Ben and Polly have stumbled into the TARDIS, and the Doctor is furious. For the first time in forever he thought he was going to be alone again, and now he has two more young people to worry about. Perhaps they’ve caught him off guard, or maybe the audience just need a refresher after the two-month gap since The War Machines 4 aired, but the Doctor is surprisingly forthright about what they’ve got themselves into:

THE DOCTOR: I have no control over where I land. Neither can I choose the period in which I land in

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This episode’s title card is black with white text – the inverse of the previous three episodes’. That’s either a deliberate reference to the growing darkness of the serial; the way the Doctor reverses the polarity and switches the War Machines’ power against WOTAN, or more likely just a mistake.

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It’s lucky that this episode exists: trying to understand it from the soundtrack or tele-snaps would be hard going, because this is the show’s biggest ‘spectacle’ episode to date. A huge chunk of the running time is devoted to the pitched battle between the army and the War Machines in Covent Garden.

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The stakes of the story are clearly articulated in the first scene: ‘Who will live to serve the machines, and who shall be eliminated?’ Everything that follows flows from this mission statement, as individuals with no further use are ruthlessly dispatched – not just the hapless tramp who wanders into WOTAN’s warehouse, or the worker who becomes a test subject for the first of the War Machines, but even Dodo Chaplet.

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The new production team of Producer Innes Lloyd and Script Editor Gerry Davis has been in place now for three months. Like most incoming teams, they’ve initially been saddled with seeing through the decisions of the previous incumbents, but with The War Machines, they’re finally putting their own mark on the show, with the closest thing to a relaunch until Spearhead from Space.

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Having absorbed both the Doctor’s intellect and his conscience, Jano helps Steven and Dodo escape, and they take the spaced-out Doctor to the Savages’ cave. Once he’s recovered, the plot is resolved fairly swiftly, as you might expect when both sides are now being led by the same man. A minor insurrection by Guard Captain Edal and a final bit of trouble from Tor are quickly dealt with, after which the Elders’ vampire machine is smashed up, while Steven is unexpectedly elected as the new overlord of the planet.

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Having drained the Doctor of his vitality, Jano is now plotting the same fate for Dodo and Steven. Which begs the question – was this what Jano planned all along (if so, it’s not clear from Episodes 1 and 2), or is this his response to their failure to appreciate the Elders’ benevolence? Did he track the TARDIS to his spider’s web, or is he trying to make the best of a bad situation?

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Having set up exactly what is happening, how and why last time, this episode goes ahead and shows it happening, and at great length. The scenes of scientist Senta extracting life energy first from Nanina and later the Doctor take up about a quarter of the running time. The telesnaps make the laboratory set seem impressive – with bubbling vats, and a glass extraction chamber – and it’s likely Christopher Barry maximised the vampiric horror of these scenes.

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Rex Tucker’s direction continues to impress. The O.K. Corral begins with a lovely tableau, shot through the bannisters of the Last Chance Saloon, as the Doctor, Bat and Wyatt remove their hats over Charlie’s shrouded corpse. It’s a composition that’s echoed in the subsequent death of Warren: shot through the bars of the jailhouse, complete with expressionistic shadows. Even the climactic gunfight is impressively captured (on film), with the deaths, Billy’s in particular, given horrible weight.

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