Mawdryn Undead (TV story)

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The Doctor and the TARDIS - well, how could I forget?Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart


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. An alien named Turlough lives in secret amongst boys at an English boarding school where the Brigadier is now teaching maths. He is contacted by the Black Guardian, who wants him to kill the Doctor. The TARDIS, meanwhile, has brought the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan to a space station trapped in a warp ellipse. It serves as a prison for a team of scientists led by Mawdryn, who tried to steal the secrets of the Time Lords and were placed in a state of perpetual regeneration as retribution. It is up to the Doctor to find some way to help Mawdryn, but doing so may cost him his remaining regenerations. But why does the Doctor's old friend the Brigadier not remember him at all?

Plot

Part One

It is 1983 and in England at Brendon Public School. Turlough, a red-haired teenager with an air of smug superiority, convinces the reluctant Ibbotson to take their math teacher's classic Humber car for a spin. Much to Ibbotson's horror, Turlough continues on beyond school property -- and is forced off the road by an oncoming car. Turlough is flung from the Humber and awakens to find himself floating above his unconscious body as school officials gather at the scene of the accident. A dark figure appears to Turlough and offers him the chance to leave Earth and return to his real home -- but only if Turlough kills the evil entity known as the Doctor. Turlough is hesitant to commit murder -- but as he begins to return to consciousness and the opportunity slips through his fingers, he agrees to do so. He awakens to find Dr Runciman tending to him, while his math teacher -- Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the former Brigadier of British UNIT -- angrily studies the wreck of his car.

In the TARDIS console room, Tegan is still recovering from the trauma of her possession by the Mara, and wants to return to Earth to rest in familiar surroundings. Instead, the TARDIS drifts into a warp ellipse and nearly collides with a spaceship travelling through the ellipse -- a fixed orbit through time and space. The Doctor is able to materialise on board the ship, which appears to be an opulent but deserted passenger liner. Exploring further, he and his companions find a transmat bay with an empty space where the capsule should be. According to the controls, someone left the ship six years ago... and went to Earth.

Brendon's Headmaster discusses the situation with Lethbridge-Stewart, and is reluctant to take any severe disciplinary action against Turlough -- an orphan whose affairs are dealt with by a very strange solicitor in London. Turlough is recovering in the school hospital, where he finds a crystal cube in his jacket; when he touches the cube it begins to glow and he is able to communicate with his new alien partner. Ibbotson arrives, and Turlough assures him that he'll take all the blame -- though in fact he's already told the Headmaster that he only went along to keep Ibbotson out of trouble. Turlough leaves hospital without waiting to be dismissed, and Ibbotson follows him to the obelisk on the hill above the school. There, Turlough follows the instructions placed in his mind, and presses the base of a stone urn -- releasing a camouflage screen around a transmat capsule. Ibbotson watches in shock as Turlough enters the capsule, which promptly disappears. Ibbotson flees back to the school and babbles everything to Lethbridge-Stewart, who is frankly sceptical; after all, a solid object just can't dematerialise...

Turlough emerges from the transmat capsule aboard the alien ship, which he hopes to use to return home; but his new partner won't release him from his contract so easily. Before he can go home, he must fulfil his side of the bargain and kill the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa return to the TARDIS but find that they are unable to dematerialise again. The Doctor soon determines that the transmat capsule has returned -- and that a signal being sent to it from a control box on Earth is interfering with the TARDIS. He returns to check the transmat controls and confirms that the capsule has just arrived from Earth, 1983. But what has it been doing there for the past six years?

The Doctor and his companions return to the TARDIS to find Turlough inside, fiddling with the controls. He claims he simply wandered into the capsule out of curiosity, and although Tegan is suspicious of him, the Doctor seems to take his story at face value. The Doctor intends to take the capsule back to Earth and programmes the TARDIS to follow him once the transmat signal has cut out. Turlough accompanies the Doctor, while Nyssa and Tegan remain in the TARDIS. Once back on Earth, the Doctor soon locates the malfunctioning signal box hidden beneath the stone urn; but as he removes it from its hiding place and begins disassembling it, Turlough -- goaded on by the voice of his partner, the Black Guardian -- finds a large rock and prepares to smash in the unsuspecting Doctor's skull... ...

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

As Mawdryn explains to Nyssa, Tegan and the Brigadier what is happening, they only succeeded in trapping themselves in a cycle of perpetual mutation and regeneration and now long for death. 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.

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. The only cure, it seems, is to do what Mawdryn demands: the Doctor must give up the energy from his remaining regenerations. 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

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 1983 version of the Brigadier back home. 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

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • Mawdryn Undead has the unfortunate distinction of contributing to one of the biggest and most widely discussed contradictions in the Doctor Who universe: the "UNIT dating controversy".
  • The Brigadier states that he has seen the Doctor regenerate twice. In fact, he has only seen him regenerate once, in DW: Planet of the Spiders The former might refer to ST: The Touch of the Nurazh or his thoughts on that the Third Doctor had changed back to the Second in DW: The Three Doctors. Alternatively, he might simply have chosen his words poorly and been referring to his knowledge of the Doctor's regeneration from Second to Third, even though he did not physically witness it. Also, his actual words are that he has 'seen it twice' which could just as easily refer to the after effects of regeneration (amnesia, disorientation, etc) and not the process itself.
  • With a whole cosmos to choose from, couldn't the Black Guardian have selected a more reliable assassin to deal with the Doctor than Turlough? He is limited to picking someone who will come in contact with the Doctor, having no power to directly influence what happens within the universe. Turlough is the most likely candidate of who he has to choose from.
  • If Mawdryn and his associates really wanted to die, couldn't they simply have rigged the engines of their ship to explode (as we see happen at the end of the story). The explosion would surely have been enough to scatter their molecules across space, making further regeneration impossible. The same would, after all, certainly kill a Time Lord. Their journey was in part meant to be a punishment. The engines might have been designed to be tamper-resistant.

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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