Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars
(4 episodes, s13e09-e12, 1975)

They’re finally back to London, but it’s not really the one Sarah Jane wants.

Professor Scarman is excavating a pyramid which contains what he calls the perfect tomb. There is an Eye of Horus on the door to the inner chamber, which scares away his assistants, but the professor shows no fear as he opens the door… and gets blasted by a ray of green light.

Change scenes to our heroes and the TARDIS travelling through space-time. Sarah Jane gleefully shows off a dress she found in the wardrobe, which a pensive Doctor offhandedly remarks that it belonged to “Vicki” or “Victoria”. That’s either Victoria Waterfield or Vicki Pallister. When Sarah Jane presses the matter, the Doctor explains that he no longer wants to chase after the Brigadier’s whims, and he doesn’t feel quite at home on Earth. His maudlin musings are broken when the TARDIS jolts violently and is redirected to the priory – Professor Scarman’s family home – that existed on the site where UNIT HQ was eventually founded. During the turbulence, Sarah Jane sees an Egyptian jackal face that rapidly disappears.

The priory is occupied by Ibrahim Namin, a mysterious Egyptian gentleman, who is confronted by Dr. Warlock, a friend of the professor who was zapped in the opening scenes. Namin’s butler discovers the Doctor and Sarah Jane, believing that they are agents of Dr. Warlock, and warns them against Namin. As the travelers depart, a sarcophagus opens on its own.

Warlock and Namin are engaged in a heated argument when the butler screams. They rush to the scene and find him strangled, and as Namin nearly kills Warlock with a gun, the Doctor intervenes and saves Warlock before disappearing again. Namin opens the sarcophagus and awakens the mummy within using a special decoder ring. The mummy and Namin pursue the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and a critically wounded Warlock, but are called off as a blast of organ music echoes through the forest. The travelers are found by Laurence Scarman, the professor’s brother, and they hide at his hunting lodge.

The year is 1911 and Scarman has developed a Marconiscope, a predecessor to the radio telescope, which can intercept signals from space. As they switch it on, they receive a signal from Mars that overloads Scarman’s device. The Doctor decodes it: “Beware Sutekh.”

Okay, so we’re talking about Mars. Are the mummies the Ice Warriors?

As the team decides to investigate further, the Doctor claims, “I never carry firearms.” Uh, yes you do. You shot people in Planet of Evil and Day of the Daleks, and you also have a favorite collection.

Anyway, the Doctor and the humans return to the priory as Namin summons a servant of Sutekh through a special sarcophagus carrying a lodestone. Alas, it’s not the Ice Warriors, but it kills Namin as the mighty Sutekh needs no other servants. The servant then morphs into the professor and takes the mummies to set his plan in motion. The Doctor investigates the lodestone and explains that Sutekh is the last of the Osirans. He accidently activates the spacetime tunnel and is nearly drawn through it until he disrupts it and falls unconscious. Sarah Jane and Laurence hide away in a priest hole.

A non sequitur (and likely redshirt) poacher runs into the deflection field set up around the estate by the Sutekh. Professor Scarman, while searching for his brother, finds Warlock and learns about the Doctor. Scarman orders a mummy to kill Warlock. The poacher runs from the death screams and seeks out Laurence. The Doctor decides that his can stop Sutekh by blocking his transmissions to Earth, but he needs Namin’s ring to isolate the frequency. On cue, the professor arrives and almost finds the travelers until the poacher arrives and shoots him. The professor sets the mummies loose on him. True to form, the redshirt’s gonna die.

The travelers locate Namin’s corpse and retrieve the ring, then hide in the TARDIS. The Doctor determines that the mummies, who are really robots, are building rockets to free Sutekh from his imprisonment by destroying the force field generator on Mars. Sarah Jane suggests, since the world didn’t end in 1911, that they should just travel forward to 1980 and be done. The Doctor takes her there, revealing a desolate wasteland, and Sarah Jane realizes that they have to stop Sutekh.

