Doctor Who - Meglos

Good old Amazon pre-orders, getting the DVD to me on Saturday, two days before release.

Meglos is a 1980 tale featuring Tom Baker's Doctor. This was in his final season and the adventures were a lot darker and sciency. If any of Doctor Who has ever been science-fiction (which I don't believe that it is), this is it. However Meglos presents us with an anomaly, in the sense that it's a fairly light-hearted tale.

First of all, Meglos himself is an evil cactus, a concept that is bizarre even for Doctor Who. In the first episode it's very difficult to take this talking cactus seriously, as you can understand. However when the cactus steals the body of a human, we begin to see the sinister side, even more so when he alters his form to look like the Doctor!

For the first half of the story the Doctor does very little, there's certainly more of a focus on Meglos, the space pirates that he has enlisted the help of and the religion vs science argument that the planet Tigella's society seems to have as the prominent aspect of its planets culture. It's quite worrying to see that all the scientists are blond-haired and blue-eyed whilst the religious Deons are not.

The story is simple enough. Meglos steals something to power his weapon, crippling a planet in the process as the power source is required to power everything on their planet. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and a couple of the Aryan-looking scientists have to follow Meglos back to his home planet to stop the weapon from being fired. All the time the Doctor and Meglos are identical, each impersonating each other to confuse the Tigellans and the Space Pirates. This leads to a number of comic moments. When the two 'Doctors' eventually meet each other the comedy however turns to silliness. By this stage teh Doctor and Meglos are deadly enemies and should be locked in mortal combat, however they spend most of their time complimenting good looks.

There are some odd bits of writing and direction throughout. The fact that the Doctor, Romana and K9 don't even leave the TARDIS until part two should be disturbing, however the space pirates and Meglos provide enough action to keep the pace going. This is unfortunately canceled out by the tediousness of the science vs religion debates on Tigella, the same scene is repeated about five times in different parts of the Tigellan city.

The final episode, despite being entertaining, is a total mess. Lexa, leader of the Deons, played by original companion actress Jacqueline Hill, is killed off in the stupidest of ways. A space pirate that we thought was dead shoots her before actually dying. the scene is rushed and there is no tension at all, when something could easily be made from it, especially when you consider the episode's strangely low running time.

There is also the ending. A rushed scene back on Tigella after the destruction of the dodecahedron (the infinite power source) where the locals have changed their minds about attempting to inhabit the surface, that is covered by the unconvincing killer Bell Planes, and have started to do a bit of gardening.

Meglos is a rushed mess, yet it is still strangely watchable and enjoyable. The acting is on a surprisingly high level, mainly due to Tom Baker playing both the Doctor and Meglos for the majority of the story. There are some questionable moments by the space pirates but nothing that removes the viewer from the story. It's a dark story told in a surprisingly comic way. The only real letdown is the shortness of three of the episodes, all of which are considerably below running time, episode four taking up only 18 of the 25 minutes. If you're willing to overlook things like this then you will find Meglos to be highly enjoyable. 7/10