DOCTOR WHO:  MEGLOS

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#37:  MEGLOS (4 Parts)	
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  9/27/80 to 10/18/80
WRITTEN BY:  John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch
DIRECTED BY:  Terence Dudley
PRODUCER:  John Nathan-Turner	
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Christopher H. Bidmead
	           

In THE INVISIBLE ENEMY, Tom Baker appeared in makeup when he was infected by the Virus of the Nucleus of the Swarm. In THE ANDROID INVASION, he appeared briefly as his android duplicate; and in THE PIRATE PLANET he appeared even more briefly as a projection. Now, after appearing in old age makeup in THE LEISURE HIVE, he once again donned special character makeup in MEGLOS, which afforded him the opportunity to impersonate his alter ego, the Doctor, while portraying the guest villain, which he did superbly.

Extensive use was made of a new Color Separation Overlay technique called SceneSync for all the Zulfa Thura exteriors, which worked pretty well until part 4, when it got a little sloppy.

The Tigellan civilization portrayed in this show, as with so many DOCTOR WHO stories, is broken down into two groups--the Savants and the Deons. Each group dresses alike and one group even has the same hairdo for men and women. This is a major flaw in many low budget science fiction films and TV shows, and is explainable--if not forgivable--in DOCTOR WHO by the low budgets and fast production time of the series.

What is less forgivable is the use of yet another time loop. This one catches the Doctor and Romana, and the same scene--thankfully brief--plays over and over. JNT, shortly to decree the end of K9 because he felt the character was a crutch to the writers, doesn't seem to realize that K9 was endearing and important, if used correctly, while plot devices like a time loop were the real crutches and served only to pad the running time.

The Doctor, wearing an apron, asks Romana to stop the TARDIS to prevent any nasty jolts, while he performs some delicate repairs on K9, injured at the start of THE LEISURE HIVE. She informs him they're in the Prion planetary system, but the Doctor doesn't want to land. "Hovering will do," he says.

The Prion system has two major planets--Zulfa Thura and Tigella. Zulfa Thura once had a great civilization but it was blown away to sand and ashes in a war; all that remains is 5 huge screens. Tigella is a planet with such lush, aggressive vegetation, the inhabitants were forced to retreat beneath the surface.

On Tigella, a transformer on walkway 9 burns out. Deedrix, the head of the Savants, argues with Zastor, leader of the Tigellans, that the Dodecahedron belongs to all citizens, not just Deons.

Caris, a Savant repairing the burnout, wants the Tigellans to reinhabit the surface, but the Deons have declared this a blasphemy.

Lexa, leader of the Deons, meets with Zastor, who takes her to the debating chamber. She refuses to let the Savants enter the power room to make some measurements of the Dodecahedron. This is forbidden according to the ancient laws, known as the Concurrence. The Savants think the Dodecahedron is an artifact; the Deons think it is a god, or at least a gift from their god Ti.

The Doctor visited Tigella about 50 years ago and, contacting Zastor now, learns the Dodecahedron is out of control. Hoping to use the Doctor to mediate between them, Zastor tells the Savants and the Deons the Doctor "sees the threads that join the universe together and mends them when they break."

In the TARDIS, Romana gets K9's manual from under the hatrack in the control room. The Doctor uses it to give K9 his first post-repair test question, to which K9 responds, "Affirmative, mistress." "Bit of a nuisance if we have to reprogram all his constants," the Doctor says. Romana is more worried about his power depletion. "That's no problem; I happen to be an expert in power sources," the Doctor replies.

On Zulfa Thura, a Gaztak ship lands and General Grugger, Lieutenant Brotodac and their men exit with a bespectacled man in a business suit. The Gaztaks are a roving band of pirates for hire and are chiefly interested in looting and pillaging. Walking past the giant screens, Grugger and Brotodac debate who and why someone sent them to pick up a male Earthling 2 meters tall.

A structure rises from the sand--a kind of bunker on an elevator--and a door opens. Entering through the door, the Gaztaks find themselves in a laboratory, where Brotodac pockets a small artifact--a redimensioner. In the middle of the room is a pulsating cactus, who welcomes them and introduces itself as Meglos, the only survivor of Zulfa Thura. Meglos is a plant, a Xerophyte.

In the TARDIS, Romana asks if Tigella's energy process is baryon multiplication. The Doctor confesses the Tigellans didn't let him see the Dodecahedron on his last visit, due to religious objections.

On Zulfa Thura, Meglos tells General Grugger the Dodecahedron was made on Zulfa Thura. Even though it powers an entire planet, the Tigellans are using only a fraction of its potential. Meglos knows how to raise it to the power 12, at which level its energy could support an entire galaxy.

