Mawdryn Undead

Dear Gary—

“In 30 years of soldiering I’ve never encountered such destructive power as I have seen displayed here and now by the British schoolboy.”

Welcome back Brigadier! Twice over no less! This alone makes Mawdryn Undead worthwhile. Add to this the introduction of Turlough as new companion, combined with a fine script and production values, and it approaches the top of my list (at least of Davison serials; it still has a ways to go to top my all time Who list).

I have to say that I am bewildered to find the Brigadier idling away his retirement at a boy’s school. I prefer to think that he was on an undercover mission for UNIT when he was ‘zapped,’ forgot his assignment, and merely settled into the life presented to him.

“After all, if I was suffering from amnesia I’d be the first to know about it wouldn’t I?” The Brigadier is in there, he just needs to be snapped out of his befuddled state. It takes more than the Doctor, though. This fifth Doctor is rather unremarkable and I don’t blame the Brig for not remembering right off. No, it takes the mention of Liz Shaw, Jo Grant, and Sarah Jane Smith to jog his memory.

“Well, bless my soul. So, you’ve done it again Doctor.” And the Brigadier is back, unfazed as ever.

“I knew a Tegan once.” The Brigadier is back and he is remembering.

“Your Tegan; my Tegan; it’s the same person,” the Doctor tells the Brigadier, although he doesn’t quite grasp the concept: “”Not a hundred percent, Doctor.”

“You never did understand the interrelation of time.”

Two Brigadiers, the 1983 version and the 1977. Whether in alternate realities as in Inferno or separate time lines as in our present Mawdryn Undead, Nicholas Courtney owns this role, and instinctively he portrays the subtle differences of the same character walking two unique paths.

Mawdryn Undead is ambitious in its storytelling. Almost too ambitious. The separate time lines, the Flying Dutchman aspect of Mawdryn and his fellow mutants, and the Black Guardian recruiting Turlough to kill the Doctor could each be a story unto itself; in fact the Guardian/Turlough plot is only introduced here in Mawdryn and plays out over three serials, leaving the divergent timelines and the Mawdryn threads only to be resolved in our present.

I do have to admit, however, that the opening Turlough scenes are rather lame, and the accompanying musical score is as much of a car wreck as Turlough’s and Ibbotson’s joy ride turns out to be. Furthermore, I find the Black Guardian aspect contrived. I don’t for a minute buy the “I may not be seen to act in this; I must not be involved” excuse that the Guardian gives Turlough as to why he doesn’t just kill the Doctor himself. And I can’t for the life of me figure out his choice of Turlough as his hit man. “If you fail me again, I shall destroy you” he threatens, yet Turlough continues to fail and is never destroyed. It seems to me that the Guardian’s threat rings hollow and undoubtedly he has more effective and willing henchmen to choose from.

I’m also not really sure why Turlough plays along. Initially he complies because he is told that the Doctor is evil and that the Black Guardian can rescue Turlough from his torment on Earth, but he quickly learns the lies behind these assertions. True, the Black Guardian can follow him around and haunt his dreams, but Turlough seems made of sterner stuff to let that bother him. Maybe at times the control crystal proves impossible to throw away, but only when convenient. At other times he is free to leave it about or put it in his pocket. It doesn’t seem to harm him in any way, either. It only glows occasionally and appears to act as a conduit for the Guardian to growl his commands. I can’t understand why Turlough is constantly holding it up as though he is a priest standing at an altar offering up a sacrifice.

However, this is a sufficient enough excuse to allow Turlough to join the TARDIS crew so I will accept it as the plot device it is.

But the main story is that of Mawdryn and his ship of perpetually doomed mutants. Disfigured by their own experiments to learn the Time Lord secret of regeneration, these eight suffering scientists seek only to die. This is at least the second hint of Time Lord history involving alien races attempting to duplicate the regenerative process, the first being the Minyans from the serial Underworld. Those weary travelers of Underworld also longed for death, but they had their quest to keep them going. Mawdryn and his cohorts have nothing of interest on their ship of perpetual orbit; they spend all their time holed up in a hidden room behind the wall and apparently only venture out once every 70 years to find help from whatever planet is currently within transmat distance.

