The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Planet Of Fire

PLANET OF FIRE (Part One) 23/02/2024 

The Master is back, but lots happened this episode before he turned up for the cliffhanger. Most surprising was the reappearance of Kamelion! I'd completely forgotten he existed until his mechanical screams interrupted the Doctor and Turlough's chat about Daleks and Tegan. Nothing was said about what he'd been up to since the last episode of The King's Demons but he'd plugged himself into the TARDIS and was 'spasming' (apparently) having picked up a distress call. Turlough recognised it as coming from something or somewhere called Trion and sabotaged it, but they followed the signal to Earth and what looks like Lanzarote.

This is where the new companion, Peri, is holidaying with her mother and Marine Archaeologist stepfather, Howard. She's bored and wants to go to Morocco with a couple of English boys she's met (she's American), but Howard wasn't keen and conned her into going out to the boat he's diving from and stranded her there so she'll miss her flight. He didn't bank on her stealing a modern artefact brought up from the submerged ruins they're investigating (on the assumption it was platinum and she could use sell it for the cash Howard had promised her to travel with) and swimming to shore,

To be honest, some of this feels convoluted in retrospect. Following the signal from said artefact, the Doctor and Turlough had already met Howard and his colleague, Curt, and, while waiting to triangulate where the signal was coming from, Turlough saw Peri in trouble (cramp?) and swam out to save her, taking her to recover in the TARDIS instead of staying on the beach or going for help. He found the artefact in the plastic bag she'd put her clothes in and opened it to get at the data core. The Doctor returned to the TARDIS and found Turlough hiding the core under a towel, but plugging the core into the console just caused an explosion and Kamelion ended up taking them to the planet Sarn (which we've seen bits of throughout the episode) for... reasons, whilst latching on to the image of Howard in Peri's fever dreams (which suggest something very dodgy about her stepfather) and taking his form. He and Peri turned up in the console room, and the Doctor and Turlough went out to explore at which point Kamelion stated 'contact' had been made and turned into the Master!

He'd mentioned 'contact' earlier so it shouldn't have come as a surprise, really. But then there's the fact that Turlough has a brand on his shoulder that matches the symbol on the head of the artefact, and Malkon (the Chosen One of a religious group on Sarn) has the same brand! The people of Sarn have been given a general introduction with religious leader Timanov preparing for a fiery test by his god, Logar, which seems to be linked to the volcano their temple appears to be built into. Meanwhile, a bunch of atheists have climbed the mountain (which is sacrilege) and found that Logar isn't there, and for this blasphemy Timanov wants Malkon to order them to be burned alive (since only a Chosen One can order that). It's quite an interesting set up and a nice contrast with the previous story. Religious fanaticism, mysterious distress calls, gorgeous locations, evocative music... and a lot of flesh on show!

First we had Howard in nothing but shorts and a neckerchief showing off his fit, tanned body - definitely no dad-bod going on there! - then Peri stripped down to a slender, pink bikini, before Turlough stepped out of his shorts to reveal a pair of budgie-smugglers underneath so he could swim out to help her! I'm not complaining, but it did seem a bit daft that he kept his shirt on, especially when we'd already seen most of Howard and Peri! The men on Sarn have an interesting wardrobe, too, with most wearing very short shorts which seem to be tucked into their crotch so as to accentuate their bulge. Compare this to the women who, like Timanov, wear full length robes. There also seems to be a strong suggestion of Middle Eastern influence on the costume design, possibly to underline the religious elements of the script. And after over a year, Turlough is finally out of his school uniform! I've no idea why they didn't do this sooner as it seems very silly for him to have clung to a symbol of the school he hated, and surely it must have begun to smell? The Doctor also got a new outfit in the form of a flattering waistcoat which he only seemed to wear on location in Lanzarote.

