"Who? He's the Doctor."
Yay, he's back! Look, down there on the right.
Just in time to try to save Ian from certain death. Another huge change of scene for this episode as we find ourselves caught up in a not very alien courtroom drama. The only significant difference is that people are guilty until proven innocent in this society. It strikes me that, apart from the radical change of location at the end of 'An Unearthly Child', this is perhaps the only story where the location changes every week along with the episode title. It must have been a very different experience watching Dr Who in the early sixties, not knowing how long each story was going to be.
Some more of Ray Cusick's set photographs...
Two of my favourite Dr Who actors appear together in this episode; the lovely Martin Cort who returns to the series in 'The Seeds of Death' and gives a wonderful turn as the terrified Locke. And Fiona Walker, later to delight us as Lady Peinforte in 'Silver Nemesis'. Here, she is wonderful as the dark and manipulative Kala, the series' first female villain. Hurrah!
Poor Aydan (Martin Cort), keeps giving himself away rather easily, but then they do only have an episode to get through this. The themes are adult; a death sentence, murder, perjury, domestic abuse and kidnap. Blimey. I love the scene where Aydan is murdered by an unknown assassin and the camera pans slowly across all of the shocked faces in silence before Kala (Fiona Walker) rushes forward, distraught.
As Gareth Roberts pointed out, "So weirdly like Lee Harvey Oswald that bit. And so soon!"
The trial continues:
A couple of lovely colour photos from the trial scenes....
We end with rather a good and chilling phonecall from Susan, "They're going to kill me."
Next episode: The Keys of Marinus
