Where is E-Kobalt when you need him?

Apparently this is Robert Holmes' first Doctor Who story and all I can say is that he got better. Well, I suppose that the guy who gave us "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" and "The Caves of Androzani" had to start somewhere.

As the TARDIS lands on some planet, the people there, the Gonds, prepare to anoint two of their best and brightest as "Companions of the Krotons". This involves donning fancy robes before your peers and walking through a door fixed in a crystalline archway.

Having read Alien Bodies and heard various takes on how that novel did wonders for the Krotons, one of the most lackluster races in Doctor Who until that point, I was keen to learn how they had originally been portrayed.

I am unsure if Krotons are these big, bulky robotic creatures with a skirting at the bottom to allow for actors' legs to have some freedom of movement or if they are crystalline creatures inside these robot shells in the same way Daleks are these tentacled creatures inside of tank-like shells with plungers and eye stalks. For heads, they've got these crystal-like thingies which spin uncontrollably when their machine cum spaceship, the Dynotrope, runs low on energy. Instead of arms with something approaching hands with opposable thumbs that would be dexterous and useful, they are endowed with big vacuum hose arms with claws on them just like the robot from Lost in Space. Quite cheesy. But they do have these loud, booming voices which are quite intimidating.

The Krotons have conned the Gonds into periodically offering the smartest among them which are usually the folks who have spent the most time in the Hall of Learning, a room with these computers that are big and bulky like the Krotons themselves. There prospective companions do CBTs. Having stepped through the door wearing a robe, these people sit in uncomfortable looking chairs and undergo a psychedelic process that reminded me of The Ipcress File. Here it drains them of their mental energy which is consumed by the Dynotrope. The remaining husks, i.e. - the bodies, walk outside and get a gas sprayed at them which reduces the flesh into tiny particles which get dispersed by the wind.

There is a faction of Gonds that seeks to rebel against the Krotons and the others who bow down before these crystalline masters. The Doctor is naturally sympathetic to the anti-Kroton cause but he charts his own rebellion which involves helping a local chemist named Beta whip up a big batch of sulfuric acid which is used on the Dynotrope to save the day.

This story is quite hackneyed with the Gonds being completely forgettable and the Krotons looking unfinished. You don't see that skirting often as the director seems to have tried to keep it out of frame but you do see it a couple times and it just left me wondering, WTF? The lead Gond, a guy named Selris, can't talk without speaking rather forcefully and loudly. Someone should have told the actor he's not onstage and doesn't have to project. He wears this thing that looks like a breast plate with shoulder dealios that bend up to look like spikes and I just couldn't help think he looked a bit like Rodak from The Space Giants. In one scene he's at somebody's home with the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe who have saved a companion from being gassed. Selris stands there with his arms at his sides and his hands balled up in fists. All he needed was a kerchief on his head and he'd have looked just like Mr. Gumby. I chuckled every time I saw him onscreen after that.

"My brain hurts!"

Zoe wears one of the miniest mini-skirts in the history of the show and looks very fine doing so. It's too bad she's reduced to yelling out the obvious ("Look! There's a door!") and for the Doctor's help or for him to be careful or whatever. Well, there is one scene where she sits down in the Hall of Learning and is all proud of herself for having solved a puzzle quickly. Mostly, though, she stands behind the men screaming this or that.

The rebel Gonds act rashly and have to have their zeal tempered and plans rearranged by the Doctor. Was Holmes doing his Edmund Burke imitation here?

Lastly, I'll note that this story sees the TV debut of the Hostile Action Displacement System. (It got mentioned in the short story "The Avant Guardian", however.) A Kroton covers the TARDIS with that nasty desolver gas and, when the stuff has dissipated, the beloved ship is gone. But we see that it simply avoided the danger by zipping over to a different part of the quarry.

Watching this story really brought home just what a stroke of genius Lawrence Miles' portrayal of the Krotons in Alien Bodies was. In that story, they are slow but steady Dalek killers while here they're just home appliances with Stentorian voices.