Mawdryn Undead (TV story): Difference between revisions

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[[Category:Black Guardian trilogy]]
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[[Category:Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart episodes]]
[[Category:Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart episodes]]
[[Category:Regeneration episodes]]

Revision as of 17:58, 29 May 2010


Synopsis

A warp ellipse draws the TARDIS off course. The Fifth Doctor's companions are separated from him not in space, but in time, and he has to deal with a treacherous schoolboy named Turlough. But why does the Doctor's old friend the Brigadier not remember him at all?

Plot

Part One

In 1983, the former Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart teaches mathematics at Brendon Public School, where Turlough is a student. Turlough convinces Ibbotson to go on a joyride with him in the Brigadier's car, which crashes. While unconscious, Turlough is contacted by the sinister Black Guardian. The Black Guardian offers Turlough transportation off Earth if he will kill the Doctor. At the same time, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa have problems of their own. The Doctor's TARDIS is caught in a warp ellipse and materializes on board a starliner locked in a perpetual orbit in time and space. Turlough, under the Black Guardian's instructions, transports himself onto the liner from Earth by means of a transmat capsule and encounters the TARDIS crew. The Doctor travels to Earth via transmat, taking Turlough with him, to get rid of the transmat interference that is trapping the TARDIS on the liner. As the Doctor is sorting out the device, Turlough, responding to the Black Guardian's exhortations, picks up a large rock and prepares to smash it down on the back of the Doctor's head...

Part Two

The Doctor is knocked backward by a small explosion, forcing the rock out of Turlough's hands. Unfortunately, when the TARDIS tries to materialise on Earth, it vanishes. The Doctor meets the Brigadier at the Brendon school, but is puzzled when his old comrade-in-arms does not remember their time together at first. When the Doctor says he has to find Tegan and his TARDIS, the Brigadier remembers meeting her in 1977. The Doctor realises that the TARDIS is right there - just six years earlier - and tries to get the Brigadier to remember the events that led to his nervous breakdown in 1977.

In 1977, Tegan and Nyssa encounter the transmat capsule, but inside is an alien-looking humanoid whom they initially believe is the Doctor, horribly injured. Meeting the younger Brigadier, they bring him and the alien back to the starliner. Tegan, Nyssa and the Brigadier enter the TARDIS control room. The alien, who is a scientist called Mawdryn, now wearing the Doctor's old coat, turns to face them. The top of his skull is missing, revealing his pulsing brain. Nyssa screams in horror.

Part Three

Under the pretense of being the Doctor, suffering a failed regeneration, Mawdryn convinces the other to bring the TARDIS to the ship, claiming it has restorative capabilities. Meanwhile, the Doctor, Turlough and the present-day Brigadier use a TARDIS homing device on the damaged Transmat to bring themselves to the ship, splitting up shortly after to search for Tegan and Nyssa. Under the Black Guardian's instruction, Turlough opens a secret room, revealing several humanoids suffering from the same malady as Mawdryn. Mawdryn fools the present-day Brigadier into using a stolen Time Lord device to stabilise his condition. Finding the TARDIS, the Doctor reunites with Tegan and Nyssa. When the Doctor finds out that there are two Brigadiers aboard, he has to try to keep the two apart lest the resulting energy discharge prove catastrophic.

The Doctor and Nyssa meet with the present-day Brigadier and Mawdryn. Mawdryn revealed that his crew tried to steal the secret of regeneration from the Time Lord, but instead suffered an agonising, eternal variation of the process. Tegan is then chased into the room by Mawdryn's mutated crewmates. The mutants take their places in the regeneration room and Mawdryn pleads with the Doctor to help them die by giving them his energy. The Doctor refuses, explaining to Tegan that if he did so it would mean the end of him as a Time Lord...

Part Four

Under the Black Guardian's orders, Turlough locates the past version of the Brigadier, and tricks him into the room Mawdryn's crew previously occupied, in order to keep the two Brigadiers from touching. He then meets the Doctor, who tells him to use the transmat to bring the past Brigadier back to Earth. Trying to leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that Tegan and Nyssa have been infected by the same malady as Mawdryn and his compatriots. Attempted time travel accelerates their conditions, and reversing out of the warp ellipse only regresses Tegan and Nyssa into children. The only cure, it seems, is to do what Mawdryn demands: the Doctor must give up the energy from his remaining regenerations. Meanwhile, the past Brigadier manages to escape the room, and encounters Madryn and his crew. Fearing the time imbalance, they send him into the transmat. However, unbeknownst to them, the transmat cannot make the trip while the TARDIS is on the vessel, and the capsule returns to it's station seconds later.

