oh but of course. I've always been very keen on survival."

I'm not surprised, it is one of the very best Doctor Who stories after all.

Ettis speaks with one of the miners, but is too stupid to realise they are only pretending to go along with the Ice Warriors, and so he has decided to use the sonic lance (which he still has "hidden in a cave") to blow up the citadel.

"That's right! Kill them! Kill them all! The queen, the chancellor, the guards! They all betrayed us. And kill the Ice Warriors, just the way they slaughtered us."

The miner quite rightly points out that he is mad, and Ettis stabs him to try to stop him from pointing it out to anybody else.

The Doctor has a plan to defeat the Ice Warriors by turning the heating up (it's been tried before). There's a moment where it looks as though he's forgotten his lines until Sarah reminds him:

Doctor: "Well, if they don't get out of the mines, they'll get groggier and groggier until..."

Sarah: "They collapse?"

Doctor: "Right."

When the Ice Warriors start to notice the heat, they ask Gebek why it is getting hotter, to which he replies:

"We have a saying on Peladon. If you can't stand the heat, keep out of the mine."

Don't give up the pretense at your day job, Gebek. Mew.

When the Ice Warriors are so hot they need a sleep, the miners attack them. Gebek notices the manny Ettis stabbed, who is still alive and tells him all about Ettis and his plan. Gebek tells the Doctor, who rushes off to look for Ettis and stop him.

"I don't believe you. It's a trick. You're working for them. You've sold out. You're like Gebek and the rest of them."

Ettis does some properly mad acting when the Doctor tries to talk him down. I doubt even the Actor Kevin Eldon could have done a better job. They have a swordfight (the Doctor having been given a sword by Gebek in the preceding scene, very conveniently) which I suspect was added into the script at the request of Jon Pertwee.

Back at the communications set room, Azaxyr watches the fight on his TV set and comments on the Doctor's skill, which I suspect was also added into the script at the request of Jon Pertwee.

Ettis knocks the sword out of the Doctor's paw, and then the Doctor regenerates, mid-fight, into the Fourth Doctor, Terry Walsh.

What a twist!

Ettis knocks the new Doctor out, and then tries to activate the sonic lance. But Azaxyr has booby-trapped it, so that it explodes - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part Three

Aggedor! The story has taken a turn for the better and this episode is off to a great start. The Doctor uses a spinny thing along with the same Venusian lullaby that he used before to hypno-eyes Aggedor.

The Doctor pets Aggedor (lucky Doctor) but Sarah, for some unfathomable reason, is still too scared to. Queen Thalira orders Ortron to release them.

"You appealed to the judgement of Aggedor. Now you shall accept it. The Doctor is vindicated."

Ortron doesn't like it, but he has to go along with it.

Eckersley persuades Alpha Centauri to ask the Federation for reinforcements or, as he puts it, "send you a bit of muscle." When he hears about it, the Doctor thinks this is "the one thing that is certain to make things worse."

Sarah talks with the queen to tell her about "Women's Lib." Let's see if she has more success here than she did with Meg in the Middle Ages...

Sarah: "'Women's liberation,' your majesty. On Earth it means... well, very briefly, it means that we women don't let men push us around."

Thalira: "It's not like that on Peladon. The ruler is always a man. I was only crowned because my father had no son. It's Ortron who holds the real power."

Sarah: "Well, only if you let him. You've just got to stand up for yourself."

Thalira: "It would be different if I was a man. But I'm only a girl."

Sarah: "Now just a minute, there's nothing only about being a girl, your majesty. Never mind why they made you a queen, the fact is you are the queen, so... just you jolly well let them know it."

Ortron and the Doctor really hate each other. It's rare for the Doctor to show such open dislike for a baddy, and not even the Master gets the sharp end of the looks and scathing tone the Doctor uses with Ortron. The feeling is evidently mutual:

Ortron: "You were warned, Doctor. You were ordered to stay in the citadel. You have disobeyed my command. Take him to the dungeons."

