Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Dæmons Episode Three

The Doctor confuses Bok by holding up some iron, "an old magical defence," and reciting the first line of a Venusian lullaby (one we will hear more of when he visits Peladon in a later story). Bok does one final, halfhearted rar and then he flies away.

The Master is still disguised as the vicar and he talks to Mr Winstanley, who he is trying to win over without using his normal arm-gripping method.

"All this talk of democracy, freedom, liberty... What this country needs is strength, power and decision! And those are what you can give to it."

Then, when this doesn't persuade him, the Master uses magic to scare Mr Winstanley by causing the wind to blow inside and, for good measure, his theme music to play.

Winstanley says

"I'll do anything you say."

thus demonstrating the "strength, power and decision" of a typical would-be dictator.

The Doctor and Miss Hawthorne argue about whether science or magic are responsible for what is happening, continuing the theme established in part one with the scene between the Doctor and Jo, only a lot more childishly:

"You're being deliberately obtuse - we're dealing with the supernatural, the occult, magic."

"Science!"

"Magic!"

"Science, Miss Hawthorne."

The Brigadier telephones Yates to tell him that the heat barrier is in the shape of a dome all the way around the village, so he can't get in.

The Doctor does a slideshow for the benefit of Jo, Yates, Benton and Miss Hawthorne to give them exposition about aliens with horns. This may be a deliberate parallel with the Master's use of a slideshow back in The Mind of Evil, or maybe slideshows were just the fashionable thing back in 1971 the UNIT era.

"Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths: gods or devils. But they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world."

"Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?"

(The earliest and most recent aliens encountered by Benton get namechecked by him here, but the Autons don't get a look in.)

"Precisely. Only far far older, and immeasurably more dangerous."

"And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?"

"That's right. They're Dæmons from the planet Dæmos, which is..."

"Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy."

(I'm not sure why Jo is suddenly an expert on this, except that it keeps the scene from being totally one-sided.)

"And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago."

The Doctor goes on to say that 

"They've been coming and going ever since. The Greek civilisation, the Renaissance, the industrial revolution: They were all inspired by the Dæmons."

and

"All the magical traditions are just remnants of their advanced science, and that is what the Master is using."

This is quite a dump of exposition, only disguised by having so many other characters present for the Doctor to explain it all to, and who can each take a turn interrupting him or asking him questions.

The Master and Winstanley are having a meeting with lots of other mannys, where the Master reveals that he knows the secrets of several of the mannys, including implying that one of them has murdered his wife:

"And you, Mr Grenville, has your wife come back from her sister's yet? Will she ever come back, do you suppose?"

Is this the most subversively adult line of dialogue in all of the original series of Doctor Who, do you suppose?

Because we know who the Master is really, it is easy for us to guess how he found these things out, but the mannys are scared and they stay and listen to him when he starts to use his hypno-eyes on them. He says

"I only need two things: your submission and your obedience to my will."

But they start to turn against him and Winstanley says:

"What's all this about obedience and submission? You said that we were going to rule."

So the master summons Bok to come in and disappear Winstanley. When the rest of the mannys are too scared to act against him, the Master says

"Thank you. It does my heart good to know I have such a willing band of followers."

Roger Delgado has been giving a commanding performance throughout, but this ironic line sets off the scene.

The Brigadier wants to blow the barrier up, but the Doctor tells him it won't work. The Brigadier says

"I'm not going to sit here like a spare... like a spare lemon waiting for the squeezer."

I think the reason he pauses in the middle there is that he realised just in time that he's not allowed to say 'dildo' on TV until after the watershed. The Doctor tells the Brigadier to build a technobabble contraption to blow up the barrier properly, but the Brigadier doesn't know how so the Doctor has to go out there himself. Jo says

"Of all the idiotic plans, as if blowing things up solves anything?"

for which the Doctor gives her into trouble like a massive hypocrite, considering how often he insults the Brigadier's plans himself.

