An Hour of Who a Day

April 11: Fury from the Deep Episodes 3 & 4

Alas, episode 3 isn't much better. It's yet more Robson-versus-the-rest-of-the-staff arguing, and while Robson seems to be getting increasingly unhinged, it's somewhat difficult to care as he hardly started out as a sympathetic character.

But we've reached another milestone! Fury from the Deep Episode 3 is the 200th episode of Doctor Who. It's just a shame it's not more interesting. Part of the problem, one suspects, is that giant masses of foam with seaweed tendrils thrashing about is an awfully visual conceit, and so the effectiveness of these sequences (such as the extended one in the Harrises' apartment) are reduced fairly significantly. Certainly the little clips we do have are pretty effective. But on audio all we get are sounds and screams and Frazer Hines's narration of the events (at least, on the BBC release we get narration).

It's not a total loss, though; the scenes set in the TARDIS to analyze the seaweed are rather nice (and rather unprecedented in this era: we haven't returned to the TARDIS mid-story since The Savages at the end of season 3), with Victoria showing off some science skills and an interesting use of an old book demonstrating that this thing has been around for a while -- there's a bit of flavor of "ancient evil" that will become a staple of mid-70s Who and parts of Sylvester McCoy's era. And we seem to be getting some character development, as Victoria bemoans the fact that they always land somewhere in trouble: "I don't really like being scared out of my wits every second." And here we note that this is the second story to be produced by Peter Bryant instead of Innes Lloyd, whose producership was marked by abrupt and unexpected companion departures; Victoria at least gets to establish that she's not having fun any more.

The Weed Creature menaces the Doctor and Jamie in the impeller
shaft. (Fury from the Deep Episode 4) ©BBC

Episode 4, it must be said, is something of an improvement, as the weed creature makes a couple suitably exciting attacks down in the impeller shaft, swallowing Van Lutyens up completely and threatening to do the same to the Doctor and Jamie. And one can't help but notice that Robson's pretty much gone for this episode, and when he does show up he's too busy being possessed by the Weed Creature (who apparently got him in episode 3) to be tediously obstinate this time around. In his place we have Megan Jones, who's been sent by the board (of Eurogas, presumably) to find out what's going on and why the amount of gas being pumped up from the North Sea has dropped so low that "the southern region receiving stations are working on emergency supplies." She at least seems much more reasonable than Robson, even if she's not yet completely convinced by Harris's stories of Weed Creatures and such. At least she's not yelling all the time.

And we get a couple more "why can't we go anywhere nice?" scenes from Victoria -- she seems to be less and less happy with her current lifestyle. Little wonder, since here she's knocked out by Mr Oak and Mr Quill and left in the pipeline room. There's a tender scene with Jamie as he discovers her lying on the steps and is worried about her safety: "No, you can't be dead. Victoria, if anything happened to you, I'd never forgive myself." It's quickly brushed aside as Victoria regains consciousness, but it's still there. Still, no time to deal with that now, as they see that the pipes are now full of seething Weed Creature. "It's begun... the battle of the giants," the Doctor says, somewhat oddly -- what makes the Weed Creature a "giant"? It doesn't seem any worse at the moment than the Great Intelligence did in the last serial. Unless we're shooting for that "ancient evil" thing again, with the implication that the older something is the more dangerous it is. Which might be what the script is getting at, but if so it's become rather muddled in the finished product.

April 10: Fury from the Deep Episodes 1 & 2

Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. No episodes of Fury from the Deep exist, so it's back to soundtracks and telesnaps.

Fury from the Deep is another highly-regarded season 5 classic, but to be honest, it's a bit difficult to see why. Episode 1 certainly starts as another fun Troughton runaround, with the three of them playing in the foam on the beach (so not the most exciting thing to listen to, but it was probably all right when watching it). And then the Doctor investigates a pipe using a sonic screwdriver -- yes, it's the first appearance of the Doctor's trusty tool, here used for what it was designed to do: turn screws.

