Episode #47 : The Krotons

Episode 47:   The Krotons.
Companions: The 2nd Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot.
Air Date:        Four episodes. 28th December 1968 to 18th January 1969.

The TARDIS arrives on the unnamed planet of the Gonds, who are ruled and taught in a form of self-perpetuating slavery by the alien Krotons — crystalline beings whose ship, the Dynatrope, crash-landed there thousands of years earlier after being damaged in a space battle.
The Krotons are in suspended animation, in a crystalline slurry form, awaiting a time when they can be reconstituted by absorption of mental energy. Periodically, the two most brilliant Gond students are received into the Dynatrope, nominally to become "companions of the Krotons" but in truth to have their mental energy drained, after which they are killed.

Although I have vague memories of seeing a Tom Baker Dalek story (probably Destiny of the Daleks) with my father, The Krotons was the first complete Doctor Who serial I ever watched, and it hooked me every since. I was 8 at the time and this was one story shown on the BBC in the run up to the start of Peter Davisons run.

The Krotons isn't a bad story for the era, and you can see that the production values have increased since the start of Troughton's run on the show. The acting from the secondary actors leaves a lot to be desired however.

The Krotons themselves look terrible. They are just silver boxes with strange bits on (see above). They are meant to be crystalline beings but they look more like robots than anything else. The voices sound like bad attempts at an South African accent and it doesn't fit quite right. But as a one off alien race you can't complain.

The above comments seem negative but the story is actually rather good and the pacing is spot on. It helps that there are only four parts to it so the length is about right. This, The Seeds of Death and Tomb of the Cybermen are the main second Doctor stories that I would recommend to anyone wanting to check out the better earlier stories from the Troughton era.