| THE DEADLY ASSASSIN by Robert Holmes |
| Story 88 Synopsis: Travelling to Gallifrey in the TARDIS, the Doctor receives a telepathic premonition. It is patchy, but it clearly shows the President of Gallifrey being shot dead. Arriving in the Capitol, he sneaks around to try and find any clues to the culprit, let alone to prevent the calamity. Since he is not flavour of the month, he has trouble, but borrows a few robes to sneak into the ceremony. On a balcony, he raises a rifle, and shoots. The President falls dead, and when guards arrive momentarily, he is arrested for murder. He claims to have been aiming for the real assassin, but is sentenced to death. To evade this, he announces himself as candidate for the post of President, where he is opposed by Chancellor Goth. Trying to track the real culprit, the Doctor takes a trip into the Matrix, where he is pursued and imperilled by a masked hunter. After many scrapes, traps and counter-traps, he persuades the hunter to unmask himself. It is Goth. In a wetland area, they fight, and Goth appears to drown the Doctor. But he recovers. Goth dies instead, and the Doctor finds that Goth killed the President because he wasn't going to be named as his successor after all. The Doctor also learns the identity of the real mastermind, who manipulated Goth - the Master. Now decaying, in his final regeneration, he intends to usurp the power of Gallifrey to give himself new life. The Doctor manages to stop him, and is able to leave Gallifrey in the safe hands of his old acquaintances, Borusa and Spandrell. |
| Review:- After Roger Delgado's untimely death in 1973, the character of the Master had been absent from Dr Who. Although a Time Lord, and thus capable of recasting in plot terms, it was decided to bring him back in an unrecognisable form. Arguably this is the finest Master story, as he works behind the scenes, using a dupe to trick the Doctor, whilst keeping his real plans a secret. Certainly the intrigues of Time Lord politics would seem potentially dusty on paper, but they work a treat. The Doctor runs through a high-tension script, making a dramatic case for the non-use of companions. When stories have this much potential, and are written this well, there is no cause for concern. As he moves from suspect to detective, it remains a point of fascination to see where his investigations will lead. The journey through the Matrix provides thrills and spills and an extremely controversial cliffhanger. After that, it's downhill all the way. Goth is perhaps to clear cut as a guilty party, but he has motivation, and means, so carries his final departure well, as he is betrayed when he outlives his usefulness. The other characters exist to give a framework for the Doctor's clash. Gallifrey seems an interesting place, not totally corridor-dominated. There is amusement at the robe swapping in episode 1. All in all, really good. But the question is - is it too violent? Well, let's deal with this by looking at that cliffhanger, shall we? After scrapping for the whole episode, Goth and the Doctor finally get their hands on each other, and any qualms about the greater good go to Hell - it's kill or be killed. Goth's throttling the Doctor underwater just does not convince. The freeze frame allegedly emphasises that he has drowned. I'm damned if I think that that's a valid argument. It's over in a blink - I don't reckon any impressionable child would have recognised the precise nature of the peril, based purely on what is shown. But then, that's just my view. |
| Disclaimer: I've seen the video, and read the book. |