Season 23, Episode 3 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 1–22 November 1986 | Writers: Pip and Jane Baker | Director: Chris Clough
Cast
- Colin Baker as the Doctor
- Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush
- Michael Jayston as the Valeyard
- Honor Blackman as Professor Lasky
- Michael Craig as Commodore Travers
Summary
Presenting evidence in his own defence, the Doctor shows the court a future adventure aboard the space liner Hyperion III, where he travels alongside a new companion, the exuberant Mel. When genetically engineered plant creatures called Vervoids begin slaughtering the passengers and crew, the Doctor must solve a shipboard mystery of murder and sabotage before the rampaging Vervoids overrun the vessel entirely.
Interesting Facts
- This serial introduces Mel Bush, played by Bonnie Langford, shown here for the first time even though her adventures with the Doctor were framed as chronologically still ahead of him.
- Its plot deliberately echoes the structure of a classic country-house murder mystery, relocated to the confines of a space liner.
- The Vervoids were designed with a deliberately unsettling anthropomorphic-plant appearance that made them one of the more distinctive monster designs of the era.
- As courtroom evidence, this segment ironically shows the Doctor commit an act that the Valeyard later twists to make him appear responsible for genocide.
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