But after that, when the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are tranquilized and taken inside the Eurogas Base (the pipe's bringing in natural gas from the North Sea, see), things really seem to drag. Robson is the worst kind of boss, one who refuses to listen to anyone else because it might damage his arbitrary reputation. It might be acceptable if he were pitched as a more reasonable person who happens to have a hang-up over this one thing (that's certainly the way the script seems to generally portray him), but Victor Maddern pitches his performance with a baseline of nastiness and hysteria already in place, so he's unlikeable from the moment we meet him. And because he's both unreasonable and clearly in the wrong (not to mention the massive inferiority complex he seems to be nursing -- "You'd better have something more than a high flown theory, because if you haven't I'm going to take you and chop you up into little pieces and throw you back to your crummy little university," he says nastily to Harris, his second-in-command), all the scenes of people arguing with him to do the right thing drag on forever. If they'd had a sensible person in charge of this place, the story would be over by episode 2. But no, things carry on. There's a bit of fun with our heroes when they're locked up inside a room, as Jamie scrambles through a ventilation screen while Victoria simply picks the lock, but really, it's not sufficient enough to sustain interest. Nice cliffhanger though, as a foamy seaweed something tries to get into the room Victoria's currently occupying.

Episode 2's a little better. Harris's wife Maggie, who was stung by some seaweed last episode, is feeling poorly, and when two men call to look at the gas cooker, they quickly make her day go from bad to worse. This is Mr Oak and Mr Quill, and the clip of their attack, with their mouths open wide hissing gas at poor Maggie, was deemed too frightening for the Australian audience, and so this sequence exists. It's certainly creepy, as the sound of gas hissing is accompanied by a soundtrack from Dudley Simpson that prefigures his work in the early 70s. And we get some more creepiness with the seaweed as well, as it seems to move under its own power and produce a shocking amount of foam -- threatening to engulf the Harrises' patio.

But other than that, it's yet more arguing between Robson and whoever happens to be presenting the reasonable course of action at any given moment, be it Harris, Dutch observer Van Luytens, or the Doctor. Robson stubbornly refuses to listen, and that's that. And so when the impeller, the thing which pumps the gas out from the main pipeline at sea, stops working, it's treated as an inevitable consequence of Robson's inaction -- which may be true, but it's not very interesting. Still, a heartbeat can be heard coming up the shaft as well, so I suppose it's not the worst cliffhanger ever. It's just not one of the best either.

April 9: The Web of Fear Episodes 5 & 6

The Great Intelligence, using Travers as a mouthpiece, tells the Doctor he has twenty minutes to give himself up to the Intelligence -- and Victoria is seized as a hostage to ensure his cooperation. And then episode 5 shows us all twenty of those minutes, as the Doctor and Anne try desperately to construct a machine that will let them defeat the Intelligence before those twenty minutes are up. Yes, this episode is just marking time.

Still, at least it's reasonably entertaining time-marking. While Anne and the Doctor are tinkering, Lethbridge-Stewart and Jamie decide to try and go after Victoria -- Lethbridge-Stewart believing it's "pointless" after his run-in with the Yeti in episode 4, "but at least we'll be doing something active." And just in case we've forgotten about the inside man, Private Evans is sure to remind us: "Been working it out, I have, see. Come to the conclusion one of you two must be working for this Intelligence... It told us it had another pair of hands working for it. Well, I know it's not me, see, so it must be one of you two. Stands to reason, don't it?" And the script is sure to continue casting doubt on Lethbridge-Stewart -- he seems to know where he's going in the tunnels to find Victoria without being told, and the Doctor doesn't seem to trust him either (in episode 6, for instance, he refuses to mention that they've gained control of a Yeti in Lethbridge-Stewart's presence).

But yes, episode 5 is largely filler. The most important things that happen are that the Doctor and Anne find a way to block the Intelligence's signal to the Yeti (though only at close range) and reprogram a sphere to obey their commands over the Intelligence, and Staff Sergeant Arnold returns from his apparent death in episode 4, when he went into the web and didn't come back out. And soon the twenty minutes are up, and it's time for the Doctor to turn himself over to the Intelligence -- just as the web bursts through the wall of the lab in the Goodge Street base.

The survivors are taken to the Intelligence by the Yeti. (The
Web of Fear Episode 6) ©BBC

Episode 6 is also quite slow, as it spends the first half ensuring that all the pieces are brought together for the final confrontation at Piccadilly Circus. To this end anyone who's run off, like Evans, or at least not explicitly killed off, like Chorley, are forcibly taken to Piccadilly. Meanwhile, the Doctor is being herded off alone, which gives him the opportunity to momentarily halt the Yeti accompanying him and switch some wires on the helmet they have for him that's designed to let the Intelligence absorb the Doctor's mind. But finally everyone is brought to Piccadilly, and the Intelligence's agent is revealed to be not Lethbridge-Stewart but Staff Sergeant Arnold. Er, what? All right, I guess he had the opportunity to do all the things the agent needed to do, but it still seems odd to take the most sympathetic and human supporting character and make him the traitor all along. There's certainly no hint of being controlled or acting unnaturally from Arnold before he arrives at Piccadilly. It just feels wrong somehow. But oh well.

