Carnival of Monsters

The TARDIS materializes in the hold of a ship making its way across the Indian Ocean to Bombay in May of 1926, which perplexes the Doctor as he set the ship's co-ordinates for somewhere completely different. His suspicions about where he and Jo have landed are roused when the ship is menaced by a marine dinosaur and the occupants seem to be repeating all their actions over a loop of a few minutes. In reality, the ship is just one of many exhibits in an illegal Miniscope which has been taken to the planet Inter Minor to introduce the highly bureaucratic ruling class and the underling Functionaries to the concept of amusement. While the Doctor and Jo fight for survival inside the machine's workings, on the outside ambitious political foes scheme to find a way to use the Miniscope to their advantage to seize power.

In typical Robert Holmes style we have the action split up between not two but three double acts of characters playing off each other; there's the standard Doctor and Jo, and outside the 'Scope are the Lurman showrunners Vorg and Shirna and the Inter MInor officials Orum (who is stipid) and Kalik (who is sly and scheming). The story unfolds at a good pace on either side of the 'Scope's walls with the Doctor only finally interacting with the Lurmans into episode four, close to the climax, but it never feels like it's two separate adventures at all.

Despite its title, though, the show is a bit light on actual monsters. We get glimpses of Ogrons and Cybermen in there (the latter would have made for an interesting alternative version of the story once they realized what was going on, and they would) but otherwise our monster sightings are down to the monstrous rubber masks slapped on the extras playing Functionaries and the vicious caterpillar monster Drashigs. The Drashigs are said to be the worst monsters ever anywhere in all times... and we never hear of them again in the regular series. Not that they are really that compelling - they are pretty mindless and hunt by scent, and they make a really horrible screaming noise when they roar. They made for an interesting action figure hand puppet when they were made into toys though. Still, monster quota notwithstanding there's a not so subtle comment on animal cruelty in the script, with the Doctor likening what's happening to him and Jo and all the other beings in the 'Scope as nothing more than a day at the zoo for whoever is on the outside. Granted modern zoos do their best to imitate an animal's natural habitat, although how natural it is to be stared at by hundreds of people ever day remains to be seen; so far that's really humans watching reality shows. But yes, there's our editorial moment of the show, and then back to running for our lives.

Another fun bit of continuity here is something that is unique to Robert Holmes scripts: aliens refer to humans as Tellurians. There's no further mention of Inter Minor in the series after this one but every so often the term Tellurian does pop up, leading to a notion that Holmes' space stories all take place in a certain area of space where interlinked societies have come up with the word themselves. Inter Minor is by no means an Empire but it does have influence in other worlds and those other worlds have defense treaties. I kind of picture one of those maps you get at the start of epic adventure fantasy novels with Inter Minor over here, the Third Zone over there... you get the idea.

But hey the Doctor and Jo are once more in time and space. The TARDIS works again.... sort of. But the Doctor is free and enjoying himself, and the adventures are going to come fast and furious... or as much as a BBC budget will allow. But between the episodes of this televised series there's a lot of extra material; Prisoners of the Lake was just one of many audios, Wages of Sin just one of many books. What was just a 5 story season has been increased threefold, adding all sorts of extra fun to the Doctor's return to space and time.

NEXT EPISODE: THE HAVOC OF EMPIRES