The Monster of Peladon Part Two

The one where the Doctor and Sarah are sacrificed to Aggedor...

It's only part two and already this serial is struggling to tell a compelling story. It's just so dull. Apart from it being terribly bland and brown to look at, the actual plot is paper thin, and realised with very little flair. As I watch, I can see that poor Jon Pertwee - just weeks away from the end of his tenure - seems bored to tears by it all, walking through it on autopilot and giving as much to it as he's getting out of it. He's a leading man with nothing to lead.

Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah remains as feisty as ever thankfully, refusing to trust anybody else to save the Doctor from the rockfall, and going into the tunnels alone to find him. Naturally, she gets lost, but happens across the trisilicate refinery, where she sees a shadowy figure moving behind the frosted glass. She's then assaulted by a psychedelic psychic alarm which renders her unconscious. Eckersley claims there's nobody inside the refinery, but notably doesn't go so far as to prove it by showing Sarah inside. The moving figure behind the glass is quite spooky, and about the only moment of intrigue in the entire episode.

Most of this episode is taken up by characters travelling along murky corridors, fighting in murky corridors, or being captured in murky corridors. It's really poor script-writing, because beneath all of the half-hearted sword fights and punch-ups, there's absolutely nothing of any consequence happening. When something is achieved, such as the Pel miners gaining entry to the armoury and stealing all of the ray guns, it's done with very little directorial panache. This story is directed by Lennie Mayne, who also helmed The Curse of Peladon, but the two serials are barely comparable in style. Maybe Lennie was on autopilot too?

I don't have any sympathy for the miners either. They appear to be hard-done-by, quite downtrodden and mistreated, but they're written as two-dimensional bully boys. Ettis has infinitely more sway over the miners than their real leader, Gebek, but none of them come across as real people. When they get the guns from the armoury, they waste no time in murdering the soldiers who come to stop them. There's no regret, no expression of remorse, they just shoot them down in cold blood. And then we see that Ettis is more than willing to run a sword through poor Alpha Centauri, again in cold blood, just so that writer Brian Hayles can generate a bit of jeopardy. It's false jeopardy, it doesn't earn its place in the story.

It's written so poorly. Hayles gives people dialogue that's only ever said in low-budget BBC sci-fi dramas, like "Seize her!", "Your whole plot is clear to me now", and the hopeless "What new folly is this?" As Harrison Ford said to George Lucas on the set of Star Wars, you can type this shit, but you can't say it!

The cliffhanger sees the Doctor and Sarah thrown into a pit beneath the temple as sacrifices to the judgement of Aggedor, and lo and behold, the real Aggedor creature emerges from the gloom. It's lovely that the BBC Costume Department had kept the Aggedor and Alpha Centauri outfits, but so far, it's not feeling like it was worth it.

First broadcast: March 30th, 1974

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The shadow behind the refinery window is spooky, especially when the lights snap off.
The Bad: It's just people running around, this is not drama.
Overall score for episode: ★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 33
Neck-rub tally: 15

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part 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/2014/06/the-monster-of-peladon.html

The Monster of Peladon is available on BBC DVD as part of the Peladon Tales box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Peladon-Tales-Monster/dp/B002SZQC70