Vengeance on Varos Part Two

The one where Peri is turned into a bird...

"Here comes the acid bath."

"I hate this bit."

There's an attempt at the top of this episode to explain why the Doctor is apparently dead from heat exhaustion when there's no physical reason to cause it. I struggled with the sense of it in my review last episode, and here writer Philip Martin tries - and, in my opinion, fails - to explain. "His mind thought he was dying of thirst," says the Governor. Sil continues: "His body agreed, so die they did."

Sorry, but no. It still doesn't work for me. "His body agreed"? Where does science come into this? I truly struggle with the idea that convincing the mind of something results in a physical, and deadly, effect on the body. You can convince the mind of things through suggestion, hypnosis, or simple lies, but the body can only respond to a physical cause, surely? The Doctor feels thirsty and hot, but he's not really either of those things, so why would his body respond accordingly?

Vengeance on Varos Part One

The one where the Doctor visits a planet where torture and death are entertainment...

After a good-looking model shot of the planet Varos (spoilt by the fact it's on videotape and looks precisely like a model), the next scene is of a handsome bare-chested young man being tortured by a beam of light, sorry a heat ray. Shackled to the wall and subjected to a 'laseriser', this is the rebel Jondar, played by none other than Sean Connery's son, Jason. More of him later (although there's plenty of him here too).

Watching Jondar's misfortunes on TV are bickering married couple Arak and Etta (the latter played by Sheila Reid, who'd go on to play Clara's gran during the Steven Moffat era). The torture and killing of rebels, criminals and miscreants on Varos is televised to entertain the general population in a twisted form of Big Brother that would make George Orwell proud. This is Doctor Who doing Nineteen Eighty-Four, complete with snappy contractions such as ComDiv and ComTec. At last, a script with a bit of depth and intelligence behind it, perhaps?