But before we quite get to the soap opera-esque TARDIS scenes (where the characters spend their time rehashing the events of Kinda in a decidedly less charitable light than when we last saw them), there are some establishing shots in a manor house, as a spaceship crashes down nearby. This leads to a sequence where the residents of the house try to defend themselves against the alien interlopers but are presumably unsuccessful, as the next thing we see is the house abandoned weeks later. It's a quite beautiful-looking android, though, with lots of glittering jewels and sharp elegant lines. But this scene sets up the aliens as potentially dangerous, and this is what our heroes wander into, after avoiding plague-fearing peasants (complete with Adric spraining his ankle for no reason whatsoever) and meeting up with a highwayman/out-of-work actor named Richard Mace.119 The rest of the first episode is an exploration of the abandoned house, looking for the alien survivors that have left bits of their technology scattered about. The first cliffhanger is completely unmemorable, though: the Doctor has disappeared. Which might be all right if I didn't know what the resolution was (he reappears, having learned that a brick wall was in fact a fake wall), but I do, so it remains a very uninteresting cliffhanger.
Part two is a bit more interesting, because we finally get to see one of the alien creatures, and it's actually a pretty good design. There's some nice detailing and some animatronics even, which give these lizard/fish creatures some extra realism. The actual plot is still pretty straightforward, though; Adric and Tegan are captured, while the Doctor, Mace, and Nyssa escape, stopping to investigate the crashed escape pod that the Terileptils arrived in (and the Doctor must recognize the design, because he identifies the missing occupants as Terileptils with ease). And while there's some fun interplay between the Doctor and Mace, as his entire worldview is repeatedly challenged (though, to his credit, he never completely cracks under the pressure), the plot is still remarkably linear; the Doctor and Mace head to the village, to work out how the miller can access the manor house (so that they can go the same way and rescue Adric and Tegan), but they're captured by the peasants, who decide to behead them. "Not again," the Doctor moans, as for the second time this season an episode ends with a blade raised above his head...
119 Richard Mace was a character created by Eric Saward for a series of radio plays in the 1970s, where Mace was an actor/detective in the late 18th century. Saward adapted the character for this story, despite Nathan-Turner's misgivings.