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.
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