Season 20, Episode 3 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 1–9 February 1983 | Writer: Peter Grimwade | Director: Peter Moffatt
Cast
- Peter Davison as the Doctor
- Sarah Sutton as Nyssa
- Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka
- Mark Strickson as Vislor Turlough
- Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Summary
Manipulated by the Black Guardian into betraying the Doctor, a secretive alien schoolboy named Turlough hides among pupils at an English boarding school while a shuttle full of scarred, immortal mutants drifts nearby in a decaying orbit, cursed with endless regeneration by a stolen Time Lord device. As two timelines and two versions of an old friend collide, the Doctor must resolve a temporal paradox involving a previous incarnation of the Brigadier to save everyone involved.
Interesting Facts
- This story introduces Turlough, played by Mark Strickson, who becomes the Fifth Doctor’s final regular male companion.
- It begins the season-long “Black Guardian Trilogy,” continuing into Terminus and Enlightenment.
- Nicholas Courtney reprises his role as the Brigadier, involved in a time paradox spanning two different points in his own timeline.
- The immortal, disfigured Mawdryn and his fellow mutants offer an unusually tragic, sympathetic take on the era’s alien antagonists.
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