Recap: Doctor Who "The Face of Evil" Episode 2

When last we left off, we discovered that running around the universe and meddling in other civilizations' affairs tends to leave a bit of an impression. In the Doctor's case, he seems to have visited this planet a long time ago.... and has now been immortalized in the side of a mountain as this planet's version of el Diablo.

Go big or go home, I guess.

Leela asks the Doctor if he can remember what he even did to cause her ancestors to build a gigantic sculpture of his face, and he snaps back that of course he can remember.

Doctor: "...I'm trying to."

There are only two options here. Either the Doctor has yet to go back to the past and do what he's done (which seems unlikely, since he's not a fan of what's happened here), or he's been here before. But when? His trip here certainly wasn't shown in any previous episodes. And if you're preparing to leave a comment nitpicking that sentence, don't worry. I'll be nitpicking it myself soon enough.

Doctor: "Perhaps I was on another part of the planet?"

Leela: "There is no other part. Only beyond the Wall."

The Doctor gets to thinking, and he decides to return to the village full of people who want to kill him, although he's confident that they won't succeed as long as he can avoid them.

Doctor: "Anyway, they'll be preparing for their battle."

Leela: "That's what you said last time."

Doctor: "Well, you can't expect perfection, you know. Not even from me!"

Which is why the Sevateem are in this mess in the first place, Doctor.

Speaking of the Sevateem, Andor tells Neeva that their warriors refuse to begin their raid on the Black Wall while the Evil One is out there. Neeva's solution?

Neeva: "We tell them it has been destroyed."

Andor: "No! I will not lie to my people."

Rather than try to reclassify the statement as an "alternative fact," Neeva simply points out that the Black Wall will only be weak for a short time. It's now or never if they want to rescue Xoanon. But Andor has had it up to here with Xoanon moving in mysterious ways. Neeva promised victory. If it doesn't come, Andor is having Neeva killed.

The Doctor returns to the hut where they were going to kill him, preparing to break into the Shrine of Xoanaon. Neeva prays to Xoanon, wishing to hear the words of his god, but he doesn't get an answer. So reluctantly, he gives up and trades in the Holy Spacesuit Remains for the Power Glove.

"I love the Power Glove. It's so bad."

Once he leaves, the Doctor enters and thinks about what he'd just heard.

Doctor: "You know, I had a feeling... I had a feeling that Neeva was actually expecting to hear an answer to his prayer."

Leela: "There wouldn't be much point in praying if he didn't."

Doctor: "I can quote you a few theologians who'd give you an argument on that."

He takes a look at the discarded technology that makes up the "holy relics," and tries talking into one. But her gets as much answer as Neeva did. Then the Doctor hears the voice of Xoanon, his own voice, come out of Neeva's discarded helmet. And that's when he knows that Xoanon is no god.

Doctor: "Gods don't use transceivers."

To say nothing of starships.

Leela: "Are you certain?"

Doctor: "Aren't you?"

Leela: "Yes."

Doctor: "That's better."

Whatever happened to "Never be certain of anything. It's a sign of weakness"?

The Doctor tries to take a message for Neeva, but Xoanon recognizes the Doctor's voice.

Xoanon: "At least. We are here. At least. Us."

Doctor: "Us?"

Xoanon: "You. Me. Us. We."

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."

Xoanon: "At last, I shall be free of us."

Doctor: "Who are you?"

Xoanon: "Don't I know?"

Clearly, something terrible has happened here. The Doctor begins to formulate a theory, albeit a very simple one: He came here long ago and screwed something up royally. But when? How? And who the heck is on the other end of that helmet?

Doctor: "I must take a look at the Wall."

And so, the Doctor gets taken to the Black Wall. Except it's not so much a "wall" as an "absence." The Doctor instantly recognizes it as a "time barrier.." Basically, everything inside of it exists a few seconds out of sync with the Sevateem village, creating an impenetrable boundary. Nothing can get through it, simply because there's nothing on the other side.

Doctor: "I've seen it done as a parlor trick, but nothing on this scale."

I wonder if it has anything to do with Missy's later "time stop" parlor trick.

The Doctor says that there is simply no way through, except using specifically built bridges that only the barrier's creator could put in place. Meaning that all the warriors beginning the raid on the Wall are walking into a trap.

Leela thinks they might be able to warn Calib, so they head out as the attack on another part of the Wall begins. It doesn't go well, since the warriors have little defense against psychic energy beams.

