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Doctor Who and friends land on an unconvincing planet and run into this rubbish little robot thing. Doctor Who looks instantly furious. He's easily confused, and it's quite possible he's spent the last half an hour shouting at the robot trying to order a gin and tonic.
Vicky loves the robot and decides to call it a Chumbley. She spends ages saying the word out loud, hoping it will catch on, and that she'll be the coolest.
The robot is indifferent to all this, and just captures them and waves a gun about until they go where it wants.
Soon these Space Ladies show up and say, "Get off Doctor Who, you bad robot!" And they shoot it with a net!
This being the Sixties, there's a strong sense of the story going, "Ooh - what if ladies were powerful, like men? Imagine that! Only happen in space, am I right?" Unfortunately the women all look a bit gormless, so the impact is diminished.
This is one of the stories where the BBC hurled the original film into a skip, so sometimes it is a cartoon for a bit. I quite like this shot - it looks like everyone is posing for a photo to commemorate the time they captured each other and covered each other in nets, but then nobody was ready for the photo so they all look startled.
This woman is the boss of the Space Ladies. She's doing a big speech about how the robots are total jerks and no-one likes them and how Doctor Who and the gang should be friends with the Space Ladies because they're the coolest. And also, do they have a spaceship please because the planet is about to explode?
Steven and Vicky don't look convinced, do they? Steven's generally furious with everything, so no surprise there. But Vicky is usually up for a laugh, so one has to wonder why she's giving such slumped-shoulder attitude? Is it because 'Chumbley' isn't catching on like she'd hoped? Or is it just that she's used to being the only girl in the story, and she's like, "If you even start being adorable I will claw out your eyes."
Space Lady Boss spends ages explaining the plot to everyone. The Space Ladies are having a squabble with some gross triangular aliens called the Rill. They want Doctor Who and friends to spend a lot of their time running between the two groups, as if mediating a playground dispute between teenage boys and girls.
It's quite possible that the Space Ladies secretly fancy the Rills, but - being women - can't come out and say it, and are, instead, really mean to them.
I may be bringing some of my own issues to the table here.
Doctor Who and Vicky go to see the Rills and - sure enough - they are very triangular, and very gross. Just look at this guy! He looks like he's sneezed his own face inside out. Vicky sees him, and does a massive scream, which may be why he looks so sad.
The story is trying to make a point about how we shouldn't judge by appearances, and how even though this guy looks like the reanimated corpse of a bogey, he's actually quite the decent sort. But, right, the first time we see him, the episode suddenly ends! That usually reserved for big shock moments, like when people say, "Oh no, it's the Daleks!" or "Oh no, we've been sentenced to having our heads chopped off!"
In this case the big cliffhanger is, "Oh no, look at this guy's face!" That can't be any good for his self esteem.
Vicky goes to tell Doctor Who that she's met a Rill, and he's actually quite lovely, and not a horrid mean boy like the Space Ladies said. She leaves out the bit where she instantly screamed in his face, on the reasonable grounds that it makes her seem like she's very shallow and possibly quite racist.
Doctor Who looks pretty shifty, doesn't he? I think he was outside the Rill spaceship, messing up their stuff so that they would all suffocate to death. This is one of his signature moves - murder the aliens with science and run off. He's now wondering if he can put everything back like it was without them all noticing and going, "Hey, were you trying to murder us?"
Back at Space Lady HQ, there's a lot of agitation and filling in of forms. Boss Space Lady obviously hates her job, and despises everyone working for her. And with good reason - they have absolutely no initiative and they keep letting people escape.
Here, Boss Lady is doing evaluations on the rest of the Space Ladies. She's giving this one 2/10 for 'what to do if a prisoner tries to steal your gun and run off", on the grounds that the correct answer isn't, "Freeze like a statue and stare sadly at him until he's gone".
Vicky is arranging to help the Rills escape before the planet explodes. You can see that she is trying hard to avoid eye contact with the Rill, presumably so that the fine details of the plan don't keep getting derailed by her shouting, "Arg! Yuk! Oh no!"
Vicky and Doctor Who agree to help the Rill power up their spaceship. Possibly because the Rill make a compelling moral argument about the virtues of tolerance, but more likely on the grounds that their spaceship is slightly nearer the TARDIS, and they're happy to provide their own electrical cable.
Steven has escaped from the Space Ladies, but not made it very far. He's just in the porch of their spaceship, and they've locked the door so he can't get outside.
So now they're in the embarrassing position of him having not-quite escaped, but not quite being a prisoner either. That's why he's refusing to meet Space Lady Boss's eye - it's like when you say goodbye to someone and then find you're both going the same way.
Space Lady Boss isn't so bothered, though. She'd rather hang out with Steven than her stupid employees. He may be permanently furious, and keep waving a gun in her face, but at least he doesn't get confused about which one is him and which is the mirror.
It doesn't take long before Steven escapes properly, and Vicky introduces everyone to the Rills. I don't think she remembers to prepare everyone for quite how disgusting they are, on first sight. She should have said something like, "Now, when you meet them, you're going to want scream at them, and point at them, and be sick on them. Try to control that instinct."
No-one screams this time, but Doctor Who is clearly trying hard not to laugh, and Steven just walks right up to the Rill and stares at it in undisguised horror. The Rill wears the resigned expression of someone thinking, "Great, more racists."
Eventually the Rills zoom off into space, just as the planet starts to explode. This Chumbley makes a heroic sacrifice, shooting at the bad Space Ladies while Doctor Who and the gang leg it back to the TARDIS.
Doctor Who has actually been pretty proactive this story. Usually he just witters to himself, and sometimes falls asleep, while everyone else does the heavy lifting. This week he's been pretty helpful. It's reassuring, then, that our last glimpse of him is more like his typical behaviour: running away, looking over his shoulder at a dying ally and shouting, "Sucks to be you!"
Ah, Doctor Who. Planets explode where e'er you go.
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