Note the Target novelisation of this was known as Doctor Who and the Doomsday weapon. Doesn't quite have the nice ring to it, but since the story is about BOTH a colony and a Doomsday weapon I will let that pass.
The story opens with the Time Lords discussing how information from their files pertaining to the Doomsday weapon has been stolen by the Master. They then plan to utilise the Doctor to deal with this problem. Note that the Time Lords are still dressed in the style of clothing reminiscent of Troughton's last story War Games, but in colour. They didn't dress in the "classic" style with head gear and gigantic collars, which we tend to associate with them, and seen throughout the new series, until the Tom Baker story the Deadly Assassin.
Cut to a scene with the Doctor trying to repair his dematerialisation circuit and he enters the TARDIS followed by Jo. Before he knows it the TARDIS doors have shut and its taken off much to the chagrin of the Brigadier. For the tech notes, it implies the TL somehow must be aware the Doctor had entered the TARDIS at that particular time. Perhaps they utilise the same type of technology the Doctor used in the Chase to spy on the Daleks, a “time television as Dodo Chaplet put it.
The Doctor finds himself on a world where colonists have set foot. Unfortunately there are two problems. The first is their crops don’t grow (it’s radiation from the Doomsday weapon silly). The second is the planet is also rich in technobabble mineral which the evil Interplantary Mining Corporation (IMC) wants to get hold of. To that end they utilise various means including scaring them with holographic projections of monsters and even murder. This mineral is in high enough quantities to build 1 million housing units for the 100 billion inhabitants of Earth.
Nitpick, they mention that earth has one hundred thousand million, which would be 100 (American) billion. Note that a British billion is 1 million million, ie the equivalent of an American trillion. Hence why the show said one hundred million instead of 100 billion. Now that we got that out the way…
I love how in this story there are several subplots and characterisation going on. The two main plots involve the conflict between the colonists and IMC, and the Master’s attempt to locate the Doomsday weapon. He poses as the adjudicator to rule on who gets the planet. Interestingly his TARDIS is disguised as a earth spaceship, and is quite capable of flying in the same manner as one, as well as dematerialise. Not that surprising given in NuWho we see the Doctor fly his TARDIS in all sorts of acrobatic manner, notably in the Runaway Bride.
Back to the first plot - IMC have sent a spy and sabotuer into the colonists ranks, posing as a member of a colony on the other side who had his colony destroyed by giant lizards and the natives. Another member of IMC creates the holograms of giant lizards and controls the mining robot which makes the fake claw marks. The Doctor deduces something isn’t right because the size of the claw marks could not possibly be made by a monster which the colonists report as 20 feet high. Interestingly enough, the rest of the episode used the metric system for measurements, with characters describing distance in kilometres.
Of the IMC staff, most of them are like RDA from Avatar, 3 decades plus before James Cameron flick came to the big screen. Captain Dent of the IMC is potrayed as the cold blooded captain quite well, who calmly covers up the death of colonists. His security guards have no qualms about shooting prisoners (nor tying them up next to a bomb) and his second in command murdered two colonists and tried to kill the Doctor. The mineralogist Caldwell is shown to be the only one with a conscience, and works for IMC namely because he has a gigantic debt back home on Earth. Itwas pleasing that ultimately he ended up staying with the colonist after IMC is ejected from the planet.
The Doomsday weapon was built by an ancient civilisation which degenerated due to the radiation from the weapon. For some unknown reason they were not capable of destroying it, despite eventually building a self destruct mechanism into it. Maybe by the time they realise the radiation was the cause, there were too few engineers among them to be able to safely dismantle it without resorting to a giant explosion which destroys their city.
I also find it interesting that the TL knew where to send the Doctor, but the Master who also read the same files was searching several other planets nearby before he found the correct one. Maybe the Time Lords had more than one file on the Doomsday Weapon.
At the end of the day, the Colonist manage to defeat IMC through sacrifice of their leader, while the Doctor convinces the last intelligent member of the ancient race not to help the Master. He then instructs the Doctor to activate their self destruct.
All in all a nice edition to my collection of classic Who.
