BROADCAST: January 1 - January 22, 1977
LENGTH: 4 Episodes, 25 mins. each
EPISODE 1 SUMMARY:
On an unnamed planet in the distant future, Leela, a young warrior of the Tribe of Sevateem, is on trial for denouncing their god, Xoanon. Her father takes the test of the Horda in her place, and dies. Andor, the leader, exiles Leela to the forest.
With it's usual inaccuracy, the TARDIS arrives on the planet instead of the Doctor's intended destination, Hyde Park. He thinks the navigation system should be repaired and reaches for his handkerchief, planning to tie a knot in it as a reminder, but already finds a knot tied for something he can't even remember. He sets off into the forest to explore.
Leela is stalked by two warriors from the village. She kills one, and the other is brought down by her friend Tomas, who was tracking them after he saw Neeva, the shaman, send them. Tomas offers to go with her, but she tells him to return to the village and keep his eye on Calib, an acquaintance of theirs who is a devious schemer.
Leela is then pursued by invisible creatures and bumps into the Doctor, whom she calls the Evil One. Using an egg timer, the Doctor is able to distract the creatures, who hunt by homing in on vibrations. Having saved her, Leela begins to trust him. They return across the boundary, which the Doctor discovers is a sonic disruption field that acts as a fence, keeping the phantoms out. In the village, Xoanon speaks to Neeva, commanding that Leela and the Doctor be destroyed.
Sensing danger, Leela hides, but the Doctor is capture by a patrol. They also call him the Evil One, and make a holy gesture the Doctor recognizes as also being the sequence to check the seals on a Starfall 7 spacesuit. He is taken before the tribe, and Andor is about to kill him before Neeva intervenes. He will gather the warriors, speak the holy litany, and then kill the Doctor before them. With the Evil One dead, their attack will succeed and they can finally free Xoanon.
The Doctor tries again to convince Andor that he is not the Evil One: the tribe's religion must be based on visits by other space travelers, because their technology is all over the place, but Andor refuses to listen.
During the litany, Leela slips in and rescues the Doctor, and the two make their way to a mountain with the face of the Evil One carved in it. The face of the Doctor...
EPISODE 2 SUMMARY:
Neeva lies to the tribe, telling them the Evil One has been destroyed, so they will not delay their attack. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Leela slip back into the village to examine Neeva's holy relics. From the remains of a spacesuit, the voice of Xoanon speaks to the Doctor - "At last we are here, at last, us... At least I shall be free of us." The voice of Xoanon is also that of the Doctor, leaving him with an uneasy feeling.
The Doctor examines the Wall, a black barrier beyond which Xoanon is meant to be held prisoner by the Evil One and his followers, the Tesh. The Wall is a time barrier, moving everything inside a couple of seconds ahead in time. At another part of the Wall, the tribe mounts an unsuccessful attack, resulting in many casualties.
Back at the village, the Doctor and Leela hope to win the support of Calib, who ran away from the attack to save his skin. When their guard is down, Calib poisons Leela with a janus thorn. With her out of the way he hopes to use the Doctor as a tool to break Neeva's control of the tribe, but Tomas arrives and the Doctor uses the distraction to trip Calib and snatch his crossbow. While Tomas guards Calib, the Doctor is able to use one of the relics, a bio-analyzer, to find a cure for the posion and save Leela.
All three are captured and brought before the tribe. Calib thinks the Doctor should be given the test of the Horda; if he dies, then he is mortal and therefore not a god and not the Evil One. The Doctor stands on a platform over a closed pit full of Horda, flesh-eating creatures that are a cross between a prehistoric fish and an insect. A boulder is lowered on a rope, slowly opening the pit. The Doctor must cut the rope with a crossbow in one shot before the platform drops him into the pit. Leela frees herself and tries to stop the test, but the Doctor is able to get off a successful shot. Having passed the test, he has proven the he is not the Evil One.
In the shrine, Xoanon says he has decided to destroy the Doctor, and is switching off the boundary to allow the invisible phantoms to roam free. The Doctor cobbles together some of the leftover bits of technology to create a gun that will be effective against the phantoms as well as a temporary sonic field generator to keep them on their side of the boundary, but several have already crossed over. One attacks and kills Andor before Tomas drives it off.
