"I can't take you back, Susan. I can't."
An episode confined to the TARDIS (mostly console room) and featuring only the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian. After an adventure in the past (perhaps on Earth) and one in the future on an alien planet this takes place in the liminality of the TARDIS. This was to be the penultimate episode of the show if the series proved to be unpopular and gives the impression that it's a low-cost "holding" story awaiting a decision whether or not to commission any more episodes.
It's actually enjoyable - even if it's quite like a theatre production. Characters lose their memories, distrust one another, there might even be some malign alien threat on board, the TARDIS is silent, Susan wields a pair of scissors. It's when Susan suggests that the menace could be hiding in one of them that we move into paranoid Who Goes There?/The Thing territory. Weird stuff happens: the TARDIS shows them photos of Earth, Quinnis in the Fourth Universe (?) and of the cosmos. Doors open and close mysteriously. The food machine malfunctions. The faces of the watches and clock look like they melt. The Doctor accuses Barbara and Ian of sabotage (an opportunity for Barbara to remind us of their previous adventures). At the end, the Doctor appears to drug everyone and begins dashing about in a sinister manner. It's all tense.
My initial impression is that we're being introduced to the idea that the TARDIS has an intelligence that is trying to communicate with its passengers in some way. We shall see next week.
Next week: The Brink of Disaster.
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