Three’s A Crowd
After her ordeal in Tibet, Erimem is uncertain of whether she wishes to continue traveling with the Doctor and Peri. The TARDIS arrives on Space Station Medusa, orbiting over a distant world that is the home to Earth Colony Phoenix. Protected from the inhospitable surface of the planet by their artificial habitats, the colonists live and work in isolated quarters, travel only by transmat, and virtually never share space with each other. After she and Peri find what appears to be a nest of enormous eggs, Erimem accidentally activates a transmat port and finds herself beamed to Earth Colony Phoenix, into the quarters of a man who has never met another human being in his adult life. The Doctor and Peri are taken by an android to meet the leader of the Phoenix colony, who insists that nothing is wrong – even though Peri later learns that the colony, capable of supporting thousands, is down to only 16 people. Soon, the Doctor learns the grisly truth: a species of aliens known as the Khellians is also lurking on both the colony and the station, and has slowly harvested the human population for food until the colonists are nearly extinct.
written by Colin Brake
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Caroline Morris (Erimem), Deborah Watling (Auntie), Richard Gauntlett (General Makra’Thon), Charles Pemberton (Butler), Lucy Beresford (Bellip), Richard Unwin (Vidler), Daniel Hogarth (Laroq), Sara Carver (Khellian Queen)
Notes: Deborah Watling played Victoria Waterfield, who traveled with the second Doctor and Jamie, in from 1967 to 1968. The transmat sounds, if they’re not the actual original effects, seem to be an homage to the teleport sound effects from Blake’s 7.
Timeline: after The Roof Of The World and before The Council Of Nicaea
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Tired of the constant political backstabbing that seems to be evolving into the more literal variety, Leela tells Romana she wants to leave Gallifrey. Romana agrees, taking her to a secure retreat on the planet Davidia so they can talk over what’s bothering Leela. While they make some headway in understanding each other, the peace on Davidia is shattered by the unexpected arrival of a TARDIS. Its sole occupant is burned beyond recognition, his hands are broken, and he is missing his tongue, and worse yet, when Romana calls Braxiatel on Gallifrey to check on the ID of the TARDIS, the Cardinal learns that the vehicle is still on Gallifrey – this TARDIS comes from the Time Lords’ future. When Romana talks about forcing the man to regenerate, Leela can only see it as more evidence that she’ll never be able to understand the Time Lords. Romana also wants to try to access the man’s thoughts via the Matrix, but given the threat of Pandora, the disembodied voice which promised that Romana would become the Imperiatrix of Gallifrey, Romana is barred from using the Matrix lest Pandora spread throughout Gallifrey’s systems. The retreat may offer an alternative way of viewing the TARDIS pilot’s thoughts, though after seeing those thoughts, Romana and Leela may wish they had let him die.
Ford discovers that the publishers of the Hitchhiker’s Guide have not only changed their name, but they’ve been bought out – and a chance encounter with Zaphod reveals that anyone who’s working for Guide is now, whether they realize it or not, working for the Vogons. Frustrated by the reappearance of the alternate Earth, the Vogons are now setting out to destroy that planet in every probability and every dimension, and using the Guide’s knowledge – and a portable version of the deadly Total Perspective Vortex – to achieve that goal. Arthur, resigned to his existence in this dimension, is feeling fatalistic enough to work at trying to consciously avoid Stavromula Beta, a place where he has been told he will meet his own death. And a television reporter named Tricia McMillan has the story of a lifetime land in her lap as aliens visit her home.
Young billionaire Bruce Wayne, traumatized by the murder of his parents, wanders the world attempting to find some purpose to his life. After being directed to the mountaintop retreat of Ra’s Al Ghul, Wayne seems to find some peace with his past. But Wayne is unable to join Ra’s Al Ghul in his quest to topple civilization and he, instead, tears down Al Ghul’s retreat and returns to his home in Gotham City to become its protector. He takes on the mantle of Batman and aligns himself with Jim Gordon, one of the few uncorrupted officers on the Gotham Police Force. But just as he begins to do some good, Ra’s Al Ghul comes back into his life, questioning whether he has chosen the right side for which to fight…
Toby Longworth (Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz), Neil Sleat (Newsreader), Roy Hudd (Max Quordlepleen), Douglas Adams (Agrajag) 
Mel is alarmed when the TARDIS materializes without the Doctor at the controls. After leaving her on Earth briefly to take care of unspecified business, he has vanished without a trace, leaving her a holographic message in the TARDIS instructing her to follow his trail to the Klyst Institute, a grim-looking mental hospital. Rather than risk trying to fly the TARDIS herself, Mel enlists the reluctant help of a rough-and-tumble cabbie who helps her as she breaks into the Institute. There, she finds the Doctor – but his mind is gone, and he speaks in almost nonsensical phrases. Mel and her new friend try to escape with the Doctor, but they find that the Institute is no longer on Earth, having transported itself to an asteroid in an instant. The Institute also seems to be bigger inside than out, and other aliens (and humans) have been captured for horrific mind-transfer experiments. Are Time Lords operating in secret on Earth? And if so, are they renegades like the Doctor…or something darker interference in human history going on with the Time Lords’ full knowledge?
The body of the mutilated Time Lord from Davidia is returned to Gallifrey in stasis – and in complete secrecy – for further study. Romana and Braxiatel discover that the experiment of opening Gallifrey’s doors to other temporal superpowers may have unintended consequences; one of Braxiatel’s alien students is caught trying to poison Gallifrey’s water supply in the name of the Free Time movement. Complicating matters even more is the fact that he’s caught by Andred, who is still on the run after having broken out of his imprisonment. The question of whether or not Romana will appoint Braxiatel to be the new Chancellor of the High Council is at the heart of Inquisitor Darkel’s latest political power grab, as she plays all sides against the middle and finds her most willing (if unwitting) ally in the naive Castellan Wynter. By preying on his fear that his inexperience will cut his reign short, Darkel convinces him to unleash the Pandora creature, which K-9 had managed to corner in a data partition in the Matrix. But in so doing, Wynter discovers in the most horrible way that the mutilated body from Davidia is himself – but even his attempts to deny Pandora a body and mind to inhabit will prove unsuccessful, as she seeks a victim who now sits in an even higher office.
