Season 18, Episode 2 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 27 September – 18 October 1980 | Writer: John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch | Director: Terence Dudley
Cast
- Tom Baker as the Doctor (and Meglos)
- Lalla Ward as Romana
- John Leeson as the voice of K9
- Jacqueline Hill as Lexa
- Bill Fraser as General Grugger
Summary
Summoned by a distress call, the Doctor and Romana travel to Tigella, whose ruling factions are divided over whether to trust their sacred, all-powerful Dodecahedron or to explore the modern science that could save their dying planet. Unbeknownst to them, the last surviving Zolfa-Thuran, a cactus-like being called Meglos, has taken on the Doctor’s own appearance in order to steal the Dodecahedron for himself, forcing the real Doctor to prove his identity against a convincing impostor wearing his own face.
Interesting Facts
- Tom Baker plays a dual role as both the Doctor and his cactus-alien doppelganger Meglos, requiring careful staging to keep the two visually distinct despite the identical appearance.
- Jacqueline Hill, who had played original companion Barbara Wright in the show’s earliest years, returned here in an entirely different guest role as the priestess Lexa.
- The story explores a societal divide between religious dogma and rational science among the Tigellans, a theme common to the era’s more cerebral scripts.
- Meglos’s cactus-based alien design was one of the more unusual and technically challenging creature concepts of the classic series.
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