An intriguing serial that, like a number of Third Doctor stories, probably gets a little heavy-handed with the real-world parallels but is still a creative yarn with a worthwhile message. The show offers up an interesting alien world/culture here that I like exploring.
This is the period of the show where the Third Doctor is still exiled on Earth but the Time Lords remote-fly the TARDIS on occasion to send him and Jo on assignments for them. In this case, they’re dropped into a diplomatic mission to deliver an important message on the planet Solos, bearing a complicated message-containing device that will only open for the person for whom the message is intended (not that the Time Lords have told our heroes who that is, since they’re logical like that.) However, upon arrival, the Doctor and Jo find Solos on the brink of rebellion. A team from the Earth Empire has been subjugating the locals with extreme prejudice, and the Solonians have been beset with a mysterious rash of cellular mutations that may be a result of the humans’ experiments on Solos’s atmosphere.
This is far from the first or last story featuring human colonizers on an alien world, but I really enjoy how this one takes advantage of the creative potential of what that might look like. Not the power-mad Earth Marshal who views all Solonians as inferior and the mutants as a plague on the planet—that was a given, obviously—but the details of how humans get by trying to form a vastly-different planet to their will. The surface of Solos is toxic for humans and they require specialized protective gear for long trips away from their underground base, and their ignorant meddling with Solos’s atmosphere is a bullheaded attempt to make the planet more hospitable for humans, the Solonians be damned.
The Solonians themselves, and their planet, also display some inventive storytelling on the show’s part. I love the idea of a planet with an extraordinarily long orbit resulting in centuries-long seasons (Westeros, eat your heart out,) and the story nicely examines the sort of impact this orbit might have on the indigenous population. This is one advantage, I think, of having longer serials. While six- and seven-parters can drag from a narrative perspective, the extra episodes do give the story breathing space to explore more creative possibilities within the worlds and societies the show creates.
Jo is fine if unremarkable here. Even though it hasn’t been too long since I rewatched this story, not much stands out on her side of things, as either a big win or a major misfire. Her biggest contribution here is probably the connection she develops with Solonian leader Ky. While it starts as something of a hostage situation (because of course it does,) she keeps a clear enough head to recognize the complexity of the dynamics here, and her insistence on Ky’s value is an early counteract to the Marshal’s insistence that Ky is nothing but a dangerous insurgent. The Doctor gets a lot more to do. From the jump, the human scientific expert sees the Doctor’s incredible knowledge and the Marshal looks to exploit that intelligence to bring his plans to fruition, putting the Doctor in the tricky position of working out scientific saves from inside the belly of the beast. Bonus points for deciphering the glyphs on some ancient tablets—I always love when the show delves into a planet’s long-forgotten history.
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