Mawdryn Undead
Mawdryn Undead is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in four parts, from February 1 to February 9, 1983. The serial was the first of three loosely connected serials known as the Black Guardian Trilogy, and introduced Mark Strickson as a new companion, Vislor Turlough, as well as reintroducing Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
Synopsis
In 1983, the former Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart teaches mathematics at Brendon Public School, where Turlough is a student. In the aftermath of a car accident, Turlough is contacted by the sinister Black Guardian, whom the Doctor thwarted during the quest for the Key to Time. Seeking revenge, the Black Guardian offers Turlough transportation off Earth if he will kill the Doctor.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa have problems of their own. The TARDIS is caught in a warp ellipse and materializes on board a starliner locked in a perpetual orbit in time and space. Turlough, under the Black Guardian's instructions, transports himself onto the liner from Earth by means of a transmat capsule and encounters the TARDIS crew. The Doctor travels to Earth via transmat, taking Turlough with him, to get rid of the transmat interference that is trapping the TARDIS on the liner. Unfortunately, when the TARDIS tries to materialize on Earth, it vanishes. The Doctor meets the Brigadier at the Brendon school, but is puzzled when his old comrade-in-arms does not remember their time together at first. When the Doctor says he has to find Tegan and his TARDIS, the Brigadier remembers meeting her in 1977. The Doctor realizes that the TARDIS is right there - just six years earlier - and tries to get the Brigadier to remember the events that led to his nervous breakdown in 1977.
In 1977, Tegan and Nyssa encounter the transmat capsule, but inside is an alien-looking humanoid whom they initially believe is the Doctor, horribly injured. Meeting the younger Brigadier, they bring him and the alien back to the starliner, which is actually the prison of a group of alien scientists who had been trying to discover the Time Lord secret of regeneration. As Mawdryn, the leader of the group explains, they only succeeded in trapping themselves in a cycle of perpetual mutation and regeneration and now long for death. When the Doctor finds out that there are two Brigadiers aboard, he has to try to keep the two apart lest the resulting energy discharge prove catastrophic.
Trying to leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that Tegan and Nyssa have been infected by the same malady as Mawdryn and his compatriots. The only cure, it seems, is to do what Mawdryn demands: the Doctor must give up the energy from his remaining regenerations. Hooking himself up to Mawdryn's apparatus, the Doctor is about to sacrifice himself when the two Brigadiers meet and touch hands, causing a discharge of temporal energy at precisely the right instant. Tegan and Nyssa are cured, the alien scientists succeed in ending their undead existence, and the Doctor remains a Time Lord. The younger Brigadier, however, will not remember his time with the Doctor until they meet again in 1983...
After returning the Brigadiers to their respective time zones, Turlough asks if he can join the Doctor in his travels. The Doctor agrees, apparently not realizing he is taking an assassin into the fold.
Notes
- Mawdryn Undead has the unfortunate distinction of causing one of the biggest and most widely discussed contradictions in the Doctor Who universe: the "UNIT dating issue." The UNIT stories of the late Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, and early Tom Baker eras, while broadcast from 1969 to about 1976, were all intended by the production team of the time to take place in the "near future." In one specific instance, in the serial Pyramids of Mars, Sarah Jane Smith specifically says she's "from 1980." Therefore, the Brigadier was still an active member of UNIT as of that year. However, when Tegan and Nyssa arrive on Earth, it's 1977 - the Queen's Jubilee - and the Brigadier, recently retired, has just begun teaching at the school. Fans who seek a way to resolve this difference are split. Some believe the dates of Mawdryn Undead should be ignored because of the greater number of UNIT stories that posited the existence of UNIT in the late 1970s and early 1980s, even if few of those stories mentioned dates directly or depended on those dates for anything. Others believe that the Mawdryn dates should remain canonical, either because the story was produced and broadcast later (and therefore overrides what was already established) or because the changing of the date would render Tegan's discovery nonsensical. Arguments on both sides of the discussion have become passionate, although some people, perhaps more than would admit, choose their position based as much on their estimation of Doctor Who in the 1980s as a whole as on the merits of the relevant arguments. Perhaps the main reason for the dating problem arose from the fact that the story was written without the character of the Brigadier in mind at all - see point 5 below.
- The Doctor cites the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect" (first mentioned in the Third Doctor serial, Day of the Daleks) as the reason for the temporal energy discharge resulting from the meeting of the two Brigadiers. However, the Effect must not apply to Time Lords, or at least can be mitigated, as the Doctor has met his prior incarnations on several occasions.
- David Collings, who played Mawdryn, also appeared in the Fourth Doctor serial The Robots of Death, and would himself play an alternate Doctor in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who Unbound audio play, Full Fathom Five.
- The Black Guardian Trilogy continues in the serial Terminus.
- The original intention of the production team was for the character of Ian Chesterton, one of the original regulars from the series' first two seasons from 1963-65, to return for a guest appearance in this story, hence the school setting as Chesterton was a science teacher. However, actor William Russell proved to be unavailable. Some consideration was given to instead using the character of Harry Sullivan, who was a regular in the the programme for a season in the mid-1970s, before the return of Lethbridge-Stewart was eventually decided upon.
External Links
| Preceded by: Snakedance |
List of Doctor Who serials | Followed by: Terminus |