June 14: The Time Monster Episodes Five & Six

After a deus ex machina button to bring the Doctor back from floating through the time vortex, it's time for two episodes set in Atlantis.  These are marginally better than the last two, partly because the setting is a bit more interesting, but mainly because George Cormack is so watchable as King Dalios.  It's not perfect (these scenes open with Hippias rebuking Dalios for the lack of food in Atlantis, even though we'd seen them acting all buddy-buddy in episode three), and there's the matter of Ingrid Pitt's stilted delivery as Queen Galleia (and her rather, um, distracting costume), but these scenes are nevertheless an improvement over just about anything in episodes three and four.  Particularly worthwhile are the scenes of the Master failing to hypnotize Dalios ("A very elementary technique of fascination.  I'm too old a fish, too old in years and in the hidden ways to be caught in such a net.  You are no emissary from the gods," Dalios tells the Master), and then his successful efforts to seduce Queen Galleia, where we see the Master at his most charming ever -- all the more nefarious for using his wiles rather than simple hypnosis to achieve his goals.

The discussions between the Doctor and Dalios are also reasonably entertaining, but it seems events are moving faster than either of them anticipate: Galleia has convinced Hippias to venture into the catacombs of the temple in order to defeat the guardian of the Crystal of Kronos -- the Minotaur of legend (as played by body-of-Darth-Vader-in-the-first-three-Star-Wars-films Dave Prowse⁷⁰) -- so that the Master can retrieve the true crystal for his own ends.  And then Jo is thrown into the catacombs as well...

Episode six sees the destruction of Atlantis as a result of the Master's actions.  But before that the Doctor and Jo are imprisoned, which gives Pertwee the chance to deliver the Doctor's "daisiest daisy" speech, where he describes meeting with a hermit after "the blackest day of my life," who then told him the secret of life.  It's a charming speech, and it gives us a little bit of insight into the Doctor's character, which is nice.

Queen Galleia learns the Master has killed Dalios. (The Time
Monster Episode Six) ©BBC

But before long the Master has seized power and Dalios has died (though it looks more like he died because he was old rather than because he was gravely mistreated), and the Doctor and Jo can do nothing but watch.  But when Galleia learns of Dalios's death, she becomes angry and orders the Master seized, but the Master summons Kronos using the true crystal of Kronos -- after which Kronos descends upon Atlantis, causing its destruction (which is at odds with what we're told in The Dæmons -- by the same authors! -- and so a bit difficult to reconcile; meanwhile, the depiction of Atlantis here is at odds with that in The Underwater Menace, but that's probably to be expected).  The Master escapes in his TARDIS with Jo and the crystal, while the Doctor pursues him in his TARDIS.  The Doctor knows he can't let the Master go free with the crystal as it would mean the end of everything, so (with a little help from Jo) he does a Time Ram, which will utterly annihilate both TARDISes.  But at the moment of collision, Kronos is set free and rescues them all, sending them back home (including the Master, thanks to the Doctor's intervention).  Back on Earth, the gap in time is closed, freeing the Brigadier and his men, and returning Benton to his adult self -- albeit in the nude...

The Time Monster starts well, and there's a real sense of trying to make this the most epic Doctor Who story ever.  But somewhere along the way they get bogged down in pointless details and padding, rather than keeping their eyes on the big picture.  The result is a mess, frequently tedious and only occasionally entertaining; it's not the powerful story it wants to be and it never reaches the level of greatness it's striving for.  A lot of important elements of the story do start here (TARDISes may be sentient, the Doctor's meeting with the hermit, the idea that the TARDIS travels through the "time vortex"), and you can tell that they're at least trying to do something big, but unfortunately these are small additions to a story that squanders its potential on a lot of Doctor-Master bitching and some truly horrible dialogue and awful moments.

And so season 9 comes to an end.  Season 8 may have given the impression that the production team were growing more comfortable with the series, but this season cements that impression.  There are some good moments and some terrible ones throughout the season, and there hasn't been a season that has been quite so uneven as a result -- and run the gamut of what this team thinks the show is about.  But even the less-than-impressive moments are generally worth our attention, as you can see that they're trying to make this show the best they can, and the confidence they exude as a result helps those weaker moments shine at least a little.  But in the final analysis, more than any other season yet (more so than even season 8, which at least introduced the Master to shake things up), season 9 feels like nothing so much as business as usual.







