Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1558 in VHS
• Released on: 2003-03-10
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Video Description
Starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

The Doctor is invited to visit the planet Tigella by its leader, Zastor, who has become concerned about disputes between his people’s two opposing factions, the religious Deons and the scientist Savants. The TARDIS is intercepted by the megalomaniacal xerophyte Meglos, last survivor of the planet Zolfa-Thura, and trapped in a chronic hysteresis – a time loop – but the Doctor and Romana manage to free it. Meglos, using the body of a kidnapped Earthling, transforms himself into a duplicate of the Doctor and steals the Tigellans’ power source – a mysterious dodecahedron. He plans to use this to power an apocalyptic device with which he intends to destroy Tigella. The Doctor, although hindered by the activities of a group of Gaztak mercenaries hired by Meglos, ultimately brings about the xerophyte’s destruction by tampering with the dodecahedron’s controlling computers.

Synopsis
The villain Meglos, who has changed his appearance to look like the Doctor, steals a power source from the inhabitants of the planet Tigella in order to destroy their own planet...

Customer Reviews

See the cactus Tom Baker!!!
This is an interesting story, and is very good in my personal opinion. Tom Baker is brilliant in his portrayal of Meglos (although covered in green spikes half the time). Also very good to see Jaquiline Hill playing a role other than original assistant Barbara. Her role as Lexa is outstanding and is definately benificial to the story. On the downside, there are a few questions that may be left unanswered, but all in all a truly anjoyable Doctor Who adventure!

Spiky
Meglos has gone down in Doctor Who history as one of the worst stories and fans' least favourite Tom Baker story. This is probably because it is 70s Doctor Who by numbers, and despite being a great writer of comic sci-fi, then script editor Douglas Adams surely wouldn't have tried to claim that his Doctor Who contributions were his best work. The double-act perpetuated by thugs Grugger and Brotadac is silly, and many of the ideas are all too similar to recent serial 'The Creature from the Pit'. The best bits involve Meglos' imitation of The Doctor's form, and the makeup is pretty impressive.
I have to concede that it's not one of the best ever Doctor Who (or even Tom Baker period) stories, but it has a certain charm and is worth seeing for the spiky Doctor alone.

My God, Tom Baker was awful!
Tom's gargantuan reputation cannot conceal the fact that so many of his stories were terrible. aided and abetted by the smug Romana who cannot act to save her life and has to be put with comic buffoon males to make her look smart (ANYONE would be smarter than Brotodac and Gurgger!), Tom can barely hold the attention of the audience in this disposable outing.
The main gripes are that this is basically a giant pantomime, like a lot of other stories after the end of the Hinchcliffe era, Invisible Enemy, Horns of Nimon, TimeLash, etc. But I think Dr.Who does pantomime very cleverly and the panto episodes are some of the show's most entertaining. twin Dilemma is a pantomime with a black heart and an unhinged Doctor, but this is just pointless and shallow. Even for a pantomime, Meglos is not very good. It has a couple of nice FX scenes in the beginning with the screens of Zolpha Thura and Meglos makes a great boo-hiss alien villain (the guy's a talking cactus! Brilliant!) and Tom does some good work when covered in cactus spines, but unlike other Dr.Who pantos this one is lacking the substance in the middle to make it worth it. Overall, very average!