I'm not entirely certain why the Animus decided to web the Doctor and Vicki other than the fact that it made for a good visual cliffhanger to get everyone to come back for the next episode. As far as I can make out the Doctor and Vicki get captured, are marched into the hairdryer room, get webbed, Vicki tumbles over, the hairdryer comes down on the Doctor and they get marched to the Centre of the web.
From a time management standpoint it seems a great waste of resources to go to the trouble of immobilizing someone for 20 or 30 seconds when they were already under guard. Granted the "guard" is a couple giant canoe ants, but they managed to escort the travelers this far without incident.
I actually tried to convince myself that maybe more time had passed. Theoretically hours or days could have passed between episodes and this was just a way to keep the pesky travelers under wraps.
Then I remembered that this was a coordinated assault with Barbara on the outside and I was back to scratching my head over the waste of resource.
Then I was scratching my head over a Menoptera putting his hands over his head and calling out, in a high pitched squeal, "ZAARBIIIII!" The Zarbi comes charging after him only to be distracted by another Menoptera doing the exact same thing. Another Menoptera does this and the Zarbi runs off confused.
Angela said that this is when Doctor Who meets Monty Python. She's not entirely wrong.
The Doctor and Vicki are brought before the Animus. Unfortunately Vicki stashed the Isop trope in the astral map and doesn't have it with her to destroy the cancer at the heart of Vortis.
The Animus is an interesting design. Sort of a malignant cancer-spider sitting in the center of a web of light and acid. The fact that they choose to heavily light it made it hard to focus on which was probably for the better.
The Doctor is instantly blinded by the intense light cascading out of the Animus. Vicki manages to stay conscious longer.
While all of this is going on, Ian, Vrestin and the Optera manage to make some progress in their upward trek. When they get to a point where the light is more intense most of the Optera elect to stay behind. It would have been all of the Optera, but Vrestin insisted that the light is good and that the Optera must return to the surface.
Given the fact that the Optera look upon the Menoptera as gods, I'm not certain if it's really ethical of Vrestin to tell be dictating what the Optera should or shouldn't do.
Barbara makes it to the chamber where the TARDIS is stored. I think that there was some problem with the TARDIS prop. We only see the ship itself for a split second and it looks like a cardboard cutout. What dematerializes at the end of the episode is almost certainly a mock up.
The group find the astral map.
Barbara is familiar not only with what the astral map is, but in how to operate it. This seems to indicate that the Doctor has been teaching her (and possibly the others) how to operate the ship's functions. This would be a fairly recent development since he only showed her how to open the TARDIS doors in The Powerful Enemy. The Doctor has shown a willingness to teach and Barbara has shown an interest in being able to control her situation.
Barbara tries to reach the Menoptera main force without any success. She finds the isop tope hidden away in the guts of the map and reckons that the Doctor and Vicki were captured. They proceed forward.
Vicki is nearly unconscious. She is muttering about this being her fault while the Animus speaks of reaching out of this galaxy and into the Solar System to take from humanity their mastery of space.
It's unclear how the Animus knows about Earth. Presumably it found out from Vicki's mind, but that isn't stated outright. At least not as far as I could tell. Although I could have just missed it while having a "ZAARBII!" flashback.
If it did get this information from Vicki's thoughts I wonder if the Animus was basing it's belief in humanity's mastery of space on Vicki's 25th century memories or the TARDIS. We have no way of telling when this story takes place relative to Earth. We could be 200,000 years before the Doctor got thrown into the cave of skulls or 1,000 years after the Daleks firebombed London. It doesn't get explored, but it's very possible that the Animus would get jack about space travel had it's plan reached fruition.
Or maybe it knew about Earth by reputation and the last paragraph was useless speculation.
Barbara and the Menoptera break in. They lost Hrostar while trying to put the slave collar on a larvae gun in a scene that was more dignified than "ZAARBII!", but not by much.
The Menoptera are instantly blinded by the evil light. It's up to Barbara to persevere. The Animus tries to dominate her mind.
At this point Ian and company burst through the floor. The Animus claims to have known that they too would arrive.
In the end, Barbara kills the Animus, resisting the force that stopped the Menoptera dead in their tracks and felled the Doctor himself.
The rest of the episode plays like the the denouement of a bad Star Trek episode down to crappy joke that passes itself off as character development.
I don't want to end this on a negative note. This isn't as bad as some people have suggested, but it is seriously flawed. There are some really good things in this story. The Animus is an excellent concept and was brought to chilling life by the voice of Catherine Fleming. This is the first story to feature female (nonhuman) aliens. There are some small acting gems from the regulars. The subplot about the Doctor's ring fascinated me from the first time that I saw this story 20 odd years ago.
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| The Doctor conversing with the Animus via cone. |
Next up: The Lion
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