The Curse Of Peladon: Ranking - 15

 

The Curse Of Peladon

(Season 9, Dr 3 with Jo, 29/1/1972-19/2/1972, producer: Barry Letts, script editor: Terrance Dicks, writer: Brian Hayles, director: Lennie Mayne)

Rank: 15

In an emoji: 🏰 

   'Planet of hope and glory 

Head stuck in a jar 

We're the intergalactic rulers 

We really have come far 

Don't turn off my life support 

That would be insane 

We're the great minds in the universe 

And part of the galaxy's brain drain!'

  

It’s EU#1, as Britain spends most of 1972 pontificating about whether to join the European Common Market or not (the thing undone by Brexit in 2019) in Dr Who’s most glorious tale of community, togetherness and, erm, big hairy beasties. If sequel ‘The Monster Of Peladon’ is the most ‘leave’ of Dr Who stories, with a plot based around deceit and suspicion, then ‘Curse’ is the most ‘remainer’ of Dr Who stories, certain that with a bit of good faith, hope, celebrity and sticking plaster we can all become stronger together without losing our own unique identity(whatever those idiots arguing against the idea might claim). This isn’t some Star Trek utopia where strangers in the final frontier all get along from the moment they meet though: this is a universe where neighbours squabble over borders and resources and where people who naturally distrust each other and this brave new world pick fights over nothing, before finding out that there really was nothing to fear after all because your rivals are people just like you. Only we’re not talking about something as low key as a collection of countries that could be seen on the news: in Dr Who’s hands we are, of course, talking about a union of planets. 

 ‘Peladon’ is one of Dr Who’s sweetest and most uplifting stories this, full of more aliens per intergalactic mile than we’d ever seen in the series at once (only ‘The End Of the World’ matches it as late as 2005, as part of Russell T Davies’ attempts to show off how much budget he’s got for the new series) and a scope much bigger than usual even for Who. This is the sort of thing that would be thrilling any era but particularly in 1972: this is only the second time the timelords have allowed the Tardis to leave Earth following the Dr’s exile two years and eleven stories ago and the first time we’d seen a proper alien planet in colour (the other, ‘Colony In Space’, doesn’t really count, given all we see is a beige quarry). What’s really interesting is that, to a degree, ‘Curse’ goes against the grain of Who stories: till now the closest we’ve come to seeing contemporary concerns on screen was the worry over the nazi invasion of England 20 odd years on in ‘The Dalek Invasion Of Earth’, but this one was so close to the ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ in the news in 1972 and the slow inch forward and metre back of negotiations that its main themes will be boringly familiar to anyone whose sat through British politics of the early 1970s or indeed the past few years. If anything too the ethos of ‘Curse’ rather goes against the grain of Dr Who’s world view up to 1972: most of the time London, standing in for Earth, is doing quite well on its own thankyou very much and doesn’t need anyone else (including the supposedly wonderful gifts promised by the ‘Claws Of Axos’). ‘Peladon’ should be so very wrong – and yet somehow it feels so very right. Amazingly, so, actually, given that for once the first drafts don’t sound very enticing at all (this story is really a composite of two separate stories: ‘The Brain Dead’ had the Ice warriors attacking Earth with a thing called a ‘z’ beam that turned them into zombies, which sounds the sort of thing a Dr Who writer comes up with when asked to develop a story on the spot and not up to Hayles’ usual imaginative standards. The next draft ‘The Shape Of Terror’ has a research station home to different alien cultures, Si Delta 6, attacked by pirates and the Doctor and Jo getting the blame, while the real villain is a sentient cell of ectoplasm named Energid and the Ice warriors aren’t in it at all – which sounds like the sort of thing a Dr Who writer comes up with out of desperation a minute before deadline. It was script editor Terrance Dicks’ idea to combine the two, coming up with one of the series’ most nuanced and thoughtful scripts as a consequence. 

 Taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary is, you see, very Dr Who, even when it comes to something as normally drab and boring as politics, treaties and negotiations, which suddenly take on new meaning now that its alien cultures jostling for position: I’d love to know how many viewers of this story grew up to be diplomats and civil servants, inspired by the events of this story the same way other fans were inspired to be writers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, explorers, astronauts and all the rest by other individual stories (another of the reason ‘Kerblam!’ annoys me so, restricting fans’ ambitions to being given the chance to work in an Amazon warehouse some day, if they’re very very lucky: back in the day Dr Who career options were literally sky high). What’s more Dr Who has always been about having an open mind and open heart(s), to take other cultures on their own terms and to believe that the future is going to be better than the present and no other story offers that hope as sweetly as this one. If nothing else its positive that Earth is even trying to take a seat at an intergalactic table with the ‘big boys/girls/hermaphrodites’ in the future. Until 1972 Earth has generally been the runt of the litter of the milky way; we’re not even the masters of our own solar system thanks to the Ice Warriors (who, this being one of their creator Brian Hayles’ stories, are one of the monsters at the Peladon negotiating table alongside us). And by and large in these stories ‘Earth’ just means ‘Britain’, which nearly always means that we’re alone, an island drifting in space, where nobody loves us, everybody hates us, think we’re going to eat giant maggots and Wirrns (fat ones, juicy ones, green ones made out of condoms and bubble wrap etc etc). Giving us friends in space, sometime, seems like the single most optimistic thing this series ever does – alongside assuming that we have a future at all. Too often Dr Who portrays us as going backwards and blowing each other up so, against the backdrop of the cold war, even coming into this (unspecified) future intact and with some of our dignity and respect from other aliens is optimistic. What’s more, we do it as equal partners, in a corner of the universe that has some form of recognisable democracy. 

 Even more so, Who has always been about giving a voice to those who don’t have one, of championing the under-dog against the odds and against the establishment. While not quite as one-sided as the debate over Brexit in the 2016 referendum it’s certainly true that the ‘leavers’ (well ‘un-joiners’ I suppose) were shouting loudly and longest: then as now the people at the top had investments in British firms and risked losing money if Britain ended up in a pact with other countries so they made sure they took up most of the debate. Here writer Brian Hayles writes a story all about the important of the referendum that year, of using your ‘voice’ and speaking up even when people don’t want you too and finding your voice, no matter how squeaky or weird or nervous you sound. This is a story where so many people in it are mute: Grun, the King’s champion, had his tongue cut out to make him subservient and easy to over-rule but the Doctor befriends him and recognises his rights as an individual. If this was an Orwell book (and ‘Peladon’ does feel as much like ‘Animal Farm’ in a metaphor sense as much as it does a political manifesto: ‘six arms good, two legs bad?!’) then he’s the heavy labourers that no one ever listens to, the gentle giant whose might everyone fears. Aggedor, the mythical beast that everyone is afraid of (and who comes to be associated with trade union sin sequel ‘Monster Of Peladon’) turns out to have a roar worse than his bite and is really just a giant cuddly teddy. Then there’s the newly installed King of Peladon, the person who would seem to have all the power but who is afraid to use it, shy of his own abilities and easily overawed by louder voices underneath him and a stickler for traditions and the status quo because he doesn’t have the courage for change. The only Peladonian with any voice in this story is Hepesh and he’s a big shouty gammon leaver fifty years early, older, bossier, shoutier – I even think I saw one or two campaigners around the referendum with the same red stripes in their beards. Although Hayles is a clever enough writer to make even him sympathetic; the Doctor asks him why he’s doing this in episode three and he snaps back ‘I’m scared’ before ranting about being afraid that joining a galactic federation would transform Peladon so much he wouldn’t recognise it anymore, something the Doctor tells him gently is silly and that the federation will add to his planet, not take away from it, not that the big hairy badger’s listening). As for the aliens, well, they’re not so strange when you get to know them. Even though one race is big and green and hissy, another is a hermaphrodite hexapod and a third is just a big giant head in a jar. By Dr Who standards, though, they’re practically cousins. There were lots of people who asked whether Dr Who should be doing this sort of thing but of course they should: more than anything the Peladon stories are about prejudice (everyone’s, up to and including the Doctor’s) and there’s never been a more Who-y theme than that; it’s just the means of telling that story that seems a little unusual. 

 Prejudice isn’t just a human trait: most species apparently have evolved to be plain suspicious of anyone who doesn’t think like them or look like them, even though there’s no need – the civilised thing to do is to always to look beyond your trigger re-actions at someone whose different to you and remind yourself that they’re really only ‘human’ like you (even aliens who aren’t human, but you get the drift: they’re only people worried about feeding their people and are just as scared of you as you are of them). The Galactic Federation, that should be bringing out the best in these species and encouraging trade and communication, really does seem to have brought the worst out in everyone as they all rub shoulders warily, eyeing each other out – even the species with one big eye. Of all the final frontiers in space in Dr Who none seems as wide as the gulf around the negotiating table and Hayles brings the viewer along with him, encouraging us to try to work out who to trust: does that guy in the tank making gurgling sounds have our best interests at heart? Is Alpha Centauri (the first alien species in Who to have unusual personal pronouns long before ‘The Star Beast’ got people’s knickers in a twist) really as sweet as they/them seem? Do we side with the ranty shouty man and his weak King, even though he seems to represent the working classes and they’re usually the ‘good guys’ in Who? And what about the monsters we know to be evil, the Ice Warriors, surely they’re up to something – and the Doctor is openly suspicious with us. In the end everything we think is wrong because we don’t know enough information: we’re suspicious by nature, not because we ought to be and only one of these species is on the take (and it’s not who you think either). Frankly we could do with more Dr Who stories studying the idea of this ‘culture shock’, of finding out that there are more ways of living life than your own (as English as this series is most of the time, at its best its multicultural and embraces everyone who wants to live in peace with us). As with all the best Who stories there’s little to choose between the ‘monsters’ and the humanoids we trust automatically just because they’re ‘like us’ and we’d have all solved the story a lot sooner if we’d learned to be kind and understanding from the first. 