The manny from the pub has been spying on the Doctor, and he now reports what he has learned to the Master. The Master sends a henchmanny to steal Yates's helicopter. Yates chases after him on a motorbike because, like in The Mind of Evil, he has delusions of being an action hero.

The helicopter flies over the Doctor and Jo as they drive along in Bessie, a scene that has echoes of North by Northwest or, since it is a helicopter and not an aeroplane, From Russia With Love. But the helicopter flies into the heat barrier and blows up, no grenade necessary this time.

The Doctor only starts to tell Sergeant Osgood (here acting as the Brigadier's thumbs to do the actual W-word) how to make the device to blow up the barrier, then the Master decides to summon Azal the Dæmon.

Azal is the POV monster, and he becomes so high up (signifying he is giant) that even the Master gets scared and falls over. The camera does a wobbly special effect meant to signify the ground shaking, and the cliffhanger moment is the Master cowering and shouting

"Go back! You will destroy me! No! No!"

While it is highly unusual for a baddy being in peril to be the cliffhanger, it shows how the Master is just as much a regular character as any of the Doctor's Companions from UNIT.

This episode is incredibly heavy with exposition, to the extent that the Doctor resorts to a slideshow, but now that we're through it we can more clearly see the similarities and differences between this story and its obvious influence Quatermass and the Pit.

The similarities are obvious to anyone familiar with both stories, since they both feature an archaeological dig turning up an ancient spacecraft, whose alien occupants are horned, and who have influenced the development of humanity, and whose technology is sufficiently advanced as to be taken for the supernatural.

Looking beyond that, there are plenty of significant differences that mean The Dæmons can hardly be called a ripoff of Quatermass. Here are just some examples:

• Quatermass and the Pit is all about the slow build-up over the course of its episodes, up until the explosive, dramatic payoff at the climax in the final part. The Dæmons, meanwhile, has action from as early as part one
• Quatermass and the Pit is set in London, specifically post-war London, and this setting is a vital element to the story. The Dæmons is set in a rural English village, and this is an essential part of its plot, where the Master can infiltrate the community and our heroes can be easily isolated
• In Quatermass and the Pit the explanation of the aliens is mainly theorising by Professor Quatermass, with nothing ever explicitly confirmed on screen. While in The Dæmons, the Doctor (and the Master) already know about the alien Dæmons from before the story begins
• The character of the Master, who seeks to gain the power of the aliens for himself, has no parallel in Quatermass

So the differences build up to ensure the actual storylines are hardly similar at all. The most direct lift from Quatermass is the live TV broadcast from the scene of the action, that is then cut off. Only this occurs towards the end of Quatermass and the Pit, but early on in The Dæmons (in episode two).

What The Dæmons borrows (or steals, if you prefer) is not whole plots, but rather ideas, or details. For a final example of this, the name of the village, Devil's End, is quite close to the name of the street where the events of Quatermass and the Pit took place, Hobbs Lane/Hob's Lane - with "Hob" being another name for the devil.

This gets even closer if we consider the film version of Quatermass and the Pit (which was made in 1967, much closer to when The Dæmons was made than the 1958 TV series), where the London Underground station setting is Hobbs End.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Dæmons Episode Two

Yates and Benton are having as much fun as the Master, but that is because they were watching a different TV channel. This could have killed the dramatic tension so carefully established at the end of part one by having a comedic moment at this point, but instead it only sustains it and delays the resolution of the cliffhanger. They soon change channels to watch the dig programme, and see Jo and the unconscious Doctor for a few seconds before

It's easy to imagine a modern version of The Dæmons could play even more with the medium of television, in the style of Ghostwatch or the 2018 Hallowe'en 'live' episode of Inside No. 9, although it is equally easy to imagine BBC management* not allowing this precisely because of what happened with Ghostwatch.

