C058 Colony in Space

The Doctor spent his down time between adventures on Earth building a new dematerialization circuit for his TARDIS in order to escape his exile. The first time Jo stepped aboard the ship, Time Lords suddenly and remotely piloted it to a failing, extraterrestrial colony. There, colonists maintained a truce with a tribe of telepathic, spear wielding thieves, who bled away resources as cover crops repeatedly and inexplicably failed. Previously unknown, enormous reptiles killed two colonists before Norton, lone survivor of another colony, arrived warning against the tribe and the monsters who wiped out his people. Worse. The Interplanetary Mining Corporation arrived to exploit the mineral rich planet.

The Doctor reasoned the hostile reptiles were a hoax, and, once he could prove his suspicions, miner Captain Dent ruthlessly ordered his henchman, Morgan, to silence his potential accuser. Meanwhile, Norton sabotaged the colonists’ power and framed the tribe, intensifying the debate about whether they should stay; return to the overpopulated, resource taxed Earth; or select another planet upon which to settle. Their secondhand ship, though, was as dodgy as the models portraying all the planet’s land vehicles except the corporate miners’ futuristic, flatbed jeeps.

After escaping Morgan, the Doctor repaired the sabotage and warned combative colonist Winton’s plan to attack the miners was suicidal. The colonists’ leader, Ashe, advocated presenting their claim on the planet to a judge who would settle their dispute with the miners. They agreed and summoned an adjudicator. The Doctor helped Winton devise better a plan of attack, which succeeded and saved lives. Captain Dent, though, turned the tables and used Jo and Winton as hostages, chaining them to a bomb. They escaped, prompting corporate miners to hunt Winton while the tribe took Jo to their forbidden city. The Doctor followed to bargain for her life as the Master arrived, impersonating the adjudicator, who ruled in the miners’ favor. Upon returning with Jo, the Doctor ignored the Master’s sensible warning and, with neither proof nor the ability to identify or account for himself, accused the adjudicator of being an impostor. He realized the Time Lords had sent him to stop the Master from taking advantage of stolen information regarding an intergalactic threat.

Colonists regained the upper hand and kicked the miners off the planet while the Master proposed personally investigating the planet’s historical significance to support an appeal he and Ashe began crafting. With a previously stolen key, the Doctor and Jo entered the Master’s booby trapped TARDIS, and were gassed. Dent confirmed the Master was a phony and returned to assert his governing authority. Capturing the colony, he ordered the colonists to vacate the planet, well aware their ship would explode, ruining the three female colonists’ promising sex lives. Using Jo as a hostage, the Master persuaded the Doctor to guide him to the forbidden city. Dent’s men rescued her, but promptly condemned her to die with the colonists. Escaping, Jo returned to the forbidden city, despite the tribe having condemned her if she ever returned. The Doctor and the Master, meanwhile, debated using a doomsday weapon capable of destroying solar systems. It had caused the planet’s great civilization’s decline and the weapon’s destruction, which the tribe requested of the Doctor, would enable the colonists’ crops to grow. Miners ambushed the Doctor, Jo, and the Master after they escaped the city’s destruction, and colonists, except Ashe, who had stayed on the ship, arrived and won a short firefight that enabled the Master to flee and escape. Back on Earth, UNIT vainly hunted him despite the Doctor’s knowledge he was long gone before he and Jo left.

Sadly, using the Brigadier and UNIT strictly for comedy made them, and their leader, look silly. The scene where Jo marveled at the TARDIS being bigger on the inside than on the outside was handled much more deftly. The Doctor told her the TARDIS was “dimensionally transcendental”, and his tossing off this term as a both its meaning and explanation was simultaneously nonsensical and wonderful.

Writer Malcolm Hulke believed the decision confining the Doctor to 20th century Earth left DOCTOR WHO two basic plots. After four alien invasion stories and three about mad scientists, he broke the new format–temporarily. “Colony in Space,” took the Doctor and Jo far away from Earth for the first time as the Time Lords’ occasional, compulsory agents. This outstanding decision proved the Doctor could be freed from his exile, reopening the show’s limitless canvas for storytelling. Producer Barry Letts’ team, though, had not previously filmed the TARDIS taking off or landing. So, in this serial, both the Doctor and the Master’s TARDIS suddenly appeared and vanished rather than slowly fading in and out while the familiar wheezing groaning noise sounded.

The unscrupulous, greedy mining company served initially and adequately as antagonists in a serial written by politically left leaning Malcolm Hulke. Nevertheless, he showed his cards immediately, revealing the Master by name in the opening scene. The production effectively hid his distinctively devilish appearance and identity as he arrived impersonating the adjudicator a few episodes later. The length of the serial and the need to make it more interesting than a legal dispute between farmers and miners necessitated a major antagonist like the Master. Once again, he dealt with powers he badly underestimated, assuming force of will and a few parlor tricks would allow him to use the doomsday weapon to pursue intergalactic power. Fortunately, his ongoing duel with the Doctor suddenly shifted his focus briefly. Once the story’s climax unfolded, it became clear the tribe with the doomsday weapon was benevolent, but not omnipotent like the aliens the Enterprise routinely encountered on STAR TREK. Powerful aliens would have enabled the Time Lords, about whom the Master complained, “know everything, do nothing,” to ignore his theft of their information and never need to send the Doctor to solve their problem.

Getting the Doctor away from Earth was fantastic and the Master’s use in this story, during a season that overused him, helped make this serial a highlight.

Hey guys!! Bet you didn’t expect to see me here in the classics. How’s it going Ponken and probably Nik? I finally caught up with you, so you may be hearing from me on some of these oldies.

Ok, what the hell is Jo wearing around her middle? Is it one of those things from the 80’s I’m going to call a belly pack? Oh snap, is Jo really from the future?! Aw wait. It’s just a hideous belt.

Pretty good mudfight in the last episode. I cannot think of a single mudfight I’ve ever seen that was better. This is something I’ve truly been missing from all the fast-paced high-action content modern shows deliver.

My last thought is simply this: watching the old episodes for the first time alongside New Who’s Capaldi/Missy dynamic is quite interesting. I’m still deciding how I feel about the Master as a character.

Rating: Here’s mud in your eye!