The Monster of Peladon

Dear Gary—

“There’s a gang of hot-headed miners running around in those tunnels with sophisticated weapons.” That nicely sums up The Monster of Peladon.

The Doctor has returned to Peladon fifty years after the events of The Curse of Peladon, this time with Sarah Jane Smith in tow.

“It’s not your precious Citadel at all; it’s another rotten, gloomy old tunnel.” A tunnel with hot-headed miners running amok in their afro badger hair.

Peladon hasn’t changed much since the Doctor’s last visit. It still has a rather ineffectual ruler (King Peladon’s daughter Queen Thalira); it still has a rather medieval caste society; and it still has Alpha Centauri. Peladon has joined the Federation, but the hoped for progress has not materialized.

It would be interesting to see Peladon fifty years after Curse if Jo had stayed behind to become the queen. How different things might have been. Instead King Peladon must have continued allowing himself to be cowed by his Chancellor and the Federation; forever caught between the two and paralyzed to make any decision. And his daughter is carrying on where he left off.

The result is that Peladon is on the brink of yet another civil war, this time led by the exploited miners who have been bearing the brunt of the power struggles occurring in the Citadel.

Add to this boiling pot a traitorous Federation engineer and a rogue Ice Warrior faction intent on getting the trisilicate for the Federation’s enemy the Galaxy Five confederation. Then mix in the Doctor and Sarah Jane.

The result is another decent Doctor Who action adventure.

Decent Doctor Who adventure . . . Galaxy Five . . . I don’t know, Gary . . . I’m kind of missing the days of reconstructed Galaxy Four.

But I have to let those sprays of molten silver that are Galaxy Four spread themselves out and dissolve into the Galaxy Five crisis at hand.

And so the Doctor’s lament, “I wish we could stop for a while and take stock of ourselves instead of being surrounded by dangers all the time,” disperses out and reimages itself as “My dear Sarah, there is nothing I’d like more than a quiet life.”

A quiet life, however, is never the Doctor’s fate.

“He was the most alive person I ever met,” Sarah says of him when she thinks he is dead. Alive; full of life; larger than life; never quiet. Even the Doctor’s Zen like memories that he shares are bursting with color and life, just like those shimmering molten silver sprays.

But of course the Doctor is not dead.

“I put myself into a complete sensory withdrawal,” he explains; “I shut myself off.”

That brief trance-like state is the only quiet the Doctor knows. After that it is off to race about the tunnels with those hot-headed miners. The Monster of Peladon really should have been called The Tunnels of Peladon.

The monster that the title refers to is a holographic image of the Doctor’s old friend Aggedor that the engineer Eckersley and his Ice Warrior cohorts are using to terrorize the miners. The real Aggedor also makes a cameo appearance and the Doctor reacquaints himself using his old standby Haroon, Haroon, Haroon lullaby. Unfortunately this furry royal pet meets an untimely death.

It is an interesting re-visit to Peladon, The Monster of Peladon. It has enough reference to The Curse and yet enough difference to keep it a separate story. Trisilicate and the miners were only minor plot points of Curse and have been mined effectively here in Monster. The Chancellor holding desperately to the old ways and dominating the young ruler is also a nice echo of the past story, but the outcome of Monster promises more reform than the previous with the appointment of the miner Gebek as the new Chancellor.

Sarah’s exhortations to the queen also remind one of Jo’s efforts with Peladon back in Curse, although Sarah seems to be making more of an impact. Peladon was lovesick and starry eyed; when Jo left her influence left with her. Sarah’s lectures on women’s lib, however, start to sink in and Thalira begins to take more of a commanding role as the story progresses.

And then there is Alpha Centauri. Good old Alpha. And the Ice Warriors. Only this time, instead of being the good guys the Ice Warriors turn out to be the baddies. Similar yet different. Quite a nice touch.

Galaxy Four to Galaxy Five; Curse to Monster; first Doctor to third; the magic of Doctor Who. Shimmering echoes of the past enriching the present.

Here’s hoping those shimmering echoes are spreading out amongst the stars and will find you, Gary, somewhere in time and space.