Fresh from seeing off the sewer-lurking Cybermen, the snuff-film selling Sil, and the Master-mauling Rani, the Sixth Doctor is back to take on... well, let's see!
Diddly-dee-dum, diddly-dee-dum, come on, you know the words!
We're half-way through Season 22 now, with the Sixth Doctor well-established...
...and somewhat embattled, up against the A-Team on the Other Side...
...facing criticisms of violence and nastiness...
...and BBC One Controller Michael Grade looking for any excuse to wield the axe.
PART ONE
(16th February 1985)
Love this starting in black and white for the 2nd Doctor and Jamie, before fading up to colour.
Space Station J7 defies all sense of what is structurally possible. Its architneers, revelling in the freedom of zero gravity, have created an ethereal tracery of loops and whorls and cusps that form a constantly changing pattern as the station rotates slowly upon its axis.
"Look at the size of that one, Doctor!"
"Yes, Jamie, that is a big one!" Oh give over, you two.
I like Troughton's silver wig though! Looks better than in The Five Doctors where his own hair was too dark and limp looking because they forgot to do it up.
Weird seeing the previous TARDIS console and walls; aged well, like Pat & Frazer! Strange to see them in Tom's old console room.
The Doctor and Jamie have been sent to the space station to see new old friend Dastari, at the behest of the Time lords. Season 6B klaxon!
As if it hadn't already, continuity goes for an even bigger burton with the mentions of Victoria. No, I've no idea why Victoria wanted to study graphology either.
Jamie wonders why they're slipping in quietly, and the Doctor's response is of the firmly tongue in cheek variety. "Think of the commotion, they'll all be scrabbling around wanting my autograph!"
His promise of a smooth landing was a bit optimistic.
As they ready to step out, the Doctor errs on the side of caution and decides to take the "recall disk" with them.
Time for some last minute tips for his Highland companion:(1) Don't go wandering off; and (2) Let him do the talking. Jamie knows the drill: stand in the background and admire the Doctor's "diplomatic skills".
Having arrived in the station's galley, they meet the chef, Shockeye. I love the space station sets. Great design makes it look bigger budget than productions either side of this story.
The scullion pompously announces himself by his full title: "Shockeye o' the Quancing Grig!" But the Doctor isn't interested and trumps his credentials by revealing himself to be a Time Lord.
Although Shockeye offers fawning apologies, he's still holding that ruddy great knife. The Doctor fumbles behind himself to find some implement of defence, but somehow misses all the cutlery and settles on a less than lethal looking cucumber.
Shockeye thinks that Jamie is a gift for Dastari - and looks forward to cooking him!
When Shockeye asks him to name his price, the Doctor threatens the Androgum with a damn good cucumbering. You'll have someone's eye out with that cucumber. Eye if they're lucky.
The Doctor departs, leaving Shockeye to his butchery.
Jamie cautiously sidles out, but Shockeye is clearly not giving up the chase.
The Doctor tells Jamie that the androgums are the servitors aboard the station, they do all the maintenance. Shockeye has "...a high opinion of himself - chefs usually have!"
The Time Lords recall the TARDIS to keep it safe. How are they supposed to escape now? This base could be under siege any minute now the Doctor's on the scene.
Watch out Doctor, it's Servalan! Actually, it's Chessene, and she's a bit miffed, having promised the Doctor's TARDIS to "the Group Marshal".
Weird plot cramming here. Group Marshal Stike's forces are on their way for the "Kartz-Reimer module". Shockeye has other things on his mind, though.
He's overjoyed that the scientists loved their meal. Of course he wasn't able to taste it himself what with it being drugged and all.
Chessene assures Shockeye that their last supper would have added lustre to his reputation, except that they won't live to remember it.
Dastari seems to be wearing more tinfoil than a Troughton era Cyberman. Love Frazer's bit of business with Jamie trying to get a sly glance at Dastari's diary only for the scientist to slam it shut.
Dastari isn't pleased to see the Doctor, and resents the Time Lords' interference.
The Doctor says that officially, he's there quite unofficially. "I'm a pariah, they can always deny sending me!"
The Doctor puts the heavy word on: the Time Lords want the experiments of Professors Kartz and Reimer halted.
Dastari dismisses their "typical hypocrisy", just as Chessene drops by to offer refreshment.
Jamie fancies a snack but the Doctor declines for the both of them, admonishing Jamie that one meal a day is quite sufficient. Speak for yourself!
Dastari is proud of the genetic modifications he's made to Chessene...
...but the Doctor isn't so sure that that the "boiling energy" of the Androgums can be harnessed as Dastari intends.
Dastari believes he's completely changed Chessene's nature.
He tells the Doctor that "our races have become tired and effete. Our seed is thin. We must hand the baton of progress to others."
Beware of nuclear physics-understanding earwigs, coming soon from Dastari Productions.
A technician (another enhanced Androgum?) detects Sontaran battlecruisers approaching the station with hostile intentions.
I like to think the Sontarans' seats stay still in those spherical ships - they pedal, Flinstones-style, on the inside.
"Operate the defence... [waits a few seconds till Chessense injects him and he slumps over, unconscious]". Hate that horrible half-line, terrible direction. Should have scripted a full line to be interrupted.
Chessene allows the Sontaran battlecruisers through the defence perimeter.
Over ten minutes in, we join the 6th Doctor and Peri fishing on an alien planet that looks suspiciously like Spain.
Peri's scaring the fish. Like Dastari, she's wearing tinfoil, but not as much of it.
Maybe she's going to use that top to bake some Gumblejack as soon as the Doctor can actually catch one and stop misattributing Dr. Johnson quotes to Rassilon.
Colin does make that Gumblejack sound tasty.
Not before time, the Doctor has a bite.
Peri can't help laughing at the Doctor's tiddler.
The Doctor throws it back, lamenting the one that got away - "that magnificent Gumblejack that was trying to eat this poor little fellow."
Back in Dastari's office, the 2nd Doctor's doomsaying is getting him no further forward.
Dastari suggests that the Time Lords have a vested interest in preventing other races from discovering the secrets of time travel.
The Doctor suggests that Kartz and Reimer at least go on hiatus. Careful what you wish for...
Dastari throws a wobbler, though, calling the Time Lords' demands "grossly unethical".
"What are you grinning at, you hairy legged highlander?"
"I'm just admiring your diplomatic skills."
While they've been sniping at one another, Dastari has slumped over his desk.
While the Doctor admonishes Jamie for his "appalling mongrel dialect" (what the actual?), they're soon hearing the sound of laser fire, as the station comes under attack.
The sounds of battle grow closer, and an Androgum - racing n to warn Dastari - is killed before their very eyes.
At the Doctor's urging, Jamie legs it.
We're keeping the Sontarans hidden for now - they must be planning a really dramatic reveal...
Back in the TARDIS, the 6th Doctor is already planning his next fishing trip - this time to the Great Lakes of Pandatorea, home to Conga Eels longer than railway trains.
He's just explaining that he's felt in need of a bit of R&R when, as if to prove his point, he has a funny turn...
...collapses, and has some sort of fit. Let's just hope he doesn't start trying to strangle Peri again.
Aboard the space station, we see the apparent source of his distress: the 2nd Doctor being tortured under a flickering blue light.
Jamie is powerless to help his old friend.
Worse, he's been spotted by the ever hungry Shockeye.
As Jamie nicks Shockeye's outreached hand with his trusty dirk, Chessene calls out to the chef.
It's just the distraction that the highlander needs to make his getaway.
Shockeye wants Jamie to stew in his juices, but will have to have his collation cold.
Shockeye accuses Chessene of forgetting her family tree, which she denies.
"Do you think for one moment that I forget that I bear the sacred blood of the Franzine Grig? But that noble history lies behind me, while ahead? Oh, ahead lies a vision!"
Peri thinks the recovering 6th Doctor needs some celery.
This prompts a trip down memory lane, with jelly babies and recorders.
He remembers "being put to death", except that can't have happened as he's still here, now, in this incarnation.
Peri suggests he should see a Doctor.
"Are you trying to be funny?"
He decides it's not such a bad idea after all and starts reeling through his collection of business cards. "Archimedes - bit wet." TMI. "Columbus - he had a lot to answer for!" Oh ho ho! JNT actually thought this would appeal to US audiences.
Now the 6th Doctor's off to see Dastari, too. He's obviously a go to guy.
For some reason, the TARDIS doesn't want to go.
"You know, that was a good idea of mine, wasn't it?"
"What?"
"Getting medical help."
Arriving on the space station, the 6th Doctor and Peri arrive in a darkened, rotting kitchen. And don't take off again. Loons.