Speaking of which, the locations are spectacular! No tawdry Dutch backstreets here, but sweeping vistas, mountainous landscapes, the truly beautiful interiors at Mirador del Rio, and the views across to La Graciosa - it all looks absolutely stunning and like nothing in the show before! Imagine if Snakedance had been filmed on location somewhere like this! We certainly have some of the most beautiful locations and incredible direction and cinematography the series have seen. I hope it isn't restricted to just this episode!

PLANET OF FIRE (Part Two) 24/02/2024 

Well, then! It turns out that Turlough comes from a planet called Trion of which the civilisation on Sarn seems to be a part. Not only that, but the brand he and Malkon have on their shoulders is a Misos Triangle which is apparently a custom on Trion, whatever that means. Turlough also believes the crashed spaceship where Timanov found Malkon as a child was his father's ship, so does this mean he and Malkon are related? He's also very cagey about contacting Trion, even though it seems they established the settlement a very long time ago and set up equipment to tap the volcanic energy within the planet, and that the volcano upon which the settlement seems to be built is about to erupt!

This story looks absolutely amazing with Kamelion in either the form of the Master or a silver-faced Howard chasing Peri across the volcanic landscape of Sarn/Lanzarote. It's more cinematic than I've ever seen the show, and looks and feels exotic and modern, a bit like a Duran Duran video. The subject matter is pretty good, too, with Timanov clearly a religious fanatic who's devoted his life to worshipping Logar and who's more than happy to cast unbelievers into the planet's fire to burn to death. Peter Wyngarde is putting in an excellent performance, though, making the zealous priest quite sympathetic despite his dialogue showing him to be something of a psychopath. The show doesn't often tackle religion, but Timanov is coming across better than Lolem, Neeva or Catherine de Medici! 

I think the locations, set and costume designs really help to sell this story, too, giving it the feel of an historical or religious film like Sebastiane or The Last temptation Of Christ. Peri is coming across very well, if a little whiney, standing up to the Kamelion-Master - "I'm Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can!" - although the Master's inability to hypnotise her may be down to him trying to do it via Kamelion. We've actually seen very little of the Master so far. His TARDIS materialised near the start of the episode but an earth tremor knocked it onto its front trapping him inside. All we've seen of him is when he's been inside his TARDIS linked to the contraption he's using to control Kamelion. To be honest, I think Anthony Ainley is much better off playing Kamelion as he gets to wear a more flattering dinner suit instead of his usual Panto garb, which Howard also wears.

I like the conceit that the unbelievers think they've found the fabled 'Outsider' in the Doctor and Turlough who represent what they believe - that the 'Outsider' is no God but just a man - while Timanov and his acolyte encountered Kamelion/Howard with a silver face who then became the Master, thus 'proving' their belief that the 'Outsider' is a holy messenger from Logar. It's a clever way of portraying Timanov as more than just a fanatic and allows him to keep his dignity whilst supporting his convictions. As much as it's clear that there is no deity called Logar and everything has a logical, scientific explanation, everything Timanov and his followers have seen support their beliefs and this helps portray them as something more than a bunch of nut jobs.

One thing this story has made very clear, thus far, is that, having introduced Kamelion in The King's Demons, the production team really didn't have any excuse for not integrating him into the series so far. We've seen the rather static prop a couple of times in the last two episodes and the rest of the time he's been running around played by Anthony Ainley and Dallas Adams. Just a brief appearance in Warriors Of The Deep to establish he'd chosen this form or that would have allowed another actor to play the part. Still, I think that may have led to an overcrowded TARDIS in most of the stories this year.

