Wednesday, August 29

Galaxy 4 Part 4/4: The Exploding Planet

Recap: the Rills are cool but can only breathe ammonia, the Drahvins are not so much morally ambiguous as they are cold and murderous, Steven is stuck in an airlock sans air with the choice of suffocating or surrendering to Maaga the Duchess of Sexytown, and the Doctor and Vicki are chillaxin' outside Sexy Drahvin HQ with a couple Chumblies and a sexy Drahvin who doesn't know wtf is going on. And also the planet's going to explode in a few hours because of reasons.

So, Maaga and her sexy cronies are on the inside of Sexy Drahvin HQ when boom, the Chumblies throw an ammonia bomb at them to distract them while they shoot open the door to the airlock. Steven stumbles out and the Doctor and Vicki are somewhat concerned because, as well as the oxygen deprivation, Steven seems to be suffering from Chronic Blurring of Face, the infamous alien disease.


This is, understandably, very distressing for them. While the TARDIS crew are familiarising themselves with Steven's new and unfortunate lack of facial features, the Rills start a dialogue of trash talk with the sexy Drahvins.

RILL VIA CHUMBLEYCOM: Maaga, you will take your soldiers back into the ship, and you will stay there. Until now we have spared you, although you have attacked us time and time again. But we will always defend our friends.
MAAGA: Friends!
RILL VIA CHUMBLEYCOM: We will prevent any attempt on your part to leave the ship. I am resolute. Now go back into your spaceship.
MAAGA: You have polluted the air with your bomb!
RILL VIA CHUMBLEYCOM: Ner ner ner ner ner, you smell of cat pee!

The TARDIS crew head back to the Rill base and decide that, as they have only six hours before Shit Goes Down™, they best get a move on with the 'powering the Rill ship by TARDIS juice' plan they have. So, the Doctor and Vicki head back out onto the planet to the TARDIS and leave Steven with the Rill so he can recover from his blurry face some more. (It's getting better, but it's still not quite there.)


There's a hilarious awkward silence between Steven and the Rill, and then Steven makes it VERY clear that he doesn't think much of the Rills' motives for saving him. You've spent too much time around the crazy sexy Drahvins, Steven. Not all aliens want to kill you, I promise. The Rills, because they are adorable, assure Steven that even if their ship doesn't get fixed, they'll let the TARDIS crew go because the Doctor "travels further than they can" and "everything he has shown he stands for is what they believe in." Which sounds cute but the things the Doctor has shown he stands for include mass murder and being generally incompetent. Steven, however, is overcome with the urge to cuddle these hideous creatures, and offers to help fix the Rills' power cable. The Rills accept, and the footage cuts away before Steven can express his lustful feelings for yet another alien species.

The Doctor and Vicki arrive safely at the TARDIS, and Vicki is getting worried about the imminent destruction of the planet, because it's starting to get dark. The Doctor assures her that they've still got about five hours left, and also soothes her fears about the coming explosion.

VICKI: Strange to think that at dawn all this will explode into nothing.
DOCTOR: No, not just nothing, child. Hydrogen gas that springs itself out like molten silver against the other stars in the same galaxy. Hmm.
VICKI: Wow, for a doctor, your bedside manner is really, REALLY bad.

While all this is going on, the Drahvins are still plotting to steal the Rills' spaceship and kill everything. They've already taken out the Chumbley standing guard outside Sexy Drahvin HQ, and now Maaga and her underlings are questing out into the wilderness (or out into the few hundred metres that seems to separate the Drahvins from the Rills) to get shit done. The alarm on the now-defunct Chumbley outside Sexy Drahvin HQ alerts everyone at Rill Base about this; the Doctor's advice is to not worry about it and just stay chill for the couple hours it's going to take to get the Rill ship working again.

Suddenly, Drahvins. (Steven's brilliant reaction: "Well, they don't waste time, do they?") A Chumbley manages to paralyse the one threatening them, then they all go take cover in the main Rill's room. Turns out, the Rills? Not sexy.


Thirty minutes to planetary destruction! And the sexy Drahvins are getting a bit frantic because they can't get past the Chumbley guard to the Rill base. But it's good news for the Rills: their spaceship is fully charged! Things are looking up! The plan now is for the Rills to high-tail it out of there ASAP and the TARDIS crew to take a Chumbley guard to get them across the planet and vworp the frick away.

The Rill ship takes off! Hell yeah! This angers the sexy Drahvins and, with a crazed look in their sexy eyes, they turn to the TARDIS as their only means of escape. You're probably better off on the planet, sexy Drahvins, you can't even choose where you want to go in that thing. Maaga, Heiress to the Fortune of Sexiness, pulls out her sexy weapon but the Chumbley is on the case and zaps the sexy Drahvins until they fall over and then it points at them and laughs.

Then, boom. The trio are safely in the TARDIS and they make it off the planet without any further fuss. We get to see a shot of Planet Time Bomb very scientifically living up to its name by blowing up right on time. Because of science. Steven only pines for the Drahvins a little. 


Vicki takes a peek at the TARDIS scanner and sees that they've materialised orbiting this other (hopefully non-exploding) planet.

"Look at that planet," says she. "I wonder what's going on down there."

"Yes," the Doctor responds. "Yes, I wonder. Hmm?"

This can only be foreshadowing, am I right? How exciting.


Holding out for actual footage in the next serial. How good would that be.

Moosh

1 comment:

  1. Please continue all the way to Eleven. :D Or more likely, by the time you get through them all, Nineteen or Twenty.

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