⁷⁰ Seriously, did the casting people on Star Wars just watch season 9 of Doctor Who for potential actors?  It's a miracle Paul Whitsun-Jones doesn't show up as one of the Imperial officers aboard the Death Star.

June 13: The Time Monster Episodes Three & Four

Kronos recedes into the Crystal of Kronos. (The Time
Monster Episode Three) ©BBC

Oh dear.  They've started to build up The Time Monster as this epic story, and then they spend two episodes giving us some of the most flagrant padding ever.  Episode three isn't as bad though, as, after Krasis explains his role to the Master, we see the Master summon Kronos (who looks like a cross between a bird and a man, all in white) for the first time.  He can't quite control him yet, but he knows he's close to being able to do so.  All he needs is the true crystal of Kronos -- the one he has is only a fragment of it.  So the Master needs to head to Atlantis to get that crystal.

That's the interesting bit.  The other stuff ranges from the rather laughable (bless them, trying to show time slowing down by having all the actors slowly jog in place, but it's incredibly obvious that that's what they're doing -- they probably should have actually slowed the film down and then superimposed the Doctor over it, but maybe that was technically beyond them) to the bizarre: yes, it's time to mention the time flow analogue, made out of random bits of junk around Stuart's apartment (wine bottle, forks, corks, keychains...) but seemingly able to interfere with the Master's efforts to summon Kronos.  "The relationships between the different molecular bonds and the actual shapes form a crystalline structure of ratios," the Doctor explains.  "... it's just like jamming a radio signal, Jo.  We used to make them at school to spoil each other's time experiments."  So that explains that, then.  Which might be okay if the Doctor's modern art device had lasted longer than thirty seconds.  But it doesn't, and so it's exposed as the padding that it is.

Episode three ends with Mike Yates and a caravan trying to get to the Brigadier, only to be stopped by the Master bringing threats from the past to stop them.  The last problem is a V1 Doodlebug which is going to fall right on top of where Yates's convoy is.  The Brigadier tries to warn Yates, but then there's a huge explosion (although, annoyingly, not even a hint that something fell out of the sky onto them).

But the problems really start with episode four, which may be the single worst episode of Doctor Who yet.  Yates barely survives the explosion, but there's no time to waste, so Jo and the Doctor head off in the TARDIS (which has been redecorated, as Jo points out, by sticking awful plastic bowls all over the walls instead of the previous round circles -- fortunately, the redesign only lasts this story) to stop the Master.  The Master himself freezes time around TOMTIT and then escapes from Benton, Ruth, and Stuart into his TARDIS: next stop, Atlantis.  We get some truly horrendous dialogue from Ruth first though (including such gems as "You know, Stuart, for a so-called member of the dominant sex, you are being remarkably feeble" and "why are you men so spineless?" -- which might just be all right if any of it were delivered convincingly), and then their efforts to free the Brigadier and his men from the time field only serve to turn Benton into a baby.

There's a hint of cleverness with the TARDIS scenes, with the first suggestion that the TARDIS is not only alive but also sentient (and we get a mention of telepathic circuits).  And, also somewhat cleverly, we see that the Doctor, in order to stop the Master, has materialized his TARDIS inside the Master's and ended up with the Master's TARDIS inside his TARDIS as well, in a sort of eternal paradox.  But rather than do anything interesting with this (as they would later do in Logopolis (and then rather less interestingly in the (admittedly brief) 2011 Comic Relief sketch "Space" / "Time" -- but at least they explore the paradox somewhat)), it's simply the backdrop for the Doctor and the Master to bitch at each other for the rest of the episode.  It's tedious and painful to watch, with little fun involved for anyone in the audience.  The whole thing ends when the Doctor leaves his TARDIS and gets swallowed up by Kronos, after which the Master sends the Doctor's TARDIS spinning off into the vortex.  Hooray.  Can we get on with the story now, please?

June 12: The Time Monster Episodes One & Two

In an intriguing parallel with The Mind of Evil, this episode starts with the Doctor having a dream where the Master is literally towering over him, laughing evilly all the while, along with volcanic eruptions (yes, that same footage as from earlier stories), four-headed labryses, and a large crystal appearing.  It's an unusual beginning, to be sure, but it seems the Doctor is right to be worried about his dream (despite the Brigadier's understandable reaction when he hears about it): a volcanic eruption has recently occurred in the Thera group of islands, "'believed by many modern historians to be all that remains of Plato's metropolis of Atlantis'" (as Jo reads from the newspaper).  And how does this tie in with the Master?  Well, as we soon learn, the Master is working on a project called TOMTIT ("What on earth does that stand for?" Yates bizarrely asks, as if there's no way that could be anything but an acronym -- he's right, as it turns out, but it's probably named after the New Zealand bird and the words slotted in afterwards, à la WOTAN from The War Machines), which is designed to transport things through gaps in time ("Sort of through the crack between now and... now," Benton helpfully explains).

