Planet of Fire Part Three

The one where Peri discovers a mini Master...

Some of the dialogue Peter Grimwade gives Anthony Ainley to say as the Master is ridiculously turgid and overblown, yet somehow Ainley gets away with it. "Your cremation will deprive me of our periodic encounters," he says, delivering effortlessly what might sound awkward coming out of anyone else's mouth. "Your puny mind no longer affects me," he adds. It's comic strip bad guy dialogue, but Ainley gets away with it.

Ainley is actually rather good in Planet of Fire. Usually his performance is ten times grander than anybody else's, resulting in the pantomime villain image he has, but here he's thought about the fact K-Master isn't the real Master, and adjusts his performance accordingly. Granted, he adjusts it to send it even further into madness, but that feels right because this is the real Master (wherever he be) trying to hold on to his control of Kamelion. Ainley has a presciently cat-like presence, his eyes wide and demented, and you actually believe this man would stop at nothing to achieve his aims. He's more than happy for the Doctor to burn alive, and is unusually brutal in the way he drags poor Peri around. "Journey's end, Doctor!"

"Life must be very complicated for you at the moment," says the Doctor, amusingly. Peri has managed to tell Turlough (off screen) what she experienced in the TARDIS (ie, her stepfather kept turning into a cackling bearded loon and a silver robot), so Turlough works out that what they think is the Master is actually Kamelion in disguise. He tells Malkon to get this information to the Doctor, which he just about manages to do before he slips into a deathly coma for the rest of the episode (it's just as well because Edward Highmore is terrible).

The Doctor tries to sever the Master's mind-link with Kamelion to show the people of Sarn that he is not really an agent of Logar. "Silver puppet jumping on a string. String cut!" he says, but unfortunately only succeeds in bringing about Kamelion's psychomorphic fringing, a silvery version of Howard. This plays into the Master's hands even more because the Elders see a silver man as the Shining One, another representation of Logar, so the Doctor's plan sadly fails. Peter Davison is magnificent in these scenes where he faces off against K-Master, staring Ainley down as the Doctor tries to appeal - against all odds - to his old friend's mercy. That fails too, and he's banged up in the flame chamber, where his mental link with Kamelion is cut. Half-time score: Master 1 -  Doctor 0.

K-Master drags Peri off with him as hostage, and gets the Sarns to place his toppled TARDIS upright so he can get inside (he's given up using the Doctor's TARDIS it seems). Peri seems very clued up in this episode all of a sudden, as if she's been briefed by the writer and director and had advance sight of the scripts. She goes from the pathetic ingenue of parts 1 and 2 to a vital part of the Doctor's team in part 3. She seems to know who everybody is, what their names are, and their importance in proceedings. She even claims to know how to control Kamelion's mind. It's all a plot convenience by Grimwade, who needs Peri to do and say things useful now, rather than remain the clueless outsider that she would realistically still be at this stage.

Yet again, Mark Strickson steals the show as Turlough continues to take a lead and becomes quite Doctory at times, refusing to tell all he knows about the Trions and his father's ship. "I think Malkon is my brother," he reveals, but declines to expand too much further. He uses the Mesos Triangle on his arm to claim control over Sarn as the new Chosen One, and Strickson does not shy away from the confrontational scene he has with Peter Wyngarde's Timanov, clearly undaunted by the fact he's acting against a small screen legend. I will say that it is a little hard to take Turlough's proclamations too seriously while he's dressed in little shorts, pumps and stripy socks!

The more Turlough demonstrates he knows more than he's telling, the more he riles the Doctor. When the Doctor wonders what the substance on the cave walls is, he rounds on his companion: "I want to analyse the deposit on the walls. Unless, of course, you can tell me what it is?" Turlough claims ignorance, yet looks characteristically suspicious. And then this most affable of Doctors stares his friend straight in the eye and states: "If you're holding back anything that will aid the Master, our friendship is at an end. Is that understood?" And then he strides off, clearly displeased. There remains a tension in the air between them after this, demonstrated in the scene where the Doctor wonders why the Master wants numismaton gas. "Perhaps he plans to bottle and sell it," Turlough says, a hint of disdain in his voice. "Even if I were in a better humour, that wouldn't be funny," admonishes the Doctor. Their friendship is definitely strained.

The episode degenerates into one of those where people chat on TARDIS sets - plural, because we also see the Master's beautifully black TARDIS interior (it's like the Doctor's, but "infinitely superior, as I am to that galactic philanthropist"). It gives me disturbing Time-Flight vibes. In that other Grimwade story, everything boiled down to two Time Lords swapping bits of TARDIS circuitry, which was incredibly dull, and here too we have comparators and temporal stabilisers being stolen. It's just not interesting, nobody cares about bits of TARDIS, we want action!

The K-Master makes it to the fire cave at the heart of the volcano, where he can control the flame that rises from it, and also the odd tremor. The K-Master unleashes "a modest thunderbolt", causing the Elders of Sarn to rush into the Doctor's TARDIS for safety, just like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the Fifth Doctor's era. Not a single Elder (not even the one that's allowed to speak) passes comment on the fact it's bigger on the inside, which is yet another unforgivable oversight by Grimwade and director Fiona Cumming.

There's a nice moment where Wyngarde gets to act as Timanov recalls the day, when he was a boy, that he claimed to see Logar on the mountain. Cumming affords an all too brief shot where Wyngarde is in medium close-up and his wonderfully lined and expressive face gets priority. Notice also Wyngarde's quivering finger as he casts his mind back, a tiny detail that tells us Timanov was deeply affected and remains in awe of this memory. Wyngarde was a great actor, but is given too few opportunities to show it in this story. And don't get me started on the offensively wasted Barbara Shelley (she gets 19 lines in the entire four episodes)...

The Master seeks the restorative properties of numismaton gas, the blue flame at the heart of the mountain. The Doctor reckons the Master wants it to aid some kind of rebirth (remember, the Master's still occupying Tremas's corpse). Peri, meanwhile, refuses to aid the Master's machinations and orchestrates a rather amusing escape which results in the K-Master being locked out of his own TARDIS. And when she lifts the lid off the Master's "control box" she finds a mini Master inside, reduced to roughly the size of an inch. It's a marvellously unexpected twist, one you genuinely do not expect. "You escaped from my slave, but you will obey me or die!" the Master rather optimistically tells Peri as she gazes down on the vole-sized villain.

First broadcast: March 1st, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I love the rising tension between Turlough and the Doctor as the latter begins to distrust his companion.
The Bad: I can really do without people stealing bits of TARDIS in order to delay the plot.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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

Planet of Fire is available on BBC DVD as part of the Kamelion Tales box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Kamelion-Demons-Planet/dp/B002SZQC6Q