Previously on Doctor Who… The Moonbase.

The Macra Terror is a 4-part early Doctor Who adventure that is completely missing from the BBC archives.

In order to watch the serial, I’ve found the “Loose Cannon” reconstructed version of the adventure.  This version employs the audio of the story matched against telesnap (still images), descriptive text captions, existing footage where available, and sometimes a little added pieces of CGI/animation.

The Macra Terror is a story I’ve listened to on audio many years ago, and is one of those that I’d always wanted to watch.  The first two episodes of The Macra Terror follow a similar pattern to the previous story in that the “creature” of the adventure is barely seen, and their motives are not yet revealed.

Something in this story makes you realise what a good TARDIS team this is.  This is the first time we’ve had two similarly-aged men in the TARDIS (Ben and Jamie) and, although they don’t use it much, it’s good to have two guys being guy-ish.  I don’t think there’s any occasion in the future where the same thing happens, which is a real shame.  It’s a great dynamic that’s missing from so many stories.

The story itself is relatively straight-forward and one that probably came across better on its first broadcast.  Today, though, it’s a familiar story that’s been used not only in other series, like Star Trek, but also reused again in later Doctor Who adventures.  It’s a tale of a populace being “tricked” into doing what they’re told by an unseen master who turns out to not be who they think he is and, once he’s revealed (usually by the series’ regular hero), the people rebel and everything will doubtless be right with the world again.

Having a familiar plot isn’t always a bad thing if the characters are handled well and, in this adventure, we have that thanks to the larger TARDIS crew and a duped villain played by the incomparable late Peter Jeffrey.

Next time … The Macra Terror continues