126: Mawdryn Undead

8/12/08

This story opens with a schoolboy (who looks 30) named Turlough crashing a car, then finding himself floating above his body and being communicated to by a man known as the Black Guardian, who we met back in the Tom Baker years. He's the counterpoint to the White Guardian and he represents chaos and evil. Anyway, he tells Turlough that he will save him if he will do one thing for him: kill the Doctor. Turlough agrees and finds himself back in his body.

The TARDIS is flying through space when it is suddenly appears aboard a ship that seems to be empty, is well furnished and lavishly decorated, and appears to have been in orbit around earth for a very long time. There is a Transmat on board, which is a teleportation sort of device with an opening at one location and another somewhere else, making travel between the two points instantaneous. The TARDIS cannot depart because the transmat beam is interfering. So the Doctor traces the beam to earth, where the other portal is, in an attempt to free the TARDIS of the beam.

On earth, they find the Brigadier, the classic character who was the head of UNIT and has been around since the days of the second Doctor, has taken a job as a teacher at the school that Turlough attends. He gets caught up in the story at this point. The Doctor goes back to the ship to try to free the TARDIS, then comes back to earth, only accidentally does so 6 years too early. Therefore there are two Brigadiers running around, one 6 years the senior of the other.

This is where the story gets tricky, and I think they did a reasonably good job of keeping this all straight. Aboard the ship in the sky a man named Mawdryn reveals himself, along with 7 of his race. They are damaged and dying, and they have mutated. As the story unfolds, we learn that they are immortal, but they are mutants and are incredibly unhappy and weak. They were exiled from their planet, and every so often their ship comes close enough to a planet that they hope will give them help. In this story, the only person who can help the 8 mutants is the Doctor, and to do so he must give up his remaining regenerations to them. I'll leave the story at that.

There's a couple of things worth mentioning in this episode. The first is that this is the episode that brings us Turlough as a companion. I've never really cared for him, as I've found him smug and unlikeable, and now I get why I have always thought that. He boards the TARDIS as a traitor, and is just waiting for the right moment to strike at the Doctor. Granted, he is in the power of The Black Guardian, but he's also a pretty nasty character.

Second, this is a story that mentions previous Doctor Who stories and characters, something that was never really done back then. There's been a few references before, but I appreciated what we were given here. When the Doctor finds The Brigadier, he has to jog his memory as to who he is. He asks about former companions, he asks about former monsters the two faced together, and then as the Brigadier remembers, we get black and white clips from the second, third, and fourth Doctor. A nice tip of the hat to the past, in my opinion.

Sonic Shenanigans: The Doctor mentions "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow" which was something the writers had him say when he needed to do something incredibly difficult incredibly quick. It's a deus ex machina device.

This is a decent enough story, and I liked it, but it doesn't do anything exceptional for me, so as such, I'm giving it a 6/10.