Back in the cavern, the Master says

"To do my will shall be the whole of the law."

and his cultists hesitatingly reply with

"To do thy will shall be the whole of the law."

as if they are only just realising how deep the shit is they have gotten themselves into, and that it is too late to back out now.

The Doctor looks frozen solid, even when they take him back to the pub. The mannys from the TV programme and a doctor (but not the Doctor) from the village think Professor Horner and the Doctor are both ded, until the doctor (not the Doctor) hears the Doctor's pulse and two hearts.

The next morning Yates and Benton fly in by helicopter, and see the giant "hoofmarks" leading out from the dig site, from an animal "at least 30 feet tall."

They meet up with Jo and immediately go to the pub - not for drinks, that's where the still unconscious Doctor is having his sleeps.

The Brigadier is on the telephone finding out that the Doctor, Jo, Yates, Benton and his helicopter are all away at Devil's End having fun without him. It's like he missed the first session of their RPG and has to be brought into the plot and get caught up with what has happened so far as quickly and efficiently as possible. This makes for an amusing scene that only works with the Brigadier because he is the character who is supposed to be in charge of the others.

Benton finds Miss Hawthorne, who had been captured off-screen by the Master's henchmanny Gavin, and rescues her. In hiding from Gavin, they find the door down to the cavern, where Miss Hawthorne gives Benton the exposition about "Mr Magister" and says:

"Oh, I should have realised at once, 'magister' is the name given to the leader of a black magic coven."

She doesn't know that he's really the Master though - she must have not watched the rest of this season, lol.

Gavin comes back with a gun and has a fight with Benton until Benton falls on the Master's special evil stone and is knocked out by it. Gavin forces them out of the church, but then he sees a large POV monster and tries to shoot it while Benton and Miss Hawthorne run away. They are the sensible ones, because the POV monster pewpewpews Gavin and he disappears. In other words, this scene plays out exactly like a typical monster encounter in a game of Call of Cthulhu. The POV monster then zooms into the cavern and finds the Master's special stone.

A manny is driving along in his van when he suddenly feels the need to crash it and get out of the van to hold his head - which is lucky for him, because the van then explodes.

The Doctor wakes up and shouts

"Eureka!"

although he is nowhere near a bath. The Doctor is feeling well again, and comes down to the main pub set with Yates and Jo in time for Miss Hawthorne to arrive with Benton. She fills them in on what has happened, ending on

"The new vicar. He calls himself Magister."

"Magister? Yes, of course, I should have known."

"What?"

"Jo, did you fail Latin as well as Science? Magister is the Latin word for Master!"

The Brigadier drives up to the van-driving manny from earlier and finds there is now an invisible "heat barrier" there that sets fire to his stick. I love the way he is completely unfazed by this and simply says

"Must be some sort of heat barrier."

He then telephones Yates to find out what has happened and is equally unfazed by Yates's summation of the story so far, although he does have something of an understated 'Oh FFS!' look on his face when he hears the Master is involved.

The Doctor and Jo go back to the dig site to investigate. They find a tiny spaceship, and the Doctor begins to explain:

"About a hundred thousand years ago..."

But he doesn't get any further than that right now, because the Master has sent Bok to kill them. He runs in and goes "Rar!" and, as scary cliffhangers go, well... let's just say I've seen scarier.

D'aww, with his derpy tongue Bok is so cute!

* The nearest the series has moved in attempting something like this was in the 2007 episode Blink, which not only broke the fourth wall by having the viewers watching at home count as witnesses to the Weeping Angels (thus preventing them from moving while on-screen), but also ended with a montage of real-world statues - with the implication that any one of them could be a Weeping Angel really.

Considering that Blink is one of the most highly-regarded Doctor Who stories made since the series returned to BBC TV in 2005, and how much the makers of the series love to revisit their successes (until these lead to diminishing returns, and sometimes still even then), it is perhaps even more surprising that there has not been any subsequent attempt at taking this any further, which I see as additional evidence that the BBC management must be standing in the way.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Dæmons Episode One

The Dæmons is the fifth and final story of season eight of Doctor Who, and was first broadcast in 1971. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, John Levene as Sergeant Benton, and Roger Delgado as the Master.