And this is where things start to get wrong-footed in this story, because Barry Letts and Robert Sloman have decided to do some stuff on Women's Lib (even though two years earlier they had incredibly smart and qualified Dr. Elizabeth Shaw as the Doctor's assistant/partner on the show (and the year before they had independent genius Zoe Heriot) and no one batted an eyelid).  The result is cringingly awful, as Dr Ruth Ingram complains about male superiority and attitudes but still lets the Master and student assistant Stuart Hyde be condescending and patronizing towards her (except when the script remembers to have her complain about it) -- and worse, easily manipulable by them ("Course, if you need a man in charge..." Stuart says, egging her on into doing a trial run on TOMTIT, which is apparently the last straw for her).  In a word, ugh.

Still, that aside, most of the first episode is decent (even if there's the self-indulgent stuff with Bessie and her super drive and inertia brakes) -- although, as the Master (in disguise not only as Professor Thascalos but in a radiation suit as well) demonstrates TOMTIT to the Grants Committee and UNIT, he shouts "Come, Kronos!" when everything is going wrong (it seems), as if no one will notice that.  And yet no one does, so...

Episode two involves the Doctor properly with the TOMTIT stuff (and therefore, the Master's scheme).  An unforeseen side effect of TOMTIT's running out of control is that it's aged Stuart about sixty years, to a man in his 80s.  He's raving deliriously about Kronos as well, which concerns the Doctor.  He knows that Kronos is a name for a very powerful being called a chronovore which could threaten the entire universe.  There's a conscious effort here to make The Time Monster feels like a real epic, an impressive season finale from a time before such things really existed.  This is slightly thwarted by the fact that episode two feels like a lot of padding.  Learning about Kronos is one of the key moments.  There's some technobabble with the Master (E=MC³ in the extra-temporal physics of the time vortex, doncha know), and some stuff with Benton being lured away by the Master (which is actually the most entertaining thing in this episode, as Benton is wise to the Master's plan and sneaks back into the room with TOMTIT that he's been sent away from, in order to get the drop on the Master -- which works, but only for about a minute) that's clearly there primarily to make the episode the right length. 

Oh, and we get a couple views of the Crystal of Kronos in ancient Atlantis (since it's the same crystal as in TOMTIT, linked across interstitial time (I think -- this bit is rather hard to follow)), which are mainly important because the Master, at the end of the episode, uses TOMTIT to bring a priest of Kronos (Krasis, according to the end credits) from ancient Atlantis into the present day.  It's not the most exciting cliffhanger ever, but I guess you take what you can get.  And that's really about it for episode two.  It tries hard to impart a sense of epicness to the proceedings; it's a shame that doesn't really translate to what we actually see.  But maybe things will improve in the next few episodes.

June 11: The Mutants Episodes Five & Six

What to do in the event of a hull breach in space: 1) roll around on the ground in an effort to look like you're in danger of being sucked out; 2) wait for the pressure between Skybase and space to equalize (!) but make sure you do it before the air runs out (!!); 3) once that pressure has equalized, calmly walk out, congratulating each other on surviving.  (Let's try and be charitable to the Bristol Boys and assume that Skybase Control has simply thrown a forcefield around the breach, and Cotton just doesn't understand what's going on.  But even so...)

Sondergaard tries to reason with the mutated Solonians. (The
Mutants Episode Five) ©BBC

Back on Skybase for episode five (well, once the Doctor makes it back from the surface, dodging Professor Jaeger's rockets -- which are represented by really quite astonishingly poor explosions, without even a whistle to suggest they're coming from the sky), with the Marshal temporarily regaining the upper hand.  Jaeger's effort has gone horribly wrong and is slowly turning the surface of Solos into an uninhabitable desert, but the Marshal forces the Doctor to help fix the mess that's been made, by threatening Jo's life.  And... that's about it.  The Doctor succeeds in repairing Jaeger's mistake, and Stubbs, Cotton, Jo, and Ky temporarily escape before being recaptured (though not before Stubbs is killed, apparently by a laser blast to the butt) and stuck in a room which Cotton suddenly realizes will be flooded with radiation when the approaching Earth shuttle Hyperion (with an Investigator on board) needs to be refueled: "We'll all be done for!" Cotton exclaims.  (And look!  We've made it almost six episodes without mentioning Rick James (not that one)'s mesmerizing performance.  Not for necessarily the right reasons, mind, but nevertheless it's hard to look away any time he delivers a line.)

