The A-Z of Classic Who | Meglos: Double Trouble

It's a been a long time, but I'm back. I'm sure you're all delighted to hear it. And we start with a very popular one... alright, a slightly popular one... alright, a not very popular one... alright, even some Classic Who fans would probably not know about this one. But it's here in the alphabet so here it is.

Meglos is not a very good story. I'm sorry to have to deliver this information to you.

That's not to say there isn't good stuff in the story, but unfortunately its buried beneath a pretty thin plot, some poor comedy and some pretty bad performances. Which is a shame because there's a genuinely interesting idea at the heart of the story and as we'll examine, there's a lot of unrealised potential here. But it just all falls apart, again not in a horrifically dramatic way, it's just that none of it ever comes together, nor feels like its ever going to come together. 

It's all gone a bit prickly

Meglos was also the final story broadcast before the announcement of Tom Baker's departure from the series. It's a testament to Baker's skills that even in a performance that he clearly does not give anything approaching a shit about he's still the highlight of the story, especially as he's playing two parts which we'll get to, but a shit he does not give. This is a theme throughout the entire of Season 18 of course, save for his final performance in Logopolis and a few good moments here and there throughout the rest of the season, and really how can we blame him? The show he'd done for seven years was being changed radically and soon enough he would be the last remnant of the old order. Plus of course, the whole 'very complex sexual tension with his co-star' thing, which probably didn't help.

What makes his performance in this story work, however, are two things. One is that, frankly, Baker could be asleep and deliver an exceptional performance as the Doctor - he was just so utterly suited to the role in every way that a bad performance from him is still very entertaining. Second, rather more interestingly, he follows Hartnell and Troughton in playing a second character during the story. While the Abbot of Amboise and Salamander were people who just happened to look like the Doctor however, Meglos is trying to impersonate him, which brings the intrigue of Baker playing someone who's playing the Doctor, which results in him giving a fascinating performance. Baker as Meglos feels almost like he's doing the Doctor, but it's a bit off, as if Meglos has read about the Doctor but not observed him much... which is more or less spot on of course. It's also clear Baker is having fun playing the villain and well, a bit of scenery chewing is okay every now and again.

The Doctor accidentally stumbled into Tigella's Worst Dressed Competition

Unfortunately, as fun as it is, the two character dynamic is severely lacking in depth and complexity. In The Massacre, the Abbot's purpose was to sow doubt in Steven's find about the Doctor, to give depth to his loss of faith in him, by making him question whether the Abbot is a man he previously trusted. This lent much greater weight to the end of the story, where Steven's trust in the Doctor is broken - no, the Doctor was not the Abbot... but he managed to shock and disappoint Steven with his own actions, he didn't need those of the historical man. In The Enemy of the World, Salamander was essentially a mirror of the Doctor, and it's very obvious in how Troughton plays him. He's intelligent, cunning and quick-witted but a little ruthless and manipulative - he's basically the Second Doctor's own personality, but enhanced and then turned towards world domination rather than protecting the innocent, a reminder essentially of what the Doctor could be if not for his morality. This is highlighted throughout the story in the impersonation scenes - Troughton plays the Doctor impersonating Salamander almost as if he's becoming too comfortable doing it. Even expanding the scope to beyond the main character, look at Mawdryn Undead, where Nicholas Courtney was able to explore the Brigadier and how the Doctor shaped his life.

None of this is in Meglos. Meglos takes the Doctor's form, turns into a catcus man and chews the sceneary. There's no depth or weight to it, nothing to say about either of their characters, no revelation for the Doctor about what it means. It's just there. It just happens. And despite Baker's performance making it much better than it should be, it is sorely lacking.

Oh look, a splitscreen effect!

And unfortunately, this theme is one that pervades Meglos. So many interesting ideas are brought up and absolutely nothing is done with them - the dangers of the power of religious fundamentalism, for instance. The only reason Lexa is not the most intolerable character in the show's history is that Jacqueline Hill is a talented enough actress to carry the part above the dross on the page. She's a single-minded bigot, totally unable to see things in front of her, happy to condemn her entire people to death because of her faith. This should be fascinating, and you can bet Malcolm Hulke or Robert Holmes would have explored that for all its worth. But the ideas are not explored in any way, they just... are. It makes Lexa's sacrifice for Romana totally worthless - there's no character arc to reach it, or even a sense that this shows she's actually a good person blinded by dogma or anything like that. She just does it because the script requires it, and it's annoying because there's a great deal of potential in this character and this plot point, especially as in the end, it's an entirely pointless death - Romana could have regenerated to save herself from the blast, a point that could have given even greater meaning to what happens. But it means nothing.

