297 Colony in Space Episode Five

EPISODE: Colony in Space: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 297
STORY NUMBER: 058
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 08 May 1971
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Michael Briant
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Colony In Space
EPISODE FORMAT: 525 video RSC

"I just have to press this button on here, and Miss Grant's cubicle will immediately be flooded with lethal gas!"

Ashe interrupts the Master, asking him as the adjudicator to intervene in the fight. Winton captures Dent forcing IMC to surrender. They are taken as prisoners to their space ship. Trying to get evidence that the Master is an imposter the Doctor & Jo plan to break in to his Tardis, disguised as the Adjudicator's space ship. Dent prepares to leave but contacts Earth to check the Adjudicator's identity. The Doctor & Jo get past the Master's alarm system and search his Tardis. The IMC's ship orbits Uxarieus when confirmation that the Adjudicator is a fake arrives. The Doctor & Jo find the credentials for the real adjudicator but in her haste to leave Jo activates the alarm system causing her & the Doctor to be gassed. IMC return to the planet 50 kilometres from the colony and plan to attack & kill the colonists. The Master uses Jo as a hostage to get the Doctor to guide him to the primitives' city. The IMC guards enter the colony taking Ashe hostage, forcing the other colonists to surrender. IMC hold a show trial and exile the colonists from the planet. Ashe protests that their ship is old and won't survive the trip. The primitives attack the Doctor & Master destroying their vehicle. Caldwell confirms Ashe's claims and says the ship may blow up on take off, but Dent is unconcerned. Caldwell & Morgan, attempting to locate the Adjudicator, find the key to the Master's Tardis that the Doctor dropped earlier. They gain entry to the Tardis setting of the alarm system which notifies the Master causing him to activate a mechanism to flood the chamber holding Jo Grant with poisonous gas.

How stupid is Jo Grant? Well as stupid as the story needs her to be obviously. After the Doctor's made such a fuss about getting into the Master's Tardis she forgets everything he's said about the alarm system and sets it off in her haste to try and get the Doctor out of there!

Deary me. I suppose you can lay some blame at the Doctor's feet for not deactivating the alarm in the first place but.....

It's episode five and I'm getting very very weary of the Colonists/IMC struggle. It feels rather stretched out now, with the position of power changing between IMC to the Colonists and back again during this episode, finishing with an IMC Kangaroo court effectively sentencing the colonists to death!

DENT: As legally appointed Governor of this planet, I declare this court in session. Morgan?
MORGAN: You are charged with destroying property and equipment belonging to the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, assault and murder of IMC personnel, trespass on a planet lawfully allocated to IMC, and armed rebellion against the lawful representatives of the Earth's government. How do you plead?
WINTON: This whole business is a joke!
DENT: I advise you to take it very seriously. Have you anything to say in your own defence?
ASHE: Everything we've done has been provoked by you. This planet is rightfully ours!
WINTON: The only mistake we made was not killing you when we had the chance.
DENT: You will do yourself no good by this hostile attitude, nor by repeating slanderous allegations which have already been dismissed by the Adjudicator.
ASHE: Why isn't the Adjudicator taking this trial? What right have you to sit
DENT: You still don't realise the position, Ashe. The Adjudicator's authority passed to me when he made his decision. I am now the legal ruler of this planet. Now for the last time, have you anything to say?
ASHE: I agree with Winton. This trial is a farce.
DENT: I take it you admit the charges?
WINTON: We've admitted nothing.
DENT: On three of these charges, you could be sentenced to life imprisonment. On two you could be sentenced to death. The sentence is execution. However, the sentence will be suspended on condition that you and your followers depart this planet immediately.
ASHE: But that's impossible!
DENT: The alternative is execution.
ASHE: You don't understand. That spaceship was old when we bought it. It won't survive another trip.
DENT: The trial is now concluded.
ASHE: If you send us up in that spaceship, you're condemning all of us to death.
DENT: You will make preparations for lift off immediately.

This is emphasised by Caldwell's assessment later:

CALDWELL: I've just been checking over the colonists' spaceship.
DENT: Well?
CALDWELL: Ashe is right. It's in pretty bad shape. There's a fair chance it may blow up on the ground.
DENT: Make sure all IMC personnel are clear of the area before take off, will you?

Dent's response makes it quite clear he knows what fate he is condemning he colonists to.

We get to properly see inside the Master's Tardis for the first time this episode.

As with the Monk's Tardis in the Time Meddler it is effectively just the Doctor's Tardis set reused in a slightly different configuration.

They've even reused the photographic flat, but here it's turned on it's side so the roundels are in rows instead of columns, like it was in the first episode.

To subtly emphasise this difference, the doors on The Master's Tardis are located on the right of the screen whereas they are almost always to the left of the screen for the Doctor's time machine.

However whereas when the Doctor's Tardis doors open in they show roundels on the reverse of the doors here you have a flat surface, painted maroon to blend in with the outside of the set and matching the colour of the Master's ship seen in the previous episode, though I'm not 100% sure where on the Master's spaceship they're meant to be walking into!

I reiterate the point that these are the Doctor's actual Tardis doors that have been disguised because this unknowingly marks a crucial point in their history. Before this, as I've said previously, you've always seen roundels on the rear of the doors when they open:

After this point it's always a flat panel.

The change made for just these scenes in this story sticks for as long as these doors were used!

Oh look, there's Pat Gorman again! Having played a Primitive throughout the story then IMC man Long in episode 3 he's now an unnamed colonist in this episode!

The start of this episode is refilmed, and watching closely the new version removes Norton being shot from the gun battle: I only spotted it because we get a nice clear shot of the white power station control panel which is obscured in the original version in episode 4!

I believe that this story is the last time we see one of the original set of Power Station panels.