The transmat is apparently the root of all the trouble in Mawdryn Undead, wreaking havoc with the TARDIS and causing the travel to two separate time lines, with Tegan, Nyssa, and Mawdryn ending up in one (1977) and the Doctor and Turlough in the other (1983), and with the Brigadier on hand to greet both landing parties.

(What a massive cosmic deal New Who could make out of this—first the out of the blue reuniting of the Doctor and Tegan in Arc of Infinity, and now the reappearance of the Brigadier. One huge coincidence followed by another. Surely the universe as we know it is coming to an end . . . yet again.)

The Brigadier is the salvation of Mawdryn in more ways than one. Not only does he brighten the tone by his mere presence, he manages in his bemused way to provide the clues necessary to reunite the Doctor with his TARDIS (not to mention his companions), and ultimately he unwittingly supplies the big bang power source that is essential to bringing Mawdryn’s “endurance of endless time” to an end.

Despite the ambitiousness of the tale, there really isn’t much more to it. With an alien not intent on taking over the world but rather simply looking to be euthanized, and with the Growling Guardian story really only in a holding pattern until it can be fully realized, there isn’t much in the way of action in this story. There are a lot of scenes roaming about the “Queen Mary” or “Mary Celeste” (take your pick) ship, trying to keep the two Brigadiers apart, traveling to and fro in TARDIS and transmat between ship and Earth, and running about the boy’s school.

However, the attention is in the details as they say. In this case, it is in the characterizations. It is in the Brigadier (as already discussed); it is in the agony of Turlough as he wrestles with his choice; it is in the wretched purgatory of Mawdryn; it is in the urgency of Tegan as she tries to find help for the ailing Doctor (or so she thinks). And finally, it is in the Doctor.

“Don’t you understand,” the Doctor states when asked to aid Mawdryn and his fellow condemned souls, “if I did it would be the end of me as a Time Lord.”

(Again I have to note that New Who would have used this not as a mid-season cliffhanger for episode three, but would have opened the first episode of the new season with this startling revelation, telegraphing a painful season-long story arc that wouldn’t be resolved until the final moments of the last episode of the last story of the season in a bigger and better and brasher that tops all that went before—but just wait until next year—conclusion that leaves one exhausted.)

This declaration by the Doctor is not a signal for a special effects laden season of endless melodrama, but a moment of inner turmoil and crisis of conscience.

The Doctor is being asked to give up all of his regenerations so that the mutilated scientists can at last find peace. (Side note: a definitive statement that the Doctor is on his fifth generation with a total of only twelve regenerations possible for Time Lords.) It is too much for the Doctor to give up. “Sometimes you have to live with the consequences of your actions.”

But the consequence for the Doctor’s refusal is what brings him back to Mawdryn. Tegan and Nyssa have become infected with the same mutation; they cannot leave the ship; even the Doctor’s “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” cannot save them. If they leave they either age or revert to childhood. There is no escape. The Doctor is their only hope just as he is Mawdryn’s only hope.

It is a tragic, touching moment as the Doctor prepares to sacrifice himself for his friends. And then the Doctor Who ex machina in the form of the duplicate Brigadier and, “as Tegan would say, Zap!” The Blinovitch Limitation Effect. “The two Brigadiers just shorted out the time differential” thus providing the power source needed and saving the Doctor’s regenerations: “I am a Time Lord.”

The Doctor is still a Time Lord, Tegan and Nyssa are free from the infection, the mutants are dead, and the two Brigadiers are returned to their own timelines.

Wait—“Where’s Turlough?”

“I’m not that easy to get rid of.” Turlough is on the TARDIS.

“Doctor, may I join you?”

“I think you already have,” the Doctor replies.

Turlough—not the innocent school boy he portrays. With the alien and technical knowledge he displays throughout Mawdryn Undead, he can’t have fooled the Doctor. But that, it seems, is a story yet to be told.

This story, though, is done, and I send this out, Gary, ever hopeful . . .