Fortunately, Jo, Ky, and Cotton escape before the room is flooded with deadly radiation by escaping into Hyperion's fuel probe (um, ok) and getting out via that.  But the main bit of entertainment in episode six is the Investigator's inquiry into the Marshal's actions (as reported to him over radio by Jo during their escape last episode).  When the Marshal appears to have the upper hand, everything bad is conveniently omitted from anyone's testimony (including the Doctor's, who believes the Marshal is still holding Jo captive) -- and, amazingly, the Investigator seems perfectly content with this story, not needing any corroboration one way or the other.  Everything's fine, nothing to see here, even though a high-ranking Earth official was assassinated on Skybase a couple days ago.  It's only when Jo and company burst into the Marshal's office that the Doctor changes his tune, accusing the Marshal and Jaeger of "the most brutal and callous series of crimes against a defenceless people it's ever been my misfortune to encounter."  But there's no real evidence, not even when Sondergaard shows up, and when a Mutt also arrives on board it freaks the Investigator out enough to give the Marshal all his power back, which means that Jo and friends head back into the refueling chamber until the Doctor makes Solos's atmosphere breathable for humans -- at which point the Marshal is going to force the Investigator and the crew of the Hyperion to become the first settlers on Solos.  Paul Whitsun-Jones, it should be noted, does a great job of portraying the Marshal as someone's who's become dangerously mad, and he makes it clear that this bizarre plan makes sense to the Marshal.

Ky evolves into the Solonians' ultimate form. (The Mutants
Episode Six) ©BBC

But fortunately for everyone, Sondergaard gives Ky that crystal they found in the cave, and that and the radiation trigger the mutation in him, only he moves rapidly from Mutt to an angelic form, who finds the Marshal and vaporizes him before moving on to help initiate the change in the rest of his people.  Solos is saved.

The Mutants has a rather low reputation in fandom, but to be honest it's hard to see why.  Sure, there are a few obvious targets (the opening shot, the sometimes severe yellow-fringing on almost all the CSO, anything involving Rick James), but there's also enough that's right going on (the design (and realization) of the Mutants, the basic storyline about an extra-long year, all the location footage standing in for Solos, Tristram Cary's score -- which sounds like The Sea Devils done properly) that it makes it easier to forgive some of these flaws.  It's an improvement over Bob Baker & Dave Martin's last script (The Claws of Axos, if you've lost track) and it's streets ahead of something like Colony in Space, and indeed in terms of ideas and entertainment it holds its own against that Pertwee "classic", The Dæmons.  It is a little loosely structured, and some might find the switching between Skybase and Solos a bit tedious (even if structurally it makes sense and keeps things more interesting than if they'd done, say, three episodes on Skybase followed by three episodes on Solos), but honestly, there's plenty to enjoy about The Mutants -- even if there's not necessarily much to love.<sup>69







69</sup> And yes, this is the story mentioned in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses -- even if it's clear Rushdie (or, to be charitable, his character Saladin) didn't watch enough to actually understand the point of this story.

June 10: The Mutants Episodes Three & Four

Yeah, it wasn't even a weird ploy: Varan really does want to kill the Doctor -- although the Doctor's able to dissuade him remarkably quickly (and even gets Varan to take him to Ky).  Which means we've moved on to the next phase of The Mutants: two episodes focused primarily on Solos.  It's a nice change of pace, and it means we get to learn more about what's going on with the Solonians.

Jo wanders into a radioactive cave. (The Mutants Episode
Three) ©BBC

The best thing to note about episode three is the design of the fully mutated Solonians; we got a glimpse of one in episode two, but here we get to see a group of them in all their glory.  Kudos to future Oscar winner James Acheson⁶⁸ for his Mutt costumes, a striking blend of humanoid and insectoid and easily one of the best things about this story.  The scene where they're surrounding Ky in the cave, as he pleads with them to remember their time as humanoid when he was their leader, is really nicely done.
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).

June 9: The Mutants Episodes One & Two

"It's..."

