Kinda

"It is Mara who now turns the wheel.  The Mara who dances to the music of our despair.  Our suffering is the Mara’s delight.  Our madness the Mara’s meat and drink.  And now he has returned…"

A beautiful, paradise planet, Deva Loka.  Its inhabitants, the Kinda, are a gentle and seemingly primitive people.  On the surface, a perfect place to colonize.   But if it is so perfect, why is the colonization team disappearing one by one?   Unaware of this, the Doctor and his companions choose to rest on Deva Loka.   Enchanted by the beautiful Chimes, "the place of dreams," Tegan sleeps and falls prey to the Mara, a malevolent force out to steal her mind.  But just what are its ultimate evil intentions?

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric are captured by the surviving colonization team’s officers, Sanders and unstable Hindle.  When Sanders disappears, Hindle collapses into a world of paranoid delusions and suddenly the security of the entire base is at risk.  Can the Doctor rescue Tegan from the Mara and defeat it-before it pushes Hindle over the edge?  And who is the mysterious blind woman who appears in visions?   Will she help the Doctor or ultimately impede him?

• "Kinda" picks up immediately after the events of "Four to Doomsday."

• Nyssa is written out for this 4 part adventure.  This was commonly done in the 60's to give actors a break during filming.  However, it was rarely done more than 1 episode at a time.  The reason here was a little bit different.  Nyssa was originally conceived as a short term companion and was originally planned to depart at the end of the previous story, "Four to Doomsday."  Peter Davison (Doctor #5) lobbied hard to keep the character on longer.  By the time producer John Nathan-Turner relented, it was too late to rewrite "Kinda" for the additional companion, so instead she was written out instead of in.

• Episode 4 ran severely under time and so several "padded" scenes were filmed after principal photography was already done.

• Conversely, episode 1 ran over time and had to be trimmed down to fit into the allotted time.

• The villain in this story, the Mara, makes a return the following season in the story "Snakedance."

• Watch for an eerie cliffhanger to episode 1.  Simon Rouse does an excellent job playing the demented Hindle.