What I liked about this one in the old days was the depiction of a far future society with really advanced technology, who were still helpless against the antimatter monster. The principal 'variation' is the difference between my mental picture of Sorenson (thin, dark, driven) and the meaty thug we see on screen. But we can't blame TD for that.
It's Edgar Lumb, not Egard, who gets buried in the opening scene. The Doctor, not Sarah, recognises the distress signal. He's flicking the TARDIS controls 'like a supermarket cashier'. There's more bizarre supermarket imagery later when the plastic-wrapped TARDIS is compared to a supermarket chicken. Had El Tel just been shopping when he wrote this one?
Salamar owes his early promotion to influential friends in high places.
Sarah actually gets physically (not just psychically) drawn towards the antimatter beast in both encounters that she and the Doctor have with it.
The joke about Shakespeare taking up writing because he was a dreadful actor is drawn out a bit longer, suggesting that TD particularly liked it.
The Doctor's experience inside the Black Pool is pleasantly psychedelic. He has to concentrate hard to get on with what he's come there for.
When Vishinsky goes out to get Sarah and the Doctor, it's him that orders the sickbay to be made ready, not Salamar (depriving the latter of one of his few human touches).
Salamar threatens to arrest Sorenson if he keeps arguing on board a military vessel.
When the Doctor recovers in the sickbay after his visit to the Pool, he tells Sarah that he's given his promise as a Time Lord. This has the advantage that her subsequent question 'Your promise as a Time Lord?' actually makes some fucking sense instead of being a bizarre non-sequitur.
It's just the pupils of Sorenson's eyes that become flat discs of red (a description that stayed with young Shallow for a long time).
There's no fight between Salamar and Vishinsky in the ejector room. The latter won't eject the Doctor and Sarah, but he doesn't try and stop Salamar doing it. When the scream comes over the intercom, and the others hurry out, it takes a desperate appeal from Sarah to get him to press the vital button. (He does it 'almost casually'). This works quite well as it appears as a decision point for his deposition of Salamar in the next scene.
'The whole story was there,' the narrator says on behalf of the Doctor when he grasps the effect of the black potion on the anti-matter. The speech to Sorenson ends with a repetition of the words 'Total responsibility', which is very effective.
Crewleader Ranjit has an Indian accent, not the one he has on screen. Much is made of the Doctor's concern about making two short, accurate journeys in the TARDIS, the second one to a fast-moving spaceship into the bargain.
Sarah has grown very attached to Vishinsky and says goodbye with 'real regret'. He begins 'a clumsy speech of thanks'. We actually 'see' the TARDIS departure, and are assured that Sorenson becomes the most brilliant scientist in the Morestran Empire, Vishinsky returns to a hero's welcome and the promotion that has so long eluded him, and the Doctor and Sarah go off to begin their next adventure.
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