to assassinate the Doctor. Although outwardly an ordinary pupil at a boy's private school, Turlough is in fact an alien who believes the Black Guardian will return him home if he succeeds in his task. The TARDIS has its instruments jammed by a mysterious signal and is forced to materialise on a huge spaceship in a fixed orbit. The Doctor discovers that the signal, a beam to guide the ship's transmat capsule, is being transmitted from Earth. He travels to Earth in the capsule, leaving Nyssa and Tegan to follow in the TARDIS. However, the capsule lands in 1983, but the TARDIS materialises in 1977. Tegan and Nyssa encounter a badly burned man and think it could be the Doctor.
Tegan goes for help to the school and encounters the Doctor's old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, now retires and working as a maths teacher at the school. They rejoin Nyssa and at the stranger's urging, use the TARDIS to travel up to the spaceship. The stranger is actually Mawdryn, one of a group of alien creatures who are confined to a state of perpetual regeneration brought upon themselves through the use of a stolen Time Lord device. The Doctor takes Turlough and the 1983 version of the brigadier to the spaceship in the capsule. He reluctantly agrees to give up his remaining regenerations to end the mutant's ordeal. However, the energy required is provided when the two versions of the Brigadier meet. The Doctor then returns them to their own times, and Turlough joins the TARDIS crew. Mawdryn's ship self-destructs.
CAST:
The Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet
Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Turlough (Mark Strickson), The Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney), Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall), Headmaster (Angus Mackay), Ibbotson (Stephen Garlick), Doctor Runciman (Roger Hammond), Matron (Sheila Gill), Mawdryn (David Collings), 1st Mutant (Peter Walmsley), 2nd Mutant (Brian Darnley).
FACTS:
This story is the first in the 'Black Guardian trilogy' featuring the return of the Guardians of chaos and order, as seen in season sixteen's 'Key To Time' sequence.
A flashback sequence of clips featuring past Doctors, companions and monsters from earlier stories is shown when the 1983 version of the Brigadier, who has been suffering from a nervous breakdown, regains his memory of the Doctor.
David Collings, who played Poul in the 1977 story 'The Robots of Death' appears as Mawdryn.
OTHER FORMATS:
The Fifth Doctor Novelisations
Fifth Doctor Videos
Back to the Fifth Doctor Programme Guide