While not the best story of the UNIT era, and arguably not even the best story of this season, this is nevertheless the ultimate UNIT story, in which the idea of the 'UNIT Family' achieves its perfected form.

It starts on a dark and stormy night, promising that this will be a scary story. Scary Cat is on standby to help me out if it gets too much.

There's a cat! I detect obvious thematic parallels with the shot of the lions in part one of Terror of the Autons; the last story of the season echoing the first. This also reassures any cats watching that everything will be alright in the end and reminds us that cats are best.

A doggy ventures out into the storm and gets wet. The manny who is with him gets attacked by a sound effect, and in the next scene Miss Hawthorne is trying to convince a doctor (not the Doctor) that "he died of fright."

The story then goes very meta, as there are mannys trying to make a TV show within the TV show we are watching.

We are given to understand from their dialogue that a manny called Professor Horner is going to sit in a corner open a barrow (with or without the assistance of Tom Bombadil we don't know yet, but either way it will probably be cut out) and they are going to film it for a TV broadcast.

The Doctor is despairing of Jo who believes in "the occult. Well, you know, the supernatural and all that magic bit" while the Doctor thinks "everything that happens in life must have a scientific explanation." Bessie then starts driving around by herself until the Doctor gives her into trouble. The Doctor then reveals that he did it to troll Jo using a remote control, which gives us all a lol while at the same time introducing the 'science vs magic' theme for this story.

Mike Yates arrives and tells the Doctor about the TV programme that he and Jo are wanting to watch. Due to the law of conservation of narrative detail it is of course the one we saw the mannys setting up for earlier. When the Doctor hears it is being made near a place called "Devil's End" (lol, sounds a bit rude) he becomes interested as well (naughty Doctor).

The TV presenter Alastair Fergus, who is surprisingly not a real-life BBC TV presenter (Doctor Who was using real BBC personalities playing themselves in the show from as early as 1966's The War Machines) but is played by actor David Simeon, records a spooky introduction for his programme, aided by pretty good acoustics for a studio set.

Benton is already watching the TV when the Doctor, Yates and Jo arrive, and so from this point they are seeing what we are also seeing. Alastair interviews Professor Horner, who is a grumpy and cantankerous manny. He wants to open the barrow at midnight of "Beltane, greatest occult festival of the year, bar Hallowe'en."

Presumably he couldn't be bothered to wait six months to do it at actual Hallowe'en? Or perhaps the BBC didn't want a repeat of what happened back when they broadcast Ghostwatch on the night of Hallowe'en 1992?

No, it is actually revealed that this is a "publicity gimmick" for the professor's new book coming out the next day - although I presume that could also have been held back six months if they had really wanted to?

Miss Hawthorne arrives and protests about the dig, although with her strongest argument being that she is "a witch - white of course" and that she "cast the runes" and "consulted the Talisman of Mercury" she comes across as a loony. Somehow this is enough to convince the Doctor that she is right and they have to "stop that lunatic before it's too late" and he means Horner is the "lunatic" not Miss Hawthorne! At first glance this would seem to be the Doctor going back on all the rubbishing of the supernatural that he did in the earlier scene, but I think he just wanted an excuse to go get involved in the plot as soon as possible.

Alastair says that viewers should "tune in to BBC3" to see the dig finish at midnight. This is a crucial piece of evidence for establishing the dating of the UNIT era - BBC3 began broadcasting in 2003 so it cannot possibly be set any earlier than that. Of course this is contradicted in plenty of other stories, such as Pyramids of Mars or Mawdryn Undead, but for now it is one of the most conclusive arguments for UNIT dating.

