230 The Krotons: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Krotons: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 230
STORY NUMBER: 047
TRANSMITTED: 11 January 1969
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who: The Krotons


Definitely German Submarines today. Promise.

The Krotons cut the power to the machine interrogating Jamie. They track the Doctor & Zoe to the Tardis. Eelek, the council deputy, goes to see Beta hoping to recruit him help them fight the Krotons. He tells Beta that the Doctor & Zoe then Jamie have gone into the Krotons' machine. Eelek tells him not to obey council chief Selris but to obey him instead. One of the two Krotons is dispatched from their ship, the Dynotrope, to fetch the Doctor & Zoe. Jamie is interrogated about the Tardis, but it decides that he has no value. Selris tells Thara that the Doctor, Zoe & Jamie have all have gone into machine. Thara tells him Eelek has taken over as council leader and is going to try to overthrow the Krotons. The Kroton explains to Jamie that the Dynotrope needs high brains for it's power transfer. It tells him that they do not die, merely exhaust and revert to their base compounds. The Doctor emerges from the Tardis having analysed the liquid he took from the Krotons ship and deduced that it's based on Tellurium. Outside the Tardis the Doctor is looking for sulphurous rocks when the Kroton finds them demanding that they return to the dynotrope. Back at the Krotons' ship Jamie seizes the Krotons' weapon and attacks the remaining Kroton with it, which causes the other Kroton to loose contact with the Dynatrope which is directing it. Hearing what has happened, the Doctor realises that the Krotons can't see in bright light. Once communication is regained the Krotonm attacks the Tardis with it's gas weapon leaving no trace of the Doctor's ship then returns to the Dynatrope reversing it's course. A short while later the Tardis materialises a short way up a hill. The Doctor says he has set the Hostile Action Displacement System. At the Gond city Eelek plans the Gond's attack on the Krotons. Inside the Dynatrope the Krotons' decide that the high brains must be recaptured before they exhaust time in 3 hours time. The Doctor & Zoe return to the city and learn from Vana and Thara what is happrning. The Gonds start to attack the machine's supports. The Doctor gets Beta to process his collected sulphur using instructions he has left. An alert sounds in the Krotons' ship, the Dynotrope is now out of balance. The Doctor goes to stop the Gonds but their work has undermined the cities foundations which starts to collapse burying the Doctor under rubble.

There's a horrendous continuity mix up in this episode when it appears that Beta is in his lab working on the sulphur and under the city undermining the Dynatrope at the same time, but apart from that it's a nice little episode. The stuff with the Tardis is good causing you for a brief moment to think that the Tardis has actually been destroyed by the Kroton. We get our first proper look at the Krotons in this episode. The bodies and heads look very nice, almost like crystal, and I can live with the tube like arms ending in claws. But the rubber skirt from the waist down just doesn't work and makes them look silly. For many years they were rumoured top be the winner of a Blue Peter Design A Monster competition, which Patrick Troughton helped to judge, but this just isn't true. Nowadays Blue Peter have contributed not just a monster to the series, the Asorbalof in Love & Monsters, but a Tardis console as well in The Doctor's Wife.

This serial introduces us to the acting talents of Philip Madoc, here playing Eelik. He'd already been in the second Doctor Who film as Brockley and one of my earliest Doctor Who memories is of him being exterminated in the shed. After this story he'll be back as two of the most memorable Doctor Who villains. First he's the War Lord in two stories time in The War Games (also directed by David Maloney) and then as Doctor Solon in The Brain of Morbius before appearing as the less villainous Fenner in Power of Kroll. He's been in loads of television including UFO as Straker's ex wife's new partner, Space 1999 as Koenig's predecessor Commander Gorski. I recently saw him in Midsomer Murders playing Barnaby's former (Welsh) DCI in The Axeman Cometh, a barking episode involving a rock group. But not half as barking as Country Matters is! He's got a talent for playing German officers and (here we go) in this role he can be seen in one of the most repeated clips on television. He plays the commanding officer of the U-Boat crew captured by the Walmington-on-Sea home guard in the Dad's Army episode "The Deadly Attachment".

I am making notes, Captain, and your name will go on the list; and when we win the war you will be brought to account.
You can write what you like, You're not going to win the war!
Oh yes we are.
Oh no you're not.
Oh yes we are!
Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp, he's half-barmy, so's his army, whistle while you work!
Your name will also go on the list! What is it?
Don't tell him Pike!

And by an odd coincidence the subject of Philip Madoc popped up in my Twitter feed last night!