B5 - The Expedition

And so the second half of the story kicks off with another memorable scene (this story really has been full of the, I'm finding) where Ian has to try and persuade the Thals that they have something to fight for, but the rest of our heroes really only wants them to run off and die so they can retrieve the fluid link that the Daleks still have in the city. It's quite a selfish attitude for The Doctor to have (as I pointed out from the last episode), and makes you realize, 45 years later, at how right Davros was in Journey's End. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Having just met, Barbara and Ganatus seem to be getting along quite well in this episode. This isn't the first romantic subplot that the fledging program tries to develop in the first couple of years (Verity Lambert was a real romantic, it seems). Such frivolity would be all but verboten in the years to come as the show decided to replace realistic character interaction with a succession of rubber monsters.

Anyway, you can see by how many tangents I'm wanting to go off on here (not unlike a certain podcast) that this episode really registered with me. It has a cool ending, though, where Ian is menaced by a giant donut with eyes, and a red shirted Thal meets his apparent death via a pretty neat whirlpool effect. But it's becoming quite apparent that 7 episodes is just not a viable length for a fast paced Doctor Who story.