The Macra Terror

The Doctor and his companions arrive on a human colony on a distant planet. The people seem to be happy and want for nothing. Yet a few are treated as lunatics and criminals, because they have seen monsters lurking in the forbidden zones- the Macra. Do the Macra, in fact, exist, and if they do, what is their relationship to the colony.

The Macra Terror has a synopsis that reads like a bad 50s B-movie, yet the story itself is so much more than that. Ian Stuart Black had a knack for taking simple and sometimes clichéd ideas and making them work in new and interesting ways. The colony is presented as a utopia that is really a dystopia. The people are happy in work and play and have access to countless recreations. The starts with full of holiday-camp style ‘stings’ that encourage the colonists to be happy. However, they are fed instructions in their sleep and are told not to question the status quo, and the majority of them do not because life is so comfortable.

However, there is a dark side to this society- the Macra themselves. They have been using the colonists to mine for the gases they need to survive and have been controlling the colony for years. Black astutely sees the colony as being an organism, and the Macra as an infection or parasite. They are clearly intelligent creatures to have accomplished them, yet they are never shown speaking or acting intelligently- their on-screen appearances are limited in number, and always have them acting simply as monsters. They clearly see the humans as merely a means to get their food and nothing more. The fact that they accomplish that by keeping the humans in a state of artificial bliss does not count in their favour- sometimes a person can be destroyed by fulfilling their desires rather than subjugating them, as struggle and conflict have been removed. They are worse than slaves- they are battery hens.

The guest cast is excellent, Peter Jeffrey is fantastic (as he often tends to be) as the Pilot and Terence Lodge is very effective as Medok, a man who has seen the Macra. The surviving clips show good production values. The Macra themselves are, obviously, not 100% convincing, but the sight of them coming out of the darkness with their glowing eyes is very effective. The script, as well as being thoughtful, is lightened with humour- the aforementioned ‘stings’ are great, as is the hilarious scene where Jamie leads an impromptu dance class. There is also the great ‘makeover’ scene where the Doctor is tidied up by a machine and then steps into another one to mess himself up again.

The regulars rise magnificently to the occasion. The fact that Ben is successfully brainwashed makes for a very interesting dynamic between Ben and Jamie and both Michael Craze and Frazer Hines rise to the challenge magnificently. Troughton is simply amazing, depicting the Doctor as being both brilliant and childish and a decidedly anarchic streak: ‘Bad rules were made to be broken’ seems to be a dictum he lives by.

If there is a flaw in the story, it’s that the ending is a bit rushed. However this is a great spin on a monster story, and well worth a spin.

NEXT: The Faceless Ones