Doctor Who Season 20 was released on Blu-ray a short while ago so it’s time to look at the story I haven’t seen in the longest time off the set, in this case I couldn’t remember which out of this and the following story, Terminus, I hadn’t seen so I went with the earliest of the two *shrugs* I mean, I’ll review them all eventually… Mawdryn is an odd one, mainly because the role of returning character changed from Ian Chesterton to the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart but the role in the story of “older teacher” wasn’t changed, making for an odd out-of-character rewrite for the Brig that infamously cemented the “UNIT Dating controversy”. It’s also the story that debuts companion Turlough and boy, he is not very likeable to start with… Let’s take a look!
The story starts off focused on a boys school where the prototypical “naughty student” (who’s also clearly too old to be a student…) Turlough (Mark Strickson) manages to peer-pressure his apparent friend “Hippo”, otherwise known as Ibbotson (Stephen Garlick) into stealing a car for a joy ride, a joy ride that ends with the car crashing. While unconscious Turlough is visited by The Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall), the literal personification of evil in the Doctor Who universe who wishes to get revenge on The Doctor for the whole Key to Time thing from a few seasons ago but can’t be seen to directly interfere. We find out that Turlough is in fact an alien stranded on Earth and so the Guardian offers him a way off-planet in exchange for murdering The Doctor, who he claims is evil and needs to be stopped. Even so Turlough is unsure but he quickly says yes before waking up and finding The Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) furious at the state of his vintage car.
Turlough talks to the Black Guardian via this weird crystal thing, because… I don’t know really. He used telepathy earlier…
Meanwhile in the TARDIS The Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) go through the all too familiar experience of having a nice time before the TARDIS suddenly buffers them about and forces them to land somewhere, in this case a luxurious looking spaceship that has been travelling for millennia. Around the same time Turlough follows his new master’s instructions and finds a transport capsule that takes him up to the same ship, where he eventually meets The Doctor and co. and feigns ignorance. The Doctor decides to take the capsule back to Earth with Turlough in order to find the recall device while sending Tegan and Nyssa down afterwards but something goes amiss and while the former end up in 1983 and latter end up in 1977. This is where the Brig comes in as The Doctor meets him in 83 and his old buddy has no memory of the time traveller or his miraculous TARDIS while the recently retired version of him in 1977 who meets Tegan does. The Doctor manages to bring his memories back and surmises that a very traumatic event must have caused the memory loss…
“Brigadier! … What’s happened to your moustache?!”
Tegan for the record ended up running into the Brigadier because she and Nyssa found an unconscious and badly burned man laying in the TARDIS in ‘77 and assumed it’s the Doctor going through regeneration again so Tegan went to get help. Obviously we the viewers know this man is no such thing but the companions and the Brigadier have all seen the phenomenon so have no real reason to doubt it, especially when he starts claiming to be The Doctor. Eventually the fact the “new body” has its brain exposed and he’s acting like a bit of an arse starts making them doubt him so we eventually find out he’s the titular Mawdryn (David Collings) and comes from the spaceship from earlier and he soon heads to the craft with Tegan, Nyssa and 1977 Brigadier while soon after The Doctor, Turlough (who for the record has tried to kill The Doctor a few times but either failed or couldn’t bring himself to do it) and the 1983 Brigadier also head back to the same ship…
The story is very weird to watch for a long-time viewer as myself because seeing the Brigadier as a happily retired teacher is just wrong and seeing Turlough as essentially a school bully who’s doing deals with as close to the devil as you can get is also odd, though at least that is intentional due to how his character develops rather than a betrayal of any kind. The story is fine overall, a few location changes and keeping companions and Doctors apart works well in giving everyone at least a little something to do but nothing really grabbed me.
The Continuity:
And Tegan and Nyssa thought the previous regeneration crisis was bad…
In the opening TARDIS scene Tegan complains about having had nightmares about the Mara, linking this directly to “Snakedance”, the story that aired just before this one. The Black Guardian first appeared in the Key to Time series of six stories during the Fourth Doctor TV run, specifically appearing in person in the final story “The Armageddon Factor”. This story also forms a lose trilogy with the following two serials, “Terminus” and “Enlightenment”.
I’ll also mention again that this really buggered up the UNIT dating stuff, as the Third Doctor UNIT stories were supposed to be set “in the near future” of the 70s, which most people assume to mean 80s, but here the Brigadier states he retired in 1976. It’s one of a few examples that just muddle everything up when it comes to dating the UNIT stories from the 70s, hence the “UNIT Dating Controversy” that still gets debated about (and cheekily referenced on the show itself!)
Overall Thoughts:
The Doctor comes to the realisation that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing…
Mawdryn Undead has the debut of a companion, the return of the Brigadier and the Black Guardian as an over-arching villain but somehow it doesn’t really come together as anything special. The Brig stuff just doesn’t feel right due to him suddenly being a retired teacher and Turlough really comes across as a snivelling knob for most of the story, though again at least that was intention at the time… still doesn’t make it any more fun to watch. The actual story of Mawdryn and his crew was good though! Average is the best way to describe it, I think.
It soon turns out that Mawdryn and his fellow exposed-brain buddies are a race of people who stole Time Lord technology to give themselves immortality but in classic monkey’s paw fashion it gave them eternal life but in bodies that constantly died and kept them in a state of painful undeath until the next species came along that they could restructure their bodies on (which is what happened with Mawdryn on Earth). All he and his kind want is death but to do that they need a Time Lord to give up one of his lives for each of them, and wouldn’t you know it there are exactly as many people on the ship as The Doctor has lives remaining. The Doctor refuses to give his lives to people who did such a stupid and illegal things to themselves so they, of course, capture Tegan and Nyssa and infect them with a virus that will only be cured via the same machine that will give them death.
The two Brigadiers touch hands while Tegan couldn’t look any more bored if she tried. It’s only her life on the line after all!
The Doctor becomes resigned to his fate and tells his 83 Brig to throw the switch, meanwhile the Black Guardian tells Turlough to stop the 77 Brig from coming into contact with his future self as it could ruin everything but that Brig pushes Turlough aside, walks into the room and touches hands with his future self. The resulting paradoxical energy then takes the place of The Doctor’s lives so he, Tegan and Nyssa are safe and Mawdryn and his kind get to die. The effects of seeing himself and the paradox energy are what gave the Brig his memory loss, so that’s also tied up. Despite The Doctor clearly being onto him he welcomes Turlough aboard as a new companion regardless…
Hogan Reviews 