DDD1 - Inferno 1

I mentioned how The Ambassadors of Death is set in a strange time that looks like the weird, wonderful future. Well, that future of competent space programs and Morse code 2.0 is also, bizarrely, a world that is amazed by remote control garage door openers. And they can't spell "mega" correctly, either.

Such an innocent start to this story, this episode is. On the outset, it looks like someone at a drilling project has become transformed into a murdering monster after touching some strange green goop, and that this rampaging beast will be a threat to the work being done at the drilling project. Will The Doctor be able to stop the beast and save the project? Stay tuned....

Of course, hindsight prevents one from being able to review this first episode without knowing what's to come. It is astounding how little the events that are to come are signposted, apart from a brief trip by The Doctor into Mirrorlon world during a test run in the TARDIS....er...on the TARDIS console. If this was a New Series episode, the first two of installments would almost surely have been a pre-credit sequence (as, indeed, it was, in 2006's Rise of the Cybermen). The sole function of this episode is to not only lay out the plot, but to introduce, and make the viewer intrinsically familiar with, the exact details of Project Inferno, and the people who staff it. We find out that Dr. Stahlman is a jerk, Petra is stiff and humourless, Sir Keith Gold is alive, and Greg Sutton is a playboy. Remember those descriptions for later as there will be a test.