Episode #127 : Enlightenment

"You are a Time Lord, a lord of time. Are there lords in such a small domain?"

Episode 127:          Enlightenment.
Companions:         5th Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough.
Air Date:               1st to 9th March 1983.

The White Guardian warns of impending danger and directs the TARDIS to what appears to be an Edwardian sailing yacht, the SS Shadow, but is actually one of a number of spaceships taking part in a race through the solar system, the prize being Enlightenment. The yacht's Captain Striker and his fellow officers are Eternals who feed off the thoughts and emotions of their kidnapped human crew - Ephemerals - in order to fill their own empty existences.

Enlightenment is a very strange story, almost surreal in fact. I can remember a lot of very similar weirdness coming out of the 1970's British science fiction so it isn't out of place. However, sailing vessels from Earth's history racing around Earth's solar system crewed by drugged/mind controlled sailors and commanded by beings from outside our space time continuum doesn't quite fit in with the Whoniverse we know of, but then in other ways it is the sort of thing I can see fitting in well with the 1st Doctor's adventures. This strangeness doesn't spoil the story but if it seems out of place you might not enjoy as much as you could do.

The Black Guardian is defeated this time though for how long we don't know. The White Guardian makes a reference to the Doctor having a third encounter but so far it has not happened on screen. It would be a nice idea to bring that into the current incarnation of the show. As it stands though watching my way through the classic show again, I'm glad that we won't see him, as just three adventures back to back and I'm bored of the villain already.

At the end of the story the Guardian is defeated and Turlough's activities are revealed though the Doctor seems to forgive him and he joins the crew as a proper companion. One thing we don't get often enough are male companions for the Doctor and even though Turlough does seem a whiny coward a lot of the time, it is nice to see a non-female companion.

"Be vigilant, Doctor. Once you denied him the Key to Time, now you have thwarted him again. He will be waiting for the third encounter, and his power does not diminish.... While I exist, he exists also... until we are no longer needed."

Episode #126 : Terminus

"If we don't do something quickly, the whole universe is going to be destroyed!"

Episode 126:   Terminus.
Companions:   5th Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough.
Air Date:         15th to 23rd February 1983.

The TARDIS attaches itself to a space liner after Turlough, still under the Black Guardian's influence, damages its controls. The Doctor and Nyssa meet two space pirates, Kari and Olvir, who have come on board the liner in search of plunder, while Tegan and Turlough get lost in the infrastructure. The liner docks with what appears to be a hulk floating in space. This is Terminus, which claims to offer a cure for lazar disease. It is crewed by a group of armoured slave workers, the Vanir, while the cure is administered by a huge dog-like creature known as the Garm. Nyssa, who has contracted the disease from sufferers transported aboard the liner, discovers that the cure - involving exposure to radiation - does actually work. The Doctor and Kari meanwhile learn that the ship, once capable of time travel, was responsible for the creation of the universe when an ejection of fuel from one of its engines caused the 'big bang'. Aided by Kari and the Garm, the Doctor is able to disconnect a still active but damaged engine that is on the point of exploding - something that could result in the universe's destruction.

I rather enjoy this story even though in all honesty nothing really happens in it. The Black Guardian is up to his old tricks again although he seems rather impotent in this one. If he is so all powerful why does he need a weak willed scapegoat like Turlough to do his dirty work? The plot is solved rather too quickly though we do have some suspense as the ship nearly recreates the Big Bang!

Nyssa elects to remain behind on Terminus as her skills could help with the cure for the disease and so we lose her as a companion. She was a good companion to start with but as time as gone on, she has lost that spark that made her so good when she first joined the Doctor. It's a weak fair well right at the end of the episode and then she is gone.

The Doctor still doesn't seem to notice that Turlough is up to something even though Tegan seems to have him figured out already. You would have thought that he would listen to a long term companion when she raises concerns. Turlough is very much a coward not in keeping with the Doctor's usual companions.

Terminus gives us the main explanation for the Big Bang in the Whoniverse though it still has plot holes left unanswered, such as what existed before the explosion since we know there was a universe before hand? Was Terminus once part of that universe and then pushed forward into ours? These and other questions are just left hanging for those of us who pay attention to the minutiae.