 Jo, as it turns out, is the person whose most ‘right’ here, her naturally hippie instincts to be kind and a polite to all living things the ‘right’ way of going about things, for once even more than the Dr’s (he’s naturally prejudiced against the Ice warriors and can’t see how they might have changed since the Patrick Troughton days when they were shooting at him). Many fans have tried to find parallels between what’s happening on Peladon and Europe in 1972 (after all, Dr Who was on BBC One right after ‘The Magic Roundabout’ in this period and the ‘English’ Eric Thompson (mostly made-up) ‘translation’ of the show was actually originally a French programme about different European mascots getting along (Dougal the dog is Britain, hovering up vast quantities of sugar while France is Brian the snail, naturally) and mostly come unstuck, even though it feels as if there’s meant to be one. There’s the natural starting point that ‘England’ is meant to be ‘Earth’: after all, London stands in for the Earth in a majority of Dr Who stories and Jo ends up, thanks to a misunderstanding, representing her planet as ‘Joespehine of Tardis’ and she’s very much the British audience identification person in Dr Who in 1972 (even if some of her clothes and language are as 1960s as they come!) Earth, the new kid on the block, is the planet everyone is a little suspicious of as it was with Britain back then – we finally joined in 1973 while France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had been in a union, under a different name, as far back as 1950. Even back then we were viewed as a sort of American stooge doing what our younger, louder little brother said rather than as natural Europeans though, an ‘outsider’ every bit as much as a timelord exiled to Earth,separated geographically from the rest of Europe by sea on all sides that made us grow up isolationist. I might be reading too much into this but note how Peladon is lost without the steadying hand of his father, a man who filled every room he was in while the King feels small; this is an era when America has got tired of Britain following it around like a little kid all the time but we didn’t want to let them (and their money) go, when our relationship was closer to ‘special needs’ than ‘special’. Part of joining the common market was to try to find a second identity with our nearest neighbours the best possible alternative to standing on our own two feet. 

 That’s what most fans presume, however I think that’s wrong: ‘Earth’ is surely ‘Peladon’, the country full of well-meaning people who are still stuck in the past, ruled by a Royal Family who are out of touch with their people, weak and inbred, struggling to work out how to rub shoulders with more technologically advanced races than us. This is a different world now though and it scares Peladon more than the others – as they, in turn, are scared by such a backward-looking nation. The Peladonians are sweet though for the most part, well meaning and polite and as much as the King should be a wet blanket he’s actually quite adorable on screen, where he’s always trying to do the right thing by everyone with the sort of English morality you only see in the movies. Peladon, though, isn’t like the other planets: there isn’t just one people to appease but whole factions (we’re not one country after all but four), all of whom want different things and no one person can represent them all: whatever you do is going to upset somebody there’s going to be a row and the crux of this story is what happens when a disintegrating, fractured planet starts making decisions with other planets who have their act together when ‘we’ clearly don’t. Hayles both sees an optimistic future where we get to work alongside our neighbours in Europe more or less happily for forty-five odd years but also sees the in-fighting and self-destruction that leads to Brexit as political advisors offer the King conflicting advice and are on the make for their own ends (especially the poor miners, the very definition of ‘miner characters’ without much screen time, desperately trying to cling on to some sort of power, even though their leaders have given them up for good and betrayed them, while blaming it all on the ‘aliens’: ironically enough this most pro-trade union of stories got hit by a strike of energy companies and power blackouts for episodes three and four which means a good quarter of the people watching the first two parts never got to see how it ended till a repeat a decade later). No wonder both Earth and Peladon look on in amazement at the other cultures who are all of one mind and agree on everything and even – shock horror – all have the same dialect and accents rather than the jumble we have. 

