Doctor Who - Meglos

If anyone ever tries to tell you that Season 18 was the sensible, grown up brother of Season 17, then I strongly recommend you punch whoever it might be squarely on the nose. Young or old, male or female, I'm not fussed as long as you punch them, and punch them hard. 'The Leisure Hive' almost pulled the burgundy wool over our eyes, but in the end there was just way too much silliness to put to bed memories of 'Destiny of the Daleks' and 'Nightmare of Eden'. 'Meglos' is another step in the wrong direction, and doesn't feel so much as a story belonging in Season 17, as more like a story left over from the middle of a Troughton season. It's space opera, with very little to commend it.

Throughout John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch's story (yes it took 2 whole people to cobble this thing together) there's an unshakeable feeling that this is 3 different scripts mashed together, and unfortunately none of those scripts had an ending. As proof of the latter, I present you with Exhibit A, a final episode that runs to 19 minutes, and that includes opening and closing credits, and a recap that is far from being brief. So, why does Meglos feel like 3 different scripts? Well, the skimpiest synopsis shows that there's a lot going on which doesn't look like it belongs together. We have a mysterious creature who potentially owns the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. He just needs a bit of help getting his hands on a power source. Meanwhile on a different planet, two factions fight over what is better, science and stupid haircuts or religion and synthesised chanting. They also have a power source, that's quite powerful. But wait, the mysterious creature from the first script can also change form and give us a doppelganger thriller too. Except it's not thrilling.

First up, Meglos the titular creature is a villain that looked good on paper, possibly, but who is utterly ridiculous when put into practice. I'm not spoiling things if I reveal he's a cactus. Certainly anyone who's been going to Madame Tussauds since 1980 will know he's a cactus. He's a cactus, with no arms and no legs, and who only gets to move about when an episode 4 plot contrivance demands it. He's a genius, and an evil one at that, but he's a cactus. Somehow, he's managed to contact comedy space pirates, for whom the budget means only two of a group of six get to speak, and by God I wish the budget hadn't stretched that far. Bill Fraser looks embarrassed to be the leader of this gang, and rumour has always had it that he agreed to take on the role if he could kick K9. I'd have taken the role so I could kick Christopher H Bidmead for commissioning the script in the first place. I digress. So, without any mobility and sat inside a control centre (on a planet called Zolfa-Thura) which seems to demand mobility, Meglos has contacted these space pirates to come to his aid. They bring him a random human, and we soon learn that Meglos requires the human in order to copy the form, to give him some mobility, and mainly so the pirates don't have to continue to shuffle him around on a wobbly balsa wood tray. Having got human form, albeit slightly spiky human form, he then reveals he wants to harness a power source from another planet.

The Doctor and Romana are busy having one of those tiresome TARDIS console room scenes, where they try and fix K9. For reasons I can't remember, despite having watched this on it's original broadcast, then again on UK Gold in the 90s, and again last week for the purposes of this rant, they decide to go to Tigella. I haven't mentioned the planet Tigella yet, but that's because I was talking about Zolfa-Thura and Meglos, and that power source he wanted. But wait, Tigella has a mysterious power source! It's ever so powerful in fact, but quibbled over in an underground city by two factions, some Pan's People scientists who have as much skill when it comes to acting as they have when it comes to combing their hair, and the other ones, the boring religion bunch. That there is a fight going on over science versus religion means not a jot to the story, it simply provides a handy excuse for a sacrifice cliffhanger, and some argumentative padding. It's not developed, and is as pointless as the constant references to taking back the surface of the planet. There's a lot of back story missing in this story.

