Wednesday, September 18, 2024

The Armageddon Factor [II]

1 September 1979 [21 minutes]
“I believe this planet is called Skaro.”
The Movellan tells the Doctor what planet he is on. The Doctor is surprised; we are not. The Doctor says something under his breath. The BBC sub-title department think it might have been “Good God!” but I don’t think that’s how the Doctor talks. Tom Baker would have said something a lot stronger. All his frivolity drains away. He starts talking with his serious face. “Why are you here on Skaro?”
There are relatively few recurrent planets in the Doctor Who universe. The Doctor has been to Earth dozens of times. He’s made three visits, so far, to Gallifrey. Two trips to Peladon. Two side-trips to Metabelis Three. Telos has been mentioned several times, but the Doctor has only been there once, when the Cybermen were mostly dead. I make this his fourth visit to Skaro. We know the place like the back of our hand. Like the back of our sink-plunger. It may look like a quarry, but we’ve seen the maps in our Dalek Annuals, radiation mountains and swamps of mutations and all. 
Counter-earth, round the other side of the sun? Capital of a galactic empire? Somewhere in the next universe but two? 
The radiation should have given him the clue. The Doctor’s  very first encounter with his arch-foes began with the needle on the TARDIS radiation detector switching to “Danger” and a mad scramble for anti-radiation gloves. But this moment surprises him. Takes his breath away. He has programmed the TARDIS to select locations at random. And he has arrived on the home planet of his bitterest, most iconic enemies. According to the principle of pot-luck.

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