The small matter of what is causing the Doctor to act the
way he is on Thoros Beta is something that continues to be the problem with
this story. Despite all the hard work that Philip Martin and Ron Jones have
done to make this story sound and look like a great adventure. Like the
previous episode, this one doesn’t feature a courtroom scene for several
minutes. It’s good that the series arc story isn’t thrown in our faces so soon.
This is the episode where Kiv’s mind is swapped and
considering how important it seems to be there is little sense of drama apart
from Sil over reacting. Sil is rather amusing apart from this brief moment. He
decides he wants to be the first face the Kiv sees in his new body and the look
on his face causes Kiv to think he’s died. There is very little room for humour
in this section of the story so its good to see Nabil Shaban doing the honours.
Yrcanos is basically leading a revolution in this episode
and becomes leader purely by the fact that he shouts the loudest. This involves
dragging Peri from one tunnel to another and they don’t actually achieve
anything. It was slightly disappointing that Brian Blessed has been left to do
and also Nicola Bryant seems to have drawn the short straw in trying to calm
him down.
There is very little from the courtroom but what we do see
is rather good. Michael Jayston is the strongest part of the courtroom part. It
did feel like Lynda Bellingham and Colin Baker were spare parts but to be fair
Colin Baker makes up for that in other areas of this episode. There is more
about what the Doctor can and cannot remember which s fun because it just seems
to give the Valeyard more ammunition to use against the Doctor. It’s good to
see the Doctor in a rare situation where he doesn’t know whats going on. This is
something that usually happens to the companions so you could say that the
Doctor is getting a dose of his own medicine.
The final minute of the episode sees Peri seemingly gunned
down. Considering that Nicola Bryant is about to leave the show it is perfectly
plausible that she could have left the show an episode early. This leads to a
good cliffhanger but unlike previous endings, there isn’t a zoom in but just a
static shot of Colin Baker which is at least a minor difference. It’s not been
an action packed episode and is probably
the weakest of the three but it’s still been an episode that hasn’t been
boring. Compared to the Robert Holmes story, this one has been a huge
improvement. 
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