PLANET OF FIRE (Part Three) 01/03/2024 

I'm really enjoying this story so far, but I'm wondering if it's for the right reasons. It looks amazing, has stunning location work, is introducing new companion Peri very well - she's coming across better than Tegan did in Logopolis - just threw a curveball at the cliffhanger, and is developing Turlough's backstory more than any other serial since Mawdryn Undead - more even than that story, to be honest! And that's just it. Shouldn't we already have had hints about him being from Trion (a planet the Doctor, oddly, seems unfamiliar with) or at least something about his family? After all, Tegan could barely go a season without bumping into one of her relatives! And didn't Turlough want to go back home at the end of The King's Demons or something? He certainly didn't seem as bothered about getting in touch with them as he has in this story, which sort of implies nobody had actually bothered to think about it, even Peter Grimwade who was responsible for both this and Turlough's debut. I know the series can often be formulaic, but there's always (well, mostly) been a tendency to develop the companions with little bits of information seeded throughout different stories, be it Vicki growing up in a house near an old castle, or Jo pulling in favours from an uncle to get a job with UNIT, Harry having once worked at Pompey barracks, or Tegan not liking ice cream when she was three, but aside from learning that his people had encountered the Tractators, we've really not learnt anything about Turlough apart from that he's an alien orphan and his education at Brendan Boarding School was dealt with by a 'very strange' solicitor in London. Despite this, Mark Strickson has managed to make Turlough at least likeable, but I feel providing such an abundance of information in his tenth story is too little too late.

I also wish they'd got him out of that school uniform sooner. Given that he hated the place, why didn't he raid the TARDIS wardrobe like Tegan did? It may have helped develop his personality at least a little! Nevertheless, it was nice to have the Doctor questioning him about his background this episode, even if he didn't provide any answers.

We did get a few answers as to what's going on with the Master, though. The machinery shown to the Doctor and Turlough by the unbelievers controls the sacrificial fire in Sarn's temple, and Turlough used it to rescue the Doctor and the rest from being burnt alive at the start of the episode. Kamelion took Peri, Timanov and the believers to access the Master's TARDIS after Malkon was shot for demanding that the sacrifice be stopped and, inside, got Peri to help carry his 'control box' into the console room. The Master's TARDIS looks pretty cool in these scenes, by the way, being a black-painted version of the Doctor's.

Taking his TARDIS to a control room within the volcano which taps the Numismaton gas (which has healing properties) that is generated within the planet, the Kamelion-Master got it working (blasting blue flames from the top of the volcano) but was tricked by Peri who locked him out of the Master's TARDIS and opened the control box - to find a miniaturised Master within! A bit of an unexpected twist, but it explains why the Master has brought them all to Sarn. I also noticed that Sarn, with its healing blue flames, doesn't sound a world away from Karn, with its sisterhood also guarding a healing flame within a cave in the mountains. It's probably not intentional, but it would be easy to see Sarn in 1984 eventually becoming Karn in the far future where Professor Solon tried to resurrect Morbius. Food for thought!

PLANET OF FIRE (Part Four) 02/03/2024 

I really wish they'd done more with Turlough. If the audience, if not the Doctor, had known some of is backstory earlier on, it could have led to him being a much more interesting and relatable character. It turns out he was a political prisoner following a civil war on Trion. His mother was killed and, when the other side won, he was exiled to Earth and kept under watch by a Trion agent posing as Turlough's family's solicitor in Chancery Lane, and his father and brother, Malkon, were exiled to Sarn where they were to rule the diminished indigenous population whilst regulating the machinery which kept the planet stable. Unfortunately, the ship crashed and Malkon was the only survivor, so there was nobody to keep the planet in check and Malkon was raised as the Chosen One with no knowledge of his true identity. We don't even know if Malkon is his real name, although I suspect not since Turlough didn't immediately recognise the name and came to the conclusion he was his brother only because he was the only infant who would have been on the ship. It also raises the question of how old Vislor Turlough (that's his full name!) and Malkon are. Malkon can't be any younger than 15 (Edward Highmore is 22 but could conceivably be that young to look at) so the civil war must have ended a maximum of 12-13 years ago. Turlough was at a public boarding school so should be 18 at the oldest, but he was a Junior Ensign on Trion and old enough to be treated as a political prisoner, so how old is he?

