The Fifth Doctor and Peri visit a distant Earth outpost that is being terraformed. Large predators called the Farakosh are threatening the locals, but they have large robots called Exotrons to protect them. However, the Doctor discovers that both the Farakosh and the Exotrons are not what they appear to be...
As a Bonus Episode, Urban Myths is a one-part story that involves three people at a restaurant planning to kill the Doctor for his actions on the planet Poytee. They each tell the story as they remember it...
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Robots:The Doctor: "Uh, excuse me, are you some kind of robot?"
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Two people to the same woman under five minutes. First, Tyler as he lays dying, and then Christian in a Never Got to Say Goodbye and pulls a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: The Farakosh pick up on the signals the pylons emit.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Peri calls a "Farakosh" a "Gigantic Hyena".
- Compelling Voice: When the Doctor gets into a Psychic Link with a soldier, he manages to drown him out with his more experienced mind.
- Distressed Dude: The Doctor gets kidnapped by a giant robot a couple of minutes in.
- Fantastic Measurement System: "Clicks" for distance.
- Foreshadowing: Tyler arguing with an Exotron seems a lot less important before The Reveal.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Oh Five. This is a recurring thing for you, isn't it?
- Tyler later pulls one, trying to redeem himself.
- Then Christian and the other Exotrons do one in order to save the remainder of the survivors.
- Tyler later pulls one, trying to redeem himself.
- Informed Ability: Subverted Trope when it comes to Peri's Botanist interest.
- Late to the Punchline: Shreeni doesn't immediately pick up on the Pun.
- Pun: The "Bear walks into a bar" joke gets used by Weiss.
- Remote Body: The Exotrons are controlled by Major Taylor, through a psychic network. Of course Science Is Bad.
- The Reveal: All the Exotrons are near-dead humans, with exoskeletal robotic suits.
- Telepathy: People at random can pick up stray thoughts from one another. The Doctor, at first, thinks this is a TARDIS malfunction until he meets the brain behind the Exotrons.
- Vicious Cycle
- The Doctor: "You've created your own enemy to fight!"
- War for Fun and Profit: Ballentyne.
Urban Myths has examples of:
- Apocalypse How: The Doctor supposedly swamps the planet in lava, releases a virus into the ocean which kills all known life, or detonates the planet.
- Call-Back: In Commander Edge's telling, the Doctor mentions the Brigadier.
- Darker and Edgier: The first telling of the Doctor's arrival on Pytoon has Peri talking in a deep voice and the Doctor immediately arming himself with a BFG.
- Improvised Weapon: The Doctor takes out a hijacked car with a cricket ball in Kettoo's telling.
- Mistaken for Special Guest: The third telling of the story has the Doctor being mistaken for scientists sent by the government.
- Out-of-Character Alert: The Doctor delivering a Bond One-Liner in Edge's telling has the other two people at the table question its validity.
- The Rashomon: Three tellings of the Backstory that brought the trio to this restaurant.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Kettoo says she and her colleagues work at an office. And they TOTALLY blend in! (They're actually Celestial Intervention Agency agents.)
- Tampering with Food and Drink: A well-intentioned example that works: The meals Peri serves to the three agents are the Doctor's way of administering the cure to the virus that infected them.
- The Virus: In the second and third telling, the rioting is caused by a beserker virus which could threaten the galaxy. It turns out that the three agents are all infected by a moderate variety of this (they were doing a follow-up report after the Doctor saved the day), and they are telling wildly different stories because they are subconsciously riling each other up to kill the Doctor.
