Colony in Space

Colony in Space
by Malcolm Hulke
Originally Broadcasted: April 10th-May 15th, 1971

For the first time since his exile to Earth, the Time Lords call on The Doctor for a special mission to the planet Uxarieus. There he becomes entangled in a struggle for control of the planet between colonists and the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, and to make things worse is an old enemy waiting in the wings...

I saw Colony in Space for the first time a few years ago on a recorded DVD and I remember I wasn't too keen on it at the time. Now that I've bought the DVD and watched it again, I actually liked it a lot more. Perhaps it was the realization that this story was written by Malcolm Hulke, who is one of my all-time favorite writers for Doctor Who. He always comes up with very clever, and also very political stories that have a deep meaning to them. The plot of Colony in Space closely parallels the real-life occurrences of settlers coming to distant lands and paying no attention to the often primitive life already there (for example, the struggle of the Native Americans). This is actually shown to happen twice, first with the colonists and the "primitives" and then with IMC and the colonists. The struggle between the colonists and IMC is actually quite exhilarating and made me want to keep watching. And then when The Master got in the middle of things, it just got more interesting. At this point in the season, it was Roger Delgado's fourth consecutive appearance as The Master. His appearance was inevitable, but it was clever to have him not appear until mid-way through the story. Just when you thought he wouldn't appear in this story, there he is! Even though it was Jon Pertwee's 8th story as The Doctor, it was the first time he, and indeed Jo Grant, had gone to outer space. So it really added an extra dynamic to this great duo. It was cool that you could have both these kind of stories, as well as the equally wonderful UNIT stories. Oh, and as always, Jon Pertwee is awesome!

Luke's Rating: 8/10