Lights off? How did they wangle that past JNT? It's the aftermath of a massacre.
The aircon leers at Peri...
There's evidence of a recent battle: scarring on the walls from laser fire, and a blood-stained lab coat. The Doctor wonders "what kind of monster" would want to stop research that threatened no-one at all.
"It threatened the Time-Lords!" booms the artificial voice of the station's computer.
This is the completely rubbish End of Fake Part 1 (overseas 25 minutes version).
"That's 22 and a half minutes, press the button now."
"Was that a good place for a cliffhanger?"
"Who cares?"
The Doctor takes issue with this assertion, and is met with a haughty instruction to leave the station. When he firmly declines, the station switches to "defence alert".
That means "The usual. Floor trips, electronic sensors, death rays, jets of nerve gas. Nothing to worry about."
No sooner do the words leave the Doctor's mouth than the Computer decides it's W.O.O. time. (With Out Oxygen!)
Caught on the hop, with the whole section depressurising, the Doctor locates a manual door lever, and gets to work.
Colin pumping away while Nicola just lies there. (Sorry).
The door to the next section opens in the nick of time, and the Doctor carries the unconscious Peri through to safety (and more importantly, fresh air!)
In the Andalucian countryside outside Seville, Shockeye, Chessene and one of their Sontaran allies arrive at a remote hacienda.
Chessene, who appears to have some kind of heightened psychic ability as part of her augmentation, detects only one occupant, an elderly female.
The Sontaran casually takes his helmet off in longshot. Oh.
"Never mind about that dramatic reveal, we're on holiday now!" - Director Peter Moffat, summer 1984.
Having made it to the (slightly) more airy environs of Dastari's office, the Doctor waits for Peri to recover.
He rubbishes the computer's earlier suggestion that the research being carried out by the now dead scientists was any sort of threat to the Time-Lords and wonders if the computer has been reprogrammed to mislead any investigators .
Having lost track of them due to the luxuriously insulated floors in Dastari's office, the computer turns on the lights.
"I love games, Doctor - games where I'm not expecting to end up dead!" Peri has a point.
Something's not right here though. Why doesn't the 6th Doctor remember all this about the the time experiments of Professors Kartz and Reimer?
Despite his treatment at their hands over the years, the Doctor is quick to defend the Time Lords, despite a fairly damning diary entry from his old friend.
Sure enough, the computer has dug into its bag of tricks and is now attempting to roast them alive. The Doctor decides they need to get into the station's infrastructure and turn the computer off and on again.
The Doctor rummages in Dastari's desk to find something to trip the door controls, but there's not even so much as a paperclip to be found.
The Doctor finds the door control mechanism. Now he just needs a piece of wire to trigger it to open.
He hasn't any wire in his voluminous pockets, but... well, always bring a banana to a party.
Thankfully, Dastari's desk isn't as useless as first suspected - he's able to extract a length of wire from the sculpture there.
A short circuit later and hey presto, the door opens. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like!"
There's some really lovely Spanish guitar stuff on the soundtrack to this, as the Doña Arana says a prayer to her patron saint, lays a solitary red rose, and returns to her hallway.
Chessene seems to have psychic powers in addition to her increased intelligence.
Varl's face seems to have caved in a bit. Generous explanation: war wound. Real explanation: Doing things on the cheap as per.
Having made their way back to the kitchen, the Doctor and Peri set about getting into the station's infrastructure. Whilst the Doctor removes a wall panel, Peri polishes off his banana.
She balks, though, at the sight of a murdered Androgum. The Doctor, however, says they haven't got time to bother about dead Androgums. Right-o.
"Put your hands above your head and slide... I'll be right behind you." FILTH.
They find themselves in some sort of dimly-lit climbing frame.
As the Doctor uses his "unerring sense of direction" to point them in the direction of the control centre, a sinister lurking presence growls to itself and ambles after them.
On Earth, Chessense relates her findings from the mind of their erstwhile host. When she confesses that the Doña Arana was more interested in religion than food, Shockeye is more than a little irked. "I'm not interested in the beliefs of primitives - only what they taste like!"
Chessene responds that he's quite the primitive himself, but he puts her high handedness down to "the foreign, alien filth injected into you by Dastari."
The Doctor gives Peri a crash course in the various booby traps the computer is likely to employ against them.
Burberry's noose? Very nasty. Even the 6th Doctor wouldn't wear Burberry.
Varl watches as the Sontaran battlecruiser descends. No one else on Earth detects its arrival in plain sight.
We meet loveable thesp Oscar and his companion Anita, hunting moths in the Spanish countryside.
She goes on to lament the state of disrepair into which the Hacienda itself has fallen.
Shockeye, already riled up by how "insipid" he finds the watermelon he's sampling, is particularly vexed by Varl referencing Group Marshall Stike as "our" leader.
Oscar (or should that be Robert Holmes) waxes lyrical about moths. "Painted beauties sleeping all day, and rising at the sunset to whisper through the roseate dusk on gossamer wings of damask and silk."
Just as Oscar explains how he loves them so much that he feels the need to trap them and kill them with cyanide, Stike's battlecruiser roars over their heads, coming in to land at the Hacienda.
They think the giant sphere descending overhead is a crashing plane. Really?
Whoops, Pat's been at the duty free and needs carrying home.
Knowing that the Doña will be unable to assist any crash survivors, Anita insists that they follow on to help. Oscar isn't so keen.
Back on the station, Peri has discovered the 'nest' of the thing stalking them through the infrastructure.
As Peri is grabbed from behind, she cries out, distracting the Doctor and causing him to trigger one of the aforementioned booby traps - a spray of knock out gas that catches him full in the face.
As Peri struggles for her life, the Doctor keels over and is left precariously suspended only by a cluster of dangling wires. Oh noes - it's a Col-hanger!
PART TWO
(23rd February 1985)
The Doctor blames Peri's startled cry as distracting him from avoiding the gas trap, and is initially sceptical that her attacker could be human (they haven't reached this part of the galaxy yet, apparently, though that begs the question of Dastari).
The lurker is Jamie! But if he's here, then where's his Doctor?
Jamie becomes agitated, so the Doctor anaesthetizes him to let him get some rest.
The Doctor goes from "I seem to remember I was always very fond of Jamie." to "I'm afraid he's deranged." in 60 seconds. Jamie starts mumbling that "they killed the Doctor."
The Doctor is puzzled as to how sure Jamie is that "they" killed his Doctor. As the Doctor is here and now in a later incarnation that's not possible... is it?
Ah, he *did* use that pocket watch before they made a disproportionately big deal of it getting smashed in Revelation of the Daleks.
The Doctor recognizes the description. "They had a sort of armour. Heavy with no necks. And their hands were just two great fingers."
The Doctor sets off to find out if anything about this attack is recorded in the computer's data banks.
Back in Andalucia, Oscar is puzzled by the lack of wreckage from the apparent 'crash'. "Like the star on my dressing room door it becomes conspicuous by its' absence!" A great Holmes grotesque. Maybe a descendant of Henry Gordon Jago's...?
Anita has to appeal to his ego to persuade him to continue the search. "Think of all the publicity. Who knows, the British Council may forgive you and book you on a forthcoming tour!"
With an odd flourish as they find themselves face to face with a mirror, the Doctor and Peri arrive on the station's control deck.
The Doctor falls back on good old fashioned Ceefax. Can't beat it.
The Doctor starts to worry that his earlier self might have arrived in the middle of one of Kartz and Reimer's time experiments, which could account for how he could have died then and still be alive now.
If the holistic fabric of time were punctured, the universe could collapse...
...in a few centuries. the Doctor laments Peri's failure to comprehend the scale of the theoretical disaster.
Between the "never more a butterfly" and The Mysterious Planet's bit about world's ending, Robert Holmes - of all people - seems to best bring out the sensitivity and kindness of the 6th Doctor. He's written properly Doctor-ly in this, and benefits enormously. Pip and Jane Baker play up his love of language (to the nth degree!) but I think Holmes brings out the compassion. 2 sides of the coin I guess. In any case, some of his best stuff is for Big Finish, I reckon.
The Doctor springs into action when he suddenly notices Peri caught in the same "torture tube" that Jamie saw his Doctor die in.
However, as he frantically searches for the right control to release her, he makes an unexpected discovery.
At the flick of a switch, the scene before him changes, and it's no longer Peri in the tube, but Dastari. Or is it the 2nd Doctor?
When he even sees himself in the tube, he knows for certain these are just mocked up images and not even recordings.
When Jamie doesn't recognize the Doctor, he unhelpfully explains that "I am him, he will be me."