Or whatever the heck this is.

The Doctor quickly meets up with Calib back at the village, which confirms Calib's suspicions that Neeva and Andor were lying about killing the Evil One.

Doctor: "How was the battle?"

Calib: "Just as the old ones remembered the last time. The Wall closed up."

Leela: "A massacre?"

Calib: "More than half the men were killed. And we never even saw the Tesh."

But the Doctor and Leela need somebody's help, and Calib's the best they've got. First and foremost, they need Calib's help to convince the others that the Doctor isn't the Devil.

Doctor: "Having, first of all, convinced you."

Calib: "I don't think you're the Evil One, I never have. I don't believe in ghosts."

The Doctor starts elaborating about his discoveries regarding the Wall, but Calib decides that he's going to stab Leela with a janis thorn. Calib doesn't think the Doctor's the Evil One, but the others do. With the Doctor alive, Calib can expose Neeva's lies for the good of the tribe. Leela's just an unfortunate casualty.

Calib tries to threaten the Doctor, but the Doctor knows Calib needs him alive. Tomas suddenly enters to call Calib a coward, giving the Doctor the opportunity to grab a crossbow and knock Calib to the ground.

Calib: "You've broken my leg!"

Doctor: "I'll break your nose if you don't get up."

"Neck" is what was written into the script. But once again, Tom Baker decided that such a threat wasn't setting a good example for the various childrens watching. But he is happy to threaten Calib with a crossbow unless he and Tomas put Leela on the bench in the Shrine of Xoanon.

So now, the Doctor hands the crossbow to Tomas so he can use the old bio-analyzer in the stash of "holy relics" to synthesize a cure for the janis thorn's venom. Calib tries to get Tomas on his side while the Doctor works. He manages to escape while Tomas is distracted, but the Doctor's synthesized cure brings Leela back, to her surprise.

Leela: "Do you know the answer to everything?"

Doctor: "Yes. Well, no, no. Answers are easy. It's asking the right questions which is hard."

"I hear they're still trying to find one for '42.'"

The Doctor instructs Tomas to take Leela out through the rear. He's got a date with Calib and the guards. The Doctor opens up with a dose of "Look behind you," which he uses to walk over to Andor's pilot's-seat throne and sit on it, shortly before Neeva arrives.

Doctor: "They told me you were dead. Or was it the other way 'round?"

When Tomas and Leela escape out the back, Andor finds them, which seems to prove Neeva right when he said that both of them were helping out the Evil One.

A meeting is quickly called, and some of the Sevateem take issue with the fact that Neeva claimed the Evil One was killed. And yet, here he is.

Neeva: "Did it not bring the witch, its servant, back to life? I tell you it was destroyed! But not totally, so it renewed itself."

Oh, like the X-ATM092. You can beat it, but you have to make sure that you deplete its HP before it can fully repair itself.

Doctor: "Ha! If you can believe that, you can believe anything."

"Coming back to life from the brink of death is certainly not something I've ever done. Three times."

Andor claims that the Doctor was seen attacking the Sevateem, but the Doctor refutes this with an "Oh, flapdoodle," which I need to start working into conversations.

Doctor: "The attack failed because it was a trap from the start."

And when Neeva asks who would set such a trap, Leela is bold enough to say "Xoanon!" For which Neeva demands that they should be destroyed and thrown to the Horda. But Calib decides to speak up on the Doctor's behalf.

Leela: "Conscience?"

Doctor: "No, no. Politics."

Calib argues that if the Doctor can be killed, then he's not the Evil One.

Doctor: "Good point. Fifteen-love."

Neeva argues that the litany says the Evil One can be destroyed, though.

Doctor: "Fifteen-all."

So Calib counters that the Doctor should be given "the test." Sure, "the test" may be designed for mere mortals, but didn't Neeva just argue that the Evil One is mortal?

Doctor: "Game, set, and match to Calib, I think."

So the Doctor is ushered to the Horda Pit and is shown a Horda.

Wrong.

There ya go.

Doctor: "What do I do, fight it or eat it?"

Apparently, a mere ten of them can completely devour a man's arm before he can cry out in pain. So, yes, these are basically alien piranha.

