By Richard Sellers
This arch opens with a menacing ceremony where in a pair of the strange society’s brightest students are chosen to be “companions” to the mysterious Krotons. The boy goes willing receiving his shiny silver robes and stepping through a door way that quickly closes behind him. The chosen young woman though is delayed by her distraught father who doesn’t trust the traditions.
The Tardis makes its entrance just in time for The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie to see what happens when the gullible young man steps through the exit door. He stumbles out in a daze and is blanketed in a acid fog that leaves little more than a pile of ash. Dumbfounded, our heroes find another entrance into the complex and descend down to the ceremonial hall the poor man came from. The doctor tries to warn the group about the boy, but Jamie is challenged by one of the men and has to defend his honor. Jamie quickly wins the fight, but as he is fighting the young woman is ushered through the door. With Jamie triumphant The Doctor is able to finally explain what they saw and together with the girl’s father return to the surface just in time to save her from the acid.
With the young woman still in an almost catatonic state the head to her grandfather’s house to get some answers.
The old man explains that thousands of years ago their people, the Gonds, were invaded by aliens called the Krotons. After a long war peace was finally settled with Krotons giving the Gonds their technology and in return the Krotons got the two smartest students of each graduating class. Apparently no one asked what the hell happened to them.
While The Doctor and his companions are getting their history lesson the girl’s father takes matters into his own hands and returns to “Hall of Learning” to destroy the Kroton’s leaning machines. The Doctor is warned, but the damage is done by the time they get to the hall. A booming voice tells all the Gonds to leave, but then an odd looking robot spies The Doctor from a monitoring room. A ridiculous robot/snake thing comes out of the wall and goes straight for The Doctor.
We’ll see if this remains an interesting twist on an old story or just implode like so many others. So far though, it’s pretty decent.
Doctor Who #228 S06E01P01/ The Krotons part 1
Original air date: December 28th, 1968
4/5 don’t ask, don’t tell policies
As Always, Richard