"Who will I be?" is the typically Jamie response. Genius stuff from Frazer Hines.
Peri is distressed by the terror tube, but the Doctor points out the good news: this means his earlier self is alive and kicking.
He fancies the Sontarans for this, and smells a conspiracy. But what sort of a conspiracy?
"A plot." He's just brilliant throughout.
The Doctor knows that Dastari is just about the only bio-geneticist capable of isolating the symbiotic nuclei of a Time-Lord required to control a TARDIS.
This astral plane stuff is guff though, I'm sure those mythical 'casual viewers' will have thought so. Does rather spoil it.
"I think your Doctor's worse than mine."
In the Hacienda's cellars, Dastari and Chessene have hastily lashed up a laboratory, and strapped the Doctor to an hopital guerney.
"BOING! BOING!" says Col, staring Nicola square in the chest. "Bells, my dear!"
Having connected with the blurred subconscious of his earlier self, he's identified that he must be within earshot of the Cathedral of Seville.
Stike cloaks his ship...
Yeah, Dastari, funnily enough the Doña Arana isn't bang up to date on local top secret military installations.
Dastari frets about conducting a delicate operation on a heavily populated world, bubt Chessene points out that the location was favoured by Group Marshal Stike, whose forces are planning an attack on the nearby Madillon Cluster.
"Ratty, I love ya, you're the one for me."
"The Doña Arana knows it as rat. She called him Roland." Yeahhhhh!
Never one to pass up the chance to impart arcane knowledge, the Doctor identifies the specific bell he heard as the Santa Maria, largest of the 25 bells at Seville's Cathedral.
"Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective if used properly!"
"I have our bench!"
Jamie has scrubbed up well.
Jamie isn't too surprised to find that this later Doctor seems to have just as much trouble giving them a smooth landing as his own Doctor.
Peri struggles with the Doctor's torturous mish-mashing of personal pronouns: "If anything happens to myself as a result of it I will never forgive himself."
Dastari has drugged the earlier Doctor. "Siralanamode, that affects the memory..."
"We're not interested in your memory. Junk his episodes."
He's none too pleased to recognize Chessene, and even more put out when he recalls he's at the mercy of the Sontarans.
Seems the 2nd Doctor already knows the Sontarans.
The Doctor becomes agitated when Chessene declares Jamie must be long dead, so Dastari and Shockeye fasten him down.
In the nearby countryside, Oscar and Anita are startled by the arrival of the TARDIS.
Colin's outfit's much more palatable when reduced to that waistcoat. Even the yellow trousers don't look too bad. I maintain that at the end of The Twin Dilemma he should have been more reassuring; 'I've settled down now, time to get out of this daft get up.'
By neglecting to correct Oscar's assumption that he's a member of Interpol, the Doctor is able to recruit the actor's assistance in pointing them towards the Hacienda.
Oscar is keen to get back to their restaurant, but Anita steps in to help, and the Doctor appeals to his sense of public duty.
"We Botcherbys have never shirked public service. My dear departed father was an air raid warden in Shepton Mallet throughout the war. He slept in a steel helmet for five years."
By now, Jamie and Peri know to just roll with it.
In the cellar, Dastari wheels in the Kartz-Reimer time travel module, much to the Doctor's derision. "Well that'll never work, I can tell that from here."
Despite Dastari's claim that it worked well enough to lure him in, the Doctor smugly declares that it will never work properly without a molecular stabilisation system.
Dastari proudly reveals that Chessene is the mastermind behind the conspiracy, leading the Doctor to an off-kilter assessment that any Androgum will ultimately bite the hand that feeds it.
Dastari confesses he was saddened that the Time Lords chose to send the Doctor, knowing the painful operation he must now perform. The Doctor is scornful. "It'll hurt you more than it hurts me?"
Dastari hardens as he leaves. "At least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you've been part of a great undertaking!"
Stike is less than impressed at the slow progress. "Dastari, why this delay?"
"It's only Part Two, got to pad it out a bit, mate."
Stike begins to fear he's dropped the ball by throwing his lot in with Chessene.
The Doctor makes light of the unending war with the Rutan.
Peter Moffatt points the camera right down the gap in Stike's loose collar as Stike bullishly assures the Doctor that any death of his will be alongside his comrades at the battle front.
Nearby, the 6th Doctor instructs Oscar & co. to wait while he goes for a little scout around by the Hacienda.
Oscar doesn't need telling twice, but his sighting of a rare "Feathered Gothic" falls flat with Jamie.
Stike implores the Doctor to save everyone time by telling Dastari where his symbiotic nucleii is located within his cell structure, but the Time Lord takes the opportunity to warn him that Chessene will stab him in the back...
This successfully goads Stike into striking him...
...gifting the Doctor the chance to demand to be set free for a duel!
Wonderful glare from Clinton Greyn there.
"Well, that didn't work, did it?"
His later self skulks onto the Hacienda grounds.
He's soon at the side of the house near the kitchen, and hearing the voices within.
"What have you got there, Shockeye?"
"It's something called 'The Jon Pertwee cookbook'..."
Shockeye is fascinated that amongst the many recipes, there appears to be none for cooking human meat.
The Doctor gets closer to hear better, balancing precariously on a rickety old set of wooden steps at the edge of the window.
He hears as Chessene explains to Shockeye that humans don't tend to eat their own kind, which he finds odd considering they're at the top of the food chain.
The Doctor leans that little bit too close and the steps give way beneath him, causing him to fall.
He quickly clings to the wall as Chessene, hearing the noise, peers out, though thankfully not below.
She promises Shockeye he'll taste human meat before their visit to Earth is over and confesses to "a certain curiosity" herself.
The Doctor returns to his friends to relay his findings.
"The Sontarans are here, I can sense their presence". Oh aye?
When he describes the duo he overheard, Jamie recognizes them as Chessene and Shockeye. "Dastari said she was a... hungryman?"
The Doctor kindly volunteers Peri to distract the house invaders while he and Jamie get inside via the cellars.
"I don't speak Spanish!", she protests.
"That's alright, neither do they!"
Anita will point them in the right direction, but Oscar stays put.
Shockete takes a fancy to some of the late Don's attire.
But his thoughts turn gastronomical again at the sight of the approaching Peri.
In the cellar, Dastari prepares to begin the operation.
As the local anaesthetic begins to take effect and the Doctor slurs his words, Stike grows increasingly impatient.
Troughton had the best job here; sunny holiday in Spain followed by "acting" asleep a lot. I should like a job like that.
Just as Dastari is about to start sawing into his skull, though, Chessene commands him to wait after hearing Peri calling out at the front door.
Anita shows the Doctor and Jamie the entrance to the cellars and gives the Doctor a parting kiss on the cheek.
Jamie hopes for the same, but only gets a handshake. Ah well.
Love the way Servalan says "American student?" like "are there such things?"
"She was constantly thinking of the Doctor..." Well, there you go.
The Doctor and Jamie make their way through the ice house to the main cellar, where the Doctor finds the ladder "a wee bit rickety"!
At least Jamie will have something soft to land on.
Stike says he won't tolerate further delay. Bet he does, though.
Dastari isn't so keen on the delay himself, but Shockeye tells him that Chessene needs the Doctor upstairs immediately, so they strap him into an old wooden wheelchair.
Jamie and the 6th Doctor watch them depart. Preferring to avoid a confrontation with the Androgum, the Doctor suggests they have a look around in the cellar first.
Upstairs, Dastari and Shockeye dutifully wheel the 2nd Doctor through the hall so Chessene can gauge her reaction.
Chessene disses Peri. "If she has friends they will come enquiring after her." *If.*
The 6th Doctor and Jamie have found the prototype time capsule in the cellar...
...but the Sontarans have found them.
Run, Peri, run!
In her haste to escape the ravenous Shockeye, Peri stumbles and falls.
Shockeye catches up with her and looms menacingly over her, deeming her a "fine fleshy beast". The silver tongued devil.
Cliffhanger!
PART THREE
(2nd March 1985)
He knocks her unconscious and slings her over his shoulder to carry her back to the Hacienda kitchen.
Now she's a takeaway.
In the cellar, the 6th Doctor and his Sontaran captors become acquainted.
"I am Group Marshall Stike, tallest Sontaran ever. Ever."
"My money's still on the Rutans."
Should they actually bother to turn up, that is.
Stike orders the Doctor to prime the capsule, holding his gun to Jamie's head to coerce his co-operation.
The Doctor does as he is bid, dematerializing, and rematerializing a few seconds later.
Stike tells him that as Jamie is of no further use he'll be executed.