EPISODE 3 SUMMARY:
Because Xoanon can transmit his voice to the shrine, the Doctor realizes there is a bridge through the time barrier, which he and Leela find by climbing through the mouth of the face on the mountain. They encounter a being in a spacesuit who walks through a wall. Through an opening on the rock, the Doctor sees a ship in the distance, which he recognizes as that of the Mordee Expedition. He tells Leela that the wall in front of them is a three dimensional projection, and they walk through and are transported to the ship.
On board they find another shrine, and the Doctor has Leela recite part of the littany: "The Sevateem was sent forth by God to seek Paradise. The Tesh remained at the place of Land." The Sevateem were the planetary survey teams, and the Tesh were the technicians who remained in the ship. Both groups are descended from the human colonists.
They are discovered by a group of Tesh, who render Leela unconscious and take her away. The Doctor realizes Xoanon has been conducting a eugenics experiment: the Sevateem are the peak of physical achievement, while the Tesh have evolved psi powers. Jabel, the Tesh leader, calls the Doctor 'Lord of Time' and says they have waited for his return. He will help them achieve communion with Xoanon and reach Paradise.
On a monitor screen, the Doctor sees Leela about to undergo a particle analysis. Jabel wants to study how the Sevateem open the barrier, but the Doctor angers him by telling him Xoanon does it. Before the Doctor can rescue Leela, Jable knocks him out and has him strapped to the analyzer as well. Leela manages to wake him up in time for him to use a hand mirror he was already holding to redirect the particle beam back into the analyzer, destroying it.
The Doctor explains that when he was last on the ship, he'd repaired their computer using his own mind as a template. He failed to realize Xoanon wasn't malfunctioning, but was achieving sentience. Because he'd failed to wipe his mind-print from the computer, Xoanon developed a split personality. This schizophrenia led the computer to set itself up as a god and conduct experiments on the colonists. They find a communications room and are able to see the village under siege from the phantoms, which the Doctor says are mental projections from the dark side of Xoanon's Id. Pretending to be Xoanon, he tells Neeva to lead the tribe across the barrier and through the mouth of the idol.
On Level 37, they overpower the guard posted outside the Sacred Heart. The Doctor enters the computer core and attempts to reason with Xoanon, but the computer will not accept his existence over it's own and attacks him.
EPISODE 4 SUMMARY:
Outside the computer chamber, Leela has been fighting off Tesh, but her gun has lost its power. She jumps out to attack them head on, but the lights flicker. The Tesh run off in fear, leaving one cowering on the ground. He tells her it is "Fail Safe", the end of the world, that also happened before the time of Land. She enters the computer chamber and fires on Xoanon, cutting off his attack on the Doctor's mind.
Outside, the Doctor notices an odor in the air and discovers the walls have been electrically charged; a precaution in case he managed to escape. Xoanon possesses the mind of the cowering Tesh, who attacks the Doctor, trying to force him onto the wall. After a struggle the Doctor knocks the Tesh onto the wall instead. In a store room, the Doctor begins gathering various odds and ends, but Xoanon interrupts him, possessing Leela in another attempt to kill him. The Doctor is able to block the control and snap her out of it.
The Sevateem have entered the ship to attack the Tesh. Tomas is wary of their success, thinking the Tesh are leading them into a trap, but Calib refuses to listen and leads them further on.
The Doctor returns to the shrine/computer room, booting up the monitors so they can have warning of anyone approaching. Leela sees some flashing lights on one panel, and the Doctor says Xoanon has set the atomic generators to overload. He has 24 minutes to build a device to wipe his memory print from the computer before the generators explode, destroying half the planet.
In desperation, Xoanon takes control of everyone aboard the ship, Tesh and Sevateem alike. Leela tries to stab the Doctor in the back, but he moves and she misses, instead hitting the computer which gives her a shock, knocking her unconscious. The Tesh and Sevateem surround the Doctor, but Neeva, who remains unaffected by the mind control, attacks the computer core. Xoanon disintegrates him, but the distraction is long enough for the Doctor to plug himself into the system, purging his personality from Xoanon's mind.
The Doctor wakes up two days later, and Leela tells him there hasn't been any communication from Xoanon in that time, and the Tesh and Sevateem have an uneasy truce. They enter the computer core to find a much more agreeable and sane Xoanon. He apologies for everything, and offers his knowledge and power to help both Tesh and Sevateem. If they don't trust him, they can press a button and he will cease to exist, but nobody is willing to press it.
Since Leela is the only one among them to have spoken with Xoanon, Tomas nominates her to be their new leader. She refuses and runs off after the Doctor, forcing her way into the TARDIS and accidentally setting it in flight. Like it or not, the Doctor has a new companion.