The Doctor and Jo drive in Bessie to Devil's End, but the wind blows the sign to point the wrong way. Wait, does this mean that even the convenient signposts and establishing shots are on the side of the baddys in this story, mew?

Miss Hawthorne goes to the church and wants to speak to "the real vicar" Canon Smallwood. But the new vicar who has replaced him is Mr Magister, and when he arrives to speak to Miss Hawthorne he is quickly revealed to be...

The Master! Here he appears in one of his most iconic disguises and aliases. He tries to hypno-eyes Miss Hawthorne but it doesn't work, so instead he sends his henchmanny to follow her.

By the time night has fallen, the Doctor and Jo have found a pub where they ask for directions. They are mistaiken for mannys from the TV programme (if it is a mistaik - it could be the episode being even more meta) with one of them saying to the Doctor

"Forgive me, but I thought... well, the costume and the wig, you know?"

The Doctor is confused and says

"Wig?"

Lol. They do get directions in the end, thanks to Jo asking nicely, but one of the mannys sneaks out of the pub to inform the Master they have arrived.

The Master then changes into a fancy costume and goes to the cavern where he meets with some cultists setting up for a ritual, which has attracted Cthulhu's interest to this story.

A tree falls over and forces the Doctor and Jo to leave Bessie behind. They run to the dig as the TV programme starts again, indicating that they do not have much time left until midnight.

The Master and his cultists do chanting that helps to build up the tension, as we cut between them, the Doctor and Jo running, and Horner talking to the TV mannys. The Doctor runs in but is just too late to stop the professor from opening up the wall at the dig. A hole appears and a powerful wind blasts out of it. Quick cutting ensures that we never see anything for long enough to be sure of what is going on, which is incredibly effective at sustaining the atmosphere by forcing our imaginations to fill in what we don't see.

The Master is happy - he laughs and shouts

"Azal!"

but his mannys are scared because they see Bok's eyes begin to glow.

Scary face!

There are plenty of moments here that would have made great cliffhanger points (truly they were spoiled for choice), but for the final shot we see Jo catch up with the Doctor to find him and the professor knocked out

'Oh noes!'

she says, and I suppose that is as good as any of them. Few Doctor Who stories manage to end their first episodes in as scary and suspenseful a way as this one does.

Doctor Who Night 2020: The Phantom Pipers

This year I have been mostly in lockdown because the mannys are worried about the coronavirus. Fortunately there is no coronavirus on the internets, so we held our annual Doctor Who Night there.

The Moonbase sees the Doctor, Jamie, Sailor Ben and Polly team up with the employees of Moonbase PLC to fight the Cybermannys. You can tell the mannys W-word for a private corporation because of the way the base is run with a minimal number of staff, even though the gravitron is capable of devastating the Earth when it (inevitably) goes wrong. And Benoit is obviously their IT manny, since he is the one who suggests they try turning the gravitron off and on again to fix it.

The Doctor, Sailor Ben and Polly have all met the Cybermannys before in The Tenth Planet, but they are new to Jamie, and some komedy arises when he first sees a Cybermanny and mistaiks it for "the Phantom Piper" lol.

Maybe when he says "the Phantom Piper" he really means Pipes? Now that would be scary.

By the time of Tomb of the Cybermannys, Sailor Ben and Polly have left and Jamie has become the veteran of Cybermanny stories. There the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria "Vic" Waterfield (the nickname never caught on, despite the supposed-to-be-Americans' best efforts) meet the Shapmeister himself, here playing Viner, who really gives away what sort of story they are in when he says

"These controls are of their earlier dynasty."

(Well, that and all the references to archaeology and archaeologists.)

Viner is easily the most genre-savvy of the guest characters, and as the atmosphere of the tomb gets to him he has further lines such as

"He's dead. Don't you see, he's dead? It's this damn building. It's alive. It's watching us! It'll get us all! We've got to leave!"

and carries on like that right up to the point where Klieg shoots him.

