Colony in Space Episode Four

The one where the Adjudicator turns up and is revealed to be...

Isn't it great how the Adjudicator's spaceship looks like it's being flown by a seven-year-old boy playing with his toys? It wobbles toward the surface of Uxarieus on a wavering trajectory, then turns from a spaceship into a rocket to flip up and land upright! Elon Musk would be proud!

Meanwhile, aboard the IMC ship, the colonists have taken control and set about gathering vital evidence against Dent to present to the Adjudicator. Winton finds a machine which projects giant images of lizards (complete with sound effects!), as well as the polystyrene claws that Morgan fitted to the servo robot's arms. The colonists must feel really stupid to have fallen for this kind of mummery! Even more frustrating is Winton's swift loss of control when he lets Morgan reach for a pistol in Dent's "secret compartment", and they tumble all the way back to square one.

The Adjudicator arrives wearing grand robes, and it turns out that he is actually... the Master! Shock horror! This would have been a much, much better revelation if we hadn't been told in the very first scene of the first episode that the Master was going to turn up at some point. The only surprise is that it's taken him this long to do so.

So what does he want this time? He presides over the tribunal with elan, listening to the colonists' and IMC's arguments for ownership of Uxarieus, and finally sides with the miners (it'd be more of a surprise if he didn't). Even if the Adjudicator was the real deal, IMC would probably have won based on Ashe's utterly pathetic defence (when Winton suggests he mentions the murders, he simply gives up and tells him to "leave it").

Throughout this story, Robert Ashe has been the voice of fairness and honesty, always playing it by the book, even when the opposition isn't. Winton, on the other hand, is ready to step up to Dent's challenge and break the rules in order to win, but Ashe refuses to support him at every turn. So no wonder Winton decides to take control away from Ashe at the end of the episode, organising a trap for Dent and his men and raising arms against them. It's dog eat dog now, and I can't really fault Winton's conduct. He tried Ashe's ways, but they failed, so now it's time to try a different tack.

It's interesting that the Master isn't expecting the Doctor to be on Uxarieus; he doesn't form part of his plan. Given the earliest opportunity, he intends to shoot the Doctor and Jo and claim they were "victims of stray bullets" during the shoot-out. He realises the Doctor poses a major threat to the success of whatever his plans are (he seems to have an interest in the Primitives' city, so we can assume it all has something to do with the doomsday weapon plans he stole from the Time Lords).

Talking of the Primitives' city, what a rollercoaster ride that is! It provides not one, but two classic WTF moments in quick succession, first when the alien priest turns around to greet Jo (who then screams her head off), and later when the alien guardian emerges from his wall cabinet. I've not really mentioned the design of the Primitives so far, but they are pretty basic, with green leotards for bodies and rigid fibreglass masks for heads. They don't look remotely realistic, and there seems little attempt to make them so.

The alien priests and guardian are something else again! The sweet little priest looks like a papier mache sculpt which is only half-finished, while the guardian is, well, it's a hand puppet! There's no denying the utter ridiculousness of the guardian, who sits on a throne which trundles out of a wall on a little tabletop made of MDF. His voice is silly, he looks very silly, and the way he comes out of the wall like a fold-out bed is very, very silly (I mean, what is he doing behind the wall?). No wonder the Doctor and Jo look utterly gobsmacked (Pertwee in particular looks appalled!). How any of the production team could have thought this suitable for transmission is astounding. It's one of the least convincing aliens to ever appear in Doctor Who!

Still, we do learn a little bit about these aliens during the Doctor and Jo's visit, including that they used to be a very advanced species who had mastered flight (all discerned from their bizarre historical frieze, a sort of Bayeux Tapestry in Perspex). The Doctor ascertains that there are "three different races who are mutations of the same race", but Jo insists there isn't time for philosophising, so we don't get any further on with that...

The closing Gunfight at Colony Corral is a pretty full-on affair, seeing as they're all firing rifles and machine guns at each other just feet apart. Norton - who earlier killed the third member of the Leeson family to die in a matter of days - at last gets his comeuppance (Roy Skelton was excellent as this scheming double-crosser, by the way).

First broadcast: May 1st, 1971

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The introduction of the Master and two new alien species steps proceedings up a gear, something that's truly needed right now.
The Bad: The guardian puppet is simply appalling!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 13
Neck-rub tally: 5

NEXT TIME: Episode Five...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Five; Episode Six

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/05/colony-in-space.html

Colony in Space is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Colony-Space-DVD/dp/B005CW11AO