Meglos Part Two

The one where Meglos, disguised as the Doctor, gets all spiky...

It's tiresome enough having to watch the same bit over and over again as part of the chronic hysteresis, but to have the looped footage reprised from last week as well really takes the biscuit! There's something incrementally irksome about watching Tom Baker pretend to trip over time and again, and by the time they manage to escape the loop - by rather half-heartedly re-enacting it all themselves - I was eternally grateful to the great god Ti myself!

What puzzles me about the chronic hysteretic loop is that it's the same moment happening over and over again, but the people trapped within it remember it happening. So the Doctor and Romana have a linear memory of the amount of times they've looped, and said those words and done those things, but their physical selves keep looping backwards to start again, essentially reliving the same thing repeatedly. So are they looping back in time (as the story suggests) or simply being forced to re-enact the same moment? It's confusing, because by rights they shouldn't remember they're looping, although Meglos does say their only respite is the amount of time between the loops. Still, I'm just glad it's over with, because it was such a ridiculous way to delay the Doctor actually entering the narrative.

It's not until almost 12 minutes into part 2 that the TARDIS materialises on Tigella and the Doctor and Romana make an entrance into the story proper. That's halfway through the serial as a whole. There's really no excuse to banish the star of the show for this long.

While the chronic hysteresis has been keeping our heroes busy, Meglos has morphed into the Doctor and travelled from Zolfa-Thura to Tigella in the Gaztaks' ship. The ship's lift-off would have been so much better if it didn't look like it was literally flying away on wires. Again, it's such a shame that otherwise wonderful model work is marred by something as simple as a wobbly take-off. After all the efforts to try and compete, or at least bask in the wake of, the success of Star Wars, you'd have thought the effects guys could have made their spaceships take off convincingly by now?

Meglos is played with a subtle belligerence by Tom Baker, who for the second story running has been afforded an opportunity to do some actual acting. In The Leisure Hive he had to play the Doctor as a wizened old man, and here he has to play an alien marauder with the Doctor's appearance. It's essentially a different character completely, and Tom pulls it off admirably. He gives Meglos a brooding danger, as if he could explode with rage at any moment, and his anger and frustration is bubbling just below the surface. The scene where Lexa insists "the Doctor" swears an oath to the Deon god is a case in point. "I?" quivers a clearly affronted Meglos. "Swear allegiance to Ti?" At this moment, his eyes wide with anger and fear, you imagine Meglos is going to blow his cover and refuse to do it, but he deftly overcomes his pride for the greater good.

Finally alone in the power room, Meglos attaches a gizmo to the giant glowing Dodecahedron (the gizmo Brotadac tried to steal in part 1) and then walks casually out. When Lexa and Caris investigate the power room, they find that the enormous glowing orb - the central power source and religious icon for the whole of Tigellan civilisation - has vanished.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Romana (who's changed into a gorgeous burgundy and lace get-up) and K-9 investigate the jungle of Tigella. The Doctor makes off for the city, but Romana gets separated and soon falls victim to the "lush aggressive vegetation" she spoke of in part 1. The bell plants have grasping tendrils and presumably carnivorous intent, but it's a rather unimaginative threat to have so soon after the killer wolfweeds of Chloris (The Creature from the Pit) and the man-trap vegetation of Eden (Nightmare of Eden). The theme of "aggressive nature" would continue with the poisonous spiders hatching out of the riverfruit on Alzarius (Full Circle). And of course, Meglos is a pretty aggressive plant too!

The Tigellans put out an APB on "the Doctor", who's stolen their Dodecahedron, and this stresses Meglos out a bit, enough to cause his true spiky self to emerge. Cecile Hay-Arthur's cactus make-up is so good, and the image of Tom Baker's Doctor with a green, spiky face is striking. It's a fantastic image, especially for publicity purposes. Indeed, it was considered so good that Madame Tussaud's even made a waxwork of the Meglos Doctor, which was added to their Doctor Who Experience exhibition after the story was broadcast.

Tom Baker is frightening as Meglos. He stalks the gloomy corridors of Tigella, slipping into dark nooks and crannies, and Terence Dudley - a director not famed for his flare - has him lurch forward toward camera, his face contorted, and emerge round corners in classic Universal Horror style. I'm sure kids were terrified of the Meglos Doctor, it's such an arresting, almost scarring vision. I'm surprised Meglos isn't remembered more in the public consciousness as 'The One where the Doctor's a Cactus', like The Green Death is 'The One with the Maggots' and The Empty Child is 'The One with the Gas-Mask Child'. Mind you, there was only 4 million watching Doctor Who by this point!

As Meglos escapes, the real Doctor arrives at the city, only to be apprehended by Lexa, who presumes him to be the same Doctor who just stole her god. The Doctor recognises Zastor, despite it having been 50 years since they last met, but doesn't recognise Lexa, who is the spitting image of his old friend and travelling companion Barbara Wright. Again, it's such a shame Babs never made a return to the show, and now it's far too late of course (Jacqueline Hill passed away in 1993, aged just 63). Mind you, here we are, 40 years later, and it's still possible to get Ian Chesterton back into the show, but it's never happened. Such a shame.

Out in the jungle, Romana is on the run from the marauding Gaztaks (I say marauding, they're actually quite benign), and ends up cornered outside their spaceship by Brotadac. Remarkably, Frederick Treves, who so far has played the part with a generous helping of comedy, turns Brotadac into a Nazi commandant and shrieks: "She's seen too much! Kill her!" What's with the sudden German accent, Freddie?

First broadcast: October 4th, 1980

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Tom Baker's spiky cactus make-up is really sinister.
The Bad: It takes far too long for the Doctor and Romana to get involved in the story.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 24

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four

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: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/08/meglos.html

Meglos is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Meglos-Tom-Baker/dp/B004ASO950