11x04. The Monster of Peladon
Writer: Brian Hayles
Director: Lennie Mayne
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks
Producer: Barry Letts
Synopsis: The Doctor returns
to Peladon fifty years after his first visit to the planet, where King
Peladon's daughter Thalira has become the first Queen. The planet has
become crucial to the Galactic Federation's war effort against Galaxy
Five, since it possesses large deposits of the crucial ore trisilicate.
Controversy has erupted ever since the workers in the trisilicate mine
have begun seeing manifestations of Aggedor, believing that their god
is angry over the Federation's alien influence. The Doctor and Sarah
are drawn into the politcal conflict, which heightens even more when a
ruthless crew of Ice Warriors arrive claiming to represent the
Federation. In fact, these Ice Warriors and their human ally Eckersley
plan to betray the Federation by providing the trisilicate to Galaxy
Five.
Review: After "The Mutants"
and "Frontier in Space," I find that I'm once again in disagreement
with fandom's consensus about a six-part outer space Pertwee serial.
"The Monster of Peladon" seems to be widely regarded as a second-rate
runaround and an
unworthy sequel to "The Curse of Peladon," while I actually think it's
a slight impovement. Like most of Pertwee's ventures outside
20th-century Earth, this one is a fairly obvious political allegory,
but the issues and conflicts are explored with enough complexity and
imagination to avoid the sense of having been here and done this.
"Curse" revolved around the question of whether the conservative
society of Peladon could find a comfortable place within the Galactic
Federation. In "Monster," we see that Peladon has made some progress in
terms of its place in this interplanetary alliance, but some of their
more archaic traditions and inclinations remain. Executions still seem
to be an accepted form of punishment, and Queen Thalira confides that,
though she holds titular power, Peladon is still a male-dominated
society and that real authority lies with the High Priest Ortron.
Sarah's discussion of women's liberation with Thalira is rather
abbreviated and perfunctory, but Thalira does turn out to be a strong
character, eventually standing up to Ortron and maintaining the
presence of mind to give the Ice Warriors false information when Ortron
is later killed right in front of her. The most serious problem that
Peladon faces, of course, is the dispute over the rights of the miners
who are supplying the trisilicate; this dispute has played out on
class-based lines, with Ortron and the aristocratic establishment
fearing a threat to their power, and the more radical elements among
the miners, led by Ettis, ready for full-scale revolution. In the
middle stands Gebek, the formal leader of the miners who would rather
negotiate than fight, but who has trouble gaining the trust of either
side.
At first I thought "The Monster of Peladon" was going to be a
well-intentioned but somewhat heavy-handed workers' rights fable, but
it won me over by placing this issue in the context of a war involving
the Galactic Federation and the resulting alien presence on Peladon.
Though I sympathized with the miners' desire for better working
conditions, it's clear from early on that the manifestations of Aggedor
are some sort of trickery, and their fear that their god is angry about
the Federation's presence comes off as slightly xenophobic. On the
other hand, what seems like Peladonian xenophobia one minute later
seems more like a healthy streak of nationalist independence. When the
Ice Warriors attempt to impose martial law, the miners and the
aristocratic faction led by Ortron join forces to resist the alien
takeover. Eckersley, meanwhile, seems like the sort of ruthlessly
pragmatic individual that inevitably shows up as part of any war
effort. He's utterly disinterested in what he calls "local politics"
and doesn't even care if people get killed as long as he gets his
trisilicate -- and this is his cover.
While it's clear that this story was inspired partly by real-life
labor-management disputes, it also seems to be a warning against
exploiting a foreign culture for material resources.
I suppose I should mention at this point that the American broadcast
version of "The Monster of Peladon" differs slightly from the original,
in that it omits a scene explaining that the Ice Warrior Azaxyr leads a
"breakaway" faction and that Eckersley plans to rule Earth when Galaxy
Five wins the war. This does clear up one point that I thought needed
explanation, namely whether or not all the Ice Warriors had returned to
their villainous ways, but it's also to the detriment of Eckersley, who
would have been a better villain if he'd simply been selling the
Federation out and not harboring any megalomaniacal plans. In a way,
though, I wonder if the whole story might have been more interesting if
there had been no treachery at all and the Federation had been
encouraging the Ice Warriors' brutal methods for the sake of
expediency, as this would have raised some thornier questions about how
far a society could and should go in order to win a war. The script
implicitly acknowledges this issue, in that Eckersley's indifference to
the miners is apparently at least tolerated by the Federation, but by
making Eckersley and Azaxyr traitors to their own people, these
questions still feel unanswered at the end.
That said, the script by Brian Hayles does a nice job of forcing the
characters, particularly the Doctor, to make some tough choices about
when and how to fight when one is overmatched in terms of firepower. At
one point, for example, the Doctor and Gebek have to stand by as
Eckersley and Azaxyr kill several miners because there's simply nothing
they can do to stop it, and the Doctor also has to talk the Peladonians
out of immediate violent resistance to the Ice Warriors because he
knows they'll all just be killed if they try it. (Speaking of which,
I'm not sure if it's because they were the good guys in "The Curse of
Peladon" or for some other reason, but Hayles has finally made the Ice
Warriors scary and intimidating, something he failed to do in their
first two appearances.) The Doctor's role in the dispute between the
miners and aristocrats also reflects this theme of choosing one's
battles carefully, in that he's not so much taking sides as he is just
trying to avoid bloodshed and convince both sides that negotiation is
in their best interests. (If anything, he's a bit too chummy with the
royalists for my tastes.)
It would be fair to say that "The Monster of Peladon" is not an
exemplar of original plot mechanics or three-dimensional
characterization, but in a way it doesn't need to be. I can name at
least six characters or pairs of characters who don't have exactly the
same agenda -- Thalira, Ortron, Eckersley and Azaxyr, the Doctor and
Sarah, Gebek, and Ettis -- resulting in a very complex set of conflicts
with everyone but Eckersley and Azaxyr being allowed at least some
degree of sympathy. Some of the characters may be little more than
archetypal representations of different elements in society, and there
are a number of "captures and escapes" along the way, but we almost
need the formulaic aspects in order to keep track of what exactly is
happening at any given moment. The numerous plot twists and shifting
alliances not only keep the story moving at a basic "what's going to
happen next?" level, but also reinforce the notion that the
Federation's single-minded focus on obtaining Peladon's trisilicate has
stirred up conflicts that they don't understand and can't control. The
only plot twist that doesn't really work is to have Sarah twice think
the Doctor is dead and then find out he's alive, about which not much
can be said except the obvious point that it's repetitive.
One can make the case that things are resolved a little too easily in
this story, between the revelation of Azaxyr and Eckersley as traitors
and the apparent sudden end to the war when the Galaxy Five leaders
realize that they won't be getting Peladon's trisilicate. Still, I am
not so cynical that I can't enjoy a story in which the better angels
prevail, and I must give Brian Hayles credit for the thought that he
clearly put into the premise and for requiring the characters to make
some difficult choices along the way. Season 11 is seen by some as a
period of decline, but I actually see it as a rebound following a
season marked by too much self-conscious ambition. I only hope the
quality can be maintained as the season winds down and that the Pertwee
era goes out in style.
Rating: ***1/2 (out of four)
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