 It’s only a very vague fit but I like to think of Arcturus as France, a big old head in a jar that’s full of charm and nice to everyone’s face and mutters about them and plots in private, while I’ll lay odds that the Ice Warriors are supposed to be West Germany, the warmongers who have (mega huge spoilers from now for the rest of the review, just to warn you) genuinely reformed because they know how valuable peace is after centuries of war, even while when things go wrong everyone from the Doctor on down assumes they’re up to no good simply because that’s who they used to be in the past. It’s one of the greatest twists of any Who story that, actually, they aren’t and for once the Dr’s got it wrong, secretly as prejudiced as everyone else on the planet after his encounters with them (well, they did try to blow him up twice when he was Patrick Troughton – you can see why he might hold a grudge; note too that the big rivalry on screen is between Arcturus and the Martians who are close neighbours and rivals; to them both Earth and Peladon are wannabes who’ve seen better days, which is pretty close to what was happening in real life in 1972). When everyone comes together at the end and they really have nothing to be afraid of after all, despite the very different and literally ‘alien’ cultures so different to ours, it’s all incredibly satisfying and one of the series’ most naturally feel-good moments. This is why it’s so crushing when sequel ‘Monsters Of Peladon’ undoes all that good work a couple of years later and (more spoilers) just makes the Ice Warriors the baddies again: the idea that even some of the biggest villains in the universe can have a change of heart and come good is one of the most uplifting Dr Who moments of them all. It also works as a generational divide, more like the Who stories of the 1960s: to the children who’ve grown up in peace Germany/Mars are friendly noble industrial giants we ought to copy – it’s their grandparents who are still hung up on the after effects of a war that ended long ago before they were born. Similarly if you’re young enough not to remember the Ice Warriors from three years ago (and the ratings have all but doubled since then, particularly amongst the newer younger audience, so there was a good chance you hadn’t in an age before repeats and videos) you just wonder why the Doctor is acting so oddly against a race who’ve done nothing naughtier than hiss in his ear: it’s like that iconic scene of Rose’s surprise at the Doctor reacting so badly to a Dalek, in, erm, ‘Dalek’ .

Dr Who is at its best not when its shooting big laser guns at monsters, like the worst scifi series, but when it comes with sympathy and forgiveness and an understanding of different people’s viewpoints and no story demonstrates that better than ‘Curse Of Peladon’. Even though, as so often happens, they should have learned to be suspicious of the threat from within, the badgers with the red and white striped whiskers who seem to represent the working classes on Peladon. Though in another eerie foretelling of Brexit note how the working classes are whipped up into a racist frenzy because of what they’re told by ‘advisors’ who have a stake in keeping Peladon isolationist; Hepesh, the main baddy in collusion with Arcturus, is the equivalent of Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees Mogg making up lies about what those ghastly Europeans are up to without declaring their links to companies set to benefit by keeping Britain out of the EU and with a hairdo almost as silly. Honestly, this story’s only missing having the lies written on the side of a big red space shuttle and it would have got Brexit down completely. Of course our old rivals substitute France are up to no good too but they’re just being opportunists really and making an extra deal on the side (very French) and Arcturus isn’t really the baddy either – he goes along with Hepesh’s’ plan because secretly they don’t have the resources of the other planets and are afraid of being priced out the EU if more people join (no comment). In a way too, this is a story all but resources (it’s a surprise how many Pertwee era stories are- the 1960s tales have new planets as places to expore, but in this era they’re places to plunder): Arcturus wants a deal on the side, but he’d be better off trading (it would serve him right if the Doctor brought the Tythonians from ‘Creature In The Pit’ to the negotiating table, where metals are everywhere).