"Sontaran might is invincible!" bellows Stike, as Jamie reaches into his sock to retrieve his dagger and bury it in the Sontaran's thigh.
Stike's aim is understandably off, allowing the Doctor and Jamie their escape.
It's not long before his co-conspirators find him, and Dastari even recognizes Jamie's dagger. Obviously spent a lot of time admiring Jamie's calves during his visit to Space Station J7.
The Doctor and Jamie bound across the courtyard to the Hacienda itself.
There they find the earlier Doctor. The two incarnations recognize one another immediately, and can start - never mind finish - one another's sentences, which they demonstrate with a playful cry of "Snap!"
Just as the 2nd Doctor is rather begrudgingly accepting help, they hear someone coming and have to push him in the chair as there's no time to unstrap him.
Pat once again has the difficult task of having a kip, as Shockeye returns with the prone Peri.
The 6th Doctor and Jamie can only watch on as Shockeye hauls Peri into the kitchen to prepare "supper"!
Chessene and the Sontarans (rubbish band name) plot to doublecross each other.
Uh-oh, we're running out of plot. Chessene to the rescue: "I have a contingency plan, I've had it in mind for some time..."
This is structured like a Hinchcliffe era 6 parter with its' 4/2 (here 2/1) structure.
The 2nd Doctor is none too please to overhear that Chessene's plan is to turn him into an Androgum, and using genetic material from none other than Shockeye!
In the kitchen, the gourmand is sharpening his knives, ready to butcher Peri alive.
As Chessene's plan requires Shockeye in the cellar, Peri has a lucky escape.
Stike tells Varl to go and fetch the sweets he left in the glove compartment.
Stike believes that having had the Doctor prime the Kartz-Reimer module, they can return to their unit in their prize, so orders Varl to set their own craft to self-destruct. I'm sure that won't come back to bite him.
As the 2nd Doctor protests in vain, his warnings to Shockeye come too late, and Chessene stuns him so Dastari can get cracking.
Peri is woken by the Doctor splashing something in her face.
Dastari performs the first stage of the genetic transfusion.
Chessene tells him the time is right to polish off Stike and Varl.
Having escaped to safety, the 6th Doctor tells Peri and Jamie that he expected the Sontarans to have made a move on Chessene by now.
Turns out his earlier waffle about priming the Kartz Reimer module was only half true, and whilst it worked the once for him, it won't work for anyone else as he palmed a vital component.
Dastari has given the Doctor a 50% Androgum inheritance, but within an hour he'll be all Androgum. He and Chessene leave Shockeye and son to it, and leave to deal with the Sontarans.
Shockeye soon awakes, and is horrified to learn he has been betrayed by Chessene, and worse that his precious bloodline has been interfered with.
But what's this? The 2nd Doctor is looking decidedly pleased with himself, and is quite the changed man.
Troughton is absolute genius as an Androgum. Whole thing has such an odd tone now, but he dazzles. There you go, he *has* been ginger. What was Tennant whinging about?
Just like Shockeye, he's got food on the brain, and knows the cuisine of Earth rather better than the Androgum. "Capercaillies in brandy sauce with a stuffing of black pudding made of live pig's blood, herbs, and pepper. The breasts of the birds should be slit and studded with truffles. I have eaten pressed duck at the Tour d'Argent. They are fed only on corn, fruit pulp and molasses. They're exquisite, Shockeye!"
Shockeye entreats him to lead on to an eating establishment so that they cam sample the local dishes.
As Dastari beckons the Sontarans, the 6th Doctor and his friends follow to witness the skullduggery afoot.
Stike prevents his underling from shooting Dastari in the back. "Chessene first; she's more dangerous."
Dastari tells them Chessene has the 6th Doctor trapped in the cellar. Stike can't resist the thought of two birds with one stone and enters the ice house willingly, leading the Doctor to award the points to Chessene.
Having decided she no longer needs the Sontarans, Chessene chucks them a couple of acid bombs. Harsh but fair.
The Sontarans depart with a scream; no Timelash required.
Varl is killed, but Stike, firing his gun pointlessly at the bomb, is only wounded, albeit quite horrifically so.
So what exactly did Chessene need them for then? If it was just to storm the station, why has she waited till now?
Pat's taking us all out for dinner. Hope he's not bringing the whole family(s).
The 6th Doctor, Peri and Jamie follow them, with Jamie concerned that Shockeye is his Doctor's new favourite.
Chessene and Datsari begin to panic. If the 2nd stage of the operation isn't carried out within the hour the 2nd Doctor's Time Lord genetics will overpower the Androgum Inheritance and he'll revert to normal.
Just as Doctor Androgum is getting Shockeye's mouth watering at the thought of a "Shepherd Pie" a small truck comes into view, so the doctor flags it down.
Having got the driver's attention, the Doctor keeps him distracted...
...and stands by while Shockeye kills him.
Wait, what? I know he's all Androgummed, but... really?
It seems the effects of the 2nd Doctor's Androgum inheritance are echoing through time, as the 6th Doctor starts to feel he's going through the changes too. Lovely to imagine Doctors 3, 4 and 5 being affected through time too. Pertwee would have rocked the orange eyebrows.
Back at the cellar, Stike gets in Dastari's time blender...
...with predictable results.
By this time, the Androgums are sightseeing in Barcelona.
Jamie still hasn't quite got his head around the 6th and 2nd Doctors being the same person.
"When you travel in time as much as I do it's almost inevitable that you'll run into yourself at some point." Argument accepted. More McGann ASAP please!
Shockeye and Doctor Androgum are debating the necessity of Hors d'oeuvres, with Shockeye of the opinion that 8 or 9 main dishes are quite nough.
But Doctor Androgum explains that a light dish brings relish to the appetite and gets the digestive juices flowing.
Nearby, his later self and companions are forced to duck back down an alleyway when they almost cross paths with the nefarious Chessene and Dastari.
The dastardly duo make their way to the nearest restaurant.
The Doctor kicks himself for not having the same idea, of course the runaways would make for an eatery!
Dastari is favoured with the attention of a young woman, who tosses him a flower from her balcony.
Picking it up, Dastari smiles sadly then follows Chessene on to the next restaurant.
After surviving the acid bomb and the time blender, Stike's off to his ship. You know - the one he ordered Varl to set to self-destruct earlier.
He's an old hand at these death scenes by now. What's this, his third?
Back in Madrid, we revisit Oscar and Anita at their restaurant, Las Cadenas, as they welcome two rather hungry new patrons. Shockeye still only has one thing on his mind and requests some of the special stuff.
Nearby the 6th Doctor starts to get rather peckish at the sight of a local moggy.
Oi! Lay off the cats, Doctor!
He cools off in a nearby fountain. Time is clearly of the essence here.
Oscar and Anita tot up the bill after the 2nd Doctor and Shockeye have waded through the entire menu.
The competing pursuers skirt around one another again as the net tightens.
Oscar plucks up the courage to ask Shockeye to put his hand in his pocket.
Doctor Androgum has to spell it out before Shockeye proffers a Twenty Narg note.
Oscar rejects the currency, despite Shockeye's outraged assertion that "You can change that anywhere in the nine galaxies!"
The 6th Doctor and his pals finally arrive at Las Cadenas, with Peri recognizing the name as being Chez Oscar.
With Doctor Androgum passed out on the table, Oscar makes a second - and, as it turns out, final - attempt to get Shockeye to cough up. He soon gets Shockeye's point.
"Dissatisfied customers usually just don't leave a tip!" Oscar staggers to a nearby chair as Shockeye scarpers.
From Comedy about food and bills to a nasty stabbing to Shakespeare, all in one scene. Utterly bizarre.
No-one will ever see Oscar's definitive Hamlet, now.
"To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Where are you, Anita?"
"Good night, sweet prince."
At the table, Jamie spots that his Doctor has slept off his Androgum hangover and is back to normal.
"That Beatles do went out yonks ago. Something for the weekend, sir?"
"Naff off, Miss Piggy."
Peri and Jamie must leave Anita to grieve alone.
Recovering somewhat, if rather stuffed, the 2nd Doctor is none too keen to follow orders from his future self.
Which is rather academic once they realize that Chessene has got the drop on them.
I've always loved Pat's whole-arms-vertical version of "hands up".
Having got back to the Hacienda first, Shockeye has had the time to change back into civvies by the time the others return.
Chessene appears to be forgiven, as he proudly shows off Stike's remains. "He's only a lower left leg now, but he can still work as a doorstop or an umbrella holder. Fit for work!"
In the cellar, Chessene and Dastari immediately notice the briode nebuliser is missing, and force the Doctor to give it up.