The Doctor tells them not to interfere with what's going to happen as he's placed inside a plastic transparent pyramid, but Jamie (who has the Yeti control mic) tells "their" Yeti to attack the others, thus creating enough confusion to allow our heroes to pull the Doctor to safety and cut off the Intelligence's link with Earth -- though the Doctor is none too grateful. "I told you to leave it to me!" he yells angrily at Jamie (though, to be fair, Jamie wasn't there when the Doctor told everyone else that). "Now you've gone and ruined everything!" Apparently the Doctor had switched some wires so that he was going to drain the Intelligence's mind, rather than the other way around. But because of the actions of the others, the Intelligence has only been defeated rather than destroyed. "You mean it might come back?" asks Evans (though as it turns out, not until 2012; the production team had plans for a third Yeti story, but those plans were scuppered after the fallout from The Dominators -- more on that particular tale when we get to that story). Still, the threat to London and the rest of the world is over for now, and so the Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie head out on their way.

While it's certainly wonderful to be able to see two more thirds of The Web of Fear, with hindsight it's not quite as thrilling to watch as The Enemy of the World; however, that might be because it's a lot more familiar -- most of the locations had already been seen in the surviving first episode, and the "base-under-siege" plot is also a lot more typical of this period in the show than anything in Enemy. But it is very well directed, and those first four episodes are quite good indeed, giving us a better siege tale than anything we've seen yet. It admittedly ends rather badly, as the last two episodes tend to squander the atmosphere that the first four worked so hard to create (certainly the paranoia established in episode 4 doesn't carry over to the next two episodes, no matter how hard they try to bring it up) and it ends with a bit of a bang and a partial white-out rather than anything particularly epic. But that's honestly not a fatal flaw, and it doesn't detract too much from everything else we get. It's not quite as brilliant as we were led to believe before we could see most of it, but The Web of Fear is certainly effective at what it does.

April 8: The Web of Fear Episodes 3 & 4

Alas, episode 3 is still missing, so we're left with a telesnap reconstruction on the DVD. It's certainly not a bad reconstruction, but you do wish it was the real thing. Still, at least we can enjoy what's still there, and try to imagine what it was like watching Evans shoot desperately at the glowing pyramid carried by a Yeti, only for nothing to happen when he finally does smash it (so, er, why was the Yeti carrying it around then?). And the Doctor is back! Victoria runs into him as he's accompanied by the new base commander, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, who takes them all to the Goodge Street base. The Doctor is able to reunite with Professor Travers and try to finally get somewhere with solving this Yeti crisis. But it turns out there's a traitor in the base, who's planting Yeti figurines, opening the base's door, and sabotaging the explosives store. And then, as the others head out in search of Chorley (who's determined to get to the TARDIS after Victoria has told him about it), the Yeti come in and take Travers away...

Hooray! The last three episodes of this story exist (once again, a heartfelt thanks to Philip Morris!), and episode 4 is quite a doozy. There's a real sense of ratcheting up the paranoia in this episode, as we're given a reason to suspect just about every single person in the base -- even the Doctor (after all, we don't know what happened to him during episode 2). And so there are hints dropped about everyone: Lethbridge-Stewart seems to have no knowledge of Private Evans, even though Evans was the driver who was taking him to Holborn -- and there's the matter of how quickly he accepts the Doctor's story of arriving in a time machine; Evans gives the Doctor a Yeti figurine that's acting as a homing device, and the tin with the sample of web fungus that the Doctor collects at the beginning of this episode is empty when Evans gives it to the Doctor; and Chorley's disappeared while on his way to the TARDIS, seemingly swallowed up by the fungus in the tunnels. It's all very effective, and the suspicion is a nice way of making everything seem more urgent.

