"The Dominators" - Episode 3

Doctor Who
Airdate: August 24, 1968
Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury
Written by Norman Ashby
Produced by Peter Bryant
Directed by Morris Barry

Rago stops Toba from destroying the research station just in time to prevent Zoe and Cully from being killed, but they are immediately captured by a Quark and taken to join the other Dulcian prisoners. Toba sets the prisoners to clearing the rubble around one of five drilling sites on the island. Cully and Zoe plan an escape attempt using a laser gun from the nearby war museum. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Jamie try and fail to convince the Dulcian government of the threat posed by the Dominators, so they return to the island. The Doctor modifies the travel capsule to avoid the Quark awaiting them. Jamie finds Cully in the museum and uses the gun to destroy a Quark. Toba retaliates by ordering the Quarks to destroy the museum. Cully and Jamie are trapped inside...

I've talked at length about how padded out a lot of these old stories are, and this is definitely one of the worst offenders. Perhaps the originally commissioned six-part story was filled out with a lot of unusable political stuff, but what we have here looks egregious stretched out even with an entire episode shaved off. As ever, this is a bigger problem for modern viewers, who tend to watch one episode after another. When you're watching one episode a week, it's less likely you'll notice that every single cliffhanger involves Toba ordering the Quarks to kill someone, while every single resolution involves Rago countermanding that order. And it wouldn't bother you so much that Rago is reminding Toba over and over again that they have to conserve power. And it might not even bother you so much that most of the characters are simply running around without ever really accomplishing much. If you watch it all in one go, on the other hand, you immediately realize that there isn't nearly enough story here for five episodes, let alone six.

But let's take a look at what political elements do remain in the script. As I said, it was originally supposed to be a kind of refutation of the anti-Vietnam protesters. Presumably, the argument was to go something like this: pacifism is wrong because it leaves us defenseless against those who might threaten our way of life. Ok, not a bad argument on its face, and one that featured prominently in "The Daleks" back in Season One. But trying to apply it specifically to the Vietnam War is a bit problematic. You didn't have to be a pacifist, or a communist, to oppose that war.