With Peri as a hostage guinea pig, the Doctor fakes priming the capsule once again, just so she can travel safely.
Dastari won't be convinced till she successfully returns, but the Doctor is confident.
Rightly so, as Peri returns safely.
Despite his gargantuan feast not half an hour ago, Shockeye demands his prize, and Chessene grants him his wish for a slap up Jamie supper.
The two Doctors are chained up in the cellar (well, for a bit anyway), while Shockeye gets ready to butcher Jamie. Dastari leaves the key to their handcuffs just out of reach.
With their tormentors gone, the 6th Doctor confirms the 2nd' suspicions that the test run with Peri was yet another sham.
Between them, they set about getting free. If Peri can just hook the wheelchair towards them...
...the Doctors can tip up the table and slide the keys towards them.
With a sly back-heel, the 6th Doctor has the keys and is free.
The 2nd Doctor urges him to leave the keys with them so he can save Jamie from Shockeye's butchery all the quicker.
Dastari looks on in distaste as Shockeye tenderizes Jamie with some sort of electronic device prior to killing him.
In the nick of time, Chessene bursts in to tell them one of the Time Lords has escaped.
She sends Dastari to keep guard in the cellar and then orders Shockeye after the fugitive Doctor.
The Doctor takes his chance and begins to cut Jamie free. He's interrupted by the return of Shockeye, who slashes at him with a cleaver, catching him a glancing blow to the thigh.
The fleeing Doctor stumbles on the Hacienda steps before limping out of the gate towards the grove. Shockeye informs Chessene that he's winged his quarry, and sets off in pursuit.
At the sight of the (quite realistic i.e. dark) blood, Chessene is overcome by her baser instincts.
With her bloodlust having reasserted itself, it seems that Dastari may finally be seeing the error of his ways.
Regaining consciousness, Jamie frees himself and sets off to "have that Shockeye."
Shockeye has the Doctor in his sights now.
But the Doctor has happened across Oscar's moth kit, and with it the chance to turn the tables.
The Doctor pours some of the crystals onto the cotton wool pad and adds water.
With the pad doused in cyanide, he waits for the lurking Shockeye to come closer.
The 6th Doctor mothballs Shockeye. That's 1-1 on murders for the two Doctors. Into injury time now.
Jamie makes it t the cellar, but has to hide as Chessene descends the staircase.
Dastari has decided that there's been enough killing, but finds out the hard way that for an Androgum there's always room for one more.
The Doctor and Peri make a run for it, and just when Chessene has them in her sights, a well aimed throw of Jamie's dagger saves their lives.
She tries to do a runner in the Kartz-Reimer time-blender, and like Stike before her, comes to a sticky end.
This time the module completely explodes.
In death, she reverts to her Androgum inheritance.
The 6th Doctor arrives, having missed all the... er... fun.
So it's time for a hurried farewell, wherein the 2nd Doctor takes great pleasure in lording his Time-Lord tech over the 6th.
He quite literally whistles himself up a TARDIS.
"After you, Doctor."
"No, after you, Jamie."
They've still got it.
Jamie startles Peri with a goodbye peck on the cheek, and gives the 6th Doctor a cheery wave. He got off lightly, there.
The 6th Doctor can't resist a dig, telling Jamie to "Keep an eye on the old gentleman."
Lovely parting lines from Pat. "Do try and stay out of my way in future, and in past, there's a good fellow. The continuum should be big enough for the both of us - just!" he adds, eyeing ol' Sixie's waistline.
Peri doesn't understand how the TARDIS can be in two places at the same time, but of course it's not - the 6th Doctor's version is still in the grove outside where it landed.
Peri is worried that the Doctor's mind will now turn towards another fishing trip.
But the 6th Doctor has turned veggie! Blimey, there's a shock ending for you!
I'm sure Pat would've been open to a return every few years, had he not passed away [in 1987] & had Colin not had the show pulled from under him, you know.
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Space Museum
Having made it to the (slightly) more airy environs of Dastari's office, the Doctor waits for Peri to recover.
He rubbishes the computer's earlier suggestion that the research being carried out by the now dead scientists was any sort of threat to the Time-Lords and wonders if the computer has been reprogrammed to mislead any investigators .
Having lost track of them due to the luxuriously insulated floors in Dastari's office, the computer turns on the lights.
The Doctor is sure it will switch up its' tactics and tells Peri to think of it as a game.
"I love games, Doctor - games where I'm not expecting to end up dead!" Peri has a point.
Something's not right here though. Why doesn't the 6th Doctor remember all this about the the time experiments of Professors Kartz and Reimer?
Despite his treatment at their hands over the years, the Doctor is quick to defend the Time Lords, despite a fairly damning diary entry from his old friend.
Sure enough, the computer has dug into its bag of tricks and is now attempting to roast them alive. The Doctor decides they need to get into the station's infrastructure and turn the computer off and on again.
The Doctor rummages in Dastari's desk to find something to trip the door controls, but there's not even so much as a paperclip to be found.
What the Doctor finds mildly uncomfortable, Peri finds stifling.
The Doctor finds the door control mechanism. Now he just needs a piece of wire to trigger it to open.
He hasn't any wire in his voluminous pockets, but... well, always bring a banana to a party.
Thankfully, Dastari's desk isn't as useless as first suspected - he's able to extract a length of wire from the sculpture there.
A short circuit later and hey presto, the door opens. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like!"
There she encounters Shockeye, who unceremoniously beats her unconscious with a blow to the back of the neck.
Chessene seems to have psychic powers in addition to her increased intelligence.
Varl's face seems to have caved in a bit. Generous explanation: war wound. Real explanation: Doing things on the cheap as per.
Having made their way back to the kitchen, the Doctor and Peri set about getting into the station's infrastructure. Whilst the Doctor removes a wall panel, Peri polishes off his banana.
She balks, though, at the sight of a murdered Androgum. The Doctor, however, says they haven't got time to bother about dead Androgums. Right-o.
"Put your hands above your head and slide... I'll be right behind you." FILTH.
They find themselves in some sort of dimly-lit climbing frame.
As the Doctor uses his "unerring sense of direction" to point them in the direction of the control centre, a sinister lurking presence growls to itself and ambles after them.
On Earth, Chessense relates her findings from the mind of their erstwhile host. When she confesses that the Doña Arana was more interested in religion than food, Shockeye is more than a little irked. "I'm not interested in the beliefs of primitives - only what they taste like!"
Chessene responds that he's quite the primitive himself, but he puts her high handedness down to "the foreign, alien filth injected into you by Dastari."
The Doctor gives Peri a crash course in the various booby traps the computer is likely to employ against them.
Burberry's noose? Very nasty. Even the 6th Doctor wouldn't wear Burberry.
When Peri thinks she hears something (she does) the Doctor keeps on blathering, then gets all huffy when she chides him.
While the Doctor tries to remember what the blue wire does, Peri descends to the next level just to check that the noise definitely is wheezing old pumps and nothing more sinister.
Varl watches as the Sontaran battlecruiser descends. No one else on Earth detects its arrival in plain sight.
We meet loveable thesp Oscar and his companion Anita, hunting moths in the Spanish countryside.
Anita points out the best spot for moths - near the Doña Arana's Hacienda. The "Keep Out" sign is very old, and can be ignored she says.
She goes on to lament the state of disrepair into which the Hacienda itself has fallen.
Shockeye, already riled up by how "insipid" he finds the watermelon he's sampling, is particularly vexed by Varl referencing Group Marshall Stike as "our" leader.
Oscar (or should that be Robert Holmes) waxes lyrical about moths. "Painted beauties sleeping all day, and rising at the sunset to whisper through the roseate dusk on gossamer wings of damask and silk."
Just as Oscar explains how he loves them so much that he feels the need to trap them and kill them with cyanide, Stike's battlecruiser roars over their heads, coming in to land at the Hacienda.
They think the giant sphere descending overhead is a crashing plane. Really?
Whoops, Pat's been at the duty free and needs carrying home.
Knowing that the Doña will be unable to assist any crash survivors, Anita insists that they follow on to help. Oscar isn't so keen.
Back on the station, Peri has discovered the 'nest' of the thing stalking them through the infrastructure.
As Peri is grabbed from behind, she cries out, distracting the Doctor and causing him to trigger one of the aforementioned booby traps - a spray of knock out gas that catches him full in the face.
As Peri struggles for her life, the Doctor keels over and is left precariously suspended only by a cluster of dangling wires. Oh noes - it's a Col-hanger!
PART TWO
(23rd February 1985)
Turns out Peri's attacker is none other than a deranged Jamie. ULTIMATE "NO, JAMIE, NO!"