Aside from having the Doctor, Jamie and, of course, the Cybermannys in common, these two stories also both feature the iconic 1960s Cybermanny music, which does a lot of the heavy lifting in creating the menacing atmosphere as they make their slow advance across the Moon's surface or emerge slowly from their tombs.

Mood

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Colony in Space Episode Six

The Doctor kicks the button away from the Master with some Venusian Karate, then they are both captured by aliens. Locked together in the set that the Doctor and Jo were imprisoned in earlier, they immediately team up to investigate the alien writings on the walls. This makes it four stories out of four for Doctor-Master team ups.

Caldwell and Morgan have rescued Jo and taken her back to the dome, where Dent orders Jo to be put on the spaceship with the colonists. Caldwell and Morgan have an argument which brings Caldwell's character development arc - on pause (not paws) since the arrival of the Master into the story - back to the foreground. He disobey's Dent's order and takes Jo to follow the Doctor and the Master to the alien city.

The Master finally reveals to the Doctor what we have known since the start of episode one - that he knew about the doomsday weapon from the Time Lords' files. When the aliens come to take them away, the Master uses gas to allow himself and the Doctor to escape.

All the colonists are on their spaceship ready to take off, except for Winton who has a punch-up with an IMC guard. This fight lasts for a surprisingly long time considering it is between two minor characters.

The spaceship lifts off, and then explodes. It's another model shot, of course, but quite an effective one, assisted by way of a quick cut to Jo and Caldwell where we see their reactions. They think all the mannys on board have been killed, and Caldwell feels guilty because he helped the IMC baddys send them off.

The Doctor and the Master reach the doomsday weapon's control room. The Master says that with the weapon he could make the Earth's sun explode "now." The Doctor says

"That's unbelievable!"

"You know the Crab Nebula?"

"The cloud of cosmic matter that was once a sun? Of course."

The Doctor delivers this line as though insulted by the ease of the Master's question.

"That was the result of the super-race testing this weapon!"

Jo and Caldwell reach the alien city. An alien tries to capture Jo but Caldwell knocks it out so, for a change, they are able to get inside without having been captured.

The Master tempts the Doctor in what is surely the key scene of the whole story:

"Doctor, why don't you come in with me? We're both Time Lords. We're both renegades. We could be masters of the galaxy! Think of it, Doctor - absolute power! Power for good. Why, you could reign benevolently. You could end wars... suffering... disease. We could save the universe."

"No, absolute power is evil."

"Consider carefully, Doctor. I'm offering you a half-share in the universe!"

I love the way the Master's music plays in the background behind this speech. The Doctor refuses the offer, of course, and there is a further exchange as the Master asks him why.

"Why? Look at this. Look at all those planetary systems, Doctor. We could rule them all!"

"What for? What is the point?"

"The point is that one must rule or serve, that's a basic law of life. Why do you hesitate, Doctor? Surely it's not loyalty to the Time Lords, who exiled you on one insignificant planet?"

"You'll never understand, will you? I want to see the universe, not rule it."

This beautifully sets out their opposing philosophies, and in doing so more than makes up for the fact that the Master never got a proper introduction as a character back in Terror of the Autons - in a way his introduction occurs here, in his fourth story.

Only when the discussion reaches its end, and the Master moves to kill the Doctor, does the brain alien make his entrance. He challenges them both to justify their presence here, and by implication he is also testing the worthiness of their competing points of view. The brain alien explains that the weapon is the reason for their decline, because "the radiation from the weapon's power source poisoned the soil." This has been cleverly foreshadowed from early on in the story, as the reason why the colonists were having trouble growing their noms.

The Master finishes his argument by claiming that with the weapon they "could be gods." The brain alien, which has presumably already been living with the god-like power of the weapon for a long time, judges the Master unworthy to be a god. He demonstrates a fraction of god-like power when the Master tries to kill him, but he makes the Master's pewpewpew gun vanish. He gives the Doctor the option and ability to destroy the doomsday weapon, and the Doctor says

"Not only does justice prevail on your planet, sir, but also infinite compassion."

