Doctor Who: Galaxy 4

There isn't much left of Doctor Who's season 3 opener.

The serial Galaxy 4 marks the beginning of the third season of the Doctor Who series, and they definitely weren't out to try any sort of reinvention with this story. This serial tells the same sort of story we've already seen before on the show numerous times: the Doctor and his companions, travelling through time and space in the vehicle known as the TARDIS, materialize in a new location and find themselves in the middle of a conflict between two different races. But even though it has such a familiar set-up, it's still unfortunate that we're not actually able to see very much of this particular story, as Galaxy 4 is one of the serials that has been mostly lost to time. Reconstructions have been made with still images and animation, but most of the original footage is gone; all that remains is six minutes of the first episode, which is called Four Hundred Dawns, and the entirety of the third episode, Air Lock. The second episode (Trap of Steel) and the fourth (The Exploding Planet) are gone. It's very lucky for Doctor Who fans that the audio of all the lost episodes does still exist.

As season three begins, the Doctor (William Hartnell) is bouncing around time and space with his companions Vicki (Maureen O'Brien) and Steven Taylor (Peter Purves), and when we catch up with them Vicki is giving Steven a haircut so viewers will understand why his hair got shorter between The Time Meddler and this serial that aired two months later. When the TARDIS materializes on an unnamed and uninhabited planet, they find themselves caught in a conflict between two groups that have crash-landed there in their separate ships after an encounter in space: women called the Drahvins (they're the ones from Galaxy 4) and hideous creatures called the Rills, who send out robot drones that earn the nickname "Chumbleys" from Vicki and come off like bootleg Daleks. Being stuck between these groups isn't the biggest issue our travellers have to deal with; the Doctor is also able to deduce that the planet is going to disintegrate in just two days, so there's also a serious ticking clock element to the story - and neither the Drahvins' ship nor the Rills' is in any condition to take flight.

There's also a subversion of expectations, as the Doctor and his companions will come to find out that the monstrous-looking Rills are actually the more noble of the two warring species, while the attractive Drahvins are the villains. The Drahvins are led by a woman named Maaga, and it's the performance that Stephanie Bidmead delivered as this character that really makes Galaxy 4 worth watching and listening to. It's a shame that not all of her footage has survived, because she turned this dangerous, death-obsessed character into a captivating villain. Galaxy 4 leaves me wanting to see more of her work, but her career and her life were cut way too short. She passed away just nine years after this serial aired, at the young age of 45.

Bidmead had to convey a good amount of exposition here, including information on the Drahvins' Galaxy 4 home-world, where only a small number of men are kept alive as they "consume valuable food and fulfill no particular function". Naturally born residents like Maaga rule over the ones cultivated in test tubes, as the crew of her ship were, while the test tube babies are considered "inferior products" and exist only to fight and to kill. But considering that the Drahvins have never even managed to destroy a Chumbley, it's apparent that they're not very good at the job they were grown to perform.

While the villains are the highlight of this serial, it is nice that the Doctor and his two companions are all given something interesting to do over the course of its episodes - even with both Vicki and Steven spending some time in Drahvin captivity. The Doctor is able to use his scientific know-how to both figure out what's happening on this planet and to get out of this jam, Vicki is the one who discovers that the Rills are able to telepathically communicate through their Chumbley drones, and Steven confronts both Drahvins and Rills to get information on what they're all about. He also makes an attempt to be a man of action that doesn't work out that well for him.

Galaxy 4 may not be groundbreaking and most of the footage is lost, but it's still interesting to listen to (and watch what little is left), and it does get exciting as the clock ticks down. The situation on this about-to-disintegrate planet carries on right up to the planet's final seconds of existence.

Then we get a short tease of the next episode, which is something quite different.