The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Mission To The Unknown

Doctor Who - Mission To The Unknown (09/10/05)

 Well, that was an odd one. No Doctor, no Vicki, no Steven. Just three men and some Daleks (the only way you knew this was Doctor Who!).

 It was really quite grim. One of the men was shot dead my another, Marc Cory, within the first few minutes as he was infected and turning into a Varga Plant (which he did do anyway), and another died about 15 minutes later.

 Meanwhile, the Daleks have a gathering of alien Delegates at a meeting on the planet and they're organising to take over the Universe, starting with Earth (for some reason - maybe because they didn't have a Delegate?).

 Anyhow, Marc Cory recorded a message when he found out that the Daleks were on Kembel (he's a Special Space Security Agent) but was hunted down and killed by the Daleks before he could send it off! Really quite a dark episode.

 I guess this is where the Doctor, Vicki and Steven come in. I have to say, this was a massive improvement on the last Dalek story. Here they were scary (see June 5th for my opinion on them in the other one); here they were menacing and the Delegates were cool, too. I just hope they remain this good. It's hard to believe that this is Terry Nation again. His past achievements have been very hit and miss (mostly miss!) - perhaps he's learning from his past mistakes?

Comments

  1. phutty11/8/18 10:37

    A bizarre little interlude, all the more so when followed by The Myth Makers, but at the same time a great 'teaser' for the epic to come. And yes, it's very grim. (Which, sadly, half the epic to come will be anything but when it turns into The Chase of Marinus, Part III.)

    I've always felt it was a shame they had the foresight to distance this from TDMP but then didn't think to do the same with the two halves of The Ark, for example - the first couple of eps, then The Celestial Toymaker, then the last couple of eps, say. Or maybe they did but the production deadlines were just so tight that it wasn't feasible.

    (Getting ahead of myself in this case, I wish they'd done something like that with The Seeds of Doom as well: having the first two eps as the teaser, straight after The Android Invasion, then Morbius - they try to get back to London but the TARDIS steers them wildly off-course - then the final four eps of Seeds. But then I also wish they'd scheduled things enough in advance in Season 13 that Nicholas Courtney et al. had been available for both Android and Seeds as well. It would have made that season just as serialised as Season 12 in its way: the 'mini-arc' of trying to get back to UNIT HQ from the end of Zygons to Android, then if Android and Seeds had featured the Brig it could have ended with a direct lead-in to the start of Seeds, then another mini-arc of getting back to London via Brain to the last four eps of Seeds. Would have been far more satisfactory in my view. Plus it would have been nice to have the Brig, Harry and Benton in Seeds as well.)

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    Replies
    1. Mooncalf15/8/18 20:45

      That's a great idea and it's certainly a shame they didn't think of taking that approach, but then I guess that wasn't the way the show was produced back then, despite there often being a definite progression of events throughout a season (like early in Season 13 with the 'called back to Earth/this isn't Earth, it's another planet/right place, wrong decade/wrong place (though it looks right) right decade' thing going on. And it's a massive disappointment that the Brigadier is last seen in Terror Of The Zygons, regardless of how great it may be. I had similar thoughts as I watched it in 2015/16 - but that's all to come, as you say.

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