Planet of Fire Part Four

The one where Turlough returns to his home planet...

Part 4 is packed with answers to questions which were never really asked in the first place, concerning Turlough's origins and why he was masquerading as a public schoolboy in 1980s England on Earth. The Mesos Triangle is revealed as a branding applied to political prisoners from Trion, a planet once subject to a civil war. Sarn was a prison colony where Trion insurgents were sent, and the ship in the forbidden zone was piloted by Turlough's father. Turlough's mother was killed in the Trion civil war, and his family (including baby Malkon) was exiled to Sarn. However, Turlough was sent to Earth (reason unspecified), and monitored by one of many agents Trion has peppered about the galaxy: "An agrarian commissioner on Verdon, a tax inspector on Darveg... and a very eccentric solicitor in Chancery Lane."

It brings Turlough's story full circle, harking back to the solicitor in London that Brendon School's headmaster used to deal with ("A very strange man he is too"), as mentioned in Mawdryn Undead. Turlough was in exile on Earth, a prisoner of the regime that ruled Trion. So why was Turlough so keen to return to his home planet all that time, if he was in exile and the son of a political revolutionary?

Planet of Fire Part Three

The one where Peri discovers a mini Master...

Some of the dialogue Peter Grimwade gives Anthony Ainley to say as the Master is ridiculously turgid and overblown, yet somehow Ainley gets away with it. "Your cremation will deprive me of our periodic encounters," he says, delivering effortlessly what might sound awkward coming out of anyone else's mouth. "Your puny mind no longer affects me," he adds. It's comic strip bad guy dialogue, but Ainley gets away with it.

Ainley is actually rather good in Planet of Fire. Usually his performance is ten times grander than anybody else's, resulting in the pantomime villain image he has, but here he's thought about the fact K-Master isn't the real Master, and adjusts his performance accordingly. Granted, he adjusts it to send it even further into madness, but that feels right because this is the real Master (wherever he be) trying to hold on to his control of Kamelion. Ainley has a presciently cat-like presence, his eyes wide and demented, and you actually believe this man would stop at nothing to achieve his aims. He's more than happy for the Doctor to burn alive, and is unusually brutal in the way he drags poor Peri around. "Journey's end, Doctor!"

Planet of Fire Part Two

The one where Peri steals a bit of the TARDIS...

The opening scenes of part 2 might be confusing for someone just tuning in. Anyone who missed part 1 will be utterly baffled by the procession of bizarre images presented as K-Howard morphs into K-Master, then into the real Kamelion, then back to the K-Master. But then there's another Master - the real Master - controlling Kamelion from somewhere else, somewhere very green with turtle shells hanging on the wall. Oh, and if all that's not enough to get your head round, there's a version of K-Howard wandering around with silver skin too. I reckon Auntie Margaret's probably turned over to ITV by now.

Anthony Ainley is very good though, dressed in suave "gangster" suit and giving a quieter, more understated performance than usual. It's mainly when he's playing K-Master that he's more effective - deliciously menacing and threatening, sometimes even brutal in the way he manhandles Peri - as he's given some traditionally overripe lines to say as his "real" self (as well as the tiresome "my dear Doctor", there's also the pantomime villain material Ainley got so bogged down with, such as describing the TARDIS as a "preposterous box" and Peri as "positively evanescent").

Planet of Fire Part One

The one where there's an awful lot of bare flesh...

Wow! Whoever decided to film a Doctor Who story in Lanzarote was a genius. Lanzarote - a Spanish island off the coast of North Africa - has such a naturally alien-looking landscape due to the volcanic terrain, and allows sweeping vistas for as far as the eye can see that knock British quarries into a cocked hat. The colours on Lanzarote are stunning, and perfect to stand in as an alien planet such as Sarn. The episode opens with two scantily clad young men clambering across the rocky terrain, and we soon cut to another scene filmed at Mirador del Rio, a lookout opened just a decade earlier which looks both very alien and also very Spanish! The fact it looks like nothing ever seen before in Doctor Who makes the location a roaring success.

Just when you think your eyes couldn't boggle any more - at either the stunning location or the amount of flesh on display - Peter bloody Wyngarde turns up! Seen here in flowing priestly robes and handlebar moustache, Wyngarde was a mainstay on British TV and cinema screens in the 1960s and 70s, until an unfortunate case of gross indecency with a crane driver destroyed his reputation overnight. Nevertheless, Wyngarde always had a compelling screen presence, so it's great to have him cast in Doctor Who, against type.