Mawdryn Undead Part One

The one where the Brigadier turns up as a teacher at a private boys' school...

The first five minutes of this new story spend time setting up a new character called Turlough, but Turlough is not all he seems. On the surface he's a pupil at Brendon School for Boys, a bit of a troublemaker (and, evidence suggests, a bit of a swine), but it's not long until we discover he's not actually human, not from Earth at all. He may look like a handsome public school boy, but really he's a creature from another world. Weird, but I like it...

But Turlough is something of a git. For a start, he's a bully, constantly having a go at his supposed pal Ibbotson (aka Hippo), calling him names (names which aren't even true, such as "fat") and purposefully preying on the poor lad's self-confidence. OK, Hippo's a bit whiney, but he doesn't deserve the treatment Turlough dishes out. Turlough's shady!

By the way, a turlough is a type of disappearing lake found in Ireland, from the Irish 'turlach', meaning 'dry place', and is also an Irish boy's name meaning 'one who aids or assists' (but pronounced "tur-la"). I'm assuming the naming of Doctor Who's Turlough is for the latter meaning, so should really have been pronounced Turla all along.

Anyway, as well as being a bully, Turlough also turns out to be a car thief and a dangerous driver, as he and Hippo pinch the 1929 Humber 16/50 open tourer (Imperial model) and take it for an illegal spin around the local country lanes. The most shocking aspect of this is Paddy Kingsland's simply HORRIFIC score accompanying the journey. It's so mind-bendingly twee and jaunty that I feared my ears would seize up in defence. What is it with awful incidental music accompanying people driving vintage motor cars in Doctor Who? I remember a similarly offensive theme by Dudley Simpson when the Third Doctor was at the helm of Bessie in The Time Monster. Kingsland's score is most offensive though, like some awful 1980s sitcom theme.

When Turlough crashes the Humber, he's knocked unconscious and has a trippy out-of-body experience in which he looks down on his prone self while floating in a nightmarish swirling green and blue void. Season 20 has done floating in voids pretty poorly so far (remember the Matrix in Arc of Infinity?), but this weird video effect feels like it's shredding my eyeballs on a cheese grater. First Mawdryn Undead assaults my ears, then it has a go at my eyes with this truly awful video effect.

Turlough is joined by who I assume to be the Black Guardian (the all-powerful being that tried to pinch the Key to Time off the Doctor in Season 16), but I can't be 100% sure as he's dressed like a human corvid, as if he's off to a fancy dress masque thrown by Lady Gaga. Actor Valentine Dyall has a superb voice for this type of role, silkily evil and saturnine, and coupled with his saggy septuagenarian face and droopy eye, he's perfect casting for the embodiment of evil. He's changed a bit since The Armageddon Factor, but it's intriguing to have him back, perhaps seeking that revenge on the Doctor he promised when we last saw him.

The Black Guardian makes Turlough promise to murder the Doctor, in exchange for helping him leave Earth and return home (wherever that is). Bizarrely, the Black Guardian says he cannot kill the Doctor himself as he cannot be seen to be involved. Seen by who? Who's watching? Who's more powerful than the Guardian of Darkness and Chaos? He can't mean the Time Lords, surely? They're small fry for a Big Bad like him.

Then, while we're trying to process all this, only the bloody Brigadier pops up! Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart hasn't been seen in Doctor Who since 1975's Terror of the Zygons, and it's both wonderful and surprising to see him back in Doctor Who's 20th anniversary year. It was originally written to be Ian Chesterton, of course, which would have made much more sense as Mawdryn Undead is set in a boys' school, but seeing as William Russell was unavailable, it makes sense that the Brig would retire from UNIT to become a schoolteacher (the production team briefly considered Harry Sullivan, but I suppose the Brigadier was more high profile).

Anyway: the Brigadier! The Humber Turlough pinched was the Brigadier's car, and it's interesting to note that the retired UNIT officer has chosen a vintage roadster in police box blue to gad about in in his dotage. It's lovely to have Nicholas Courtney back, although his presence is rather wasted as the narrative leaps from Turlough's story to the TARDIS and back. The Brigadier's presence feels almost incidental, not given the importance he deserves (they didn't do it much better in Battlefield, where we stumble across the Brigadier shopping at a garden centre).

When we join the TARDIS crew, there's a huge info-dump about Tegan and the Mara which really should have happened at the end of Snakedance, not at the start of a brand new and unrelated story. It's nice that many of the stories in this era follow on and reference one another, like an ongoing soap storyline, but this feels terribly out of place and confusing. The Mara should have been boxed off in Snakedance, not dredged up again here. Mawdryn Undead should have been set some time after Snakedance, giving a nice passage of time between the two stories for Tegan to recover, heal and strengthen. It's nice to see Tegan's concerned about it, but it has no place five minutes in to the first episode of a fresh story.