They return to 1911 and take refuge in Laurence’s lodge, planning to build a jamming device. As the mummies kill the poacher, Laurence tries to stop them and the mummies overrun the lodge. The mummies destroy the jamming device, but Sarah Jane drives them off with the ring. The team decides to blow up the missile using blasting gelignite, of which the poacher (of course) had a supply. Laurence stays behind to unwrap the robot as Sarah Jane and the Doctor head for the poacher’s hut. En route, they disrupt part of the barrier, which the professor investigates only to find Laurence. Laurence believes that part of his brother still survives, and he nearly breaks through until the Sutekh persona recovers and tortures Laurence for information.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane take the gelignite to the missile, but do not have detonators or fuses. They return to the lodge to find Laurence’s corpse, and they use the wrappings as a disguise to infiltrate the mummies. The disguised Doctor places the gelignite, but when Sarah Jane shoots it with Laurence’s rifle, the explosion is constrained by Sutekh’s mental power. The Doctor determines that the only way to stop him is to go to Mars and distract him. As the Doctor arrives through the spacetime tunnel, he is stunned by Sutekh, and the action causes the destruction of the rocket.

Sutekh interrogates the Doctor and discovers who he is, and he offers an alliance that the Doctor rejects. Scarman calls and reports that they have captured Sarah Jane, and Sutekh orders her death until the Doctor protests. Sutekh reads the Doctor’s mind and learns of the TARDIS, then transports the key to Scarman. The Doctor saves his life by claiming that the TARDIS controls are isomorphic and will only responds to his touch. He claims allegiance to Sutekh and is supposedly placed under the alien’s command, then returns and pilots the TARDIS to the pyramid so the professor can override the restraining field. The professor enters the chamber and the mummies try to kill the Doctor after he is no longer needed, but that releases Sutekh’s hold on him. He survives due to a respiratory bypass system. It’s convenient, but it’s also science fiction.

The path to the Eye of Horus, the source of the restraining field, is blocked by several logic puzzles which are very reminiscent to a previous story. The professor has Sutekh’s knowledge to help, but the Doctor and Sarah Jane are slower. At one point, Sarah Jane is trapped and the Doctor must face a Knights and Knaves-style challenge: There are two buttons (one is freedom, one is instant death), and the answer lies with two robots (one always lies, one always tells the truth). He successfully answers the riddle, but they are too late since the professor has already destroyed the Eye.

The Doctor realizes that the Time Factor can still save them since the transmission takes two minutes to move from Mars to Earth, and he rushes with Sarah Jane back to the TARDIS and 1911. Using a piece of the TARDIS console, he blocks the spacetime tunnel and traps Sutekh inside, propelling the Osiran forward into the far future until he dies of old age. The sarcophagus explodes, burning the priory to the ground and paving the way for UNIT’s arrival in the future. The Doctor muses about his involvement in the great London fire of 1666, and with that, the pair move on to their next adventure.

Maybe they’ll find London this time?

This was a fun adventure with plenty of twists and turns. It was very engaging. The villain seemed pretty standard until he actually got proactive about the Doctor and tried to kill him, and that small character development pushed it over the top for me. I mean, this villain actually wins until the Doctor stops him at (literally) the very last second.

Looking back, the body count is high in this one. Everyone the Doctor meets is dead at the end. I’d hate to be the CSI lead trying to put this one together.

After reading more about this one, this story also adds to the so-called UNIT Dating Controversy, which isn’t a sticking point on my end yet. That will come up in about seven seasons (or about a year in Timestamps time) with Mawdryn Undead, and, as with most continuity problems in Doctor Who, I’m just going to consider it timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly and move on.

This one ended up as a high four, and I’ll round up.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Android Invasion

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Doctor Who: Planet of Evil
(4 episodes, s13e05-e08, 1975)

This is not London.

On a dark and misty planet in the year 37166, a mining team hits a seventy percent pure vein as another on their team marks another grave in an already crowded graveyard. Professor Sorensen tells his assistant that the planet “knows” and is conspiring against them, but he refuses to leave the vein of ore since the last one inexplicably vanished after their colleague died. The younger spacer leaves the professor and returns to base, but just like Braun (the man who marked the grave), he is vaporized.

Well, that’s a dark start.