And so, he Doctor is told the rules. He is to stand on a plank above the Horda pit and fire at a rope with a weight on it. If he breaks the rope, the weight will stop pulling the rope, which will stop the pit from opening. Leela plays Navi for a second and tells the Doctor that the rope gets thinner as it goes, but also gets faster, only to get a smack across the face for her troubles. So the Doctor kicks the example Horda into the shoulder of the guy who hits her.

Doctor: "Sorry about that."

The general idea of the test seems to be that if the one on trial speaks the truth, then Xoanon will guide his arrow to break the rope before the weight can pull the Horda pit all the way open. So all things considered, this is slightly more fair than drowning a person to see if they're guilty or innocent. No, really, that was a thing that happened. They toss you in the drink, and if you sink, then you're innocent. Also, you probably drown, but at least you'll go to heaven. If you float, then you're guilty, and are quickly retrieved. To be hanged, of course. Sinners don't get to drown.

But since the Doctor's a crack shot with a crossbow, he manages to break the rope with ease. Good thing, too, since Leela's attempt at attacking the guards failed.

Leela: "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"

Doctor: "Shoot like what? Oh, like that. In Switzerland. Charming man. 'William Tell,' he was called."

The good people are convinced of the Doctor's complete and total lack of Evil-One-ness, so the Doctor pays Neeva a visit as he communes with Xoanon. The Doctor answers Xoanon when he communicates through Neeva's old space helmet, so it decides to speak to the Time Lord in two voices.

Xoanon: "We have decided..."

Xoanon: "To destroy you."

As Xoanon yammers on, the Doctor pockets a bunch of "relics." The Doctor tries to take the diplomatic route in his conversation with Xoanon, but Xoanon says that he'll be deactivating the sonic boundaries, which will let in the phantoms.

So the Doctor quickly gets to work on some old machinery in an attempt to whip up a quick replacement to protect the village from the invisible monsters.. And he's grateful that this planet was at one point visited by spacemen.

Leela: "I don't understand."

Doctor: "I mean the planetary survey teams. That's where your tribe got its name from. Sevateem, survey team. The question is, were you here before them?"

Calib: "Are we their captors, or their children?"

In the absence of Andor, Calib starts taking charge as the Doctor hands Tomas an ancient relic of great power that he just fixed.

It's called a "gun."

It has a self-regenerating power pack for its laser, but the Doctor recommends only firing in quick bursts, since it takes some time to recharge.

The Doctor quickly replaces one of the sonic devices at the village boundary, since sonic devices are basically his jam. So now the question is how to penetrate the impenetrable time barrier. The Doctor might be able to whip something up if he takes the TARDIS apart, but that's no guarantee.

But Leela realizes something.

Nothing can get past the Black Wall, right? Absolutely nothing.

Light, energy, matter; nothing.

So how can they hear the voice of Xoanon?

So the Doctor heads back to the shrine, turns off the helmet radio to Xoanon, and finds Neeva, who isn't in the best shape. After all, his faith has been shaken. And since all he has is faith, he's basically a broken shell who only responds when the Doctor imitates Xoanon's voice.

"Xoanon" asks where Neeva has heard the voice of his god, and Neeva responds that he has only heard it in the shrine. So the Doctor tells his good and faithful servant to take a nap and loudly declares that THERE'S NOTHING HE CAN DO AND HE MUST ADMIT DEFEAT, making sure that he turns on the radio link to Xoanon before he says so.

It turns out that there's a transmission broadcasting directly to Neeva's helmet, and the Doctor thinks he knows where it comes from. He heads there as some fool in the village rings the danger gong in reaction to a "phantom" attack, which will no doubt attract more phantoms.

In little time, the Doctor and Leela make their way to Mount Doct-more.

Leela: "Where the bridge through the barrier? Up the nose?"

Doctor: "No, it isn't! Up the nose. It's over the teeth and down the throat."

Really? I think the nose might be easier to get inside.

They make their way into the Doctor's face as Andor and Tomas patrol the village boundary.

Doctor: "Odd feeling."

Leela: "What is?"

Doctor: "Standing in my own throat is.”

Just wait until "The Invisible Enemy."

Elsewhere, Andor is attacked by an invisible creature, whose true form is lit up by Tomas's weapon.

So... how do these "Phantoms" leave footprints and crush clocks if they're just floating heads?

After Andor begs with his last breath for Xoanon to save him, Tomas is left all alone.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Coming up in Part 3! Face-to-face with the same face!