Here's a bit of trivia for you: The second part of today's story, Desperate Measures was the very first episode of Doctor Who to become one of the ten most-watched shows of the week when it originally aired. In fact, it is one of the highest-charting episodes of the entire 50+ year run of the show. After the last story's farewell to Susan, this story introduces a new traveling companion -- Vicki (no last name, and not short for Victoria, just Vicki). It's a tight little tale that does everything it needs to and nothing it doesn't. It also had two unintentional moments that spoke directly to my inner twelve-year-old.

Let's talk about that.

The Powerful Enemy

The story opens with Vicki, a teenage girl stranded in a severely-damaged ship on the planet of Dido. She rushes in to tell her only companion, Bennett, that the rescue ship has landed. Bennett, who is bedridden with injured legs, scoffs at the idea and tells her that the ship won't arrive for another three days. He tells her to radio the ship to confirm, which she does. The rescue ship informs her that they are still sixty nine hours away from landing. I almost stopped the treadmill just so that I could go get a drink, rewind the DVD, and then do a spit take. This next sentence is just for my wife: "Hey, honey, guess how many hours away the rescue ship is?"

What Vicky mistook on the radar as a rescue ship was actually the TARDIS landing nearby inside a cave. Barbara and Ian exit the ship to explore, while the Doctor stays inside to study some rocks. He has clearly lost some of his vim and vigor with the departure of his granddaughter. Outside the cave, which is located on a cliff face of a mountain, the two are confronted by a humanoid spiky-bug-headed thing. We will eventually learn that he is named Koquillion. As Ian rushes back to fetch the Doctor, Koquillion forces Barbara off the ledge of the cliff to fall to her certain death. Then he uses some kind of tool to seal off the cave, trapping Ian and the Doctor inside.

From there it is more drama about Ian and the Doctor trying to find another way out of the cave, and Barbara (who is not quite as dead as previously thought, because she is a Goddess) being rescued by Vicki. It turns out that Vicki's mother died on Earth many years ago, which led her father to take a job on the spaceship that eventually crashed on the planet Dido. Not long after the crash, another violent incident killed all of the other passengers of the ship, including Vicki's father, leaving only Vicki and Bennett as survivors. Since then they have existed under the rather threatening protection of Koquillion, who keeps them alive and brings them supplies, but will not allow them to leave the area of the ship. Vicki is absolutely terrified of him.

Meanwhile, back in the cave, Ian gets caught in a trap on a ledge and is about to be forced into the waiting jaws of a giant bug monster in the pit below.

Desperate Measures

Yeah, Ian escapes that trap immediately. In fairly short order Ian and the Doctor find their way to Barbara and Vicki. While the Doctor goes to speak to Bennett in his room, Barbara and Ian reassure Vicki that they will help rescue both her and Bennett. "Don't worry," says Ian as he waves a flare gun, "If old Cocky-Lickin' comes 'round, I've always got this!" At this point I didn't even need a drink to do a spit take.

So anyway, the huge twist is that Koquillion is actually Bennett wearing a ceremonial mask from the Dido people. Bennett had been arrested for murder on the spaceship, and then killed everyone after the crash to cover his tracks. He was keeping Vicki contained until the rescue ship arrived, where she would vouch for what a fine upstanding guardian he was and how awful the people of Dido are. The Doctor, of course, uncovers his scheme in a dramatic reveal. In the aftermath, Vicki decides to join up as a TARDIS companion, and we are off and running with our new co-star.

I might joke about a couple of unintentionally-funny moments, but this really was a great story. I have never actually watched any of the Vicki episodes before, and I quite like her. Maureen O'Brien is a great addition to the cast, and manages to bring something different to the mix despite being on the surface just a clone of Susan. Rather famously, after she was hired the producers wanted her to dye her hair black to make her look more like Susan, to which she offered an alternate suggestion: they could fire her and hire back Carole Ann Ford. That was the end of that discussion.

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Vicki, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Episode(s): The Powerful Enemy, Desperate Measures
Entendre: Double
Steps Walked: 6,466 today, 185,635 total
Distance Walked: 3.05 miles today, 83.40 miles total
Weight: 295.66 lbs (five day moving average), net change -11.64 lbs