Original air dates August and September of 1968. Opens with a space fleet and a rock.
A ship lands, two men get off. They absorb local radiation, and plan to use locals as slave workforce.
Futuristic tourists crash-land on the test island. They go to the landed alien ship for help, and are shot at. Three killed. One moves back to his ship as the TARDIS arrives. Doctor, Zoe and Jaimie get out, the Doctor planning on a nice long rest.
They find professors and students there, who expect them to have been radiated. They’re not, as the aliens have absorbed all the radiation. The aliens wander around finding it’s a test site, and look for more specimens.
The Doctor and Jaimie find the alien spaceship, and stroll right up to it, and then right in. They are interrupted by robots and an alien. Also, credits.
The Doctor and Jaimie are easily captured, and then submitted to intelligence tests. They deliberately fail and are eventually released.
Zoe and whatshisname go to the capitol where they are not believed at all. They plan on coming back with evidence.
The professor and his two students investigate the spaceship and are astonished to find it. They don’t find robots so go in to see. The robots find them and test them, to decide they’re different. Plausible slave labor, yay.
The Dominators bomb the research center. The one orders the destruction, and the other stops it, ordering the capture of any survivors, which would be Zoe and whatshisname.
The Doctor and Jaimie talk to the Council, which is a waste of time. The Doctor gets them to call the base, and they find it destroyed with a Quark standing in it.
The prisoners are lined up and forced to work. They work them to collapse.
Jaimie and the Doctor take a travel capsule back, diverting it to land elsewhere via a mess of wires. They go to the prisoners. The Doctor is captured with them but Jaimie and Cully escape, and destroy a Quark with the ancient laser gun. That pisses off the Dominators.
The Dominiators squabble.
The Dominators get the slaves to set up the drill, and start drilling.
The lead Dominator repairs the travel capsule and goes to the capital to get more slaves.
Jaimie and Cully destroy Quark, which causes a distraction for the Doctor to explore the Dominators’ ship. He figures out that the ship has absorbed the radiation.
The lead Dominator arrives at the Capital. He destroys a namby-pamby councilman to make a point, and then demands slaves. He leaves.
The secondary Dominiator demands to know where Jaimie is, and will kill them all one at a time until he gets an answer. The Doctor’s head is next on the metaphorical block when the credits roll.
The sooner the drilling is complete, the sooner the planet will die.
The Doctor explains how this will be a big explosion that will turn the whole planet into a nuclear volcano. Jaimie comes up with the plan to catch the nuclear seed on the way down the borehole and they’re off to the races to dig a tunnel and catch it.
Jaimie and Cully go out to distract the Quarks with some explosives the Doctor whipped up out of medical kits. They’re pretty successful, and piss off the Dominators.
The Dominiators finish their hole and go to get their seed device, just as our crew finishes their tunnel and breaks into the borehole.
The Doctor can’t defuse the seed device as it’s sealed, and comes up with the plan to stash it on the Dominators’ ship, which he does.
They take off and launch the rockets to make the local volcano, and the rest of the natives escape in the travel capsule while the Doctor, Jaimie and Zoe get to the TARDIS to escape. No big boom destroys the planet, just a little boom destroying the Dominator ship.
The extras were intersting and pointed out how the Dulcens were based on what happened if the peace movement of the 60’s actually worked.
Tags: doctorwho