"If he finds out, he'll kill us both."
Carole Ann Ford left the series because she felt that she wasn't given the juicy acting bits that she wanted to perform. Having seen (or heard) all of her run with the character I'd have to agree with her. She was the cast regular that no one seemed to know how to write.
There is a certain amount of irony that her replacement on the series was given a two episode introduction that allowed her to showcase her acting chops.
Superficially there are some similarities between Susan and Vicki. Both are hyper-intelligent, both are familiar with high tech and both have an "alien" viewpoint from that of the television audience. Susan is an actual alien while Vicki comes from our future.
I'm going to reserve commenting on their differences until after I've rewatched the Vicki episodes.
The Departure of Susan has effected the Doctor. He sleeps through the TARDIS materializing on Dido. It's a planet, not the Queen of Carthage or the woman who sang "Thank You." Yes, I'll be careful not to add an extra letter between the i and the d.
He also shows a decided lack of curiosity about the cave that the TARDIS has landed in. He claims that he's going to take a nap while he putters away doing a specimen analysis that confirms that they are on Dido.
This is the first time that the TARDIS returns to a world in which the Doctor has previously visited. Other than Earth. It's also the first time that they introduce a world as being someplace that the Doctor has visited previously in an untelevised story.
Outside the cave Ian and Barbara discover a crashed space ship in the distance. It has a British flag. Ian is keen to get down there to help any potential survivors when Koquillion shows up.
Koquillion is big an ugly and talks like Gollum after a few weeks at a charm school/psychiatric hospital. He throws Barbara off the side of the mountain and collapses the cave entrance nearly on top of Ian.
Barbara manages (we are told later) to break the worst of her fall on a tree branch. She is found unconscious by Vicki, one of the two survivors of the crashed Earth ship. Vicki tells her that the rest of the crew and passengers of the ship were invited to a great meeting. Vicki was feverish and couldn't go. The natives killed all of the humans who attended the meeting except for Bennet who managed to crawl back to the ship.
Now Koquillion acts as a mediator between the natives and the two humans. He claims that he is keeping them alive.
Maureen O'Brien is excellent in these scenes. The script was designed to show off her acting talent and she gets to go in a few different directions. I'm glad that they didn't keep her in the outfit that she's wearing in this story. The dress is short. I think that they were trying to suggest youth and weren't trying to sexualize her. The difference in size between Hill and O'Brien is significant and shows when the younger woman buries her head in Barbara.
O'Brien has an amazingly expressive face.
The Doctor performs a cursory examination of Ian. There's some light banter between the two and the Doctor says that it's a pity that he never got that degree.
The two make there way back through the other side of the cave in hopes that they can find an alternate egress.
The Doctor finds it disconcerting that someone from Dido would try to kill anyone; they have a population of about 100 and thus see life as a precious thing to be nurtured.
They eventually come to a pit that houses a big nasty beasty with long sharp teeth that resembles the Koquillion's headdress. The two skirt the edge of this pit holding onto rings set into the walls when the edge gets too narrow. It turns out that the last one is trapped. Ian sets it off and is soon caught between a line of swords. More swords start to push out from the walls herding the science teacher to the edge of the pit.
The beast below is hungry.
Next up: Desperate Measures
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