(Brains.... BRAINS!!!)
I didn't realize this was the first one with Turlough in it. Huh. It's also another "Time Lords are bastards" episode, but you don't realize that at first. Also, always a pleasure to see the Brigadier and have a few flashbacks into the earlier episodes. I'd forgotten that the Old Who did self-reference that way, much like we were treated to a sequence of prior Doctor faces in The Next Doctor and The Eleventh Hour, or the prior companions seen in Let's Kill Hitler.
This is an episode where Things Do Not Fit, some of which are resolved in the story and some which are not. The Brigadier not remembering the Doctor is, of course, very wrong and turns out to be part of the plot. When Fifth helps to restore the Bridgadier's memory it's actually a touching moment where you see that these two men do have an enduring friendship despite being very, very different.
Another This Does Not Fit is that Turlough seems to know an awful lot about time travel tech. Of course, nowadays it's almost impossible to NOT know that Turlogh is not from Earth at all, being a near-human alien, but when this first aired I can only assume this was not known and the incongruity was probably picked up by viewers and left them wondering. Davison shows his acting chops in the subtle but definite reaction of the Doctor to Turlough occasionally spouting knowledge that no English school boy of 1983 should know. The Doctor does pause, then very delibrately resumes speaking/acting every time that happens. He's curious, but not asking direct questions. That also explains why the Doctor is so willing to acquire another companion, despite the reservations of Teegan and Nyssa. Turlough doesn't belong where he is, and the Doctor is no doubt very curious about the whole matter.
I thought the spaceship sequences were a very clever use of renting a posh hotel lobby. Yes, that's what it looked like to me, a hotel lobby. Nonetheless, it did work for the story.
Now, the whole can't die thing I could cope with, and the skinned-alive-horribly-burned business where we first meet Mawdryd, but really, what is it with Doctor Who and aliens with exposed brains? It doesn't make sense biologically (I have issues with the Ood as well for similar reasons). It's not just Mawdryd, it's his unnamed crowd of fellow whatevers as well, so it's not just some unique mutation for Mawdryd.
Apparently, this is where the hard and fast "Time Lords only regenerate 12 times" comes from, with Fifth explicitly stating he's regenerated four times and only have eight left. (See regeneration note below, though.) It shows the Doctor in one of his better moments, when he's willing to give up those eight future regenerations to help everyone. The save for the Doctor's future selves is a bit of deus ex machina with the Brigadier's split-second timing, but sufficiently foreshadowed with all their efforts to keep the two Brigadiers apart (a multi-Brigadier episode!) that I'm OK with it.
But, once again, the Time Lords are complete bastards. Sure, stealing Gallifreyan tech is not good, but they've condemned these whatevers to an eternity of agonizing life. That's harsh.
We also have the Black Guardian back for this episode. Aw, damn - I never liked him anyway, and was happy to see the end of the whole Guardian business at the end of the Key to Time cycle. The BG is the worst sort of villain, a type I really don't like the "evil for the sake of evil" sort, who says he's evil, revels in being evil for no reason other than being evil, and so on. Thanks to a better viewing technology I also have come to loathe his appearance even more than before. You see, when I was watching the Key to Time cycle waaaaaaay back in the early 1980's I was using an ancient black and white TV which, so help me, I think actually still used vacuum tubes (hey, poor college student - it was my parents' spare TV I had dragged off to college with me). The pictures were grainy, alright? Not so well focused and high rez as we're all used to these days. So I never quite knew what the hell was up with his Buckwheat style hairdo.
Now I do.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! My god that's lame even for the notoriously low-budget BBC. The concept of feathers instead of hair I'm OK with but he's got a dead bird head mounted on his forehead!
WTF? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? I was happier in ignorance.Regeneration note: This is another time that the potential hazard of regeneration is mentioned, with both the whatevers' endless mutation and the Gallifreyan whatsit for fixing problem regenerations, which makes the prospect of surviving death very much a mixed blessing. I will point out, though, that even with the iterations of "only 12 regenerations" that we've seen exceptions to that before. The Master spent some time as a crispy critter after his last legit regeneration, stole a Traken body (Nyssa's father - ew, that must have been awful for Nyssa whenever she encountered the Master), was offered a new "complete" cycle of regenerations in The Five Doctors by the Time Lords, was resurrected by them during the Time War, and was brought back from the dead later on. And that's just the Master. In this story we see that regenerations can be somehow transferred to someone else, and it's not the only time the notion of transferring or giving regenerations to someone else is mentioned. As it happens, Moffet has given an out to the Doctor in this matter as of this season. In Let's Kill Hitler Melody Pond gives "her remaining regenerations" to the Doctor. Assuming Melody/River has regenerated twice (at least, it could be more) that's ten regenerations she's given to the Doctor beyond his own allotted 12. Yeah, that could keep the franchise going another 50 years, right?
