The Curse of Peladon - Episode 3

As we approach the second part of the story I worry that this studio bound story doesn’t quite have the bite that I think that it should have. The previous episode had a lot of nothing in it and this episode needed to deliver. At the end of the previous episode the Doctor was accused of herecy and this forms the plot for this episode.  The romance between the King and Jo is given a bit more time in this episode as Jo uses this to try and stop the Doctor from being killed or put in the fight. The scene ends with Jo receiving a marriage proposal. The King is somewhat weak in this episode as his inability to take decisive action is becoming frustrating.

The Doctor has a good scene with Hepesh where he discusses why he’s gone to the trouble staging things and its good that Hepesh isn’t pretending anymore. Jon Pertwee’s best scene comes when he’s trying to calm Agador whom he encounters in the caves. The Doctor’s attempts are foiled when Jo comes barging in scaring it away. Jo makes up for it by the fact that she gets to be quite feisty from the very beginning and its good to see but it doesn’t happen enough for my liking.
I do like how there seems to be more finger pointing with Arcturus being suspicious of the Ice Warriors. It doesn’t seem to be given much time and its introduced too late into the story. Had it been done in episode two then I think that this would have made the story better but hey ho, better late than never.

The Doctor gets to have his trial by combat (I say that like he wants it) and it leads to a very good and well-choreographed fight. Sometimes its clear that its not Pertwee but Terry Walsh doing some of the movements but its still a good fight. It ends in rather a horrific way with the Doctor appearing to strangle the Kings Champion before letting go. Visually its slightly odd because its not filmed at TV centre so it has that different look to and its slightly disrupts the flow of continuity.

I thought that the cliffhanger was another good one and I felt that the episode on the whole was better than the previous. There seemed to be a bit more going on in this episode and it flows better than it seemed to in part two. I really don’t know what to feel about this story and I think that the final episode will determine whether I consider this to be a good story or not.