Upon a landscape of iridescent dust clouds and multi-coloured seaweed, the Doctor and Mel explore a domed, seemingly deserted mining facility.
Herein shelter Godfrey Ketsch, Colonel Jackson, Mother Superior Tethnika; a ranting lobster named Arkon Stetema, and a Sontaran named Skeg, who, having conducted torturous experiments on the humans, is now in a state of traumatised mental exhaustion.
To investigate the loss of the Sontaran Alpha Platoon arrives Field Major Kase. But the Sontarans are unused to such an enemy as dwells here...
Tropes
- Alien Sky: Iridescent dust clouds.
- An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: A “low-level telepathic field throughout the city” causes transient manifestations of Eva Carter, head of research.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Sontarans consider open fear and entreaties for mercy to be a moral perversion.
- Care-Bear Stare: A poignant example in Skeg, who, exposed to the aesthetic sensibilities retained in the walls, is bereft of warlike instincts.
- The Comically Serious:
- Stetema.
- The Sontarans gets some nice moments.
- Friend to All Living Things:
- The Doctor entreats mercy for the traumatised Skeg.
- Tethnika’s religious order venerates compassion for all.
- Genius Loci: The gemstones in the walls are spores of a telepathic mineral organism, which extends its influence to vegetable and animal matter.
- Glowing Eyes
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The earlier Sontaran investigators became deliriously enthralled to the concept of aesthetic appreciation.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Ketsch, whose interstellar parentage allows for outlandish limb contortion.
- Humanity Is Infectious: The Bloom is intoxicated by tumultuous, combative emotions.
- Mind Rape
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Sontarans are shown basically having panic attacks, it is clear that there is something seriously wrong at the base.
- Puppeteer Parasite
- Sad Clown: Mr Ketsch is prone to world-weary witticisms.
- Sanity Slippage: Several of Kase’s team, on exposure to the aesthetic sensibilities retained in the walls, succumb to some rather un-Sontaran-like drilling exercises.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Stetema, magnificently so.
- Shout-Out: The Doctor refers to the footage of the crew’s descent into violent hysteria as a Video Nasty.
- Starfish Aliens: A mineral organism which extends its sensory and manipulation abilities to various forms of matter. When fully grown, it resembles a coral reef.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Field Major Kase grows increasingly vexed with the inability of his men to facilitate the base.
- Voice of the Legion
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Sontarans, to the mining facility. It, however, has other ideas…