Episode #125 : Mawdryn Undead

"Maybe the capsule's malfunctioned. I hate those transmat things. Like travelling in a food mixer and just as dangerous. I'd be afraid of coming out puréed."

Episode 125:   Mawdryn Undead.
Companions:   5th Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough.
Air Date:         1st to 9th February 1983.

The Black Guardian recruits a young man named Turlough to assassinate the Doctor. Although outwardly an ordinary pupil at a boys' private boarding school, Turlough is in fact an alien who believes that the Guardian will return him home if he succeeds. The TARDIS meanwhile has its instruments jammed by a mysterious signal and is forced to materialise on board a massive spaceship in a fixed orbit. The Doctor discovers that the signal - a beam to guide the ship's transmat capsule - is being transmitted from Earth. He travels down to the planet in the capsule, leaving Nyssa and Tegan in the TARDIS with the co-ordinates pre-set to follow. Things go wrong, however, as the Doctor arrives in 1983 but the TARDIS materialises in 1977.

Mawdryn Undead is a very well written story utilising a plot element that has been ignored for the past twenty years of the show, that of the time travellers being split up into different years and how their actions affect the events in the later time zone. In this regard Mawdryn Undead is an excellent example of the sort of stories that could come out of the show if the writers put their minds to it.

The second well conceived element of the story are the villains. Mawdryn and his followers aren't villains because they want to kill, conquer or destroy the universe. They simply want to die but can't. Now that the Doctor has arrived they feel that they can both be freed from their eternal agony and get some small revenge on the Time Lords who did this to them in the first place. A villain who isn't out to be evil for the sake of it is a nice change.

The Brigadier returns to the show with this story, now retired and working as a maths teacher in a boys school. Bit of a departure from running UNIT but I guess retirement can do that. Mawdryn Undead does introduce the biggest continuity issue of the entire show, the infamous UNIT dating controversy. You can read about that here.

The character of Turlough is introduced in this story and by the end of it he has become a companion of the Doctor. Turlough is an alien for some reason not yet explained is being forced to stay at a private boys school though he longs to return home. He is coerced into aiding the Black Guardian in his desire to kill the Doctor for revenge following the Key to Time storyline.

Episode #103 : The Armageddon Factor

"There'll be a rather large bang, big enough to blow up Zeos, take Atrios with it, and make certain the whole thing ends in a sort of draw. That's the way these military minds work."

Episode 103: The Armageddon Factor.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Romana.
Air Date:       Six episodes. 20th January to 24th February 1979.

The final segment of the Key is traced to the planet Atrios, engaged in a long war with the neighbouring Zeos. The Marshal of Atrios intends a final strike to destroy the Zeons, but the Doctor and Romana discover that Zeos is deserted and the war is being co-ordinated by a computer called Mentalis, built by one of the Doctor's old Time Lord Academy friends, Drax.

The Key to Time story arc comes to an end with a bit of a let down unfortunately. While the story itself is fine and moves along nicely, it is stretched out to six episodes and comes to a rather pointless end. The Black Guardian is introduced and has possibly orchestrated the whole thing from the start and to thwart him, the Doctor scatters the pieces of the Key back into time and space. All of which means the last six adventures were pointless. The only reason I don't rate it worse than an average story is because it does flow well and is otherwise entertaining. I just find it disappointing as a conclusion.

We lose Mary Tamm as Romana. In the following story she is simply replaced by a regenerated version played by Lalla Ward (who also played Princess Astra in this very story). I liked Tamm's version of Romana but Lalla Ward will go on to be a very good successor.

The 1970's and 80's had some strange ideas about nuclear wars and this episode runs with those. There were plenty of shows back then that used the concept of nuclear war and what might happen, and this story does bring back memories of those programmes.

At the end of the story the Doctor fits a randomiser to the TARDIS so that they won't know where they are going and in theory neither will the Black Guardian. Questions that this raises are that if the Guardians are these god-like beings with domain of time, how can they not know where the pieces of the Key to Time are, and where the Doctor is at any time?