2 out of 5

Directed by: Douglas Camfield

Jesus Christ, who let this mess bloat to 12 effing episodes?  Even ignoring the Benny Hill mess of the Christmas episode, ‘Master Plan’ renders the Daleks’ as innocuous idiots, which, as the series’ main reoccurring baddie so far is annoying enough, but then it goes ahead and stuffs in an extra annoying villain just to make sure you’re plenty pissed by the time the conclusion rolls around.  The writing split – half to Terry Nation, half to Dennis Spooner – is confusing, as there’s a fairly clear divide between Nation’s flighty sci-fi and Spooner’s mixture of whimsy and history – and makes me curious how planning went back in those days that this story was allotted so many episodes to wrap up an idea that absolutely could have been compressed.  As could many Who serials up to this point, but at least there had been a pattern previously of sticking to between 4 to 6 parts.  Why double that?

So we land on planet Kembel from the Dalek Cutaway (‘Mission to the Unknown’) and the Who crew run afoul of another space agent who’s following up on the missing Cutaway agent (…further evidence of over-plotting, as ‘Mission’ could have been wrapped into this serial or ditched without affecting plotting too much).  Appreciably, there’s not too much of the usual “let’s all go explore” confusion that causes whole serials’ worth of events – the Doctor and Steven and Katrina are on the same page pretty soon with the understanding that the Daleks are here, and that the ‘Guardian of Earth,’ Mavic Chen, played with fucking gag-worthy pomposity by Kevin Stoney, is on their plans to, like, take over the universe something something with the Time Destructor.  In a pretty amusing sequence, the Doc disguises himself as a delegate in these meetings the Daleks are holding with the various space-region representatives (promised positions of power in the reign to come) and manages to make off with a hunka metal which is key to the Destructor’s functionality.  Then it’s off to Earth to convince peoples that Chen sucks and the Daleks are coming.  As scripted by Nation, this all works pretty well and moves at a fair enough clip, with expected delays like a matter transporter and a prison planet sending us on a runaround like in ‘The Chase.’  Yes, by 6 episodes in, we already have plotting delays.  Which means it should have ended there.

Instead, Katarina is offed, Sara Kingdom – another space agent, initially working for Chen until set on the right path by the Doc – is on, and there’s a Christmas episode where the TARDIS warps to a film set and let’s forget about the destruction of the Earth while ha ha the director thinks we’re actors and zoop let’s run around and get yelled at and toast the holiday whoop-fucking-ee.  Fine, let’s say it was a station requirement / expectation at the time to acknowledge Xmas… this was not the episode in which to stuff such a detour, unless the hope was to poo on any sense of urgency, which was already slipping by this point.  Anyhow, Spooner takes over at this point, so, of course, let’s toss some history in there – now we’re in Ancient Egypt – and let’s bring The Meddling Monk back, out to get revenge on Doc.  Spoon’s attempts to kill things shuffled until that precious metal is back in Chen’s / The Daleks’ is not unentertaining – the Monk is funny, the Egyptians’ attempt to reconcile Doc and the Daleks is amusing – just, again, again, again, why did we let this go on for so long, especially when it’s not exactly clear why the Daleks – who never fail to brag about their superiority – need all of these delegates besides Chen and how, exactly, they’re planning to use The Time Destructor except that it’s a pretty mean sounding name.  I should offer: it’s very possible these things were mentioned, however, the sound mixing on the available audio is rather poor and so a lot of dialogue is hard to discern from background noise.  And apparently I’m not so interested that I’m willing to dig up a script; the wiki page summary matches my understanding of events, so that’s good enough.

I’ve mentioned that the Daleks’ sense of threat is diminished by this serial.  So: when the Doc steals the metal, there’s like a slap fight between Chen and the Daleks as to who’s responsible for retrieving it.  It just doesn’t sit right.  The ‘Leks frequently discuss killing Chen, as his usefulness by this point is zip, and thus letting him boss them around and holding off on their decision seems mighty passive.  Later, when the Doc steals and activates the Destructor, the Daleks just zip around and pee their metal pants, scared of breaking the damn thing.  This isn’t so out of character, but paired with how they’ve been represented vs. Chen up to this point, it further solidifies that they’ve lost their mean streak.  And then they go chasing after the Destructor anyway and try to shoot it.  MAKE UP YOUR MINDS, DALEKS.  Sigh.

There are some bright spots scattered throughout ‘Master Plan,’ which, despite it being unarguably overlong, make it acceptable viewing and offer food for thought as to how this could’ve been tightened up into something more solid.  The delegates’ costumes – particularly the bubble guy who we see the most – are well done, for the most part, with some really interesting visual concepts (though you will want to punch bubble guy whenever he ‘speakssssssssss’), and I can’t deny that Butterworth’s Monk is amusing, even if he is just sorta’ tossed in there by Spooner.  Sara Kingdom was a great character, one I wish could have become a companion, and a wise replacement for Katarina.  The whole crew is actually handled well throughout ‘Master Plan,’ with everyone working (as best they could) to keep things moving and responding actively and intelligently to events.  It’s really only the manipulative machinations of the script that keep us running around.  Lastly, the series ends on an impressively dark note (not to mention Katarina’s death); who knows if this is a remnant from Nation’s writing, but, honestly, it matches with Spooner’s flirtations with more bleak material in ‘The Romans,’ so I’ll give him credit there.

I was looking forward to this, as the odd one-off buildup from ‘Mission to the Unknown’ made it seem like we were leading into something fairly epic.  It’s runtime was certainly sanctioned for an epic, but it barely has enough actual plot to get us to the midway point.

As a side note, whoever handled the reconstructions I watched (not sure if it was Loose Cannon, and the XMas episode was, I believe, a different reconstruction crew from the other eps) did an excellent job of keeping them visually interesting – frequent background animations and frame switches to match the dialogue / action.  It was, honestly, as close to watching a live ep as I feel like it can get with the materials provided.