Meglos' own history is woefully underexplored - the Zolfa-Thurans' extinction is glossed over as some kind of war (thanks for that, extremely descriptive) over the story's MacGuffin. But instead of this being some plot for revenge or redemption or something like that, Meglos just wants the MacGuffin for power's sake - it again wastes potential and turns him into a pretty one note villain who's no better than the awful henchmen he's hired, who by the way are probably among the worst henchmen characters there's ever been in the show. The performances are dreadful and they're written as painfully unfunny one-note brutes. And the costumes are terrible. No wonder the underling wants the Doctor's coat.

These guys: Making me miss that henchmant twat from Delta and the Bannermen

Going back to Meglos himself, there doesn't seem to be any connection between him and his backstory at all - the last survivor of his people, using desperate technology, resorting to slavery and piracy to get this MacGuffin? Surely the potential is right there? But he's just a cackling beard-twirling moron, "I want to rule the universe" villain. There's a long-standing rumour that Steven Moffat wanted to bring back Meglos, to set up a cunning plan of revenge against the Doctor, only for him not to even remember Meglos, which is an amusing and clever idea (probably why he abandoned it), and why wouldn't he forget Meglos? Aside from impersonating him, what is unique or interesting about him?

To be briefly positive, the first episode is by the far the strongest of the four - the stuff happening on Tigella is set up well, the conflict between Deedrix, Lexa and the weird-haired guys does well to play up the whole religious fundamentalism thing I talked about; information about the Meglos plot is drip-fed to the audience at a perfect pace, and I like all the stuff with the Doctor, Romana and K9 in the TARDIS. Sometime it's nice to just see them do something low-key like repair K9. I also like the timeloop idea - seeing the same scene repeat is genuinely quite chilling, and it all ends in a cracking cliffhanger as Meglos takes the Doctor's form for the first time. If the other three episode had followed up on this, Meglos would be much better remembered.

Although it probably still wouldn't be a classic

But they don't. The whole Tigella things goes nowhere, the conflicts unresolved and the ideas not explored. Meglos is, as I said, a weak villain with poor motivation. The Doctor and Romana get to Tigella, and all that happens is the Doctor gets caught up in some dull case of mistaken identity with Meglos, and Romana goes walkies through the crap jungle set with the annoying henchmen. Even the solution to the timeloop is crap - they just repeat the looped bit themselves? Nobody stuck in one of this chronic hysterectomies or whatever it was had thought of that before? And they don't even really repeat it, they say the lines completely differently. It's just a huge letdown.

To briefly explore another positive, the stuff between Meglos and the human isn't bad - some of the best moments in the story involve his attempts to break free, which while hardly being the deepest stuff ever written for the show, at least allow one character to have some motivation, and Baker plays these scenes with genuine menace. As we'll get to, this doesn't make any sense, which doesn't help, but it works decently enough. 

I do choose the strangest screencaps sometimes

I could go on and on about every element of this story has an interesting idea at its core but then just goes utterly nowhere, but I'd be here all day. The real clincher though, is that so much of the plot is left entirely to contrivance and guesswork. Where did Meglos' technology for duplication come from? Why does he need a humanoid for it to work? Why does he specifically need a human, especially when the Doctor is a Time Lord? How did he get this human and why? Where did Meglos find out about the Doctor enough to track him down? What actually is the MacGuffin? Why do the Screens of Zolfing Thurscoe or whatever amplify the MacGuffin? Why do the religious Tigellans worship it? How does it create power? How did Meglos shrink the MacGuffin? Why am I writing this stupid blog instead of doing something worthwhile with my lif- hey how did that last one get there?

The point is that I could forgive one or two of these questions, or I could forgive more if the rest of the story around them was much better. But with little else to focus on, leaving headscratching questions which can only be answered with "well I suppose he got it from..." or something like that is not exactly going to endear the story for me. Add in some really bad comedy from the crap henchmen and some cliched 'jungle of death' crap to boot, this not an impressive outing. No wonder Baker had decided to leave - the days of Genesis of the Daleks were very clearly well behind him. 

At least this story has a really good soundtrack. That's frequently a saving grace of bad early-to-mid-eighties stories.

Final Score: 3/10. Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and Jacqueline Hill make this more watchable than it probably should be, and there are some good ideas in here, no question. But nothing comes together, the villain is flat and boring, the main ideas are unexplored... it's as if someone forgot to wind up the story before letting go. Overall, not impressive, but not the absolute worst either.

Next Episode: Mission to the Unknown