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Doctor Who (Sylvester McCoy) takes his companion Ace (Sophie Aldred)
back to her hometown, a typical boring English village, but when Ace wants
to visit her old mates, she finds them all gone ... and it has something
to do with cats. And soon enough, the Doctor and Ace are teleported away
to the planet of the Cheetah-people who just like to feed on humans. Soon
enough though, the Doctor and Ace find a few young people and a totally
useless ex-SAS-man (Julian Holloway) and try to form some kind of
resistance, while the Doctor also tries to find out what's going on - and
he discovers the planet is on the brink of (self-)destruction since it
seems the fighting of the Cheetah people amongst each other brings it
closer and closer to doom ... and the Cheetah people fight a lot. And the
Doctor finds out who's behind the Cheetah people: his old enemy, the
Master (Anthony Ainley), who has no means of getting off the planet and is
slowly turning into a Cheetah man himself.
The Doctor however figures that whoever becomes one of the Cheetah
people (this is slightly contagious, actually) has the power to teleport
him-/herself and others back to earth. Soon enough, the Master has picked
one of the Doctor's crew, Midge (William Barton), to be his teleporter,
while the Doctor has to realize that of all people his companion Ace is
turning into a Cheetah woman as well.
Ultimately both the Master and Midge and the Doctor and his party get
back to earth, where the Doctor successfully stops the Master from doing
more evil - by ultimately teleporting him back to the dying planet of the
Cheetah people -, defeats Midge in a motorbike duel, and makes Ace, the
Cheetah-human hybrid, all human again ...
The very last episode of the classic Doctor Who-series,
and it ably shows what had gone wrong with the show over the years: The
masks of the Cheetah people are simply put a disgrace, not only do they
look less than frightening, they look cute and more than anything else
resemble a cuddly toy while not at all being convincing - something that
really wouldn't do anymore in the late 1980's -, the outdoor sets of the
planet of the Cheetah people simply lack any kind of otherworldly
atmosphere, they look like the British countryside - which is of course
what they are -, the story telling hides an interesting concepts under
layers of convoluted plot devices that don't lead anywhere in particular,
and the direction is just less than interesting.
Still, the episode as a whole is not all bad, it does feature some nice
ideas and Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred carry it along pretty well, it
has just got so many shortcomings that one can't help but understand why
the program was cancelled.
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