The Doctor finds a Yeti homing device in Colonel Lethbridge-
Stewart's pocket. (The Web of Fear Episode 4) ©BBC

And we also get an impressive action sequence, as the Colonel takes a squad of soldiers up to the deserted streets of London to recover the Doctor's TARDIS so that they can all escape, only to be ambushed by a group of Yeti armed with web guns. We get lots of shooting and running around as the soldiers try desperately to fend off the Yeti, only to be brutally killed via cobwebs (skillfully directed on film by Camfield). And even the scene with the Doctor and Captain Knight in the electronics shop, where Knight is killed by two attacking Yeti, is well done even though it's clearly in the studio (and thus a little more stagey). The action comes as a welcome release after the last three episodes of waiting tensely in the tunnels, even as it serves to brutally reduce the number of people left fighting the Yeti -- Lethbridge-Stewart is the only one to make it back, leaving only him, Anne Travers, the Doctor, Victoria, Jamie, and Private Evans left in the Goodge Street base. Until the end of the episode, that is, when Professor Travers returns, flanked by two Yeti...

April 7: The Web of Fear Episodes 1 & 2

Episode 1 of The Web of Fear (which picks up almost exactly where The Enemy of the World episode 6 left off, with Jamie struggling to close the TARDIS doors while the other two hold on to the console for dear life) has more or less always existed, at least as far as fandom goes, so we've become familiar with the set-up and the look of things. (The recently recovered Nigeria print is of a higher quality, however, and was used on the DVD release. And yes, my copies of both this and The Enemy of the World are region 2; neither has been released in the United States yet.) And so some of the lingering questions regarding the story in this episode are perhaps more noticeable because we're so familiar with it. Why, for instance, is the TARDIS stopped in deep space by a strange web? Is this the closest the TARDIS is going to get to roughly contemporary Earth, and so the Intelligence has to snag it while it can? Why do the Yeti change shape right before our eyes, given they're just robots with nothing supernatural about their construction, just their controller? And who thought it was a good idea to give them big glowing eyes anyway? (Sorry, I guess I'm just partial to the original design.)

But what's also clear from episode 1 is both the striking direction by Douglas Camfield (returning for his first story since The Daleks' Master Plan) and the moody sense of tension generated by the proceedings. London is an eerie place, even though we're only given hints based on the silence and the apparently abandoned Underground, but the desperation evoked by the army people situated in an old World War II bunker also helps sell the situation. Even if the implication seems to be that Professor Travers reactivated a sphere, giving the Great Intelligence a foothold onto Earth again, and then left his daughter to deal with the resulting crisis (admittedly, the dialogue is a bit confused here, as Travers demands to know why he's been brought to the Goodge Street base, learns it was on Anne Travers' orders, and then seems to imply that he sent for Anne to help him in the first place). And man but they do a good job of making us dislike journalist Harold Chorley, don't they? He's slimy and dripping with the wrong sort of charm as he oozes his way around the base, looking for quotes for his own career's sake rather than because he's interested in the events happening. (It's been suggested that he's a deliberate parody of David Frost, but as I haven't seen much of Frost I can't really comment on that -- but I thought I'd mention it for those who have.) It's a taut episode, and it leaves us wanting more.

Now episode 2 is a Nigerian recovery, so this is brand new for a lot of people, myself included. Yet I had to remind myself while watching it the first time that I hadn't actually seen it before, so familiar did it feel in places. That's partly because we're still in the same sets as episode 1 -- the Goodge Street base and the London Underground tunnels, and partly because we're getting a sort of "best of base-under-siege" episode, as we watch these characters run through the same sorts of arguments we've already seen in stories like The Moonbase or the story this is a direct sequel to, The Abominable Snowmen (with only two stories intervening -- the smallest gap between recurring monster appearances yet). But at least in this case we're getting a version which seems to have taken the best character bits from those earlier stories and condensed them down into what we see here.

But there are still some nice moments that weren't apparent from the audio: Chorley gleefully recording the dying moments of men over the phone as they're attacked by Yeti, and Anne Travers' heated attack on Chorley, as she makes it plain how much she detests him; the Yeti's attack on the troops in the tunnels, with their web-shooting guns making quick work of the explosives the soldiers had placed; and the cliffhanger, as Jamie and Private Evans, the Cowardly Welsh Army Driver™, are trapped in the Monument underground platform, with the Intelligence's fungus (looking suspiciously like the BBC foam machine at work) filling up both of the other tunnels. Victoria has also left the base -- thanks to both Anne Travers voicing her suspicions about Victoria's story of time travel and Chorley being determined to pin blame on the newcomers, despite Professor Travers vouching for them -- in search of either Jamie (looking for the Doctor with the army troops) or the Doctor (last seen at the end of episode 1 -- it's Troughton's week off, having spent the last six playing both the Doctor and the main villain). So the episode ends with all three of them separated from each other, wandering the tunnels. And meanwhile, the Intelligence is on the move again, taking over more and more tunnels with its web...