Hepesh talks a lot about how the Federation want to end the Peladon traditions so that his planet won’t look like his planet anymore: like all good writers Hayles gives him the space to speak his doubts, then shows him why he’s wrong: because it also means that power isn’t with individuals on the make gaslighting their Kings and communities anymore but with the people (at one stage he even bullies poor Alpha into voting his way, leading him to vote with all six arms). Hepesh is clearly an old-fashioned racist too: he sneers at the King for not being ‘pureblood’ (because the late Queen was Human. He also thinks that Peladon never never never shall be slaves and under the control strangers, but the joke’s on him because, left behind slaves is what the Peladonians will become if left behind (and indeed already are under him – it’s not for nothing that Peladon seems like our ‘dark ages’). Hepesh wants to have his giant beasts in sacred temples killing people and capital punishment for trespass even though it’s a daft tradition: the people don’t want it, the King doesn’t want it, nobody but Hepesh wants it, but everyone is too weak to say so: it’s archaic laws like this Peladon will lose, not their identity (it’s worth remembering that Britain only outlawed the death penalty in 1969, scarily close to the present day and it seemed even closer at the time of broadcast – indeed Northern Ireland still had their law in place until a few weeks after this story went out). That was one of the biggest talking points of the day amongst politically hi young things in 1972; another was the ambiguous wording of the 1972 EEC directive and whether it over-ruled individual planet’s rights or not: the official line at the time was the idea of ‘mutual recognition’ hammered out between diplomats from all countries that everyone could agree to, with no provision for what happened when members simply didn’t agree on something (would the Ice Warriors still be allowed to fight in self defence? Would Arcturus have grounds for rebellion if he provided his people with sub-standard jars to live in?) The Dr Who equivalent is far less ambiguous and more like the ruling now: the ‘Intergalactic articles of peace 59 subsection 2 ‘forbids the federation to contradict the rights of individual worlds’ (the wording now says that the EU laws take precedence when in contradiction with local laws so everyone is on the same hymn sheet). That’s what Hepesh is really scared for, even if there is a slight part of him that worries about losing traditions: the idea that he can’t be on the make anymore with rules that don’t apply to him and money to be made on the side (the real reason practically every MP who came out in favour of Brexit did so). Growing up the one part of this story I could never wrap my head around was how people let Hepesh get into power at all when he’s so obviously in it for himself. I don’t need to ask that question in the 21st century anymore. If anything this story is unrealistic because there aren’t lots of little Hepeshes squabbling amongst themselves and taking turns in the hot chair before stabbing each other in the back. 

 And then there’s Alpha Centauri, who might well be my single favourite creation in the whole of Dr Who: a diplomat and peace advocate whose impossibly wise, impossibly old, impossibly scared and frequently ignored, the voice of reason if that voice was high-pitched and squeaky. I don’t know what planet this squeaky hermaphrodite hexapod is meant to represent but I love him/her to pieces: he/she’s so sweet, so gullible and so cute. I ‘think’ the joke is that, on his planet, he’s an ‘Alpha’ male, a tough macho type – even though on his planet breeding means there are no longer divisions between males and females so he’s become a bit of everything rolled into one. In a world of Arcturians and Martian Ice Warriors though he’s become the beta substitute teacher nobody listens to (like a lot of ‘Curse of Peladon’ it’s all about perspective, not stereotypes). I know other fans find him a bit, well, rude with his big one eye sticking out of a green tube (‘Oh no They’ve made him a !%$*in’ prick!’ was director the ‘lovely’ Lennie Mayne’s colourful response when he saw the costume for the first time and told the designers to go back and have another go; ‘Oh no they’ve made him a !”&*in’ prick in a cape!’ was his equally colourful response when they turned up with their second attempt as seen on screen) and normally I’d assume it was an in-joke from sniggering designers seeing what they could get away with on children’s telly (I still have my doubts about the Vervoids: they can’t possibly have looked at that design and not found that one a little suspect). But despite being several hundred years old Alpha Centauri is really a big child that clearly hasn’t gone through anything as adult as puberty yet, easily scared and used to being manipulated by adults. Ysanne Churchman, taking time off from her day job in ‘The Archers’ (and still acting now at age 98!) is utterly delightful; unsure of how to get the alien voice right she asked the director how to play him and got the answer ‘as a fussy, gay civil servant’ so that’s what she does, making a great double act with Stuart Fell (regular Dr Who stuntman stuck inside the costume) to imbue him/her/it with more personality than any other DW invention I can think of, hopping from foot to foot when excited and cutely raising all four arms every time he/she/it has to vote. Dr Who aliens in this era tend to be scary, nasty, oppressive and dangerous, but Alpha Centauri is adorable. If ever there was a Dr Who monster I’d love to meet for real, then it’s Alpha. 