Peri manages to fight off Jamie's attentions and haul the Doctor down from his wiry hammock.
The Doctor blames Peri's startled cry as distracting him from avoiding the gas trap, and is initially sceptical that her attacker could be human (they haven't reached this part of the galaxy yet, apparently, though that begs the question of Dastari).
The lurker is Jamie! But if he's here, then where's his Doctor?
Jamie becomes agitated, so the Doctor anaesthetizes him to let him get some rest.
The Doctor goes from "I seem to remember I was always very fond of Jamie." to "I'm afraid he's deranged." in 60 seconds. Jamie starts mumbling that "they killed the Doctor."
The Doctor is puzzled as to how sure Jamie is that "they" killed his Doctor. As the Doctor is here and now in a later incarnation that's not possible... is it?
Ah, he *did* use that pocket watch before they made a disproportionately big deal of it getting smashed in Revelation of the Daleks.
Jamie relates the Doctor's argument with Dastari, and the subsequent attack on the station. Love the way he describes the Sontarans as "Knights". Nice callback to The Time Warrior, too.
The Doctor recognizes the description. "They had a sort of armour. Heavy with no necks. And their hands were just two great fingers."
The Doctor sets off to find out if anything about this attack is recorded in the computer's data banks.
Back in Andalucia, Oscar is puzzled by the lack of wreckage from the apparent 'crash'. "Like the star on my dressing room door it becomes conspicuous by its' absence!" A great Holmes grotesque. Maybe a descendant of Henry Gordon Jago's...?
Anita has to appeal to his ego to persuade him to continue the search. "Think of all the publicity. Who knows, the British Council may forgive you and book you on a forthcoming tour!"
With an odd flourish as they find themselves face to face with a mirror, the Doctor and Peri arrive on the station's control deck.
"No speak." The computer's got a hangover. That or the Doctor accidentally disconnected it's linguistic functions with his earlier jiggery pokery.
The Doctor falls back on good old fashioned Ceefax. Can't beat it.
As the Doctor explains about the war between the Sontarans and the Rutan, Peri laughs at the state of herself in the mirror.
The Doctor starts to worry that his earlier self might have arrived in the middle of one of Kartz and Reimer's time experiments, which could account for how he could have died then and still be alive now.
If the holistic fabric of time were punctured, the universe could collapse...
...in a few centuries. the Doctor laments Peri's failure to comprehend the scale of the theoretical disaster.
Between the "never more a butterfly" and The Mysterious Planet's bit about world's ending, Robert Holmes - of all people - seems to best bring out the sensitivity and kindness of the 6th Doctor. He's written properly Doctor-ly in this, and benefits enormously. Pip and Jane Baker play up his love of language (to the nth degree!) but I think Holmes brings out the compassion. 2 sides of the coin I guess. In any case, some of his best stuff is for Big Finish, I reckon.
The Doctor springs into action when he suddenly notices Peri caught in the same "torture tube" that Jamie saw his Doctor die in.
However, as he frantically searches for the right control to release her, he makes an unexpected discovery.
At the flick of a switch, the scene before him changes, and it's no longer Peri in the tube, but Dastari. Or is it the 2nd Doctor?
When he even sees himself in the tube, he knows for certain these are just mocked up images and not even recordings.
When Jamie doesn't recognize the Doctor, he unhelpfully explains that "I am him, he will be me."
"Who will I be?" is the typically Jamie response. Genius stuff from Frazer Hines.
Peri is distressed by the terror tube, but the Doctor points out the good news: this means his earlier self is alive and kicking.
He fancies the Sontarans for this, and smells a conspiracy. But what sort of a conspiracy?
"A plot." He's just brilliant throughout.
The Doctor knows that Dastari is just about the only bio-geneticist capable of isolating the symbiotic nuclei of a Time-Lord required to control a TARDIS.
This astral plane stuff is guff though, I'm sure those mythical 'casual viewers' will have thought so. Does rather spoil it.
"So it's a book and a film, one word..."
"Sharknado?"
"Piss off."
"I think your Doctor's worse than mine."
In the Hacienda's cellars, Dastari and Chessene have hastily lashed up a laboratory, and strapped the Doctor to an hopital guerney.
"BOING! BOING!" says Col, staring Nicola square in the chest. "Bells, my dear!"
Having connected with the blurred subconscious of his earlier self, he's identified that he must be within earshot of the Cathedral of Seville.
Stike cloaks his ship...
Yeah, Dastari, funnily enough the Doña Arana isn't bang up to date on local top secret military installations.
Dastari frets about conducting a delicate operation on a heavily populated world, bubt Chessene points out that the location was favoured by Group Marshal Stike, whose forces are planning an attack on the nearby Madillon Cluster.
"Ratty, I love ya, you're the one for me."
"The Doña Arana knows it as rat. She called him Roland." Yeahhhhh!
Never one to pass up the chance to impart arcane knowledge, the Doctor identifies the specific bell he heard as the Santa Maria, largest of the 25 bells at Seville's Cathedral.
"Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective if used properly!"
"I have our bench!"
Jamie has scrubbed up well.
Jamie isn't too surprised to find that this later Doctor seems to have just as much trouble giving them a smooth landing as his own Doctor.
Peri struggles with the Doctor's torturous mish-mashing of personal pronouns: "If anything happens to myself as a result of it I will never forgive himself."
Dastari has drugged the earlier Doctor. "Siralanamode, that affects the memory..."
"We're not interested in your memory. Junk his episodes."
He's none too pleased to recognize Chessene, and even more put out when he recalls he's at the mercy of the Sontarans.
Seems the 2nd Doctor already knows the Sontarans.
The Doctor becomes agitated when Chessene declares Jamie must be long dead, so Dastari and Shockeye fasten him down.
In the nearby countryside, Oscar and Anita are startled by the arrival of the TARDIS.
Colin's outfit's much more palatable when reduced to that waistcoat. Even the yellow trousers don't look too bad. I maintain that at the end of The Twin Dilemma he should have been more reassuring; 'I've settled down now, time to get out of this daft get up.'
"I can see from your raiments that you belong to the plain clothes branch..." Bravo, Mr. Robert Holmes.
By neglecting to correct Oscar's assumption that he's a member of Interpol, the Doctor is able to recruit the actor's assistance in pointing them towards the Hacienda.
Oscar is keen to get back to their restaurant, but Anita steps in to help, and the Doctor appeals to his sense of public duty.
"We Botcherbys have never shirked public service. My dear departed father was an air raid warden in Shepton Mallet throughout the war. He slept in a steel helmet for five years."
By now, Jamie and Peri know to just roll with it.
In the cellar, Dastari wheels in the Kartz-Reimer time travel module, much to the Doctor's derision. "Well that'll never work, I can tell that from here."
Despite Dastari's claim that it worked well enough to lure him in, the Doctor smugly declares that it will never work properly without a molecular stabilisation system.
Dastari proudly reveals that Chessene is the mastermind behind the conspiracy, leading the Doctor to an off-kilter assessment that any Androgum will ultimately bite the hand that feeds it.
Dastari confesses he was saddened that the Time Lords chose to send the Doctor, knowing the painful operation he must now perform. The Doctor is scornful. "It'll hurt you more than it hurts me?"
Dastari hardens as he leaves. "At least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you've been part of a great undertaking!"
"Oh my giddy aunt, oh crumbs."
Stike is less than impressed at the slow progress. "Dastari, why this delay?"
"It's only Part Two, got to pad it out a bit, mate."
Stike begins to fear he's dropped the ball by throwing his lot in with Chessene.
The Doctor makes light of the unending war with the Rutan.
Peter Moffatt points the camera right down the gap in Stike's loose collar as Stike bullishly assures the Doctor that any death of his will be alongside his comrades at the battle front.
Nearby, the 6th Doctor instructs Oscar & co. to wait while he goes for a little scout around by the Hacienda.
Oscar doesn't need telling twice, but his sighting of a rare "Feathered Gothic" falls flat with Jamie.
Stike implores the Doctor to save everyone time by telling Dastari where his symbiotic nucleii is located within his cell structure, but the Time Lord takes the opportunity to warn him that Chessene will stab him in the back...
...and compares her treacherous ways to the Sontarans themselves, insulting Stike's very honour!
This successfully goads Stike into striking him...
...gifting the Doctor the chance to demand to be set free for a duel!
Wonderful glare from Clinton Greyn there.
Stike has not taken the bait, though, deeming it that only another Sontaran could impugn his honour in such a manner.
"Well, that didn't work, did it?"
His later self skulks onto the Hacienda grounds.
