And apart from the usual post-regeneration nonsense – babbling and trying on silly costumes, etc. – this one settles down quite quickly. There are obvious efforts to separate the new Doctor from Pertwee as soon as possible – feet on Bessie, lying on bench with hat over face etc.
The story itself is quite basic but interesting – scientists who think they should be running the world build a mahoosive robot, send robot on a mission to nick nuclear launch codes and then plan on holding the whole world to ransom until they let them run the place. That said, a new world order created by supposedly smart people isn’t exactly new for this show and we only had that a few weeks ago when they were using dinosaurs instead.
Unfortunately the premise doesn’t take the story very far and it all gets wrapped up rather quickly. Where we could have had some political wrangling between the parties it all immediately goes towards setting off the nukes and, predictably, the Doctor steps in. Then right at the end, for no real reason, the Robot of the piece grows massively in size and does an unnecessary and unconvincing performance of King Kong
The Doctor kills the thing with a bucket full of metal virus that dissolves t into a puddle. This, of course, could be the most useful warfare weapon ever devised and yet it is ignored at the end and they all go their separate ways.
On the plus side, we get to meet Harry Sullivan – splendid sideburns on that man – and he is instantly loveable. He doesn’t do much in a lot of the story but gets a nice bit at the end and I’m always happy they took him with them in the TARDIS.
Mediocre story resurrected a bit by performances from all the main cast. 6/10 but mostly for the fact they promoted Benton.