N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Whilst it has been suggested that Tom Baker could be a bit prickly on the set of Doctor Who at times, it takes watching Meglos to discover it appears to be have been literally true.
Prickliness aside, prior to this viewing just about the only thing I’d remembered about Meglos was that it featured Jacqueline Hill’s return to Doctor Who. She’s still the best thing about it.
That said, Tom Baker is very good here too, especially in the subtle differences he brings to his performance as Meglos. There’s a definite edge to his tone of voice and the look in his eye that’s not there when he’s playing the Doctor.
The mind battle between Meglos and the unnamed Earthling is quite impressive too — in part due to the nifty superimposition effect used.
It’s also nice to see some movement in the blue screen scenes on Zolfa Thura — thanks to the new Scene Sync technology. (Barry Letts always did love a bit of CSO, so it’s no surprise to see it being tested under his watch.) It also means that this second story in a row where we’ve had the use of new-fangled special effects.
“Don’t think too hard, you’ll burst something. “
Grugger, Meglos: Part Two
Strangely though, Meglos seems like a leftover from season seventeen (but one that’s considerably less fun). This might be because it often feels as though Bill Fraser and Frederick Treves are simply trying to eke as many laughs as possible out of their roles as chief Gastak space pirates.
Perhaps they didn’t get the memo about trying to make the show less silly? There’s a distinct lack of menace in their bluster and plenty of eye-rolling from Fraser as General Grugger. I find it odd that Meglos turned out this way — I’m fairly sure that, unlike The Leisure Hive, it wasn’t a story commissioned by the previous team.
“For one awful moment I thought you’d forgotten your lines. “
The Doctor, Meglos: Part Two
Things do get a lot better once the Doctor and Romana get to Tigella, but that’s perhaps more due to my own relief after an episode and a bit of watching them tinkering with K-9 and stuck in a time loop.
But overall Meglos never really gets going for me. And there are a few moments that really jar.
The first comes towards the end of the opening episode where Meglos has somehow convinced General Grugger of the critical importance of stopping the Doctor in the time it’s taken him to twiddle a few knobs on his monitor. ‘The point is the Doctor doesn’t get to Tigella,’ Grugger says to Brotadac as if the Doctor has been a nemesis to him for years instead of for all of about five minutes.
Later, it seems that Caris has filled Romana in on what’s going on in the time it’s taken to run down a corridor. Romana is the one who tells the Tigellans it’s Meglos, not the Doctor, who has escaped. We know it’s Meglos, we know the significance but it seems a bit too soon for anyone other than Caris to grasp the significance of Romana exclaiming ‘No, that was Meglos.’
Also, why would Zastor assume the Doctor remembers the way to the Dodecahedron? Yes, again we know it’s because Meglos genuinely won’t remember the way having never been there before but hasn’t it been 50 years — you’d have thought Zastor would have cut the Doctor some slack!
Whether my irritation is due to the writing or the editing or the delivery of the lines or simply my own impatience to get to the end of the story, I’m not sure.
But if nothing else, it all seems a bit hurried — and at just over 19 minutes, Part Four certainly isn’t hanging around. Given the length of the opening and end credits and reprise, I wonder if it’s the shortest amount of new material we’ve seen yet in a regular Doctor Who episode. Time to dust of my copy of The Mind Robber for comparison I guess!
Sadly, for me the most intriguing thing in the whole story is that call back to Gallifrey the Doctor and Romana get at the very end. Now what could that be about?
One other good thing to come out of this: the cactus in the living room now has a name.