He's soon at the side of the house near the kitchen, and hearing the voices within.
"What have you got there, Shockeye?"
"It's something called 'The Jon Pertwee cookbook'..."
Shockeye is fascinated that amongst the many recipes, there appears to be none for cooking human meat.
The Doctor gets closer to hear better, balancing precariously on a rickety old set of wooden steps at the edge of the window.
He hears as Chessene explains to Shockeye that humans don't tend to eat their own kind, which he finds odd considering they're at the top of the food chain.
The Doctor leans that little bit too close and the steps give way beneath him, causing him to fall.
He quickly clings to the wall as Chessene, hearing the noise, peers out, though thankfully not below.
She promises Shockeye he'll taste human meat before their visit to Earth is over and confesses to "a certain curiosity" herself.
The Doctor returns to his friends to relay his findings.
"The Sontarans are here, I can sense their presence". Oh aye?
When he describes the duo he overheard, Jamie recognizes them as Chessene and Shockeye. "Dastari said she was a... hungryman?"
The Doctor kindly volunteers Peri to distract the house invaders while he and Jamie get inside via the cellars.
"I don't speak Spanish!", she protests.
"That's alright, neither do they!"
Anita will point them in the right direction, but Oscar stays put.
Shockete takes a fancy to some of the late Don's attire.
But his thoughts turn gastronomical again at the sight of the approaching Peri.
In the cellar, Dastari prepares to begin the operation.
As the local anaesthetic begins to take effect and the Doctor slurs his words, Stike grows increasingly impatient.
Troughton had the best job here; sunny holiday in Spain followed by "acting" asleep a lot. I should like a job like that.
Just as Dastari is about to start sawing into his skull, though, Chessene commands him to wait after hearing Peri calling out at the front door.
Anita shows the Doctor and Jamie the entrance to the cellars and gives the Doctor a parting kiss on the cheek.
Jamie hopes for the same, but only gets a handshake. Ah well.
Love the way Servalan says "American student?" like "are there such things?"
"She was constantly thinking of the Doctor..." Well, there you go.
The Doctor and Jamie make their way through the ice house to the main cellar, where the Doctor finds the ladder "a wee bit rickety"!
At least Jamie will have something soft to land on.
Stike says he won't tolerate further delay. Bet he does, though.
Dastari isn't so keen on the delay himself, but Shockeye tells him that Chessene needs the Doctor upstairs immediately, so they strap him into an old wooden wheelchair.
Jamie and the 6th Doctor watch them depart. Preferring to avoid a confrontation with the Androgum, the Doctor suggests they have a look around in the cellar first.
Upstairs, Dastari and Shockeye dutifully wheel the 2nd Doctor through the hall so Chessene can gauge her reaction.
Chessene disses Peri. "If she has friends they will come enquiring after her." *If.*
The 6th Doctor and Jamie have found the prototype time capsule in the cellar...
...but the Sontarans have found them.
Run, Peri, run!
In her haste to escape the ravenous Shockeye, Peri stumbles and falls.
Shockeye catches up with her and looms menacingly over her, deeming her a "fine fleshy beast". The silver tongued devil.
Cliffhanger!
PART THREE
(2nd March 1985)
Shockeye hauls Peri to her feet.
He knocks her unconscious and slings her over his shoulder to carry her back to the Hacienda kitchen.
Now she's a takeaway.
In the cellar, the 6th Doctor and his Sontaran captors become acquainted.
"I am Group Marshall Stike, tallest Sontaran ever. Ever."
"My money's still on the Rutans."
Should they actually bother to turn up, that is.
Stike orders the Doctor to prime the capsule, holding his gun to Jamie's head to coerce his co-operation.
The Doctor does as he is bid, dematerializing, and rematerializing a few seconds later.
Stike tells him that as Jamie is of no further use he'll be executed.
"Sontaran might is invincible!" bellows Stike, as Jamie reaches into his sock to retrieve his dagger and bury it in the Sontaran's thigh.
Stike's aim is understandably off, allowing the Doctor and Jamie their escape.
"Now I gotta cut loose, Footloose, Kick off the Sunday shoes, Please, Louise..."
It's not long before his co-conspirators find him, and Dastari even recognizes Jamie's dagger. Obviously spent a lot of time admiring Jamie's calves during his visit to Space Station J7.
The Doctor and Jamie bound across the courtyard to the Hacienda itself.
There they find the earlier Doctor. The two incarnations recognize one another immediately, and can start - never mind finish - one another's sentences, which they demonstrate with a playful cry of "Snap!"
Just as the 2nd Doctor is rather begrudgingly accepting help, they hear someone coming and have to push him in the chair as there's no time to unstrap him.
Pat once again has the difficult task of having a kip, as Shockeye returns with the prone Peri.
The 6th Doctor and Jamie can only watch on as Shockeye hauls Peri into the kitchen to prepare "supper"!
Chessene and the Sontarans (rubbish band name) plot to doublecross each other.
Uh-oh, we're running out of plot. Chessene to the rescue: "I have a contingency plan, I've had it in mind for some time..."
This is structured like a Hinchcliffe era 6 parter with its' 4/2 (here 2/1) structure.
The 2nd Doctor is none too please to overhear that Chessene's plan is to turn him into an Androgum, and using genetic material from none other than Shockeye!
In the kitchen, the gourmand is sharpening his knives, ready to butcher Peri alive.
As Chessene's plan requires Shockeye in the cellar, Peri has a lucky escape.
Stike tells Varl to go and fetch the sweets he left in the glove compartment.
Stike believes that having had the Doctor prime the Kartz-Reimer module, they can return to their unit in their prize, so orders Varl to set their own craft to self-destruct. I'm sure that won't come back to bite him.
As the 2nd Doctor protests in vain, his warnings to Shockeye come too late, and Chessene stuns him so Dastari can get cracking.
Peri is woken by the Doctor splashing something in her face.
Dastari performs the first stage of the genetic transfusion.
Chessene tells him the time is right to polish off Stike and Varl.
Having escaped to safety, the 6th Doctor tells Peri and Jamie that he expected the Sontarans to have made a move on Chessene by now.
Turns out his earlier waffle about priming the Kartz Reimer module was only half true, and whilst it worked the once for him, it won't work for anyone else as he palmed a vital component.
Dastari has given the Doctor a 50% Androgum inheritance, but within an hour he'll be all Androgum. He and Chessene leave Shockeye and son to it, and leave to deal with the Sontarans.
Shockeye soon awakes, and is horrified to learn he has been betrayed by Chessene, and worse that his precious bloodline has been interfered with.
But what's this? The 2nd Doctor is looking decidedly pleased with himself, and is quite the changed man.
Troughton is absolute genius as an Androgum. Whole thing has such an odd tone now, but he dazzles. There you go, he *has* been ginger. What was Tennant whinging about?
Just like Shockeye, he's got food on the brain, and knows the cuisine of Earth rather better than the Androgum. "Capercaillies in brandy sauce with a stuffing of black pudding made of live pig's blood, herbs, and pepper. The breasts of the birds should be slit and studded with truffles. I have eaten pressed duck at the Tour d'Argent. They are fed only on corn, fruit pulp and molasses. They're exquisite, Shockeye!"
Shockeye entreats him to lead on to an eating establishment so that they cam sample the local dishes.
Doctor Androgum agrees, but insists that first Shockeye must get himself some proper clothes - a collar, a neck tie at least.
As Dastari beckons the Sontarans, the 6th Doctor and his friends follow to witness the skullduggery afoot.
Stike prevents his underling from shooting Dastari in the back. "Chessene first; she's more dangerous."
Dastari tells them Chessene has the 6th Doctor trapped in the cellar. Stike can't resist the thought of two birds with one stone and enters the ice house willingly, leading the Doctor to award the points to Chessene.
Having decided she no longer needs the Sontarans, Chessene chucks them a couple of acid bombs. Harsh but fair.
The Sontarans depart with a scream; no Timelash required.
Varl is killed, but Stike, firing his gun pointlessly at the bomb, is only wounded, albeit quite horrifically so.
So what exactly did Chessene need them for then? If it was just to storm the station, why has she waited till now?
Pat's taking us all out for dinner. Hope he's not bringing the whole family(s).
The 6th Doctor, Peri and Jamie follow them, with Jamie concerned that Shockeye is his Doctor's new favourite.
Chessene and Datsari begin to panic. If the 2nd stage of the operation isn't carried out within the hour the 2nd Doctor's Time Lord genetics will overpower the Androgum Inheritance and he'll revert to normal.
Stike, although badly injured, has survived, and swears vengeance on Chessene.