I do love the detail in the planet set, though. It beats the socks off of anything from the original Star Trek.

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS Control Room – We haven’t seen that in a while, and it’s the first time for the Fourth Doctor. – our heroes get a distress call and materialize on the evil planet. Sarah Jane is enthralled by something odd, and after she shakes it off, they find the mummified remains of Braun. So, he disappeared at death, but then reappears as a desiccated corpse?

As they investigate the base, a new starship arrives in orbit of the planet, which is now established as Zeta Minor. The ship barely has enough fuel to return home, but Commander Salamar decides to investigate the planet and find the professor’s party. There’s not enough power for a scan, but they transmat down regardless.

The Doctor works on restoring the base’s power while Sarah Jane volunteers to go back to the TARDIS and retrieve the spectromixer, which will determine where they are. Sarah Jane returns to the TARDIS just as the starship’s landing party arrives, and they lock the TARDIS doors with a clamp and transmat it up to the starship. They then encounter the professor and display terrible trigger discipline and muzzle control during their discussion. Seriously, he keeps his weapon pointed at the professor the entire time with his finger on the trigger.

The professor takes the landing party to the base where they all encounter the Doctor, and the spacers take the Time Lord captive as they investigate the strange happenings. Back in the TARDIS, Sarah Jane tries the doors again and finds herself on the starship. She is taken prisoner and interrogated, and the ship commander is skeptical of her story since Zeta Minor is so remote. Salamar decides to land the ship and continue the investigation. The professor explains that the killings started soon after the team arrived and they mostly came at night (mostly). A paranoid Salamar decides that the Doctor and Sarah Jane are to blame, and orders their execution. Luckily, they escape through a window, but they encounter a strange neon semi-transparent creature.

A ship’s sentry tries to shoot the creature, but it deflects the shots and dematerializes the man. A desiccated corpse appears in his place and the creature vanishes. Sarah Jane explains that this is the strange feeling that overwhelmed her before, and the Doctor has a bad feeling about this. The ship’s crew discover that the Doctor and Sarah Jane have escaped and sound the alarm. The travelers run, and the crew open fire and provide their best stormtrooper impersonation by missing every shot.

The commander sends a drone to search for the fugitives. Their analysis of the corpse shows complete dehydration, almost like freeze-drying. Like that astronaut ice cream they sell at Kennedy Space Center, and probably just as tasty. The professor wants to leave since his mission – to find a new source of energy to replace their dying sun – is complete. The commander says that his new mission – to eliminate hostile alien forces – takes precedence. What is he, a Dalek?

The Doctor and Sarah Jane discover a pool of liquid that doesn’t reflect light. The drone finds them, and crewmen arrive to apprehend them. The crewmen roughly search the travelers, and one falls into the pool. There is no splash, and he continues to fall as if the pool were really a bottomless pit.

Sorenson loads his samples as the travelers are returned to the ship and interrogated. The Doctor explains that the planet is the boundary between the universes of matter and anti-matter. By coming to the planet, the boundary has been breached. The travelers are dismissed and rudely shoved into the quarantine chamber with the TARDIS and the ore samples. Sarah Jane suggests leaving, but the Doctor explains that this extends beyond the planet now. It could result in the destruction of the universe.

The Doctor gets all scientific on the ore – I have missed that aspect of the Doctor – and takes a small sample for later. The ship tries to take off, but the engines fail, and the ship is immediately attacked by the neon creature. It picks off guards like redshirts until the commander listens to the Doctor and raises shields. That pushes the creature away and earns him some cachet with the commander and crew. The Doctor explains that the ore is linked to the planet, and that the ship cannot leave without jettisoning the samples and clearly stating an intention to leave without exploiting the planet. The Doctor offers to take that promise to the forces that control the planet, but he must go alone. He goes to the pit (sans scarf) and encounters the neon creature, but the creature pushes him down the hole.

Commander Salamar argues with the professor about leaving the planet, and Sarah Jane goes after the Doctor. As crewmen unload the ore canisters, the professor sneaks into quarantine and sneaks away with a container. The Doctor falls, encounters a large neon creature, and then climbs out of the pit. Sarah Jane finds him, but he is delirious and half-conscious. Salamar see the duo on the drone’s camera feed, and sends crewmen to retrieve them. Meanwhile, the smuggled ore possesses the professor.

