A very quick read this. TD makes the story rattle along, and this despite the many additions, such as the opening where we meet the Earthling (George Morris) on his way home from the bank where he's assistant manager. A sign of the times: the bank's in a small country town, so nowadays it probably wouldn't even exist, let alone have a manager and assistant manager, or even more than one staff member come to that. Morris asks the Gaztaks if kidnapping him is some sort of student rag.
The narrator points out the appropriateness of the Tigellan hydroponics bay as a place for Meglos to hide (reminding me of the occasion when Varan hides in the hydroponics room on Skybase in The Mutants).
George Morris' struggle to regain control of his body is described, with him growing stronger on each attempt.
Romana and Caris fight furiously over the laser cutter, while Meglos makes his escape from the city.
This is the same on the page and on screen, but why does the power failure cause the temperature to rise in the food store, but ice to form in the sub-corridors?
The scenes on Zolpha-Thura start with four pages of explanations: 'Meglos was in an expansive and talkative mood', and he exposits about the inhabitants' ability to take on other forms, and the war over the Dodecahedron that led to the leader of the peace party stealing it and crash-landing on Tigella. 'Why did you want us to bring you an Earthling?' asks Grugger pertinently. 'You couldn't have known the Doctor was coming when you sent us the message.' Apparently Earthlings are particularly malleable - George being an unfortunate exception - and Meglos intended to disguise himself as a Tigellan to steal the Dodecahedron.
Offered his choice of planets to destroy, Brotodac asks for Meglos' Doctor coat instead.
The Doctor and Romana explain things to George Morris as best they can. We lose his amusing double-take at the end of the book: instead, 'the Doctor's spatio/temporal navigation was spot on' and he gets home just slightly later than normal. Luckily Mrs Morris has a glass of sherry ready for him.
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