It's a giant snake! Again I was faced with the decision of watching the "as shown" version of the story or the new CGI effects. For the most part the story is unaffected by which option you choose, the main difference is that the rather crappy looking snake shown above is replaced by this one:
which looks a tad more threatening. The snake version of the Mara (the main villain of this story) doesn't really appear to right near the end of episode 4 so it has limited screen time anyway.
Meanwhile it's Nyssa's turn to take a break from companion duties when she disappears for literally the whole story, having a nice sleep in the TARDIS. Clearly the writers were starting to struggle to come up with ideas for so many companions and were trying to come up with ways to write them out from time to time. It wouldn't be long till this group of three companions would be reduced to two in the most tragic way possible, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The natives of the planet the Doctor arrives on, the Kinda, are being observed by a group of visiting humans from inside their base. One of these, Todd played by Nerys Hughes, becomes the Doctor's main companion for this story and she's actually a pretty great character. It's just a shame that the TARDIS was so bloody crowded that there wasn't really room for her to join the Doctor on his travels. Not to be harsh on her but I'm sure the Doctor would have much preferred travel with Todd than Tegan.
Speaking of Tegan, she falls asleep in the first episode allowing the Mara to possess her via her dreams. This has got to be one of the scariest parts of Doctor Who ever. The dream sequences are very well executed and give the very real feeling of that fear and confusion that we all suffer from time to time during a nightmare.
Meanwhile the other two human occupants of the base go completely bat shit crazy after being inflicted by a message the Kinda have tried to send to them and the "would-be leader" Hindle spends the rest of the story acting like a mad spoilt child. Except this spoilt child has the ability to blow up the base and kill everyone. There are some really fun scenes here with Hindle convincing Sanders and Adric to help him build a model city out of piece of cardboard and metal lying around the base, just for fun. The extent to which Hindle is unhinged is demonstrated when the Doctor accidentally stands on one of the cardboard people that Hindle has made causing it's head to be ripped off. Sanders tries to reassure him that a bit of glue will sort out right out to which Hindle screams back "DON'T BE SILLY! YOU CAN'T FIX PEOPLE CAN YOU???? YOU CAN'T FIX PEOPLE!!!!!!!" It's brilliantly done.
I enjoyed this story much more than I expected to and I have to say that it's mainly due to the bizarre goings on in the base than anything happening with the Kinda and the Mara.
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