The second episode doesn’t have John Savident in it (booo)
but it does have a lot of other things which work very well. The cliffhanger of
the previous episode was quite clever really because the Doctor had disappeared
but when the episode starts it turns out that he went through a energy barrier
which was designed to give the impression that the stairs led to nothing. The
effect used to create this was quite good and even compared to todays standards
it holds up.
This is the episode where the regulars get separated. After
being inactive in the previous serial, its nice that Nyssa is given something
to do and is tagged with the Doctor and as a result gets a lot more screen
time. Tegan and Adric spend the episode together and its nice that they seem to
be getting on with each other. There isn’t any bickering or back biting that
would normally have happened between these two. They spend a fair amount of
time locked up and they managed to escape which I found to be rather implausible
but the objective really was to split up Tegan and Adric.
The Terileptil is introduced in this episode and I think
that the headpiece is rather splendid, the rest of it looks like a bloke in a
suit but the headpiece is quite effective and striking because it looks like
the flesh has rotted and for 1980’s Doctor Who its one of the best headpieces
that there has been. The only thing about the Terileptil that is a bit
confusing is just what is its plan? Apart from that I thought that the
Terileptil’s involvement in the story was well done and I think as a villain
its quite good.
The cliffhanger is one that we have seen before and quite
recently. It sees the Doctor (and Mace) about to be decapitated which is what
happened during one of the cliffhangers in ‘Four to Doomsday’ so it seems like
if it worked once then it could work again. I actually think that this one is
more effective than the previous one because the darkness of the tone allows
this cliffhanger to be more striking than in the rather bland surroundings of ‘Four
to Doomsday’. So at the halfway point this story is moving far too quickly for
my liking, I wish there were more episodes of this story left but I suppose
that this is credit to Eric Saward and Peter Moffatt for producing this story
and making it work as well as it has so far.
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