Anyhow, the Master had been trying to upgrade his Tissue Compression Eliminator and had an accident which had shrunk him but, unlike with Auntie Vanessa et al., not killed him. There were some vaguely comical bits where Peri was chasing him around his TARDIS with her shoe like he was a cockroach after she flipped his control box over, tipping him out, but in the end he managed to regain control of Kamelion and get what he wanted - sort of. Apparently, he's been linked to Kamelion since they met on Xeraphas (hence, I suppose, Kamelion lying low in the TARDIS all this time. Hmmm.) and, when the accident happened, Kamelion came to his aid. He needed to stand in the Numismaton gas on Sarn in order to reconstitute himself (and more) which, having regained control of Kamelion, he did. However, the Doctor and Amyand (one of the unbelievers) made their way to the control room within the volcano and... well, I'm not quite sure what happened.

The Doctor and Peri overpowered Kamelion with some Trion equipment giving him the equivalent of a heart attack which was, frankly, a bit harsh. Then the TARDIS arrived c/o Turlough (prompted by Amyand who returned to the temple in a Trion fire retardant hazmat suit to get through the lava which had trapped them in the control room); the Doctor, on Kamelion's request, used the TCE to kill him (I'm letting the fact that it's a Tissue Compression Eliminator and Kamelion isn't made of tissue slide because it always shrinks people's clothes as well as their bodies, and Kamelion shrank two Trion hazmat suits with it when threatening Peri last episode), then the Doctor sent Peri into the TARDIS while the Master ranted from the blue flames about how he was going to have his revenge until the blue flames became yellow again. The Doctor then stood wordlessly watching the Master plead for help until the fire apparently burnt him up. Then the Doctor got in the TARDIS and buggered off as the control room blew up!

Is the Master finally dead? It looks that way, but it wasn't much of a final confrontation. In fact, it wasn't a confrontation at all! The Doctor just stood there and watched! Maybe he's had enough, following his inability to off Davros, and thought it better to just let events follow their course. If he is dead, then that's four main cast we've lost in as many weeks - first Tegan, then Kamelion, the Master and Turlough.

Because Turlough has gone back to Trion. Things, apparently, have changed, and exiles from the civil war are no longer persecuted. He wasn't aware of this until after he'd chosen to return to Trion with his brother and the Sarns, which makes his character development throughout this story so much more interesting but also so much more frustrating. We've never really been given much information about Turlough and his characterisation has always tended to be rather flimsily along the lines of 'unreliable' and 'a bit cowardly'. Much of the time he was treated as Secondary Companion Given The B Plot and, as such, tended to be a rather blank character used as a sounding board for guest characters to exposit at. Here, though, not only did he get out of that horrendous school uniform, but he showed courage (rescuing Peri when he was meant to be helping the Doctor and expressing frustration at how Humans always get themselves into trouble), diplomacy (telling Timanov they needed his leadership skills to gather everyone to evacuate the planet), intelligence, compassion and self-sacrifice. It was quite a big moment when, the Doctor having activated the Numismaton gas in the temple in order to heal Malkon, Turlough grabbed his unconscious brother from the idiot carrying him with a cry of "Well don't just stand there!" and carried him into the flames. Turlough has had more motivation, personality and agency in the last four episodes than in the last nine stories, although flashes have surfaced here and there. It's frustrating that Mark Strickson wasn't given this type of material to work with more often (or at all) because over the last two weeks it's become clear that he should have been a great companion. As such, we just got the Doctor Who equivalent of Star Trek: Discovery's Airiam (you'd think writing would have improved in 34 years!).

Nevertheless, this was a really good story looking at religious extremism in a fairly compassionate way. Upon facing Amyand in the hazmat suit and mistaking him for Logar, only for Amyand to remove his helmet, Timanov didn't have a crisis of faith but saw it as an unbeliever's trick and chose to remain on Sarn to face Logar's test of his faith rather than leave with heretics, which was entirely right. It would have been wrong for him to go, as it would have undermined the character's faith and motivation throughout the preceding episodes. And we never saw Sarn, or even the temple, explode, so maybe Timanov met the real Logar after all.