"I don't believe that man was made to be controlled by machines."
Our travellers set off with the keys for home; in vision this time against a black backcloth.
They find Arbitan looking a bit thinner and behaving rather shyly until he is revealed as Yartek, leader of the Voords!
Stephen Dartnell gives a great performance here as the man inside the mask.
He returns in a months time to play John in 'The Sensorites'. I can't wait.
The Voord masks are really well done and I feel I must flag up their significance as the first masked humanoid 'monsters' of the series, a successful template that was to be repeated literally hundreds of times in Dr Who. The Daleks design is superb, but they are a brilliant one-off. A few attempts were made to repeat their success, the Mechanoids and the Chumblies, but the Daleks were always so much better because of the genius of Ray Cusick. No, the most enduring and oft-repeated model for a Dr Who monster is the rubber-suited Voord.
And so Yartek is deceived by the fake key and blows himself and the other Voords to pieces. There is a touching scene between the Doctor and Sabena as the old man talks about the death of Arbitan, her father. We really see the Doctor as a father and grandfather here.
Of course we can't leave this story without one more shot of those wonderful legs...
And so our travellers depart silently in their tiny model TARDIS again and a second story finishes without a cliffhanger allowing us to imagine unseen adventures before one of my absolute favourites...
Next episode: The Temple of Evil
Article: Robin Phillips
