Doctor Who:
The Deadly Assassin
By Robert Holmes
“Through the millennia,
the Time Lords of Gallifrey led a life of peace and ordered calm, protected
from all threats from lesser civilizations by their great power.
But this was to change.
Suddenly and terribly, the Time Lords faced the most dangerous crisis in their
long history ...”
The Doctor has returned to
Gallifrey and he doesn’t get the welcome he was expecting. First the TARDIS is surrounded by the Chancellor
guard and they are awaiting the key to break in. The Doctor gives them the slip and proceeds
to head to the capitol when he is caught by a guard. A man in the shadows helps The Doctor out by
shooting the guard allowing The Doctor to escape and make the guards think he
is in the tower all the while The Doctor sneaks back to his TARDIS.
The Doctor is determined
to prevent the assignation of the outgoing Lord President that The Doctor saw
the premonition of. He heads for The
Panoptican and to no avail he fails and is the prime suspect because he is
holding the gun that might have killed The Lord President. During his trial The Doctor declares article
17 and announces his intentions to run for Lord President. This act gives The Doctor 48 more hours to
live as it was a foregone conclusion that Chancellor Goth was going to have him
executed.
During the investigation
The Doctor and Castellan Spandrell are finding more clues that help The Doctor
case and when Runcible who was sent to get the video disk screams in
horror. The Doctor sees a calling card
from an old enemy and all of a sudden it all makes sense. Spandrell hopes Gallifrey isn’t the place for
a long time feud to continue but The Doctor tells him it is too late and they
need to stop The Master from extracting revenge on The Doctor and all of
Gallifrey.
The Deadly Assassin
heralds the return of The Master after a long absence from the show and they
get around the Roger Delgado issue by making The Master a decrypted and dying
Master at the end of his life cycle. The
Master is out of regenerations and his body is all deformed and skeletal
looking and this actually works as it shows how desperate a man he is. Plus it
is a scary image you have of him as The Masters face look like a skull for the
most part and I thought that was pretty cool. The Deadly Assassin also set the ground work
for The Masters return as they gave him a new start as the skull Master and we
see at the end him leaving Gallifrey in his TARDIS to wreak havoc on the
Universe.
The Deadly Assassin is the
only classic Doctor Who story where The Doctor doesn’t have an assistant. Tom Baker thought he could hold the show on his own so they tried it with
this story but in the end The Doctor always needs a companion. It would be quite a time before we have The
Doctor traveling without a companion again.
I enjoyed The Deadly
Assassin because it was different. I
thought it was well down without the companion and felt the story was stronger
without a companion getting in trouble as The Doctor was able to get on with
what he needed to do without being hampered by a companion getting caught or
asking a lot of useless questions. But
it didn’t have the charm of the companion but for one story it works.
I liked how the whole
story looked and felt as it had a heavy Gothic feel to it. Just look at the sets of Gallifrey and even
The Master as they all were dripping Gothic.
It was fun to see more of a background of The Time Lords and get to see
Gallifrey and how incredible pompous they all are. Just look how the first Borusa acted. Very arrogant
and pompous just like how The Doctor always describes them.
One of the reasons I like
The Deadly Assassin is the episodes that The Doctor was fighting Goth in the
Matrix. It was really neat watching them
battle it out in a forest like quarry filled with traps. I found this part of the story to be really
well done even if they got in a lot of trouble with it. The Deadly Assassin got in trouble for its
violence most notably when Goth was choking The Doctor underwater. The infamous Mary Whitehouse went ballistic
on that and made Doctor Who her own personal campaign against violence on
TV.
The Deadly Assassin is
another of those wonderful stories by Robert Holmes and you can see why he is
the premiere writer for the classic series along with Terrance Dicks. Sure The Deadly Assassin isn’t a perfect
story as it does suffer from being boring in parts but it is on that is pretty
good and a really interesting duel between two enemies who know each other
really well.
Grade B-
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