Somehow Meglos gets wind of The Doctor wanting to visit Tigella, and that buggers up his plans to steal their power source, the Dodecahedron. So he flicks some switches and can magically see inside the TARDIS on a 14" colour portable. Stretching plausibility a little further he then conjures up a 'chronic hysteresis' which is not the hernia it sounds like, but some time loop thing that I prefer to call 'interminable repetition in order to get Episode 1 to a decent running length'. Quite why they wanted to get Episode 1 above 20 minutes is a complete mystery when they clearly didn't give a stuff about Episode 4. The time loop is supposed to trap the Doctor forever, and Meglos seems very chuffed about this, like the Doctor is an old adversary, a nemesis, and not some chap he's never heard of who is going to complicate his heist plans. Meglos finds a use for the Doctor though, and copies his form, which will allow him to infiltrate Tigella without suspicion, although it's inferred that it's been a while since the Doctor was on Tigella, and that he may well have been in a different regeneration. So, the pirates kidnap the Doctor from the tedious time loop in order for Meglos to copy him right? No, this time he does it, clothes and all, by taking a quick look at the 14" colour portable. Yeah, I know it seemed like he needed a form with him in order to copy it, but it turns out that he doesn't, so you'll be thinking he changes frequently to aid his infiltration of, and then escape from Tigella. Nope.

The Doctor and Romana escape from the time loop in a fashion that will leave you open mouthed. You have been warned. Meglos gets to Tigella, does the nasty, and lots of corridor running and arguing and stuff ensues. There are about 10 minutes of Episode 1 where there is some hope that we might be onto something here. The remaining 70 minutes are spent beating that notion to death, and the hilariously rushed (and largely incomprehensible) finale has to be considered one of the soggiest, dampest squibs in the whole Who canon.

I'm boring myself now, trying to explain what Meglos is all about. From those 4 paragraphs above you'd think there was a lot going on of interest. There isn't. It's a potboiler. The three different elements to the story don't really work together, and in between the looky-likey warry-faction weapony-stealing stuff we get some crap running around in some unconvincing jungle studio sets. I can't make this review of Meglos gel and seem coherent, because the story simply doesn't gel or seem coherent. Plot holes and loose ends abound, the dialogue is appalling and worse still delivered by some of the very worst actors to set foot inside of BBC Television Centre. Jacqueline Hill lends some dignity to the affair, returning to play the leader of the religious bunch, but it's a very poorly acted story.

Where the story does excel however, is in all the areas you'd expect it to fail. 'The Leisure Hive' felt like Murray Gold had been on scoring duty, with barely a minute going by without incidental music, an effect that was what I imagine being smothered to death by a Radiophonic pillow would be like. 'Meglos' sounds great though with both Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland working on it. There are some nice cues for the title villain especially. The special effects also benefit from actually being special. 'Meglos' was the first outing at the BBC for the Scene-Synch system, which basically allowed the camera to move when CSO was being used. The principle camera's movements when following the actors etc would be mirrored by the camera providing the background image. By golly it worked too, and the opening episode of 'Meglos' contains some very convincing overlay work. See the DVD extra about Scene-Synch for a fantastic snippet from Barry Letts' 1982 'Gulliver in Lilliput' where a Lilliputian swordsman takes on the gigantic Gulliver's hand. It's really quite impressive. The model work is especially good too, save for the scene of the pirate vessel taking off, which is every bit the equal of the Dalek Saucers in flight from, well, any Dalek story from the 60s or 70s. There are some nice underground city sets, and directorially it looks good in places, with some nice shots that Terence Dudley probably dreamed up to take away from the tedium of the script itself.

DVD extras are thin on the ground, with no making of. The 'Life in Pictures' piece dedicated to Jacqueline Hill is both touching and interesting, and from a nerdy point of view I loved the feature on Scene-Synch. I was less enthused with the Flanagan and McCulloch get together, while 'Entropy Explained' was engaging and boasts a massive typo to look out for. The commentary with Lalla Ward and John Flanagan is nothing special to be honest, I could only manage a cursory listen.

I can only recommend 'Meglos' as a reminder that Season 18 was not some wonderful rebirth of the show. I'd rather watch the entertainingly naff 'Horns of Nimon' a hundred times over. An odd concoction of misfiring, quickly abandoned themes, it's a tedious exercise that fails to convince when it's trying to be serious, and provides no laughs when trying to be light-hearted. Episode 1 flatters to deceive, and by the end of it, it has set the tone for the remainder of the story. Buy it as a completist, but not as entertainment. The extras go some way to redeeming this release, but it's never going to be considered essential viewing.