The travelers end up in the ship’s sickbay, and as Salamar attempts to lift off, Sarah Jane assures the Doctor – who promised the neon creature as a Time Lord that they would leave the ore behind – that all of the samples are off the ship. The Doctor is assuaged until he remembers that he has some in his toffee tin, and he takes it to the commander. An unfortunate crewman takes the tin to be jettisoned, but he is attacked by the professor. As the ship attempts to reach escape velocity, there is a significant drag, and the Doctor presumes that more antimatter ore is still onboard.

The professor is drinking some kind of fluid to remain in human form. In an attempt to deflect the investigation, he suggests that the travelers are responsible for the deaths, and Salamar demands (at gunpoint) to inspect the TARDIS as a result. As the commander takes the Doctor to quarantine, the professor remains with Sarah Jane. The professor begins to change, sparking that same wave of unease for Sarah Jane, and he leaves sickbay to attack another crewman. Sarah Jane follows the crewman’s screams and discovers yet another desiccated corpse. The same screams distract the commander long enough for the Doctor to sucker punch him and run to the scene. Salamar follows, assumes that the travelers killed the crewman, and shoots the Doctor point blank. The travelers are taken to the ejection chambers – a futuristic walking of the plank – but they are saved by an attack on the bridge.

The professor is trying to maintain control with his serum, but he spills it, leaving no way to stop his transformation. Meanwhile, Salamar is relieved of command by Vishinsky, a senior crewmember who disagrees with the commander’s assessment of the travelers. Sarah Jane explains the strange sensations around the antimatter to the Doctor, and she rushes to the bridge and recommends closing all of the hatches in the passageways to slow Sorensen’s progress. The Doctor breaks into Sorensen’s quarters and finds the antimatter. Sorensen finds him, but the Doctor holds the professor back and explains that the serum has only facilitated the mutation. Sorensen realizes that he must remove the antimatter from the ship.

Meanwhile, Salamar takes the ship’s neutron accelerator and plans to hunt Sorensen with the deadly radiation. After Salamar kills a crewman who tries to stop him, Vishinsky lets the former commander go. Sorensen goes to the ejector room and attempts to eject himself and the sample, but he transforms before he can throw the lever. Vishinsky informs the Doctor of Salamar’s plan, and the Doctor goes to stop him. Salamar finds Sorensen in the ejector room and uses the accelerator, but Sorensen drains him and uses the accelerator’s radiation to increase strength and multiply. The creatures pass through the hatches and kill the crew as the Doctor reaches the bridge. He takes a pistol – noted – and the remaining ore and sets off to find the original Sorensen. The Doctor shoots him – also noted – and drags him into the TARDIS and restrains him, then sets a course for the planet’s surface.

The TARDIS lands at the pit, and the Doctor and Sorensen struggle on the edge. Sorensen falls in, and the Doctor throws the remaining ore in after him. The creatures on the ship vanish, and the ship stops it’s descent toward the planet. Since the Doctor kept his word, a fully human Sorensen is returned to the normal universe, and they return to the ship in the TARDIS. The professor is still returning to his original self and is highly suggestible, so the Doctor plants the idea of using planetary kinetics as an energy source. The travelers then depart for their appointment in London.

This is the standard creature feature with some added twists like the anti-matter universe, a strong environmental message, and the super-guardians of the planet’s balance. I love the detailed planet sets, and enjoyed seeing a more meaty role for the secondary characters as well.

I’m eager to see how the show reconciles the Doctor’s use of firearms in later stories. Part of me holds to the mythos that the Doctor abhors their presence, kind of like MacGyver, and using one is a breach of his character. Day of the Daleks is a good example. The counter-point, as long-time reader Nathan mentioned in a discussion on Facebook, is that the Doctor may be pragmatic enough to realize that firearms are sometimes the lesser of two evils, but always tries to find a better way. Either way, I’m looking forward to how the classic series handles this.

All in all, this was a fun and entertaining story.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.