Destroying the weapon will also destroy the city, so the Doctor and the Master have to run away. When he sees some aliens running the wrong way the Doctor says

"Come back! You'll all be killed!"

The Master doesn't hesitate for the aliens but, oddly for someone who tries to kill the Doctor so often, he does pause long enough to say to the Doctor

"Come on! Do you want to die with them?"

They meet up with Jo and Caldwell and the four of them escape just ahead of a big explosion, as is traditional.

They are then immediately captured by Morgan and his henchmannys. Morgan is going to shoot the Doctor, the Master and Jo, but they are saved by the arrival of the not-ded-after-all colonists, leading to another gunfight which is won by Winton and the colonists. While this goes on the Master escapes back to his TARDIS and dematerialises out of the story.

Back at the dome, Winton tells the Doctor and Jo that only Ashe was blowed up inside the rocket. The Doctor's TARDIS has been found, so he and Jo can leave. Just before they do, we see Caldwell complete his character arc as he leaves his life with IMC behind and joins the colonists fully.

"Doctor, come back at once!"

The TARDIS reappears in the UNIT lab and it quickly becomes apparent to the Doctor and Jo that, from the Brigadier's point of view, this is still episode one and they have only been away for a few seconds.

"What are you two talking about?"

he asks them.

"Don't try and explain, Jo. He'd never understand."

Because the Brigadier has started on his own character arc - towards being a komedy character who's as thick as shit.

What's so good about Colony in Space?

As tempting as it is to say 'the Master' again, that can only be half the answer since he's only in half the story, lol! But certainly he is responsible for lifting the story from good to great, arriving just as the 'colonists vs IMC' plotline is flagging, and only he could take the role he does in part six, as the friend-enemy who offers the Doctor "a half-share in the universe" and means it.

The plot before the Master showed up was an interesting conflict between the arch-capitalists IMC, a personification of greed, and the colonists who want to escape from the lives they had on Earth to a simpler, Arcadian lifestyle. The writing leaves us in no doubt who are the baddys, since from before they even appear on screen the IMC mannys Dent and Morgan are willing to remorselessly murder colonists to get their way. This means that by the time Winton and some of the colonists fight back we know they are in the right to do so - helped, of course, by the Doctor being on their side.

Caldwell is the character caught in the middle, and the story is really his struggle to make the journey from siding with IMC in his pursuit of moneys to siding with the colonists because they aren't evil murdering baddys. This main thread barely interacts with the second plot about the Master and the alien city and its doomsday weapon (save for the bit about how the colonists were struggling to grow noms due to the weapon's radiation), so it is easy to see how this could have made for a story in its own right - I suggest that this would have really struggled to sustain six whole episodes though, seeing as it was already struggling by the time the Master did arrive partway through part four. Which leads us to...

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

Colony in Space is the second Pertwee six-parter, and the first that finds it hard to justify the length. Unusually, the padding falls mainly in the first half of the story - perhaps because this is before the Master arrives, and it is always easier to disguise padding when the production team can throw in an entertaining Doctor-Master scene or the like.

The most visible sign of padding is in the back-and-forth between the colonists and IMC, as each side gets the upper paw over the other in turn, before fortunes are swiftly reversed. There is also the matter of the repetitious cliffhanger ends to parts one and two.

That's not to say the story isn't still great, however, with the final part (and especially its confrontation between the Doctor and the Master over the doomsday weapon) building to an epic-feeling conclusion. But it is best watched episodically, because if you try to watch the whole thing in a single session you will encounter the less-good first half, padding and all, before you get to the superior second half with the Master in it.

Oh, and that bit where the Brigadier repeats his line from part one... you wouldn't notice this if you didn't have the option of watching the whole story in one go, but it's a cheat:

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Colony in Space Episode Five

The recap of episode four shows us the entire gunfight again. Then Ashe saves the Doctor and Jo by arriving in the nick of time, and the Master is not prepared to blow his cover as the fake Adjudicator by shooting them in front of witnesses.

