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| Jo wanders into a radioactive cave. (The Mutants Episode Three) ©BBC |
Meanwhile, Jo gets scared and wanders into a really wonderfully trippy-looking cave before passing out after being approached by a silver-suited figure. And the Doctor meets up with Ky (as played by almost-but-not-quite-Luke-Skywalker's-best-friend-Biggs actor Garrick Hagon, whose scenes were mostly cut from the Proper Version of Star Wars before being reinstated for the Special Edition) and delivers the Time Lord package to him -- which turns out to be four stone tablets, written in the old language of Solos that no one understands anymore.
And while all this is going on, the Marshal decides to get rid of three problems at once, by blowing up the entrances to the caves and thus trapping the Mutts, Ky, and the Doctor. And, it turns out, Stubbs and Cotton, who foolishly reveal their true colors over the radio when they meet up with the Doctor. Thus it becomes clear that the caves are sealed in and the gas grenades that the Marshal also threw into the caves are billowing towards our heroes...
Fortunately that silver-suited figure from earlier comes to rescue them at the top of episode four, taking them to a place of safety and revealing himself to be a Earth researcher called Sondergaard (as played by actually-in-all-the-versions-of-Empire-Strikes-Back Lobos actor John Hollis (he's the guy with the weird thing on his head in Cloud City)), who's been hiding in the caves (thanks to the Marshal) and performing research into the history and culture of the Solonians. This is also the scene where director Christopher Barry uses a piece of Mirrorlon (a reflective plastic) to shake whenever he needs the caves to start collapsing. Except, since it's being shot at a weird angle, the piece ends up distorting the scene (so it's really obvious as a result) and not every shot it's used on has falling debris, so it really just looks like an odd directorial decision at times.
But this is the episode where the Doctor and Sondergaard work out what's going on on Solos: it seems the tablets are a type of calendar, one for each season. Solos has a 2000-year-long orbit, and a highly elliptical one at that, so as the seasons slowly change, the Solonians adapt to the changes. This is normally a natural change, but Professor Jaeger's experiments with the atmosphere on Solos have triggered the changes early. There are also some symbols on the tablets that represent radiation, so the Doctor and Sondergaard go back into the cave Jo went into and find a strange crystal egg. But in order to analyze it, they need to head to Skybase.
Meanwhile the others head to Varan's village (thanks to an entrance to the caves the Marshal didn't know about), where Varan, clearly mutating, has decided to lead his remaining warriors in a desperate battle against the Overlords -- and he's going to use Jo, Ky, Stubbs, and Cotton as decoys. He manages to get everyone on board Skybase just as Professor Jaeger prepares to bombard the surface of Solos with atmosphere-altering rockets, which leads to a shootout between the Marshal and Varan which breaches the hull of Skybase, sending Varan floating into space (a nicely done effect) and threatening to send everyone else after him...
68 Best Costume Design, The Last Emperor (1987); Best Costume Design, Dangerous Liaisons (1988); Best Costume Design, Restoration (1995).