Hogan Reviews

We take yet another trip to Peladon as our look at Third Doctor TV stories ends for now. The Monster of Peladon sees Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive at the Citadel for more political satire / on-the-nose analogies, Ice Warriors and everyone’s favourite talking green penis Alpha Centauri. What’s that? You’re bored of the Alpha Centauri / penis gag?! Well, too bad, it’s impossible to resist, especially at six visual episodes…

The main crux of the story won’t surprise anyone who watches the previous Peladon story as once again we deal with a kind but easily swayed ruler (in this case Queen Thalira played by Nina Thomas), unhappy miners who are being treated poorly, Ice Warriors being all suspicious and The Doctor and Alpha Centauri being along for the ride, only this time with Sarah Jane rather than Jo. The key plot of unhappy lower-class miners being poorly treated by the upper-class isn’t a very subtle look at the politics of the time but that’s Peladon stories for you! Gebek (Rex Robinson) is the leader of the miners who is pleading with Queen Thalira and her surprisingly not-very-corrupt Chancellor Orton (Frank Gatliff) for a better and safer work environment but thanks to the Federation needing the Trisilicate as quick as possible all they’ve done is send a man named Eckersley (Donald Gee) with modern mining equipment that will possibly make the miner’s obsolete, and to make matters worse whenever the miners use the equipment a ghostly figure of Aggador appears and kills one of them.

… … … Fine, I won’t say it.

The Doctor and Sarah soon begin to go through the usual riggers of being arrested, freed, still suspected by the Chancellor and Ice Warriors and then eventually figuring out what’s going on… which leads to more prison cells and escape sequences. There’s also a subplot involving Gebek’s second-in-command Ettis (Ralph Watson) trying to use the large “sonic lance” mining tool to take down the citadel and he even manages to incapacitate The Doctor long enough to actually activate it, but sadly for him it just explodes rather than fires.

It’s enough plot for a fun four parter, but sadly at six parts the plot, such as it is, can be slow and given its set on Peladon, which uses the same bland and dimly lit sets as the previous story, it can be hard to get through. There’s only so long Alpha Centauri can go repeatedly worrying about getting locked up and then escaping with Sarah Jane before you start to tap your fingers with impatience. Jon Pertwee went into this story hurt so couldn’t film his own fight scenes to top things off, and the attempt to cover this fact up may have worked with early 70s tube TVs but on a modern flatscreen TV with a cleaned up picture? Not so much! The first person shots of Pertwee trying to react and then cutting to shots from behind his stunt man in a wig don’t blend well, let’s put it that way…

Queen Tharlia is not amused… and her assistant behind her is not arsed at all, seemingly.

The little hut deep in the mines that the Ice Warriors and Eckersley hide in to project the false Aggador images is protected by an alarm that attacks people mentally, which is fine except that the sound and visual effects are really, really annoying for the viewer as well… It’s effective for the wrong reason, I’m not trying to break in! Thankfully they don’t last that long, being used as a cliffhanger here and there, but still… worth mentioning.

The Continuity:

The Ice Warriors final TV appearance until the 11th Doctor era. Crazy, given how much they’re used in expanded media…

*sigh*, here we go again: This story is a sequel to the previous Third Doctor TV story “The Curse of Peladon” and its audio sequels “The Prisoner of Peladon” and “The Ordeal of Peladon”. This story got a direct Sixth Doctor audio sequel in “The Death of Peladon” complete with Queen Thalira, plus there are many other audios set on the planet but I’m not going to list them all at this point!

Overall Thoughts:

If the sound in-studio was like the sound in-show then this scene probably didn’t need much acting…

The Monster of Peladon has its moments but it’s also unescapably dull in many more moments, both due to the stretched plot and the general scenery. Even as a big Pertwee era fan as I am I can’t give this a high score… it’s far from terrible, just dull and plodding, so if you’re looking for a Third Doctor story to pop on there are many better examples, let’s put it that way.

It eventually comes to light that Eckersley is working for Galaxy 5, the current enemies of the Galactic Federation, and is looking for profit from not only selling them the Trisilicate but also taking advantage of the weakened Earth by… taking it over. That’s some lofty goals! He is assisted by the Ice Warriors, who are indeed already back to being the villains, though they’re taken out by the old “turn the heat up to weaken them” trick and then failing to take the Peladon throne by force.

“Yes, I’m sure they won’t suspect you lot. You all look so trustworthy!”

Eckersley on the other hand kidnaps the Queen and heads into the caves only to be mauled by the actual Aggador creature he’d been manipulating the image of, though he sadly kills it the process. The Doctor and Sarah depart soon afterwards.