Mawdryn Undead Part Four

The one where the Doctor agrees to sacrifice the rest of his lives for his companions...

Mawdryn and his seven miscreant mutants have asked the Doctor for help: is he willing to donate all eight of his future selves to release them from their perpetual mutation? "I can only regenerate 12 times," the Doctor explains. "I have already done so four times." Well, that's what you think, Doctor, but let's not let the entanglements of The Timeless Children muddy what's happening here. Mawdryn is asking the Doctor not just for help, but to murder his eight future selves. No Colin, no Sylv, no Paul, no Chris, no David, no Matt, no Peter, no Jodie, and definitely no John. The Doctor would die for ever at the end of his fifth life.

The Doctor refuses, and I don't blame him. These scientists are in this state through their own meddling, after stealing technology from Gallifrey and then experimenting for centuries to try and live forever. But what they have done to themselves is irreversible. Mawdryn and his cronies aren't villains as such, they are merely victims of their own scientific curiosity and hubris. But at the end of the day it is their own fault, and it's a lot to ask the Doctor to sacrifice his future to give them theirs. "Sometimes you have to live with the consequences of your actions," the Doctor says, sadly.

But Mawdryn has one massive trick up his sleeve, albeit one he didn't plan on purpose. When Tegan and Nyssa helped the burnt, charred and ailing Mawdryn from the capsule into the TARDIS in part 2, they were unwittingly infected with the same affliction that besets the alien scientists. Over the centuries of experimentation, they somehow managed to turn the genetic defects caused by the metamorphic symbiotic regenerator into an actual virus. Disease as a side effect.

This means that when the Doctor tries to take the TARDIS forwards or backwards in time, Tegan and Nyssa either age and mutate, or regress to children. Sheelagh Wells' make-up for the ageing companions is only seen fleetingly, but it's wonderful and very convincing (she'd return to Doctor Who in 2005 as make-up designer for David Tennant's first 14 episodes). Director Peter Moffatt cast 12-year-old Lucy Benjamin (later to play Lisa Fowler in EastEnders) as young Nyssa, and Sian Pattenden as the young Tegan, and cast pretty well, because they do look alike.

The Doctor has to sadly resign himself to the fact that Mawdryn has him over a barrel (or a metamorphic symbiosis regenerator). If he wants his friends Tegan and Nyssa to continue travelling in the TARDIS with him, he must sacrifice his future regenerations to the scientists. Despite his somewhat blank, open face, Peter Davison does manage to convey the Doctor's inner turmoil as he comes to terms with the gravity of what he feels he must do. There's a distance, a remove, in his expression. You can tell he doesn't want to do this, but feels that he must. It's a heck of a wrench for him - this means the end of his fifth self will be the end of him - but his compassion wins out.

Luckily, the Doctor is saved from having to sacrifice cat badges, panama hats and jammy dodgers to oblivion when the Brigadier from 1977 - who's been wandering around the ship aimlessly for too long now - meets the Brigadier from 1983. They reach out and touch and ZAP! The Blinovitch Limitation Effect, first mentioned in Day of the Daleks, dictates that two temporal versions of the same entity cannot meet (basically ruling out the act of crossing your own timestream). If they do meet, the outpouring of energy is enormous and destructive (even the Black Guardian's afraid of it).

Luckily, the two Brigadiers touch at precisely the same millisecond that the Doctor's Time Lord energy is about to feed into Mawdryn et al, resulting in the Doctor not losing his future, Tegan and Nyssa being purged of the virus, and Mawdryn and his pals being awarded their much-craved demises. It's a bit too convenient, but at least it works as a solution, and means that having the two Brigadiers wandering around all this time had a good reason and outcome. It has a rather nice cyclical quality.

The younger Brig is returned semi-conscious to the obelisk in 1977, where he is found by Dr Runciman, who, as we know, will go on to diagnose a mental breakdown due to overwork, neatly tying back in to what the older Brig told the Doctor in part 2. Perfect!

Other stuff swimming about in my head:

• The Brigadier raises a very good point when he asks why he and the Doctor haven't been infected by Mawdryn's virus. "I don't know," replies the Doctor, which is basically writer Peter Grimwade saying he can't be bothered to think of a good reason.
• The Doctor mentions reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, which - amazingly - is only the third time this iconic phrase had been said in Doctor Who. The Third Doctor only said it once during his era (The Sea Devils), and the Fifth Doctor twice (here, and in Castrovalva), so really, it's more the Fifth Doctor's catchphrase than the Third's!
• The Black Guardian is hellbent on Turlough preventing the two Brigadiers from meeting, saying that if he doesn't he threatens to "destroy you all"! He's the Black Guardian, he's the Guardian of Darkness and Chaos, so why can't he do a bit more himself, rather than leave everything to a public schoolboy? I know he said he didn't want to be seen to be involved, but who the hell is looking? And who's going to tell off the Black Guardian? Argh!
• As Mawdryn fades away, his final words are: "Can this be death?", ominously foreshadowing some of the Fifth Doctor's final words in The Caves of Androzani: "Is this death?" Interesting to note that it would have been death if Mawdryn had had his way...
• It's a really small but important moment when Tegan pauses to thank the Doctor for being willing to sacrifice himself for she and Nyssa. The Doctor is silently humbled, but this exchange (hot on the heels of their beautiful moment of tenderness at the end of Snakedance) is vital to make all this sci-fi claptrap mean something real.

The end of the episode sees the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa bid farewell to the Brigadier in 1983, which I think is something of a shame because it would have been rather marvellous to have the Brig back on the team for a while, don't you think? OK, things might get a bit crowded if Turlough's staying on too, but the presence of an older, more pragmatic companion would change the dynamic aboard the TARDIS no end. The Brig and the Doc would become confidantes, and probably annoy the others by constantly reminiscing about old times. I'd have loved to have seen Nicholas Courtney continue his run in Doctor Who, perhaps leaving after the events of The Five Doctors. Imagine it: a five-story run with the Brig and the Fifth Doctor!

The last shot of the story is that awful two-dimensional spaceship blowing up, which I find very satisfying!

Mawdryn Undead is a breathlessly clever, timey-wimey romp which blends splashes of nostalgia with plenty of new ideas (and it's a million times better than Grimwade's first script). It's great to have the Brigadier back - twice! - and it's fun to explore the Doctor's regenerative process, and see a very real threat posed to his future. If not for the Brigadier's impeccable timing, we'd never have had The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani or the TV movie. Just think of it...

First broadcast: February 9th, 1983

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The make-up for the aged Tegan and Nyssa.
The Bad: The Black Guardian's fretting just demeans him as a force. He should be in this a lot less.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 7.8 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Terminus...

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

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.

Mawdryn Undead is available as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy BBC DVD box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Guardian-Terminus-Enlightenment/dp/B002ATVDBY