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.

Mawdryn Undead Part Three

The one where Mawdryn and his mutants emerge from their chrysalis...

Tegan, Nyssa and the 1977 Brigadier are arguing over whether they think the mutated creature wandering about the TARDIS dressed as the Fourth Doctor is actually the newly regenerated, Sixth Doctor. The Brigadier and Nyssa are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but good old Tegan remains highly suspicious, and as ever, says all the things I'd be saying or thinking. She points out that the Doctor regenerated into a human last time, but Mawdryn ripostes: "Is a Gallifreyan human?" There's nothing to say that the Doctor wouldn't regenerate into a non-human form. One thing's for sure though: Mawdryn's clothes regenerated with him, like when Hartnell became Troughton and Baker became Davison. Unless those flowing robes are part of Mawdryn...?

Mawdryn insists on going back to the ship alone, claiming the presence of another being could harm its restorative qualities. Tegan is adamant she's not letting Mawdryn/ the Doctor go alone, and physically stops the compliant Nyssa from opening the TARDIS doors. Tegan holds her resolve as long as she can, but loses in the end, and Mawdryn is allowed to leave alone. Janet Fielding is wonderful in these scenes, demonstrating why Tegan is one of the best companions of the classic era. She has opinions, she has guts, she has principles, and she sticks by them. She's fiercely loyal, but also fiercely independent.

Mawdryn Undead Part Two

The one where Tegan meets a past version of the Brigadier, and the Brigadier meets a new version of the Doctor...

Thanks to the transmat control unit exploding, Turlough fails to smash the Doctor's head in with a boulder. The TARDIS then materialises, momentarily, before disappearing again, which shouldn't have happened. Then we see the TARDIS materialising in the same place again, but the Doctor and Turlough are no longer there. It's a puzzling course of events and no mistake!

Rather wonderfully, the Brigadier arrives at the obelisk with Hippo, and the Doctor's face lights up as he spots his old friend and comrade, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Sadly, it's not quite the reunion hoped for, as the Brigadier doesn't appear to know who the Doctor is, in this fifth incarnation or any other. Curiouser and curiouser...

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!