April 6: The Enemy of the World Episodes 5 & 6

So that unexpected visitor was Donald Bruce. But Bruce, it turns out, is less dedicated to Salamander than he is to justice, so the Doctor is able to convince Bruce to let him impersonate Salamander so that they can gain proof of Salamander's wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Salamander himself is still down in the bunker, when the leader of the people down there, Swann, finds a scrap of newspaper from last year, proving to Swann that the world above isn't as devastated as Salamander led them to believe. Salamander tells him that it's only half a life being lived by the survivors of the nuclear war, but Swann insists on going to the surface with Salamander, so Salamander grudgingly agrees to take him.

We also get the return of Jamie and Victoria (both on vacation during the last episode), getting ready to be interrogated by Benik -- who's particularly slimy during this episode. "I'm looking forward to questioning them," he says at one point. "I have a feeling they're going to be stubborn. So much more interesting when our prisoners are stubborn." And then, when he's actually interrogating Jamie and Victoria, Jamie says, "You must have been a nasty little boy." -- to which Benik replies with a nasty smile, "Oh, I was. But I had a very enjoyable childhood."

Finally, we get some fun interplay with Troughton playing the Doctor playing Salamander, as he "interrogates" Jamie and Victoria to demonstrate to Bruce that Salamander isn't the white knight he pretends to be, while Kent fakes his own death, allowing him to escape from Bruce's guards while Astrid also runs away -- only to find Swann, dying from a blow administered by Salamander...

Episode 6 wraps it all up. The dying Swann tells Astrid to free the people living in the bunker, to expose Salamander's lies. Meanwhile, Benik is suspicious of "Salamander", but he inadvertently gives up the evidence that demonstrates to Bruce that Salamander does indeed have something to hide, and so he's ready to trust the Doctor and bring in his own people to conduct a more thorough investigation. (Although the Benik subplot is odd here -- he seems to be clearly suspicious of "Salamander" when he's in the office with Bruce, Jamie, and Victoria, but then he seems to believe that no, that was Salamander. But then he becomes even more suspicious of Bruce, as he's seen authorizing Jamie and Victoria's release, yet in the next scene is seen working alongside Bruce trying to break into the Records Room. That's followed up by Benik suddenly losing his nerve and trying to run away -- maybe he realizes Salamander is finished, but it's not at all clear. Were scenes explaining all this flip-flopping cut for time? The episode certainly ends abruptly...) And Kent makes his way in to expose his true colors: he doesn't want to stop Salamander, he wants to replace him. But when it all goes wrong, he's willing to blow everything up to kill Salamander and destroy the evidence. Meanwhile Astrid is trying to evacuate the people from the bunker (once she gets them to trust her and believe that there was in fact no nuclear war), so when Kent blows up the bunker it causes some problems. But Kent is shot down by Salamander, who then makes his way, dazed, to the TARDIS, where Jamie mistakes him for the Doctor. But then the real Doctor shows up, they have a quick tussle, and then Salamander starts the TARDIS with the doors open and is sucked out into space...

Before it was recovered, The Enemy of the World had a pretty low reputation -- there are no monsters, it seems badly edited, and the script is designed to keep the Doctor out of the action for as long as possible. But when you can actually watch it, the editing issues generally disappear (in fact, you see that in many cases, Letts is deliberately switching from one scene to another to underline a point made in the previous scene), you see just how good Troughton is, and you can appreciate the care that's gone into Whitaker's script. It's also nice to get a Bond-style thriller to make a change from the monster stories, such that it really does set this story apart. It's a story that stands up quite well, and I would be quite surprised if it didn't go up in people's estimations now that they can actually see it.

