As you may (or may not) know, I also have another blog called Octopodal Motion where I post pictures and videos and things about all things octopus-related. You can imagine my excitement, then, when Ian and Vicki are attacked by a giant carnivorous land octopus!

"I'm a Mire Beast! Grrr! I'm gonna eat you!!"

Let's talk about that.

The Executioner

There is no executioner in the episode titled The Executioner. I mean sure, yeah, carnivorous land octopodes at the climax, and Daleks shouting things like "Exterminate!" and "Eradicate!", but no executioner. It's like Terry Nation just wrote down a series of six episode titles that he quite liked, and then he wrote a six-part story, but the two incidents were completely unrelated to each other.

What there is is about twelve minutes of comedic story padding for the first half of the episode. The Doctor is fiddling around with the "Time-Space Visualizer" he acquired from the Space Museum, Ian is lounging about reading picture books (seriously, he is reading a giant hardcover book luridly titled Monsters from Outer Space complete with giant pictures inside), Barbara is making a new dress, and Vicki is at her wits' end wandering around annoying everyone. When the Doctor gets his room-sized McGuffin working, he explains how it can show anything in the history of the universe just be reading the light photons floating around. They then use this amazing tool to watch Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg address (as interpreted by an Englishman adopting a horrible American accent), followed by watching William Shakespeare visit Queen Elizabeth who gives him the idea for The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet.

Apparently after that they watch the Beatles perform Ticket to Ride, but that scene doesn't appear on my DVD so I assume they must not have gotten clearance for home video. That's a shame, it comes bundled with a joke where Vicki is surprised to learn that the Beatles played "classical music".

Finally after all of that padding, the TARDIS gets bored and lands on a desert planet that does not at all look like a rock quarry. Vicki runs off to explore, Ian follows her to make sure she stays safe, and for some reason both the Doctor and Barbara decide to stretch out blankets and sunbathe beneath the binary suns. Except, they also do not change out of their normal attire, so it's not like Barbara is going to get a tan anywhere besides her face, arms, and ankles. 

Finally even the Daleks get bored, and send a pursuit squad in a time machine to hunt down their greatest enemy and maybe kick up something resembling a plot. 

Vicki finds a hatch, Ian opens it (because that won't be dangerous at all), the two of them climb down the stairs, and they are promptly attacked by a giant carnivorous land octopus.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara have been caught in a sandstorm and hunker down for the night. In the morning they awake to see the Daleks rising out of the sand. Roll credits!

"I... HAVE... SAND... IN... MY... CIRCUITS! LUBRICATE! LUBRICATE!!"

The Death of Time

Time does not die in the episode The Death of Time. Nor is time threatened in any way. I guess there is some other death, but none of it is time-related. But it's sure a nifty title!

Vicki and Ian escape the giant carnivorous land octopus, but Ian is knocked unconscious when there is a rock slide. Vicki leaves him to get help, finds another hatch, and sees the Daleks outside uncovering the TARDIS (which is conveniently located just a few yards away, despite where it started out the story). 

Meanwhile the Doctor and Barbara are found by some of the sentient natives, dressed in leotards and wearing swimming caps with fins on them. They give some exposition about how the whole planet used to be underwater, but it dried up when the two suns got closer (fish people apparently don't know much about astrophysics). Then their underground city was overrun by giant carnivorous land octopodes (they call them "mire beasts", but whatever). They agree to help find Vicki and Ian, but once they get the Doctor and Barbara underground their elders decide to sell out our heroes to the Daleks in exchange for not being blown up by the Daleks. Seems like a fair swap.

Fortunately Vicki bursts in to find them, and leads the Doctor and Barbara back to where Ian is just waking up near the conveniently-located hatch. Knowing that they can escape in the TARDIS if they can just distract the Dalek guarding it, Ian develops a plan. Ostensibly it is a plan to accomplish that first thing, but given that his plan involves asking Barbara to take off her cardigan jacket for the second story in a row, I think Ian is really working on a different plan. He's been cooped up on the TARDIS with her for a year and a half now, and I figured out she was a goddess a dozen stories ago, so it's about time he came around. 

Ian's big plan (aside from getting Barbara out of her clothes) is to stretch the jacket across the opening to the hatch and spread sand over it, and then trick the Dalek into rolling right onto it and falling into the pit. Somehow, this plan actually works, and they all escape in the TARDIS with the Daleks following in hot pursuit in their own time machine.

I'm just gonna say: this is not Terry Nation's finest work here.

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Vicki, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Giant Land Octopodes: Carnivorous
Episode(s): The Executioners, The Death of Time
Steps Walked: 6,790 today, 252,142 total
Distance Walked: 3.22 miles today, 114.96 miles total
Weight: 293.64 lbs (five day moving average), net change -13.66 lbs