 Then again if there’s a second then it’s The Ice Warriors who were always my favourite DW ‘monster’ in a story that makes good on their ‘unique selling point’ that they’re not automatic baddies but noble warriors big on self defence and honour. Try to imagine another race in Dr Who who’ve been painted as the baddies that they could possibly get away with making good and diplomatic: The Daleks? Nope, too racist. The Cybermen? Nope, too serious. The Sontarons? Too shooty. The Weeping Angels? No thanks – humans voting for Brexit already do a good job enough of turning back the clock sixty years, thankyouverymuch. But The Ice Warriors you believe: they’ve always been a noble race driven by their own distinctive morals that means they can’t shoot anyone defenceless or fight wars before someone attacks them first and so they are here, with a returning Sonny Caldinez finding new ways of playing them just the right side of shifty (though I’m sorry originator Bernard Bresslaw couldn’t be there too). Normally the Humanoids let a Dr Who script down, but King Peladon is another great bit of casting, innocent and thoughtful, prone to doubts and prepared to listen to every viewpoint in the room before making a decision – in other words exactly the sort of open mind you need in political negotiations like this for all his confusion and ‘imposter syndrome’. David Troughton, son of Patrick, returns to the series for a third time and while his first roles were due to nepotism, the producers pleasing dad by getting his first telly roles as a UNIT soldier in ‘Web Of Fear’ and an American revolution soldier in ‘The War Games’, three years on he’s come such a long way that you can’t think of anyone else playing this role; despite being an inexperienced twenty-one-year old he’s just the perfect fit. His awkward half-romance with ‘Princess Jo of Tardis’ is highly believable too, as she reminds him of his Earthly mum and this is the single best romance in the series till Amy and Rory turn up (the ‘are they? Aren’t they?’ romance between Ian and Brabra not withstanding, although that seems to have been the actors’ ideas more than the writers’!) Some romances in Who stories seem grafted on for extra emotional manipulation but this one makes sense in a story that’s all about being ‘better together’, whether it’s King Peladon using Jo as a sounding board and moral compass as much as a wife or Peladon joining a federation of people who can give it what it truly needs to progress. Peladon’s daughter turns up in the sequel when David is unavailable and though she’s basically the exact same part just written as a girl, somehow she falls just the wrong side of gullible, showing what a hard role this is to play (David returns to Who a near-record thirty-six years later as Professor Hobbes in ‘Midnight’, although that job was as a last-minute replacement, unlike this part which seems to have been written with him in mind – probably at Manning’s request). Incidentally, David’s flatmate in this era was deeply jealous of the role because Dr Who was his favourite show and he was desperate to be on it, leading to lots of sulking and self-questioning about his own career – that flatmate was Colin Baker and in another 11 years he’s going to be acting alongside Patrick in a Doctor reunion (how very ‘Peladon’ – never give up on your dreams!) 

 And then there’s Aggedor, the big overgrown bear who lives in Peladon at the heart of a maze and who gets to eat the people Hepesh feeds to him, who tends to leave fans after a metaphor scratching their heads a little. Hayles says that he came up with Aggedor when thinking of a beast who was being used to scare people away from finding the truth and thought of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Hound Of The Baskervilles’ (and in the script he’s much more like a dog). Surely, though, at least as re-written by script editor Terrance Dicks, he’s Russia: a ‘great bear’ speaking a language we don’t understand, hidden away in a maze wrapped inside a puzzle inside an enigma on the fringes of negotiations, whose really very very sweet and loving when left to his own devices but manipulated by a charismatic leader into becoming a monster...It has to be, surely? After all, Russia was the ‘secret’ reason the EU was formed in the first place: Europe had to pool its resources ‘just in case’ the bear was unleashed on them to gobble them up because of ‘primal urges’ – even though left to his own devices Aggedor is as amenable and friendly as anyone, its people’s rhetoric bigging up the threat that makes everyone scared of him. Key scene: the Dr undoing his hypnotism by singing a Venusian lullaby to the tune of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ just as he’s about to be gobbled up – one of my favourite ‘get out of that cliffhanger solutions of them all (and something no other series would ever try to come up with). My one regret of this story is that it ends with Aggedor still down in the maze instead of given an interpreter and invited to political meetings as an equal who helped save the day (being left out of the EU and thus being scared of Europeans ganging up on them in turn is a key reason for the war with Ukraine now, whatever any Hepesh in the West or East tells you). 

