With the TARDIS stuck in a separate, smaller universe known as E-Space, it’s only a matter of time before we find out, well, how K9 will be knocked out of the story this time.
Yes, the TARDIS is still stuck in E-Space, and there aren’t many habitable planets in there where there may or may not be a scientist with the knowledge necessary to get back to regular space.
Now, there is one planet, and it has sentient life. But it looks rather Medieval and gloomy. The ruling council, two men and a woman, are collecting, well, people from the nearby village. Said people may or may not return.
You know, this is looking really gothic right about now. Just sayin’.
The village’s headman has an adult son that gets taken away, and a guard, somewhat helpless, says he’ll try to bring the lad back, but, you know how these things go.
Well, this would be about when the TARDIS shows up. K9 did detect some advanced technology, but at the same time didn’t. And it’s all confined to one spot on the planet, so that will be where the Doctor and Romana go to look. And this time, we see K9 kept out of things by…the Doctor’s asking him to stay behind and run some calculations.
Well, that was simple enough.
As it is, the Doctor and Romana don’t get too far. The village seems a bit surprised to see them because, well, other people don’t really exist as far as they know. They also don’t seem to know what a scientist is though the Doctor gets a bit interested when they mention something called the Withering.
Well, that just means Romana and the Doctor will need to keep looking. K9 did detect some technology. And sure, the village headman does pull out a walkie talkie after everyone leaves and…
Huh.
Well, at least K9 wasn’t wrong. Sure, there are other issues keeping him out of the plot. Like how Adric had stowed away on the TARDIS and manages to get past the dog using some simple semantics and logic traps. I don’t know if this is more of the current showrunner trying to keep K9 off the show as much as possible or Adric being too smart for his own good, but here we are. Adric ends up in the village where the headman and his wife take a liking to the kid who just shows up since, you know, they already had their own son disappear.
However, there are other interested parties in the TARDIS’s crew. The three lords know about them. And while some guards are scared off by, well, scientists with scrounged technology. They have some photos of a crew of humans that crashed on the planet a long time ago, and the command crew (a married couple and another guy) sure do look a lot like the planetary lords, but they would be centuries old by then. But, no, they look the same.
So, maybe the Doctor and Romana need to look around outside some more. There sure are a lot of bats out there, and it does seem one of those lords in the castle can command bats. And there sure are an awful lot of bats forcing the two to ground…
You know, there have been more terrifying cliffhangers on this show beyond stock footage of swarms of bats.
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