Doctor Who/Recap/S22/E05 Timelash

""The stories I've heard about you. The great Doctor, all knowing and all powerful. You're about as powerful as a burnt out android.""

- Maylin Tekker

The Doctor and Peri happen upon yet another Crapsack World, under the heel of a mysterious dictator known as the Borad who is trying to provoke interstellar war with some inoffensive handpuppets for apparently no reason. Mirror-fearing robots keep eveyrone in line, and the preferred method of execution is to be shoved into a one-way portal through time and space. It is called... the Time-Lash. As the quisling council leader and Large Ham puts it: "Most people depart with a scream."

It seems someone has—whoops!--accidentally fallen into the Time-Lash (and holding a MacGuffin, what's more), and the baddies want the Doctor to go and get her back. And to make sure he helps, they very originally kidnap Peri. At least, they say they do, but she in the meantime has made contact with a group of rebels in Morlock-infested tunnels, where she does a passable job winning them over with her encyclopedic knowledge of previous Doctor Who companions. And then a flaming android appears out of nowhere.

Anyway. The other end of the Time-Lash turns out to be 12th century Scotland, but, due to a collision with the TARDIS, the girl and her MacGuffin have ended up in 1885 instead. The Doctor convinces her to come back, but gets saddled with an overly enthusiastic stowaway in the bargain, named Herbert.

Back on the Crapsack World, the baddies have rounded up the rebels and have started throwing everyone they can into the Time-Lash, including, of course, the Doctor, once they've got their MacGuffin back. Oh, and Peri is chained up in the caves being menaced by a Morlock (a giant snake monster thing), for reasons that will probably become clear later. The Doctor and others manage to stage a moderately successful coup, even sending a flaming android back in time for good measure. While the new leader of the planet begs the invading sock puppets not to nuke them all, the Doctor wanders off, Herbert in tow, to deal with the Borad.

The Borad turns out to be a weird mutant experimental mixture of two races (who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Morlocks and Eloi of Wells' The Time Machine), and now he wants to kill everyone so that he can re-populate the world with more of his own cross-eyed hybrid kind. And, naturally, he has picked Peri for his queen (can't really disagree with this choice, though). The Doctor defeats him handily with a Power Crystal he picked up from inside the Time-Lash, frees Peri, and returns just in time to discover that the Sock Puppet Aliens have already fired their missile.

There is nothing for it but to fall back on the old Heroic Sacrifice and interpose the TARDIS between the planet and the missile. Which he does, after forcibly evicting Peri (and being horrified to discover that Herbert has once again stowed away). TARDIS goes boom, and the planet is saved! What's more, the Sock Puppets are suddenly anxious to make peace, realizing that there might be some negative repercussion to just having killed the Lord President of the High Council of the Time Lords.

But what's this? It turns out the Borad is Not Quite Dead (there were clones or something) and still has designs on Peri. Which he proves by threatening to kill her. Fortunately, the Doctor and Herbert are also Not Quite Dead for no adequately explained reason, and the Doctor throws the Borad into the Time-Lash so that he can spend the rest of his days swimming around Loch Ness and kickstarting the field of cryptozoology.

This story is one of the most hated, often rated the worst/second worst story ever, because it's derivative, it's hollow and insubstantial, and it's full of Deus Ex Machina and "it just is". However, it still has quite a few devoted fans.

Tropes

 * Ascetic Aesthetic: The Karfelon citadel is mostly bland and white.
 * The Caligula: The Borad
 * Chair Reveal
 * Cool Chair: The Borad's throne is another in the Great Chairs of Doctor Who line. It moves and has its time-acceleration ray!
 * Crapsack World
 * Death Wail: The Borad lets out a nice one when he first dies.
 * Decoy Leader: The Borad uses the face of an old man to cover for his true identity.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: When he learns the Borad's true genocidal plan, even Tekker rebels against him.
 * Fate Worse Than Death Apparently being sent to Scotland is this. Was this episode written by Garth Marenghi?
 * Ham-to-Ham Combat: Paul Darrow and Colin Baker
 * Hand Puppet: Used to represent an alien ambassador. It says something about "Timelash" that this isn't the most ludicrously cheap special effect in the story.
 * Hand Wave: How did the Doctor survive his heroic sacrifice near the end? When Peri attempts to ask this pertinent question, the Doctor brushes it aside, and he never does get around to explaining.
 * Historical Domain Character: H. G. Wells
 * Historical Person Punchline: The stowaway's full name is not revealed until the final scene (though given the number of shout-outs to his work, it's not hard to guess who he's meant to be).
 * Large Ham: Paul Darrow. Dear God, Paul Darrow.
 * Loch Ness Monster: The presumed fate of the Borad. In spite of the fact that the show has already done that one.
 * Mars Needs Women: And the Borad needs Peri.
 * Noodle Incident: The Doctor's previous visit to the planet.
 * Not Quite Dead
 * Rapid Aging: What the Borad's chair weapon does.
 * Shadow Dictator: No one has seen the true face of the Borad, only his decoy.
 * Shout-Out: To several H. G. Wells novels, reasonably enough. Also, the Doctor's line "To be frank, Herbert..." was a nod to Frank Herbert, author of Dune.
 * Slouch of Villainy: But it's not like the Borad has any reason to stand up.
 * Too Dumb to Live: announces his intention to kill his master after his Heel Face Turn... while standing right in front of the Borad's time-accelerating death ray. It ends about as well as you'd expect.
 * Was Once a Man: The Borad, until a science experiment went wrong.
 * You Have Failed Me