Just four weeks after the great stylistic overhaul of the series, and we're offered a cheap-looking story that wouldn't have felt out of place in Season 17.
Mostly questions this time - questions which Christopher H Bidmead really should have been asking the writers...
Zolfa-Thurans are supposed to be able to manipulate certain wavelengths of light, suggesting that they can actually take on any form.
So why does Meglos look like a potted plant for much of the time? Of all the forms available, why go for something which is stationery and lacking limbs? If it's simply the natural form, how did they ever develop their awesome technology?
Talking of which, he's based in a high-tech control room, which is full of fiddly buttons and switches...
Why does he need an Earthling in order to impersonate the Doctor, if he can manipulate light to alter form? Can't he just cut out the middle man, literally?
We later see Meglos revert to something like his natural form when he escapes the Gaztak ship. Why did he not do this sooner to flee? Why is he even retaining the Doctor's form, now that it's served its purpose?
How did the Dodecahedron get to Tigella?
It's obviously been there for a very long time, for it to have gained mythical status with the Deons, yet Tigella is only a few hours away from Zolfa-Thura - so why hasn't Meglos sought it out sooner?
Wouldn't blowing Tigella up, when it's right on your doorstep, have a nasty effect on your own planet?
How does Meglos know all about the Doctor - to the extent that he can trap the TARDIS mid-journey - when the Doctor doesn't seem to know anything about him. The story is written as though they were old enemies, when they aren't.
It's a bit of a coincidence that Meglos just happens to use the costume which the Doctor has only just started wearing.
The Chronic Hysteresis time-loop makes no sense. Anyone caught in a time-loop should be unaware of the fact. Every time it goes back to the start, it's as if everything that occurs for the duration of the loop never happened. There shouldn't be pauses between the loops.
Even if we allow for the fact that the Doctor and Romana, as Time Lords, have a special relationship with Time (viz Invasion of the Dinosaurs, City of Death), they should only be aware of the loop. They should not have been able to influence it, let alone extricate themselves from it.
The method they use seems to be to trick it in some way, as though it were some sentient event.
As time-loops go, it's pretty pathetic.
And how does Meglos deploy the thing anyway? How does he know that the Doctor is about to visit Tigella when Zastor has only just been in touch? Is it deployed like a weapon, or is it hanging around in space like a trap?
This is the programme which Bidmead claimed had been taken over by "magic" in recent years, and he was determined to replace this fantasy rubbish with good solid science. Clearly hasn't started yet, then...
Perhaps if it had been better explained, we might have accepted its bizarre nature.
One of the Gaztaks almost falls flat on his face as they leave their spaceship - one of the hazards of all-blue CSO studios.
Are the mercenaries really so thick that they'd believe the stuff about anti-clockwise planetary rotation, when they are a seasoned space-going group?
Bill Fraser marks the first instance of JNT's wholly inappropriate stunt-castings. He simply doesn't convince as a murderous space pirate. The whole outfit is a bit Dad's Army.
Tigella appears to hang majestically in the skies over Zolfa-Thura - by wires.
Episodes are running so short that we get what feels like half the previous episode as a reprise. Really, is no-one script editing this thing?
And to think JNT was actually keen to have these writers pen the crucial introductory story for his new Doctor. Thanks be to Ti it never happened.
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