(617) Planet of Fire - Part 3

The penultimate episode of Turlough’s time on the show is marked improvement on the previous two episodes. There is one thing that doesn’t happen in this episode that has in the previous two and that is some location footage of Lanzarote. I know that the story doesn’t suffer because of it but I like seeing it and thought that it added something to the story.

There is a great deal of time in this episode dealing with the Hall of Fire and this actually works out quite well in the context of the episode which is something that surprised me after being less than impressed until now. Narrative wise it seems that Peter Grimwade has finally got a handle on this story and is trying to make up for the lack of drama that there has been so far.

The reaction Malkon gives when he is shot is a bit silly. The thing about this group of characters from Sarn is that they just seem a bit too primitive and had this been set on earth during the middle ages then this might make sense but to be honest with everything else going on there wasn’t much time for me to be bothered by them. The stuff with the Master is easily the most interesting but I think that the stuff with Malkon is more interesting than it has been. I don’t know if that’s because the Doctor, Turlough, Peri and the Master are involved but something has changed. Something else that has become more noticeable is Turlough. I pointed out that this basically his story and he starts to become a stronger character in this episode. I like the droplets of information that seem to be coming out and it is still frustrating that we are only just getting some information about this character now. I think that had we had something in his opening story or some stories between then I think that Turlough would have ranked higher in people’s opinion.

The mystery of the Master is finally revealed at the end of the episode but there is a nice build up because there is a mysterious box that is wheeled into the Master’s TARDIS. There is some wonderful thinking in realising the Masters TARDIS and that is by simply painting the Doctor’s TARIDS console room black. The Master has been reduced to the size of a doll. This is quite a good cliffhanger and it ended what has been a greatly improved episode. It does at last feel like its building up to something which is something that I thought was missing from this story.