The Rescue

The TARDIS bring the Doctor, Ian and Barbara to the planet Dido, where a spaceship from Earth has crashed leaving only two survivors: the young orphan girl, Vicki, and her guardian, Bennet. Vicki and Bennet are waiting for a rescue ship from Earth to take them away, but this is a secret they keep from the malicious Koquillion who claims to be keeping them safe from the other people of Dido. The Doctor has been to Dido before and suspects there is something else going on here. Barbara befriends Vicki and tells her that they are here to help her, but is anyone safe from the wrath of Koquillion?

Fresh from the departure of Susan, Vicki is brought in to fill the empty spot in the TARDIS. Unlike Susan, Vicki is as human as Ian and Barbara and on some levels a tad more mature. Except for the fits of teenage girl pique and the sulking. But she seems less inclined to panic and lose her shit than Susan, and manages to keep herself together even with Koquillion screaming in her face and terrorizing her. The Doctor takes a shine to her instantly and manages to coax her out of her teen angst moments (although it's well known that actress Maureen O'Brien was required to do exactly that when William Hartnell would be difficult on set); he's seen early in the adventure turning to address Susan inside the TARDIS and then realizing awkwardly that she's no longer there and Vicki fills the gap Susan has left. For Vicki, the TARDIS crew fill the need for a family.

Interesting bit about Susan: the Doctor obviously misses her but there's nothing akin to guilt here when it comes to her. He did, after all, lock her out of the ship and leave her behind for her own good, but it's referenced by Barbara and Ian that Susan "left". If I were them I'd be worried the Doctor might have a few more lockouts planned. Venusian Lullaby was crafted to fit in before this episode and it works out well in continuity, with Barbara and Ian not dwelling too much on Susan's absence on screen even if as far as broadcasting went it just happened a week ago. There's a sense that The Rescue happens a short while after The Dalek Invasion of Earth instead of minutes later, so the insertion of Lullaby between those episodes fits.

Koquillion is a real piece of work as an enemy; he's frightening to see and he's a coward bully at worst, tossing Barbara off a cliff and keeping Vicki and Bennet on the razor's edge of terror. When help is there, though, Vicki thinks that the arrival of the TARDIS crew will jeopardize things and says everything was fine before they arrived, that she could be free of Koquillion on her own terms. Bennet is none too pleasant a man to deal with; hiding in his cabin in the crashed ship partly paralyzed from an explosion which killed many of the Dido people and all the other crew members on the ship including Vicki's father. Yeah the ship - it's shown as a long tube like a rocket broken in half, but the interior we see doesn't really have much more room inside for anyone besides Vicki and Bennet. How many other people were on this thing? And where's Vicki's room? It's like she has to sleep in the living room and Bennet gets the only proper bedroom on the ship.

With Vicki Joining at the end of the show, the TARDIS is back up to a full crew by its early standards (three companions with the Doctor make the place feel kinda crowded in later years). New adventures awaited in the next televised episode, The Romans, with a direct lead in at the end, but before we go there, BBC Books have cleverly presented a novel to slip in between the stories...

NEXT EPISODE; BYZANTIUM!