 While we’re on about the director, who asked to be billed as ‘lovely’ Lennie Mayne where possible, and his swearing another much loved anecdote from this story is the director’s comments that the extras in the crowd scenes weren’t scared enough at their first sight of Aggedor, the mythical beast of Peladon and their response should be ‘holy f!*^^*in’ cow!’ A few whispers from Jon Pertwee later and what happens at camera rehearsals? The whole lot shout ‘holy f!^^*in’ cow!’ in unison! Pertwee is one of those directors who goes out of his way for directors he likes and can phone in his appearances when he’s not enjoying being at work. You can tell he and Mayne get on famously, with the same method of taking this job deeply seriously but having a laugh along the way and he’s rarely better than here. Pertwee gets to be the voice of reason and a dashing hero rolled into one and feels a lot more at home than we’ve seen the 3rd Dr so far, one of many aliens on an alien world rather than the only alien on a human world. It’s an even greater story for Jo, who gets more characterisation than in all her other stories put together and Katy Manning is sublime, her innocence piercing through the duplicity of all the other shenanigans and guesswork on this planet (even though, technically, she and the Dr are the two who are ‘lying’, pretending to be the Earth delegate when the real ones are delayed until the closing credits when they make a run for it back to the Tardis!) Jo is the audience’s representative more than ever before, the youngster asking ‘why can’t we all just get along?’ when the adults bicker and manipulate each other. Her teenagery romance is exquisitely played too: you know she’s fallen for Peladon hard, but at the same time knows she has the rest of her life to live and can’t be tied down to just one planet and her loyalty to the Doctor outweighs her heart. She is tempted though: this isn’t like the half-hearted attempts to pair Leela off with Andred in ‘Invasion Of Time’ or Susan fish-slapping David in ‘The Dalek Invasion Of Earth’ but a real romance full of warm loving looks of longings, sweet little gestures and tongue-tied conversations (it’s no surprise Manning and Troughton started dating for a little while after this story too, seen out watching the world’s greatest musical ‘Godspell’ in the West End together – their chemistry explodes off the screen). By the time we get to the end of the story, baddy rumbled and the King and Jo making googly Alpha Centauri-style eyes at each other in a tearful way as they say goodbye, it feels as if we’ve been on a real journey, with important lessons learnt for us’ in 1972 as well as ‘them’ – and no one more so than the Dr, who nearly undid this bright brave new feature by treating this story as if it’s still the ‘old days’ of the 1960s. Those old prejudices belong in the past, ‘Curse of Peladon’ says, and wouldn’t it be better if we stopped being so distrusting of each other and recognised that we were all after the same thing underneath it all?: prosperity and peace. 

 This is also notably a story where, despite centuries of misunderstandings that’s led to the belief in a ‘curse’, of bad things befalling us if we break with tradition and anger our ancestors, there is no such thing really – we brought the curse on ourselves and the sooner we understand that and embrace the future the better it will be, for everybody. And surely the only way to get that is by taking the plunge and trusting that life with our neighbours really will be better in the end, however difficult the path getting there might be because we can all muddle through together. Despite being so intergalactic, then, ‘Peladon’ is also one of the most British things you will ever see and evidence that you don’t have to lose your identities when you join a larger organisation, whatever the Brexiteers might say, still people underneath it all however differently we might view the world. That’s one hell of a message for a so-called children’s show broadcast on a Saturday teatime and while Dr Who is uplifting more often than not this story, of all the 328-ish DW stories, really does make me feel more optimistic whenever I watch it. 

 Yes bits of it come a little unstuck on screen, the budget for making so many alien costumes starts to show particularly in Arcturus (whose nothing like as convincing as the similar head-in-ajar The Morphotons from ‘Keys Of Marinus’ a full eight years earlier) and the tight budget means that, despite being the only ‘off-world’ Dr Who story all year, it’s also the only story in season nine made entirely in the studio, with no location footage at all (and only one brief model shot, of the Tardis falling down a cliff- a rather odd detail that, if the Doctor really is sent here by the timelords, as they seem to be worse at steering the tardis than he is and it’s just the right way up again when we see it next – thanks to intergalactic co-operation perhaps?) The voices, too, are a little grating when everybody is speaking weird, from Alpha’s squeakiness to Arcturus’ bubbling to the Ice Warriors’ hissing, although even that makes sense this once: this is a story about people using their voices however alien they sound so the voices need to be emphasised like this (I almost wish Peladon had been one of those ‘missing stories’ simply so we could try to measure this story from it’s deeply bonkers soundtrack!) Such is the level of Brian Hayles’ writing though and his ability to create so many whole new races that feel as if they’ve lived for generations away from the screen and such is the level of acting from a cast who are extra committed to making this work that the result overcomes any little niggle and is a marvellous story, unlike any other in the Dr Who canon (and yes, I do include the lazy sequel) and unlike anything else in science-fiction, timeless in all the best ways despite being written to heavily reflect the world as it was in 1972. And funnily enough 2023 as well. I await the inevitable ‘Brexit Of Peladon’ sequel, whereby a pompous orang-u-tang brainwashes Peladon into leaving the union that was protecting it from economic disaster, with Pelaldonians stuck inside their caves watching everyone else prosper without them while they’re reduced to artificial force-field borders stuck randomly round the planet and make the occasional minor trade deals with Slitheen from Raxacoricofallapatorious with baited breath, with, umm, baited breath (especially after we got the start of the Galactic federation in the tail end of ‘Dinosaurs On A Spaceship’ and a cameo by Alpha Centauri, still being played by actress Ysanne Churchman then in her 90s).

