The Androids of Tara - Episode 1

The Androids of Tara is a story that I have always found rather charming. After enjoying the previous story its good that a run of enjoyable stories is showing all the good things that there are about the show. This story is famous because Mary Tamm gets to play two roles. This is the second story in a row for David Fisher. There are only two instances before this where a writer has written two stories in a row, the first was Ian Stuart Black in 1966 with The War Machines and The Savages and the second was Chris Boucher in 1977 with The Face of Evil and The Robots of Death. This episode was broadcast 2 days after the shows 15^th birthday and this is the final story of 1978. This story is quite unusual in that it takes just seven and a half minutes for Romana to find the fourth segment. That means that instead of the story being about the search for the segment the story could be a standard, more traditional Doctor Who story.

The Doctor’s decision to have a break instead of looking for the next segment seems like a bit of an odd thing to do. The only purpose that it serves is for Count Grendel of Gracht to encounter Romana without the Doctor being around. Gracht thinks that Romana is a robot and she is about to be cut up. The Doctor encounters Prince Reynart who is about to be coronated and Gracht is trying to kill him and become king himself. This is essentially the plot of the entire serial. Zadek is played by Simon Lack returns after previously appearing in the 1971 story ‘The Mind of Evil’.

Like the previous story, the location filming is some of the best that has been seen in the show. If I didn’t know any better I would have sworn that it was the same director. There is a shot where we see the castle and it looks slightly dodgy because the castle looks like it has a few bits added on which don’t quite match. I’m not sure whether its just my 2014 eyes looking at a product of 1978 but it’s the only thing that lets the location filming down a bit.

The segment is pretty much forgotten about which is a bit of shame really but that aside I thought that this was another good opening episode. Despite being wedged in the middle of a season long story, the story doesn’t feel like its running out of steam. In fact it feels like its picking up momentum. I am looking forward to the next three episodes and I will probably be spending the next three days figuring out which story is David Fisher’s best. That isn’t the sort of thing I would be considering.