Doctor: "You're making a very grave mistake, Ortron."

Ortron: "Am I, Doctor?"

Having had the Doctor imprisoned, Ortron goes on to question Alpha Centauri about him in front of the queen:

Ortron: "Tell me, has he any official rank or position within the Federation?"

Alpha Centauri: "The Doctor's position is unique."

Ortron: "Then you can produce his official Federation identity record?"

Alpha Centauri: "Well, as a matter of fact, he seems to be untraceable at the moment."

Ortron: "You see, your majesty, a nameless alien who does not officially exist."

But Ortron then makes a mistaik when he demands that Sarah be arrested as well, which pushes the queen into resisting him. He compounds his error by referring to Sarah as "only a female," perhaps forgetting (or not realising, or not caring) that this might make the queen think that he sees her in the same way.

A fight breaks out between the miners and the soldiers, with the miners easily winning using the Federation phasers. Eckersley tries using the sonic lance against them, but Gebek captures him and Sarah. It's the sonic lance they want, so Gebek sends Eckersley and Sarah away free, leaving the increasingly bloodthirsty Ettis to say

"You should have killed them."

There's an amusing scene of the Doctor making a failed escape attempt from his prison cell. It's pure padding, but a welcome light moment in what is otherwise a quite dry and serious episode... well, since Aggedor stopped being in it. More scenes with Aggedor being cute, please, that's what the public wants, not interminable scenes of mannys with badger hairstyles arguing with each other. Of course if they had all been badger aliens, or even actual badgers, that could have made all the difference.

Sarah tells Gebek (who, when away from Ettis and the other rebellious miners, is more friendly) about the Doctor's imprisonment, and he offers to help rescue him. The Doctor does a magic trick to distract the guard, like he's Vila in Space Fall, until Gebek gets close enough to knock out the guard with some Peladonian Oojah.

Ice Warriors contact Alpha Centauri to say they are about to land on the planet. They don't actually say they are Ice Warriors, but (1) I've been expecting them to turn up* since the very beginning of the story, and (2) I can easily tell by their dissstinctive voisssss.

Gebek takes the Doctor to where Sarah got SFX-pewed back in part two. He says

"This is the place, Doctor, but be careful. There is evil here. Several of my people have been attacked by magic, and their minds destroyed."

While Eckersley seemed worried that this was a possibility when Sarah got pewed by it, the fact that it has been used to "destroy" the minds of more than one manny is yet more evidence that Eckersley is a lot more evil than he seems.

With neither side wanting Federation troops on Peladon, Ortron does a deal with the rebel miners, but as soon as they agree to go back to mining, the Aggedor effect appears, pews one of them, and makes the rest run away. It seems obvious to me that Aggedor just doesn't want them to do any W-word, and rightly so.

The Doctor opens the mysterious door to reveal... an Ice Warrior.

Cliffhanger!

* They're on the DVD cover for a start.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part Two

Gebek rescues the Doctor from the cave-in using the sonic lance, and in the nick of time too because the red Aggedor SFX returns to try and pew the Doctor. Soldiers arrive to have a fight with the miners, and the Doctor joins in to help Gebek and Ettis.

Sarah, having heard about the cave-in, goes to look for the Doctor.

She gets lost and instead finds a mysterious door that pews her with a special effect when she knocks on it. Eckersley rescues Sarah, and he is very keen to convince her that there is nobody behind the door, even though she - and we - have seen that there is movement through the window.

The Doctor and Gebek go to speak with Queen Thalira, and as soon as they have gone off-screen Ettis is back trying to persuade the miners to go along with his one idea, of stealing Federation weapons and then using them in armed rebellion.

Soldiers try to capture Gebek, but the Doctor knocks them out with his Venusian Oojah. This bit is padding, and very high grade too.