At Meglos' direction, the Gaztaks put the Earthling in an alcove and Meglos in another. Before he continues the procedure, Grugger decides to steal Meglos' equipment, but Meglos has locked him and Brotodac in and threatens to lower the laboratory for a thousand years if Grugger doesn't complete the process. He also demands the return of his redimensioner from Brotodac.

Grugger pushes a button, which causes the cactus to deflate while the Earthman spouts prickly spines. The Earthling, now possessed by Meglos, steps out of the alcove and goes to a control panel. He has intercepted a transmission between Tigella and the Doctor.

In the TARDIS, Romana asks the Doctor for the magnetic tweezers. As she tinkers with K9, the Doctor trips over his apron, which has fallen to the floor. K9's probe circuit is jammed. The Doctor tells Romana just to waggle K9's tail. K9 thanks her and says his repairs are complete.

Suddenly, the scene replays itself. Meglos has trapped the TARDIS in a chronic hysteratic loop. The Doctor, K9 and Romana are caught inside a fold of time. The scene replays itself. The Doctor and Romana are aware they're in a repeating time cycle. The Doctor hopes it's not a chronic hysteresis, because if it is, they'll be stuck in this loop forever.

Meglos has another trick up his sleeve. He transforms the humanoid body he now inhabits into a duplicate of the Doctor, so he can get close to the Dodecahedron on Tigella.

The TARDIS sequence repeats. K9 says there's no known technological procedure to break out. The scene repeats again.

Meglos and the Gaztaks leave Zolfa Thura in the Gaztak ship and land on Tigella. Meglos tells Grugger to wait at the ship for exactly an hour.

In the Tigellan control room, Lexa informs Zastor the Doctor may visit the Dodecahedron if he takes the Deon oath, swearing allegiance to Ti.

Caris, thinking Meglos is the Doctor, greets him at the entrance to the Tigellan underground city, and brings him to the control room. Deedrix explains the power is used through an absorption system, via receptor panels above the Dodecahedron, while radiated energy is measured on equipment in the control room. Meglos requests the screens be turned off for an hour.

In the TARDIS, the scene replays. The Doctor suggests throwing the time loop out of phase by going through the motions deliberately before the cycle comes back again. "Off you go then," he says. They repeat the sequence and achieve phase cancellation.

On Tigella, Meglos takes the Deon oath. He tells the Tigellans it will be necessary to increase the violence of the emissions of the Dodecahedron, so he must enter the power room alone.

The TARDIS lands on Tigella. K9 reports the city is 22 degrees north 36.4 degrees west. The Doctor starts off in the wrong direction, explaining he got it wrong because of Tigella's anticlockwise rotation. Romana and K9 fall behind to look at some plants. Romana gets separated from the Doctor and K9 and is attacked by some vines and a large bell shaped flower.

Meglos enters the power room. The Dodecahedron--the term means a solid having 12 plane faces--is a pulsating 12 sided crystal, about the size of a washing machine. Meglos has lusted after it 10,000 years. He removes the redimensioner from his pocket and lays it on the Dodecahedron.

Caris sneaks back toward the power room and runs into Lexa. They hide as Meglos leaves. Caris notices there is no light coming from the power room. She and Lexa enter and discover the Dodecahedron is gone.

The Doctor and K9 approach the entrance to the underground Tigellan city. The guards remark this is the second time he's been here. "I say, you've got a marvelous memory; it must be 50 of your years since I was last here," the Doctor replies. He notices Romana isn't with him and sends K9 to fetch her.

Romana cuts the vine and crawls away from the bell plant. She stumbles across the Gaztak ship and is captured by Brotodac. K9's batteries run down and he heads back to the city. Romana offers to show the Gaztaks to her ship to postpone them killing her.

Before Meglos can get out of the city, Lexa broadcasts an alarm. The cactus part reasserts itself and Meglos hides in a hydroponics lab. The Doctor blunders in and is captured.

The Tigellan power drain is reaching critical. In two hours time the whole city will be dead.

The Doctor tells the Tigellans he's only just arrived and doesn't know what happened to the Dodecahedron.

In the hydroponics lab, the Earthling struggles against Meglos' control, but Meglos is too strong and possesses him again.

The Doctor ponders the situation. He's never been in a chronic hysteresis before and "it just might have projected a time image of me. It's theoretically possible, isn't it?" But the Doctor thinks what they've got here "is a good old fashioned doppleganger."

Meglos approaches Caris and asks her to lead him out of the city. He announces he's Meglos, the last of the Zulfa Thurans. He shows her the Dodecahedron, which is now small enough to fit inside his closed fist.