Just as Doctor Androgum is getting Shockeye's mouth watering at the thought of a "Shepherd Pie" a small truck comes into view, so the doctor flags it down.
Having got the driver's attention, the Doctor keeps him distracted...
...and stands by while Shockeye kills him.
Wait, what? I know he's all Androgummed, but... really?
It seems the effects of the 2nd Doctor's Androgum inheritance are echoing through time, as the 6th Doctor starts to feel he's going through the changes too. Lovely to imagine Doctors 3, 4 and 5 being affected through time too. Pertwee would have rocked the orange eyebrows.
Back at the cellar, Stike gets in Dastari's time blender...
...with predictable results.
By this time, the Androgums are sightseeing in Barcelona.
The 6th Doctor and co. are hot on their heels, and spot the stolen truck.
Chessene and Dastari are conducting their own search in style.
Jamie still hasn't quite got his head around the 6th and 2nd Doctors being the same person.
"When you travel in time as much as I do it's almost inevitable that you'll run into yourself at some point." Argument accepted. More McGann ASAP please!
Shockeye and Doctor Androgum are debating the necessity of Hors d'oeuvres, with Shockeye of the opinion that 8 or 9 main dishes are quite nough.
But Doctor Androgum explains that a light dish brings relish to the appetite and gets the digestive juices flowing.
Nearby, his later self and companions are forced to duck back down an alleyway when they almost cross paths with the nefarious Chessene and Dastari.
The dastardly duo make their way to the nearest restaurant.
The Doctor kicks himself for not having the same idea, of course the runaways would make for an eatery!
Dastari is favoured with the attention of a young woman, who tosses him a flower from her balcony.
Picking it up, Dastari smiles sadly then follows Chessene on to the next restaurant.
After surviving the acid bomb and the time blender, Stike's off to his ship. You know - the one he ordered Varl to set to self-destruct earlier.
He's an old hand at these death scenes by now. What's this, his third?
Back in Madrid, we revisit Oscar and Anita at their restaurant, Las Cadenas, as they welcome two rather hungry new patrons. Shockeye still only has one thing on his mind and requests some of the special stuff.
"I mean human meat you fawning imbecile!"
"No, sir, the nouvelle cuisine has not yet penetrated this establishment."
Nearby the 6th Doctor starts to get rather peckish at the sight of a local moggy.
Oi! Lay off the cats, Doctor!
He cools off in a nearby fountain. Time is clearly of the essence here.
Oscar and Anita tot up the bill after the 2nd Doctor and Shockeye have waded through the entire menu.
They've had lobsters, clams, and squid, brains in white sauce, two whole suckling pigs, a ham with figs, eight steaks, and an entire family paella! They've just ordered a dozen breasts of pigeons, probably to help down the last of their dozen bottles of wine - and they're still eating!
The competing pursuers skirt around one another again as the net tightens.
Oscar plucks up the courage to ask Shockeye to put his hand in his pocket.
Doctor Androgum has to spell it out before Shockeye proffers a Twenty Narg note.
Oscar rejects the currency, despite Shockeye's outraged assertion that "You can change that anywhere in the nine galaxies!"
The 6th Doctor and his pals finally arrive at Las Cadenas, with Peri recognizing the name as being Chez Oscar.
With Doctor Androgum passed out on the table, Oscar makes a second - and, as it turns out, final - attempt to get Shockeye to cough up. He soon gets Shockeye's point.
"Dissatisfied customers usually just don't leave a tip!" Oscar staggers to a nearby chair as Shockeye scarpers.
From Comedy about food and bills to a nasty stabbing to Shakespeare, all in one scene. Utterly bizarre.
No-one will ever see Oscar's definitive Hamlet, now.
"To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Where are you, Anita?"
"Good night, sweet prince."
At the table, Jamie spots that his Doctor has slept off his Androgum hangover and is back to normal.
"That Beatles do went out yonks ago. Something for the weekend, sir?"
"Naff off, Miss Piggy."
Peri and Jamie must leave Anita to grieve alone.
Recovering somewhat, if rather stuffed, the 2nd Doctor is none too keen to follow orders from his future self.
Which is rather academic once they realize that Chessene has got the drop on them.
I've always loved Pat's whole-arms-vertical version of "hands up".
Having got back to the Hacienda first, Shockeye has had the time to change back into civvies by the time the others return.
Chessene appears to be forgiven, as he proudly shows off Stike's remains. "He's only a lower left leg now, but he can still work as a doorstop or an umbrella holder. Fit for work!"
In the cellar, Chessene and Dastari immediately notice the briode nebuliser is missing, and force the Doctor to give it up.
With Peri as a hostage guinea pig, the Doctor fakes priming the capsule once again, just so she can travel safely.
Dastari won't be convinced till she successfully returns, but the Doctor is confident.
Rightly so, as Peri returns safely.
Despite his gargantuan feast not half an hour ago, Shockeye demands his prize, and Chessene grants him his wish for a slap up Jamie supper.
The two Doctors are chained up in the cellar (well, for a bit anyway), while Shockeye gets ready to butcher Jamie. Dastari leaves the key to their handcuffs just out of reach.
With their tormentors gone, the 6th Doctor confirms the 2nd' suspicions that the test run with Peri was yet another sham.
Between them, they set about getting free. If Peri can just hook the wheelchair towards them...
...the Doctors can tip up the table and slide the keys towards them.
With a sly back-heel, the 6th Doctor has the keys and is free.
The 2nd Doctor urges him to leave the keys with them so he can save Jamie from Shockeye's butchery all the quicker.
Dastari looks on in distaste as Shockeye tenderizes Jamie with some sort of electronic device prior to killing him.
In the nick of time, Chessene bursts in to tell them one of the Time Lords has escaped.
She sends Dastari to keep guard in the cellar and then orders Shockeye after the fugitive Doctor.
The Doctor takes his chance and begins to cut Jamie free. He's interrupted by the return of Shockeye, who slashes at him with a cleaver, catching him a glancing blow to the thigh.
The fleeing Doctor stumbles on the Hacienda steps before limping out of the gate towards the grove. Shockeye informs Chessene that he's winged his quarry, and sets off in pursuit.
At the sight of the (quite realistic i.e. dark) blood, Chessene is overcome by her baser instincts.
With her bloodlust having reasserted itself, it seems that Dastari may finally be seeing the error of his ways.
Regaining consciousness, Jamie frees himself and sets off to "have that Shockeye."
Shockeye has the Doctor in his sights now.
But the Doctor has happened across Oscar's moth kit, and with it the chance to turn the tables.
The Doctor pours some of the crystals onto the cotton wool pad and adds water.
With the pad doused in cyanide, he waits for the lurking Shockeye to come closer.
The 6th Doctor mothballs Shockeye. That's 1-1 on murders for the two Doctors. Into injury time now.
"Your just desserts!" Tasteless quips (see also "Forgive me if I don't join you" in Vengeance On Varos) are fine coming out of Connery's Bond... not really from
our Doctor Who.
Jamie makes it t the cellar, but has to hide as Chessene descends the staircase.
Dastari has decided that there's been enough killing, but finds out the hard way that for an Androgum there's always room for one more.
The Doctor and Peri make a run for it, and just when Chessene has them in her sights, a well aimed throw of Jamie's dagger saves their lives.
She tries to do a runner in the Kartz-Reimer time-blender, and like Stike before her, comes to a sticky end.
This time the module completely explodes.
In death, she reverts to her Androgum inheritance.
The 6th Doctor arrives, having missed all the... er... fun.
So it's time for a hurried farewell, wherein the 2nd Doctor takes great pleasure in lording his Time-Lord tech over the 6th.
He quite literally whistles himself up a TARDIS.
"After you, Doctor."
"No, after you, Jamie."
They've still got it.
Jamie startles Peri with a goodbye peck on the cheek, and gives the 6th Doctor a cheery wave. He got off lightly, there.
The 6th Doctor can't resist a dig, telling Jamie to "Keep an eye on the old gentleman."
Lovely parting lines from Pat. "Do try and stay out of my way in future, and in past, there's a good fellow. The continuum should be big enough for the both of us - just!" he adds, eyeing ol' Sixie's waistline.
Peri doesn't understand how the TARDIS can be in two places at the same time, but of course it's not - the 6th Doctor's version is still in the grove outside where it landed.
Peri is worried that the Doctor's mind will now turn towards another fishing trip.
But the 6th Doctor has turned veggie! Blimey, there's a shock ending for you!
I'm sure Pat would've been open to a return every few years, had he not passed away [in 1987] & had Colin not had the show pulled from under him, you know.
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Space Museum
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