Dent gets captured and makes the rest of the IMC baddys surrender. The IMC baddys are forced to take off in their spaceship. In space, they get a fax (a space fax? Either way, this is advanced technology we're dealing with here) from Earth with a picture of the real Adjudicator, which means Dent now knows the Master is an impostor, and so he orders them back to the planet.

The Doctor tries to warn Ashe and Winton about the Master, but the Master throws suspicion back on the Doctor in much the way he threatened to do in the last episode. It's almost as if the Doctor has forgotten what happened last time - well, it would have been a whole week ago when first broadcast, so perhaps that's understandable?

The Doctor still has a key to the Master's TARDIS (which he obtained all the way back in Terror of the Autons, and is a surprising bit of continuity from three whole stories earlier) so he and Jo go to look for evidence against him there.

The Doctor and Jo find the real Adjudicator's credentials, with a similar picture to the one Dent received, which is the evidence they are looking for to expose the Master. The Doctor also wants to know why he came to this planet, since (for once) it wasn't anything to do with trying to kill the Doctor. Jo goes to leave, and in so doing triggers the master's burglar alarm that they were both very careful not to set off on the way in.

So warned, the Master sees them on a tiny device, which he then turns into a button that he presses to release gas into his TARDIS, which knocks the Doctor and Jo out.

An unnecessarily padded scene of the IMC baddys landing their spaceship reminds us that they are coming back, and then Dent orders Morgan and his other henchmannys to attack the colonists (again).

The Master wakes the Doctor up and says

"Well Doctor, still pursuing burglary, eh? You know, when you stole my dematerialisation circuit, I decided to build in a few precautions."

He wants the Doctor to take him on a date to the alien city, with Jo to stay behind as a hostage.

Morgan sneaks into the dome and captures Ashe. The henchmannys get their guns back, and this leads into another gunfight, very similar to the earlier one, only this time with IMC on the left and the colonists on the right. But because Ashe has been captured, Chess rules apply again and this time it is the colonists who have been checkmated.

The Master locks Jo inside a transparent cylindrical cubicle before he and the Doctor leave his TARDIS. The costumes and set design here remind me very strongly of Dead on Arrival, I suspect one of these stories was an inspiration for the other. 

The Doctor drops the stolen TARDIS key just outside, for somebody to conveniently find later on.

Dent and Morgan have gone crazy with power after winning the last gunfight, and they set up a show trial for Ashe and Winton:

"As legally appointed Governor of this planet, I declare this court in session. Morgan?"

"You are charged with destroying property and equipment belonging to the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, assault and murder of IMC personnel, trespass on a planet lawfully allocated to IMC, and armed rebellion against the lawful representatives of the Earth's government. How do you plead?"

As he has been repeatedly threatening for the whole story, Dent claims he can sentence them to death, but instead wants them to leave the planet:

"The sentence is execution. However, the sentence will be suspended on condition that you and your followers depart this planet immediately."

As the Doctor and the Master approach their city, the aliens do some pretty good impressions of Sand People (--or worse!), not bad for a story made six years before Star Wars.

Dent wants to capture the Master, and sends Morgan and Caldwell to his spaceship (i.e. his TARDIS) to look for him. They find the key the Doctor dropped and so can get  inside. Naturally they trigger the burglar alarm as soon as they do. Even though this clearly has nothing to do with the Doctor, who is still right there with him, the Master says

"I warned you, Doctor." 

and goes to press his button to release the gas upon Jo, Morgan and Caldwell. He seemingly does it in slow motion, and it cuts to the end credits before the button gets pushed.

This is quite an effective cliffhanger in theory, but I've heard the winner of a TV cookery competition announced in less time than the Master takes to reach the button. He reeeeeally milks it.