Seriously, had no one on the production team seen the first series of Monty Python?  Because The Mutants (aka the reason no one except Doctor Who Magazine calls the first Dalek story by its original title) opens in exactly the same way.  But rather than gasp out the first word, he runs past the camera, being chased by uniformed guards in breathing masks.  Welcome to Solos.

And since this is another future story and yet the Doctor is still exiled to Earth, we have another assignment for the Doctor from the Time Lords (although this one is more overt than The Curse of Peladon): to deliver a box of something to someone -- the Doctor won't know what it is or who it's for until he arrives wherever the TARDIS takes him.  (This, incidentally, leads to what's probably Jon Pertwee's best-known goof on the show: "I'm not allowed to open it.  I couldn't, even if I wanted to.  No, I'm not meant to.  I couldn't open it, even if I wanted to.")  That somewhere is the 30th century, and a Skybase orbiting the planet Solos, which is about to be granted independence from Earth's Empire.  "We can't afford an empire any more," the Administrator from Earth (as played by the always excellent Geoffrey Palmer) tells the Marshal in command of Solos.  "Earth is exhausted, Marshal.  Finished.  Politically, economically, and biologically finished."  So this is a story "about" the end of the British Empire then.  Although we also see signs of discrimination between the native Solonians and the human Overlords, most notably in the separate transport cubicles.  So that's segregation and/or apartheid thrown into the mix.

Well, except that the discrimination is rather down in the mix (other than general "Solonians are dirty" stuff), but that's more because of the mutations that the humans apparently triggered in the Solonians (the mutants of the title) rather than because of some natural disposition (at this point in the story, at least).  No, the focus is on the end of Earth's hold on Solos.  Only the Marshal isn't ready to leave, and so he has the Administrator assassinated right before he tells the Solonians that they're free (so that's two for two for Geoffrey Palmer deaths on Doctor Who).  Err, yes... It's not clear what the Marshal's plan is, as if killing the messenger somehow eliminates the decision in the first place.  Is he trying to prove that he can convert the planet into one habitable for humans, and he needs more time?  Or does he think that proving the Solonians can't be trusted will make Earth reconsider their decision?  And in the chaos, Ky, the leader of the "terrorist" Solonians, starts to trigger the opening of the Doctor's box before escaping down to the planet, taking an unprotected Jo with him.

The Doctor and Professor Jaeger attempt to see what's in the
Time Lord box. (The Mutants Episode Two) ©BBC

Episode two is concentrated mainly on the Skybase.  There are some scenes with Ky and Jo on the surface of Solos, as they're tracked by a group of Skybase guards before escaping to a cave where Jo can breathe normally (the nitrogen isotope in the atmosphere that slowly kills humans is only a danger outside in the daylight, it seems), but the primary focus is up in orbit.  The Doctor is introduced to Professor Jaeger and his efforts to make Solos's atmosphere breathable for humans, and the Marshal attempts to cover his tracks in the assassination by killing the native Solonian assassin (who was acting on the Marshal's orders) and then the assassin's father, Varan, who's also the leader of one of the Solonian factions.  He misses Varan, though, which leads to a chase through the corridors of Skybase (and this is as good a time as any to note the distinctive triangle pattern on the walls courtesy of designer Jeremy Bear, which will go on to be used in dozens of subsequent BBC SF shows, including several Doctor Who stories), as the Marshal has declared that Varan is a "Mutt", or mutant.  It's only when the Doctor finds Varan, who is distinctly non-mutated, that the Marshal's plan becomes clear, and Stubbs and Cotton (hitherto the "everyman" characters in this story) begin to play a more significant part in the proceedings.

So the stage is set: Stubbs and Cotton are now working against the Marshal, and the Doctor determines that he needs to get to the surface.  So during an experiment to see inside the Time Lord package for Ky, the Doctor overloads the main power supply, giving him and Varan a chance to escape to the surface.  Except Varan grabs the Doctor outside the transmat booth.  "Die, Overlord, die!" he says to the person who saved his life and gave him this opportunity to escape.  That's gratitude for you.