Some gobbledegook happens, and the TARDIS is forced to materialise aboard a spaceship which is heading straight for it. On the TARDIS scanner, the spaceship looks awfully two-dimensional, like a drawing of a 3D object with the perspective badly skewed. It's a weird effect, and another example of how hit and miss the special and visual effects could be in the Davison era. However, once we see on board the ship, it's a different story altogether. The interior design is an art deco palace, like one of those grand hotel lobbies you see in classic Hollywood movies. The red and gold palette gives it the look of a museum or art gallery, or as Tegan puts it, the Queen Mary. This spaceship is like a luxury ocean liner - "designed for pleasure", as Nyssa says - with ornate statues and carvings, and ostentatious decorations and adornments. Set designer Stephen Scott played an absolute blinder on what was sadly his only Doctor Who job. The fact he went on to be production designer of Guillermo del Toro's stunning Hellboy films is no surprise.

The Doctor discovers that the abandoned spaceship is in perpetual orbit, and six years previously (1977) a transmat capsule left the ship for Earth. When the Black Guardian instructs Turlough to go to the obelisk at the top of the hill in Brendon's grounds, and activate the camouflaged transmat capsule, the two plot strands begin to merge. The capsule that left the spaceship is in the grounds of Turlough's school, and when Turlough steps inside, it disappears and returns to the ship. It's a clever and seamless way of bringing the two narratives together, and when the Doctor returns to Earth in the capsule, the audience realises he's one step closer to being reunited with his old friend, the Brigadier.

I love how Turlough wanders nonchalantly into the TARDIS and starts analysing the controls (desperate to return home). Then the Doctor rushes in and starts flicking switches and turning dials before realising there's someone in the room with him! The two strangers pause and slowly look up at each other. "Who are you?" the Doctor asks.

The speed at which Turlough is accepted by the Doctor is alarming, but Tegan and Nyssa are less welcoming. They interrogate Turlough with suspicion, Tegan in particular struggling to buy the fact that a human public schoolboy would walk into a transmat capsule, beam to a spaceship in perpetual orbit, then board a time machine that's bigger on the inside disguised as a police box. Maybe she's right, but as Nyssa points out, it's not all that different to how a curious Australian air hostess got involved in a fight to save the universe by wandering on board the TARDIS...!

I like how the Doctor seems to take Turlough under his wing quite readily. Maybe he sees himself reflected in the boy (Mark Strickson does share a similar silhouette to Davison, so much so that he was told to dye his blond hair red to differentiate between the actors), maybe he's still thinking about the loss of Adric, but the Doctor seems happy to have Turlough along. The shot of the Doctor and Turlough standing side by side at the TARDIS controls, equal and opposite to Tegan and Nyssa across the room, is marvellous, telling us in visual terms what might have taken too long through dialogue.

Some quick observations about this very busy episode:

• I love how the Doctor reacts to Nyssa's costume change. In Snakedance when she asked him what he thought of her new outfit, he was oblivious, but this time, when she doesn't refer to it at all, the Doctor seems intrigued, mildly puzzled (the brief moment he stares at Nyssa's cleavage is inexplicable).
• Tegan's on top form in this episode, coming out with a real howler when the Doctor claims: "Statistically speaking, if you gave typewriters to a tree full of monkeys they'd eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare. Now, you and I know that at the end of the millennium they'd still be tapping out gibberish..." Tegan interjects: "And you'd be tapping it out right along side them. I only asked you a simple question!" Fantastic!
• But Tegan also comes out with some puzzling ideas sometimes, such as when the Doctor hopes he can turn off the transmat beam to free the TARDIS, and she says: "I don't fancy a non-stop mystery tour of the galaxy." Why not? Isn't that what travelling with the Doctor aboard the TARDIS is?
• When the headmaster tells the Brigadier that Turlough's parents are both dead, he mentions that he's always dealt with a solicitor in London, "a very strange man he is too". The way this is written, acted and presented just makes me think the solicitor in London is the Master, but that could well be a red herring, intended or otherwise.
• When the Doctor ascertains that somebody transmatted off the spaceship down to Earth six years ago, the viewer might automatically assume it was Turlough, who we know is not from Earth. Again, writer Peter Grimwade throws in a red herring, because not long after that we find that Turlough knows nothing of the ship (unless he's somehow forgotten?).
• In reference to the transmat capsule, the Brigadier says that "a solid object just can't dematerialise", which rings loud alarm bells for the viewer, who knows that he should think the opposite, having experience of the Doctor's TARDIS. It's a clever little moment that tells us something is amiss.
• Why is the transmat capsule bigger on the inside? This suggests Time Lord technology, so maybe the Time Lords are involved, or perhaps I'm right about the Master?
• Why do Tegan and Nyssa fetch wicker chairs from their bedroom to sit in the clinically uncomfortable control room (facing camera, obviously).

The cliffhanger sees Turlough pick up a boulder, and is urged by the Black Guardian to bring it smashing down onto the unsuspecting Doctor's head. After all the terrors and dangers the Doctor has faced in his meanderings around the universe - Daleks, Cybermen, lasers, beheadings and infernos - having your head bashed to a pulp by a public schoolboy is not the most epic way to go!

First broadcast: February 1st, 1983

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Stephen Scott's design of the spaceship interior.
The Bad: That AWFUL music from Paddy Kingsland when Turlough's driving. My ears wanted to commit suicide.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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