The Mutants

The Time Lords choose the Doctor for a special task - a mission so secret that neither the Doctor or his assistant Jo Grant know the true nature of their assignment...

For in the future, the planet Solos is claiming independence from Earth's vast galactic empire. A huge space station - Skybase - orbits the planet, forming a bridgehead for the empire's control of Solos, and is commanded by the Marshall, who is determined to retain his power over the planet at any cost.

Solos's atmosphere is poisonous to humans in the daylight, and the Marshall is behind secret experiments to change the planet's atmosphere into one more similar to that of Earth. But down on the planet changes are happening amongst the native population. A disease that causes mutation has appeared and is spreading fast.

The Doctor finds himself in a race against time to save Jo's life, to find a solution to the mutants, to complete the Time Lord's mission, and to thwart the Marshall's plans...

• "The Mutants" continues the Pertwee sub-genre of ecologically minded stories, this time also mixing in colonialism to boot.  

• This story is also one of the rare times that the Doctor and Jo left Earth and U.N.I.T. behind (at least until the Doctor's pardon is written into the series). 

• Watch for famous British actor/comedian Geoffrey Palmer.  Palmer was last seen in the Pertwee classic "Doctor Who and the Silurians."

• You will likely notice a drop in quality between episodes as some are the original broadcast tapes, while at others are copies of episodes screened in America (thus having gone through a conversion process to be able to be viewed in the U.S.), returned to the BBC when the originals were junked, reconverted back to the PAL standard, and then once again converted back to our NTSC version for this video release.  Needless to say, the quality of these episodes does suffer.

• Other recurring actors include Paul Witsun-Jones (this time as the Marshal).  His previous stint on Doctor Who was as the Squire in the Hartnell historical "The Smugglers."  George Pravda (Jaeger) also appeared in the Troughton story "The Enemy of the World" as Denes and was also in "The Deadly Assassin" with Tom Baker as Castellan Spandrell.

• One last bit of sad fanboy trivia... Professor Sondergaard is played by John Hollis.  Hollis would later go on to appear briefly in "The Empire Strikes Back" as Lobot, aide to Lando Calrissian.