Lexa decides to take over. She plans to exile all nonbelievers to the surface. The Doctor is to be sacrificed.

Romana leads the Gaztaks to the bell plants, which grab them, while Romana escapes. She makes it to the Tigellan city as the outer doors are closing. Grabbing up K9, she rushes inside just as the Gaztaks catch up to her, but she and K9 get caught between an inner and outer door.

The Earthling reasserts itself again but Meglos regains control. Caris points a weapon at Meglos and marches him toward the control room.

As the Gaztaks batter open the outer door, the inner one opens and Romana carries K9 through. The Tigellans and Gaztaks exchange fire, and the Gaztaks lose 3 men. Romana sees Caris with a weapon pointed at Meglos, whom she thinks is the Doctor. Romana knocks the weapon out of Caris' hand, allowing Meglos to escape. He meets up with the Gaztaks and, showing Grugger the miniaturized Dodecahedron, tells them to leave. Caris runs after Romana and tells her that wasn't the Doctor.

In the power room, the Doctor is tied to a stone slab. A heavy stone is suspended above him by 3 ropes. A torch is lit beneath the first rope, which burns through, causing the stone to sway. The second rope is burned as well.

Meglos and the Gaztaks return to the ship and set off for Zulfa Thura. Upon arriving, Meglos buries the Dodecahedron in the sand between the screens. He turns a dial on his redimensioner and the laboratory rises up, with the Dodecahedron on top of it.

Romana and Caris tell Zastor it was Meglos who stole the Dodecahedron. Zastor rushes to the power room and stops the sacrifice. As the Doctor and Romana prepare to follow Meglos, a wounded Gaztak shoots at them, hitting Lexa, who dies.

On Zulfa Thura the screens magnify and concentrate the Dodecahendron's powers. The five beams the screens throw out can be made to converge on any point in the galaxy and blast it to infinitesimal dust. Grugger suggests trying out its power on Tigella.

The TARDIS lands on Zulfa Thura with Romana, Caris, Deedrix and the Doctor, who tells the others to wait there while he goes off to impersonate Meglos.

In his laboratory, Meglos focusses the beam on Tigella. Removing his coat and scarf, he goes outside to recheck the screen alignments. The Doctor spots Meglos as he leaves the laboratory and removes his coat and scarf as well. He enters the laboratory and finds out from Grugger the screens have been programmed to annihilate Tigella.

A Gaztak brings in the Doctor's coat. Grugger notices there are now two coats, so the Doctor pretends the second coat is a surprise gift.

K9, Caris, Deedrix and Romana take a closer look at the screens.

The Doctor tells Brotodac the screens won't reach their maximum capacity for two minutes, so he's going outside for a little stroll "to see if I can catch up with myself."

Grugger has decided Meglos is expendable and tells Brotodac to grab him and put him in the security hold of their space craft. The Gaztaks grab Meglos and take him away; then Brotodac grabs the Doctor and marches him to the ship as well.

In the security hold of the Gaztak ship, the Doctor and Meglos meet for the first time. The Doctor tells Meglos he inverted the control setting of the screens. If Grugger starts the countdown, the whole planet will be destroyed.

K9 distracts the guard and Deedrix hits him with a rock. This doesn't knock him out, so K9 stuns him, and then opens the door to the security hold. Meglos breaks out in cactus spines again, releasing the body of the Earthman. He reverts to his plant form and crawls speedily away. Romana remarks he must have modulated himself on a particular wavelength of light, which would make him virtually indestructible.

Grugger has started the countdown, so everyone dashes back to the TARDIS, which is very slow to dematerialize. Meglos reaches the laboratory, which starts to lower into the ground, but it's too late. The countdown reaches zero and Zulfa Thura and the Dodecahedron are destroyed.

On Tigella, the citizens are forced to reclaim the surface and are starting to clear away the vegetation. "I'd like to stay and help you, but horticulture's not my strong point," the Doctor says, although in SEEDS OF DOOM, the Doctor was President of the Intergalactic Flora Society!

Romana pokes her head out of the TARDIS to say Gallifrey wants them back immediately. But first the Doctor promises to return the Earthman back home before he's even left.

This ending seems rather hurried and disappointing. The Doctor doesn't even come up with any advice or the practical assistance of some weed killer to help the Tigellans reclaim the surface. In addition, the Doctor doesn't get back to Gallifrey until THE ARC OF INFINITY, by which time Tom Baker had left the role, and most viewers probably forgot he never answered this summons.

Jacqueline Hill, who plays Lexa, played Barbara Wright, companion to William Hartnell's Doctor for his first 16 stories.

Bill Fraser, who plays Grugger, played Commander Pollock in K9 AND COMPANY.