June 8: The Sea Devils Episodes Five & Six

The Doctor has been taken by the Sea Devils into their base, where he tries to convince them that he can negotiate a peace between the Sea Devils and the humans; there's no need for any violence.  But the Master is down in their base too, and he has told them that man is weak and that they can easily reclaim the planet for themselves.  The Doctor is on the verge of convincing them when their base is attacked by the Royal Navy.  In the Doctor's absence a Parliamentary Private Secretary named Walker has arrived at the base and is dead-set on attacking the Sea Devils' base.  It's worth noting how director Michael Briant directs the scenes with Walker, often in extreme closeups while eating.  Walker appears to be obsessed with food, which not only accentuates his callousness -- as he appears to be more concerned with his stomach than with the consequences of his actions -- but also, when combined with the direction, makes him appear more monstrous than the Sea Devils. 

In any event, once the attack occurs the Sea Devils won't be dissuaded from attacking humanity, so the Doctor rescues the submarine crew and helps free the sub, allowing it to return to base.  After tearing into Walker ("I think you've got it all wrong, old man," Walker says, trying to defend his actions.  "Seek and destroy.  That's what you chaps say, isn't it?"  "But the point, Mister Parliamentary Private Secretary," the Doctor replies heatedly, "is that you have not destroyed.  You have just made them angry.  Very, very angry!"), the Doctor announces his intentions to go back down and try and broker peace again.  But before he can do so, the Sea Devils attack the naval base.

The Doctor fends off a Sea Devil. (The Sea Devils Episode Six) ©BBC

Episode six has a rather entertaining battle between the Sea Devils and the navy (I particularly enjoy the part where three Sea Devils round a corner one at a time, each stopping to fire its gun at the camera before moving on to let the next one have a moment), and the business with the Master and the Doctor is nice (the reason the Sea Devils are on the surface is to get parts to repair their reactivation switch), with the Doctor criticizing the Master's circuit design before making corrections -- except the Doctor is actually adding in some additional features that the Master is apparently unable to recognize.  This suggests that the Master isn't as much of an electronic genius as he sometimes claims.  There's also the rather amazing sequence where the Doctor switches a couple wires around, creating a shrill whine that incapacitates the Sea Devils.  This is allowed to go for so long that Jo is able to rescue Captain Hart, charge down to the beach, get a hovercraft going, and head out to sea for reinforcements before the Master switches it off -- despite the fact that there's a Sea Devil in the room with the Doctor and the Master, clearly writhing in pain the whole time.

Captain Hart arrives with more naval personnel to retake the base (so this is where the aforementioned battle occurs), while the Master takes off on a jetboat with the reactivation device with the Doctor in hot pursuit -- although this looks more like a chance for Pertwee to drive a jetboat (which he is clearly loving) than for any reasons of story, since the chase ends on the beach, only with Sea Devils ready to take the Doctor and the Master down to their base.

Walker is all ready for a nuclear strike, but he's beaten by the Doctor; once the Doctor learns that there's no chance of peace with the Sea Devils, he sets the reactivation device to overload by "revers[ing] the polarity of the neutron flow"⁶⁷, which will cause their power supply to surge and explode, taking everything with it.  The Doctor and the Master manage to escape the colossal explosion, but in the subsequent confusion the Master manages to escape (by driving a hoverboat into naval-infested waters, but never mind).

There's nothing particularly wrong with The Sea Devils; it's sufficiently entertaining, and there are some moments in the serial that are quite marvelous indeed.  But the main issue here is that we've already had this story once before, only an episode longer and set in Derbyshire, and this new version doesn't have anything different to say.  The main impetus seems to have been to get the Royal Navy to help them make the show (which would have been a major coup for producer Barry Letts, who served in the Royal Navy during World War II), and to see what happens when the Master is inserted into the same basic set-up as Doctor Who and the Silurians.  But the fact is that, as good as Roger Delgado is, his character ends up distorting the story so that The Sea Devils is more about him than the eponymous creatures.  But as this iteration has nothing new to say on the subject of human-reptile relations, this isn't as great a loss as it might have otherwise been.

The bottom line is that, despite the best efforts of Michael Briant and Malcolm Clarke to do something different, The Sea Devils is content to simply carry on doing what's been working for the show for the last couple years, and, entertaining though it may be, it doesn't have any real ambition beyond that.  Still, this is the first story aired out of production order (they made it before The Curse of Peladon on account of the weather but showed it after to break up the two "space" stories this season), so at least it's pioneering in that respect.







⁶⁷ It's a requirement at this point to note that this is the only time this phrase occurs during the Pertwee era proper (though it'll show up again in The Five Doctors), but we've probably reached the point where anyone who's aware of this line as a catchphrase for the third Doctor's era is also already aware of this fact.