Doctor Who, season 3 continues …

Four of the remaining five episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan are missing from the BBC archive but I’m watching a modern CGI animated version of those episodes thanks to Who Recons.

The adventure pretty much continues as before, but a curious thing happens as you watch the episodes in succession.  It ceases to be an adventure that’s thinly-linked by chasing the MacGuffin and, instead, becomes a journey in which you’ve joined the Doctor and co. on their adventure.

The Monk from The Time Meddler returns.  He’s in more than one episode and his involvement has precious little to do with the Daleks, as many of these episodes do.  It’s more a way to pass a couple of episodes while giving us a rematch between the Doctor and the Monk.

As the adventure reaches the final episode, it becomes clear that the Doctor has recently gone missing for great wodges of the adventure until he suddenly turns up with no clear explanation of where he vanished.  What we’re left with is a lot of scenes of Steven and Sara asking where the Doctor is.  It’s a bit disconcerting.

The final episode comes along and it feels like it should be a good episode but it’s very difficult to make out what’s going on.  Why did the Doctor insist on one of the Daleks accompanying them?  Why was it suddenly not following them?  Sara and the Doctor take an awful long time to reach the TARDIS, and it seems they’ve left the Time Destructor behind but, no, suddenly it’s there when Steven discovers them outside the TARDIS.  It’s all a bit confusing, which rather ruins the drama and suspense.  I’m still not sure how this Time Destructor was any great weapon as it seems to be restricted to destroying life on the planet it’s on, after which it has no more power.  Hardly the kind of weapon that would secure a solar system/galaxy/universe for you.

A few words are made about the loss of life in the story, at which point you realise we’ve lost Vicki (not dead), Katarina (wasn’t around long enough to care about), and Sara (for no readily apparent reason), together with others (like Bret Vyon) and, really, no one gives a stuff except for this one single scene and we’ll soon forget about them again.

Oh well.  On the whole it was a good adventure, once you’ve accepted that it’s more “chase the Macguffin” than it is a “Master Plan” of the Daleks.  Would have been hugely better if it was all live-action, I’m sure.

Next time … War of God