Alpha is kept very securely locked up by the enemy – the only time he knows who he is and what they are is when they interrogate him. Which they do frequently.

After creating Doctor Ogron last episode as an amalgam of all that is wonderful about the Doctor (a “love letter in shaggy hair”!), Guy Adams presents an opportunity for the Doctor to try to work out who he is based purely on the circumstances in which he finds himself – and perhaps not surprisingly, he deduces that he must be evil if he requires all this sort of guarding. He’s trapped inside a garden that would have brought delight to the heart of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (in the Ian Fleming version of You Only Live Twice) and only can have occasional visits. But the second he’s taken away for interrogation, he remembers exactly who the mutant metal misfits are who are putting him through agony…

Giving the Eighth Doctor amnesia yet again (it’s been done in various different ways in the media over the last two decades) is something of a risky move – his “Who am I?” cry from the TV Movie is a high point of that film, but not the key note for this Doctor that it’s sometimes been seen as. It applies to all the characters equally though, even if it seems a bit odd that all of the Twelve’s different personalities are as affected as the Twelve herself, but this gives Guy Adams the chance to show the difference between the Doctor and the Twelve, even when they don’t know exactly who they are. The latter’s ruthlessness is never going to change, no matter what sort of neural inhibitor or memory-blocker is used…

Verdict: Some interesting character analysis lurking beneath the surface of a fascinating mystery for the Doctor and the Twelve to solve. 8/10

Paul Simpson