The one where the Doctor is put on trial for wandering around a suspiciously Earth-like planet, Peri complains about the scenery (again), and a robot with daddy issues tries to destroy everything.
Short Synopsis
The Doctor and Peri land on Ravalox, a planet suspiciously similar to Earth. They stumble into a plot involving underground dwellers, a robot obsessed with his creator, and a bunch of surface-dwelling scavengers who think loincloths are a personality.
Extended Storyline
So, this is The Trial of a Time Lord, Part One. The big idea: the Doctor’s life is being replayed like a courtroom Netflix binge. The Time Lords drag him in front of the Inquisitor and the Valeyard (a prosecutor with “villain” practically tattooed on his forehead) to prove he’s a menace to the universe. Exhibit A? His trip to Ravalox.
On Ravalox, the Doctor and Peri appear in a forest that looks like Surrey on a bad weather day. Peri, naturally, is unimpressed. The Doctor, naturally, is smug. They soon discover the planet has a whole lot of rubble, which the Doctor notes looks exactly like Earth — because it is Earth. Just shifted across the galaxy, as you do.
Enter the locals: Glitz and Dibber, a pair of intergalactic Del Boys. Glitz is a conman who could sell ice to a polar bear, and Dibber is his muscle, though “muscle” here means he’s big, dim, and spends most of the story looking confused. Their goal? Destroy a giant black tower that everyone’s a bit nervous about — because nothing bad ever lurks in ominous towers.
Meanwhile, underground, the story goes full “dystopian community theatre.” The people live in bunkers and follow a leader called Drathro — a giant robot who insists on being called the Immortal. He’s less “immortal” and more “sulky fridge with a superiority complex.” His followers, led by the bureaucratic Balazar, worship “the sacred texts” — which turn out to be actual copies of Moby-Dick and The Water Babies. Imagine basing your entire civilization on a children’s morality tale about fish.
The Doctor and Peri are soon captured by the locals. Peri gets dragged off to hang out with surface-dwellers who think fashion peaked with leather straps and mud, while the Doctor finds himself nose-to-socket with Drathro. The robot is obsessed with maintaining his underground colony, even though it’s all crumbling. Like a parent who insists the old VCR “still works fine,” Drathro refuses to adapt.
Glitz and Dibber bumble their way into the underground too, trying to blow things up for profit. Along the way, they cheerfully reveal they’re actually agents of shady higher powers who want the secrets locked away in Drathro’s tower. Secrets involving black light energy, which, if mishandled, could wipe out the universe. Because of course it could.
Eventually, everyone converges in Drathro’s base. The Doctor tries to talk sense into him, Peri tries to avoid being sacrificed by overenthusiastic tribespeople, and Glitz tries to work out how much money he can make from the whole mess. Drathro, unsurprisingly, ignores reason and storms off to “fix” things himself, which naturally results in him dying spectacularly when his own black light system goes critical.
The Doctor saves the day by averting a universal catastrophe, Glitz escapes to scheme another day, and Peri rolls her eyes so hard they nearly fall out of her head. Back in the trial courtroom, the Valeyard smugly points out that the Doctor still got way too involved, ruined societies, and let people die. The Doctor, of course, argues back, but the Inquisitor tells him to pipe down because we’ve got 13 more episodes of this to get through.