 POSITIVES +The Peladonians have some of the best makeup ever seen in the series, very 1970s whiskery sideburns, but tinted red and made to be stripey. Peladon is one of those planets with lots of caves and tunnels and mines and the designers have clearly born that in mind, making them look like badgers living in burrows who aren’t used to the sunlight. Badgers, notoriously, have very poor eyesight and can only see what’s right in front of them too, which is surely another metaphor right there. It’s a clever idea, even if none of the Peladonians shine as individuals quite as much as the aliens do. 

 NEGATIVES - This is, as Dr Who stories go, one of the more erudite and peace-loving examples, so it’s a shame when, towards the conclusion, we end up with yet another interminable fight sequence and not one of the best ones: it’s easy to spot when its Pertwee gurning to cameras and when it’s his stunt double Terry Walsh in an ill-fitting wig. Pertwee hurt his back during rehearsals and you can tell he isn’t (all too literally) throwing himself into these scenes with his usual gusto: given that, however, it would have made more sense to cut the fight scene altogether and have an extra bit of talking because it’s just wrong for this story. Admittedly the Doctor’s fighting in self defence and he’s up against Grun, who looks as if he eats Dalekanium for breakfast and could pull space shuttles with his teeth, but it’s a shame that in this of all stories the Dr couldn’t talk his way out of difficulty without resorting to fisticuffs. 

BEST QUOTE: King Peladon: ‘Without help we will never raise ourselves from the dark ages!’ 

 PREQUELS/SEQUELS: ‘Monster of Peladon’ obviously – the first time Dr Who ever returns to a planet that isn’t Earth or Skaro.

 ‘Legacy’ (1994) is a novel by Gary Russell, part of the ‘New Adventures’ series set a few years after ‘Monster’ featuring the 7th Doctor, Ace and River Song prototype archaeologist Bernice Summerfield in a plot as close to dammit as ‘Curse’: a galactic federation want to bring Peladon out of the dark days but treaties keep being sabotaged, something the Doctor blames on The Ice Warriors. The interest comes from the new characters reacting to similar events: you better believe Ace isn’t standing for any chauvinistic nonsense and isn’t exactly a born diplomat, while the McCoy Doctor is much cagier and less heroic in his dealings with Peladon society, while an extra chance to see Alpha Centauri is always welcome. This book still feels like one of the more pointless entries in the series though, without much going for it beyond nostalgia while in common with the other ‘New Adventures’ there’s way more sex, violence and bad language than you might be expecting – which works in some books in the series but most definitely not in the fairytale world of Peladon! 

 ‘The Bride Of Peladon’ (2008), part of the Big Finish main range of Dr Who stories #104, sees the 5th Doctor, Peri and Egyptian Goddess companion Erimem (long story!) is much more interesting and tells a slightly different tale, with the latest Peladon Royal to sit on the seemingly cursed throne murdered and their heir kidnapped, while an Ice warrior just happens to have gone missing at the same time. Could it be the Ice warriors are back to their wicked ways?... (Spoilers): No. The 5th Doctor’s soothing presence makes him fit into this world while Peri is at her most Jo-like (sweet and kind but ever so slightly feeble) while Erimem, as a Royal herself, is never more at home during her brief travels in the Tardis. Alpha Centauri is back (though sadly not played by Ysanne Churchman- he/she/they are actually played by Jane Goddard, the wife of Who writer Robert Shearman) and Zixlyr is the worthy new Ice Warrior diplomat though it’s the new characters who sparkle. One of the better 5th Doctor stories in the range. 

 ‘The Prisoner Of Peladon’ (2009) is part of the ‘Companion Chronicles’ series and features David Troughton as King Peladon telling Tharilia - at this point still a babe-in-arms – about what happened during the 3rd Doctor’s return visit to his home planet somewhere between the events of ‘Curse’ and ‘Monster’. Alpha Centauri and Grun both appear though a lot of the other characters have moved on and while not a lot happens in this story it doesn’t happen with some style, with an atmospheric spooky feeling that’s brought alive by one of the best ‘readers’ in the Dr Who franchise. 

 Meanwhile, if you wondered what UNIT were getting up to while the Doctor and Jo were on Peladon, that’s explored in the BBC’s ‘Past Doctors’ novel ‘The Face Of The Enemy’ (1998) by David McIntee. Giving the lead role to the Brigadier in a tale that sounds more like a ‘Doomwatch’ episode, about a crashed plane with radioactive chemicals that could kill al life on earth, gives this excellent story a unique twist, not least because with the Doctor away the Brig finds himself asking The Master for help in return for the cushy commuted palatial sentence we see in ‘The Sea Devils’. 

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