Doctor Who meets Porridge meets The Clockwork Orange with a touch of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The story opens with the Doctor visiting a prison where hanging has been replaced with a whizzy, infallible machine (you always know things are about to go tits up when something is described as "infallible"…) that removes the evil from people’s brains. Obviously he Doctor is against this (bloody hippy) but is rather predictably proved right as it transpires that the machine doesn’t just remove people’s evil it also basically lobotomises them as well.
Meanwhile, poor old UNIT are being asked to protect some massive international conference at the same time as they are escorting a really rather nasty missile to be destroyed. Good to see that budget cuts aren’t just a thing of today…
The Master appears and is looking to over-complicate an otherwise fairly simple (if psychopathic) plan and he uses above-mentioned machine to take over a prison. He then frees the prisoners and uses them as an ad hoc army to nick the missile and drives it off somewhere convenient to point it at London and try and set off World War III.
Bearing in mind this is a chap that can hypnotise people, I’m really not sure why he doesn’t just hypnotise his way into the prison but, like I say, he does love to over-complicate a situation, especially as the above machine turns out to be powered by an alien life-form that is quite happy to screw The Master over as well.
Sadly, this is basically the same plot as Terror of the Autons – The Master’s plot is exactly the same – use an alien ally (who turns on you midway through) to help destroy large chunks of Earth and make it prime for a takeover. He’s starting to remind me of the Generals in Blackadder Goes Forth – We’ve tried the same plot loads of times before, therefore it’ll be the last thing the enemy expects when we do exactly the same again…
6 Parts is definitely too many for this – similar cliffhangers crop up throughout the story and I did rather find myself wishing they’d get on with it.
The story is fairly bloody and the shootout in the Prison yard is pretty brutal.
There are a number of weaknesses – for example it’s a pretty crap supposedly sentient weapon that becomes immediately powerless against anyone against whom it has already been deployed, regardless of the company they keep – and when presented with the simpleton prisoner the machine attacked earlier it packs up, allowing itself to be destroyed.
Delgado (Looking splendid with a cigar) and Pertwee are, of course, excellent. The Brigadier seems to be smirking a lot more and is becoming a more rounded character, which is nice, and he has some nice interactions with his underlings.
The prison setting itself is very well done and a Doctor Who set in a prison feels like it might work very well. It’s almost as though they could have taken out the mind-wiping Keller machine, saved us all 2 episodes, and had a pretty decent, much tighter story.
That being said, it somehow manages to be a fairly enjoyable romp and deserves a 7/10... If only because the sight of both the Keller Machine and the Missile made me giggle...
The story opens with the Doctor visiting a prison where hanging has been replaced with a whizzy, infallible machine (you always know things are about to go tits up when something is described as "infallible"…) that removes the evil from people’s brains. Obviously he Doctor is against this (bloody hippy) but is rather predictably proved right as it transpires that the machine doesn’t just remove people’s evil it also basically lobotomises them as well.
Meanwhile, poor old UNIT are being asked to protect some massive international conference at the same time as they are escorting a really rather nasty missile to be destroyed. Good to see that budget cuts aren’t just a thing of today…
The Master appears and is looking to over-complicate an otherwise fairly simple (if psychopathic) plan and he uses above-mentioned machine to take over a prison. He then frees the prisoners and uses them as an ad hoc army to nick the missile and drives it off somewhere convenient to point it at London and try and set off World War III.
Bearing in mind this is a chap that can hypnotise people, I’m really not sure why he doesn’t just hypnotise his way into the prison but, like I say, he does love to over-complicate a situation, especially as the above machine turns out to be powered by an alien life-form that is quite happy to screw The Master over as well.
Sadly, this is basically the same plot as Terror of the Autons – The Master’s plot is exactly the same – use an alien ally (who turns on you midway through) to help destroy large chunks of Earth and make it prime for a takeover. He’s starting to remind me of the Generals in Blackadder Goes Forth – We’ve tried the same plot loads of times before, therefore it’ll be the last thing the enemy expects when we do exactly the same again…
6 Parts is definitely too many for this – similar cliffhangers crop up throughout the story and I did rather find myself wishing they’d get on with it.
The story is fairly bloody and the shootout in the Prison yard is pretty brutal.
There are a number of weaknesses – for example it’s a pretty crap supposedly sentient weapon that becomes immediately powerless against anyone against whom it has already been deployed, regardless of the company they keep – and when presented with the simpleton prisoner the machine attacked earlier it packs up, allowing itself to be destroyed.
Delgado (Looking splendid with a cigar) and Pertwee are, of course, excellent. The Brigadier seems to be smirking a lot more and is becoming a more rounded character, which is nice, and he has some nice interactions with his underlings.
The prison setting itself is very well done and a Doctor Who set in a prison feels like it might work very well. It’s almost as though they could have taken out the mind-wiping Keller machine, saved us all 2 episodes, and had a pretty decent, much tighter story.
That being said, it somehow manages to be a fairly enjoyable romp and deserves a 7/10... If only because the sight of both the Keller Machine and the Missile made me giggle...