Hooking himself up to Mawdryn's apparatus, the Doctor is about to sacrifice himself when the two Brigadiers meet and touch hands, causing a discharge of temporal energy at precisely the right instant. Tegan and Nyssa are cured, the alien scientists succeed in ending their undead existence, and the Doctor remains a Time Lord. The younger Brigadier, however, will not remember his time with the Doctor until they meet again in 1983. The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan deliver the 1977 and 1983 versions of the Brigadier back to the school. Turlough is in the TARDIS control room when they return. He asks if he can join them, and the Doctor comments that he already has. In space, Mawdryn's ship self-destructs.

Cast

Crew

References

Story Notes

  • Every story during Season 20 had the Doctor face an enemy from each of his past incarnations. For this trilogy, the enemy was the Black Guardian, who last faced the fourth incarnation of the Doctor at the conclusion of the Key to Time saga in 1979.
  • David Collings, who played Mawdryn, also appeared in the Fourth Doctor stories DW: Revenge of the Cybermen as Vorus and DW: The Robots of Death as Poul, and would himself play an alternate Doctor in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who Unbound audio drama, Full Fathom Five.
  • The original intent of the production team was for the character of Ian Chesterton, one of the original regulars from the series' first two seasons from 1963-65, to return for a guest appearance in this story, hence the school setting as Chesterton was a science teacher. However, actor William Russell proved to be unavailable. Some consideration was given to using instead the character of Harry Sullivan, who was a regular in the programme for a season in the mid-1970s, before the return of Lethbridge-Stewart was eventually decided upon.
  • Radio Times credits Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in the combined cast for Parts One/Two, and as Brigadier in the combined cast for Parts Three/Four. All on-screen credits read The Brigadier.
  • Former producer Graham Williams, the creator of the Guardians, did not know about their return in this season and learned about it only years later during an on-stage interview at a Doctor Who convention.
  • Originally the slot that this story occupies would have been given to the long-delayed "Song of the Space Whale" (or "Space Whale"), in which Turlough would have been one of a group of colonists, however this was once again cancelled and this story took its place.
  • Peter Grimwade's previous story, DW: Time-Flight, also takes place in two different times.

Ratings

  • Part 1 - 6.5 million viewers
  • Part 2 - 7.5 million viewers
  • Part 3 - 7.4 million viewers
  • Part 4 - 7.7 million viewers

Myths

to be added

Filming Locations

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

to be added

Continuity

  • The "Black Guardian Trilogy" continues in the story DW: Terminus.
  • The Doctor last encountered the Black Guardian in DW: The Armageddon Factor, in which he also hinted that what he thought was the White Guardian in DW: The Ribos Operation may have been the Black Guardian posing as his counterpart.
  • At the story's opening, Tegan is still unsure if she is finally free of the Mara, a reference to the previous story, DW: Snakedance.
  • Mawdryn Undead also makes the first explicit statement in the series that the current Doctor is the fifth incarnation.
  • Another example of Time Lord technology being used to create perpetual regeneration was seen in DW: Underworld.
  • Turlough's origins are finally explained in DW: Planet of Fire.
  • Mawdryn finds in the TARDIS and wears the red coat worn by the Fourth Doctor.
  • There are a series of flashbacks as the Brigadier remembers including:

Timeline

DVD, Video and Other Releases

This story along with DW: Terminus (TV story) and DW: Enlightenment (TV story) was released in The Black Guardian Trilogy Boxset on 10th August 2009 in the UK.

This story was released on VHS in November 1992.

Novelisation

Mawdryn Undead novel.jpg
Main article: Mawdryn Undead (novelisation)

See Also

to be added

External Links

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For the purposes of this list, a "regeneration story" is one in which a regeneration is actually and initially depicted. For this reason The War Games is not included below, even though it is commonly thought of as a "regeneration story". It doesn't actually include a clear scene of regeneration, and the preponderance of stories in other media confirms that the Second Doctor did not regenerate at the end of it.
Additionally, immediate post-regeneration stories, like the 2005 Children in Need Special Born Again — and ones like Castrovalva, where the regeneration sequence was replayed — are not included.

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