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
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
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.
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