Ettis captures Sarah and Alpha Centauri and tries to force them to "open the armoury door" so he and the miners can get their paws on the Federation's phasers, or any other pewpewpew guns they might happen to have in there. The spirit of Aggedor will presumably be fine with them doing that then? Ettis is a typical religious fundamentalist - it's only blasphemy when it's something he doesn't want.

Alpha Centauri opens the doors for them, but also sets off the alarm. The miners steal the pewpewpew guns, but Ortron and the queen are alerted to what has happened. It is still not clear who is the biggest baddy in this story, with several characters competing for the position, each trying to outdo the others to prove they're the real "Monster" of Peladon (ah, do you see what they did there?) and Ortron makes his play when he says

"You see, your Majesty, already the rebellion has begun. This is what comes of softness with the common people."

Ettis runs off with Sarah as a "hostage." She quickly escapes from him, and is then immediately captured by Ortron.

In the time it has taken Ettis and the miners to reach the citadel, force open the armoury, steal the weapons, and then run away, the Doctor and Gebek still haven't reached the citadel. The miners run past them on their way back from their raid.

Gebek: "Ettis, what new folly is this?"

Ettis: "No folly, Gebek - victory! Now that we've got the new Federation weapons, we'll see who rules on Peladon."

The Doctor arrives at the temple set in time to hear Ortron questioning Sarah. Well, I say questioning, but really he has already made up his mind (or what he is pleased to call his mind, mew) that she was helping Ettis.

The Doctor enters and says

"Do forgive me, old chap, but you've got it all wrong."

and

"My dear chap, you're just not listening, are you. No one's admitting anything."

Why do I get the impression that the Doctor is using the word "chap" in place of another four-letter word when he talks to Ortron?

Ortron: "Oh mighty Aggedor, make known thy will. How shall we punish those who have offended against thee?"

Doctor: "Well? And what did he say?"

Ortron: "You have blasphemed in the temple of Aggedor, therefore by Aggedor shall you both be punished."

This seems familiar. Are they by any chance going to be put into a pit?

"Prepare the pit!"

Mew. At least when Terry Nation reuses things from his older stories he reuses the good stuff. The Doctor is pushed into the pit, and Sarah after him. The queen comes in to try to stop Ortron, but he says to her

"The decision is no longer yours or mine, your Majesty. The girl and the Doctor have gone to face the judgement of Aggedor."

The Doctor and Sarah hear a rar. Can it be? This story hasn't gotten off to a great start, but the arrival of the real (and therefore super-cute) Aggedor at this point could be just what it needs to lift it to greatness. The Doctor takes out a torch to see what made the noise. It is! It's...

Aggedor!

This is the purrfect moment for the cliffhanger; with just a glimpse before the credits, it keeps us in suspense for more Aggedor cuteness to come in the next episode.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Monster of Peladon Part One

The computer game Manic Miner has 20 levels, each more different than the last - with one exception. Yes the Kong Beast appears twice, but his Return level is only superficially similar to his first appearance. The real callback level is the 18th, Amoebatrons' Revenge, which is almost (but not quite, and the differences subtle enough to make the Revenge significantly harder than the earlier encounter) a mirror-image of the 9th level, Wacky Amoebatrons.

But that's as maybe. On an unrelated matter, the penultimate story of Jon Pertwee's era of Doctor Who is The Monster of Peladon, also starring Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. It was first broadcast in 1974, as the plot about striking miners will make abundantly clear, and it is the 10th of the 11 Pertwee Six-Parters.

We are back on Peladon from the very first establishing shot. Some miners hear a noise that they get scared of, claiming "it is the spirit of Aggedor," and then one of them gets pewed.

In the throne room, we are quickly introduced to several characters: Eckersley and Vega Nexos, who are not from Peladon but have come here to do mining; Ortron, who is both the high priest and chancellor to make it harder for us to tell if he will turn out to be a baddy or not; and Queen Thalira, who is this week's inexperienced young hereditary ruler of Peladon. Alpha Centauri is the only returning character from The Curse of Peladon... so far.