April 5: The Enemy of the World Episodes 3 & 4

Episode 3 of The Enemy of the World was for the longest time the only episode surviving from this story. This is rather unfortunate, as this episode is almost pure filler, featuring comedy characters such as Griffin the chef and bizarre moments such as the decision to guard Alexander Denes (under arrest, remember, for failing to warn the population about the impending volcanic eruptions) in a corridor rather than a room. "It's easier to guard him here," a guard states, rather illogically. The reputation of this story used to hinge on this episode, and the result was deemed to have been lacking. Director Barry Letts insisted it was the worst episode of the serial, but people figured the rest was just like this.

In context, however, this episode makes more sense. It's a pause between bouts of action, and writer David Whitaker has chosen to fill up the time with character moments. Griffin the chef barely has a line that isn't some deadpan joke, and he's massively entertaining as a result. And Deborah Watling seems to also play up Victoria's ineffectiveness in the kitchen, as she describes a recipe for a pudding involving "lots of almonds, eggs, lemon peel, candied peel, oranges, cream and, oh it was lovely!" When asked how to make it, Victoria replies, "You sort of, whoosh it all up together." Griffin's expression upon being told this is a recipe for Kaiser pudding suggests this isn't the sort of thing one simply "whoosh[es] up".

A couple other moments worth mentioning: Fedorin tries and fails to poison Denes's food, which leads to his apologizing to Salamander. "Don't worry! You try, you fail, so what, huh? The moon doesn't fall out of the sky," Salamander replies, in a line I've now found myself repeating from time to time, before poisoning Fedorin with the same stuff intended for Denes. "One chance, my friend. I said one chance," Salamander says, standing over Fedorin's body. And the Doctor, who only has a limited scene this episode (since Troughton's busy playing Salamander), hides in a chest while Salamander's deputy Benik comes to Kent's trailer and smashes things up. "Sad really, isn't it? People spend all their time making nice things, and other people come along and break them," the Doctor says sadly once Benik's left, looking at a piece of broken crockery. But he's still not ready to help Kent take down Salamander.

And then at the end of the episode, Denes is killed in a botched escape attempt and Jamie and Victoria are taken prisoner for trying to aid Denes. And then Donald Bruce (Salamander's security chief, remember) spills the beans about there possibly being more than one person who looks like Salamander...

Episode 4 gets back to the action, as Astrid returns to Kent's office, only to be followed by Fariah, Salamander's food taster ("What on Earth made you take a job as a food taster?" Fedorin asked her in episode 2. "She was hungry," Salamander replies simply on her behalf, which leaves a heap of possibilities open to the imagination). But Benik has followed them, which leads to a shootout in Kent's office and the surrounding grounds, leading to Fariah being shot by a guard. "What do you think you're doing?" demands the guard captain to the one who shot her. "We had orders to kill," the guard replies. "Do you always obey orders?" the captain replies bitterly. So it seems not everyone here is as "evil" as Benik -- a nice touch. But Fariah is dead (though not before she gets a final slap across Benik's face -- but she dies before Benik can respond. "She's dead," the captain says. "Good," Benik replies impotently), and the Doctor, Astrid, and Kent are on the run.

Then the story takes a bizarre left turn. Up to this point we've had a spy thriller story, with lots of political machinations and things, but then Salamander locks himself inside the records room in his base and takes an elevator deep into the earth, where it turns out there's a small group of people living underground who are causing all the natural disasters (not sure how a group in Australia can create a volcano in Central Europe, but never mind) -- Salamander's convinced them that there was a nuclear war almost five years ago, and that they are fighting "the enemies of truth and freedom" with their natural disasters. (And it's so tempting to think that the people hid underground because of the Mayan apocalypse thing, but alas, the dates are a year off, as they would have had to have gone down in 2013, not 2012.) Patrick Troughton here delivers a tour de force performance, as he has to convince the people in the bunker not only that his intentions are good, but also that he's suffering from radiation sickness from the surface. Troughton has done his "charmingly devious" turn as Salamander in the last two episodes, but now he turns it up a notch as he smoothly manipulates these people. It's quite wonderful to behold.

But the Doctor is finally ready to impersonate Salamander -- not so much because he believes Giles Kent, but rather because Jamie and Victoria are being held prisoner by Salamander's men. Although as they're putting the finishing touches on the Doctor's transformation into Salamander, someone unexpected walks into Kent's trailer; we don't see who it is, but the expressions on the Doctor's, Kent's, and Astrid's faces suggest this isn't exactly a welcome visitor.