Eckersley and Vega Nexos don't believe in a "supernatural" explanation for the manny getting pewed, and think there must be "saboteurs" on the planet. The queen wants to help them prove this to the miners. Ortron mannysplains to the queen some things she already knows, which is a quick (if patronising) way of getting some exposition to us viewers:

"Right from the day Chancellor Hepesh died, I served your father loyally. I worked for the things he believed in: progress; civilisation; the Federation. Now there is war with Galaxy Five and our people have to make sacrifices."

Vega Nexos uses his "sonic lance" (any relation to the sonic screwdriver?) to make a special effect that creates a hole in a wall, but then the unseen enemy retaliates with SFX of their own and pews him so that Vega Nexos goes

The TARDIS materialises and the Doctor tells Sarah that he has "been meaning to pay a return visit to Peladon for ages," although he would probably have claimed that even if he hadn't intended anything of the sort. They are spotted by some guards trying to find their way into the citadel and chased. Luckily the Doctor remembers that Peladon is full of secret doors and passages so they escape into the temple of Aggedor... hmm, that didn't go so well for the Doctor last time, did it? 

They see the statue of Aggedor.

Doctor: "Ah, look at old Aggedor. There he is, bless him."

Sarah: "He doesn't look very lovable to me."

Doctor: "Ah, that's just a statue. You wait till you've seen the real animal."

The Doctor is just launching into telling Sarah the story of his first visit to Peladon when the guards come in and capture them. They are taken to see Queen Thalira* and Ortron, where the Doctor learns that King Peladon is ded.

Because the Doctor's first adventure is famous on Peladon, they don't believe he is really the Doctor until Alpha Centauri comes in and recognises him.

The superstitious miners are represented by Gebek (Rex "Dr Tyler" Robinson) and Ettis. Gebek wants to persuade the queen to send the Federation mannys away so that the spirit of Aggedor will leave them in peace, while Ettis wants to go straight to armed revolution to force the queen to do what they want. Even as Gebek goes to try to talk to the queen, Ettis secretly leads his mannys in, getting ready to attack. The attack mainly consists of them all piling on a guard when he isn't looking.

We learn that the Federation is at war with "the forces of Galaxy Five." In the previous story the MacGuffin mineral was Parrinium, now here it is Trisilicate. As Eckersley ecksplains:

"Our whole technology is based on it: electronic circuitry; heat shields; inert microcell fibres; radionic crystals. And whoever controls the supply of Trisilicate will win this war."

I presume the chief weapon of Galaxy Five is indigestion, mew.

Ettis's miners try to break into the Federation's "armoury" but they can't get in. One of them, Preba, tries to capture Eckersley to make him open the door, but the Doctor captures him instead. When they take him to see the queen, Ortron demands Preba's immediate execution, along with Gebek who happened to be nearby at the time. The Doctor, realising that Ortron is one of those high priests, helps Gebek and Preba escape and then ends up captured instead.

The Doctor looks really pissed off with Ortron, and understandably so. Queen Thalira overrules Ortron when the Doctor offers to help prove that "the appearances of Aggedor are caused by trickery" and sends him off with her champion to start the investigation.

Going straight to where Vega Nexos was killed, they are just in time to get blowed up by Ettis, who has planted a bomb there. Gebek asks

Gebek: "What are you doing?"

Ettis: "I'm restoring the holy mountain, to appease the spirit of Aggedor!"

We must be nearly at the end of the episode, so you could be forgiven for expecting that the Doctor getting blowed up would be the cliffhanger, but it isn't. He picks himself up, helps up the champion, and then they both see a red, glowing Aggedor appear.

This isn't the super-cute Aggedor we all know and love, it is more like his scary statue from the temple. It pews the champion, and that is the cliffhanger.

A lot happens in this first episode - it's certainly a lot more packed with plot than the equivalent part one of Death to the Daleks was. If it keeps up this pace, this could turn out to be one of the most exciting stories in all of Jon Pertwee's era.

* With a name like that Thalira really ought to be queen of the Thals.