The Macra Terror

This serial has a really neat concept behind it, and it starts off quite strong, but I find that the later parts really struggle to keep my attention and I just start to become bored while watching it. On the plus side, the telesnaps and what little footage survives suggests that this serial would have been quite scary upon release and I'm a big fan of the animated reconstruction's art style.

A story of two halves, but entertaining all the way through.

Our party land on an earth colony in the far future. While the colony is peaceful and accommodating, something more seems to be going on behind the scenes. The people take all their orders from a mysterious controller, who is only shown on a screen. But who is really behind those orders? And is this society as peaceful as it looks?

Let’s start with the options: This story is, once again, missing in full. But not to worry. There is a brilliant animation which isn’t necessarily faithful, but has a fantastic atmosphere. On a creative level, this is by far the strongest animation I have seen. I would give it a go if you want to experience this story yourself.

Moving past that, this story takes some clear inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984, in which a future society follows orders from a mysterious man shown on a screen. Any attempts to deviate from the norm set by the mysterious leader are quashed without mercy. While this Doctor Who version is notably a bit less harsh, its cruel utopia still comes through loud and clear.

It's all fairly typical: The party enters the beautiful surface level and enjoys the luxuries, but soon find a hole and look behind the curtain. They discover monstrous creatures on the outside.  They discover secret mines far beneath the city. They discover the controller is nothing but a weak, old man that is used as a puppet.

It's a fine setup. I like seeing the party poke holes in the system. Some of their plans succeed, while others fail with dire consequences, which makes you feel tense every time they try something new. But while I like the way this story slowly falls into place, there are 2 of the major shifts in our party’s favor that are not really earned.

The first is the discovery of the “real controller”, who is an old man, tortured by the mysterious Macra. They discover him by yelling at a screen for a while. Just a few chants of “We want to see the real controller!” and bam! The Macra turn on the camera feed and reveal a major piece of their scheme. It is completely unearned. The Macra weren’t fooled or cheated out of this information. They just heard screaming and gave in.

Another unearned moment shows up at the end of the story. The Doctor meets up with the captain, the man “in charge” of the settlement. A man who has been hypnotized by the Macra all his life. But for some reason, the Doctor has absolutely no trouble convincing him to shake off his programming and just follow him into the deep underground mines to discover the truth of his society. It completely undermines the blissful ignorance we’ve seen through the entire 4 parts, just so it can quickly wrap up the story.

But while these moments blemish the story, they are also incredibly interesting to analyze. Without realizing it, Doctor Who has hit a bit of moral roadblock: How do you properly break down a dystopic control state?

It’s something the original 1984 didn’t really have an answer for. And this story never really bothers explaining it either. It feels like the Doctor just got lucky as he suddenly convinces the captain. The Macra get scared off and everything is better now by default. Ironically, this is where the story asks us to stop thinking, as we now put one man in charge of the entire colony.

And of course this is thinking way too deep about the topic, but it is interesting. We’ve seen the Doctor save plenty of civilizations, without spending any time on the fallout. The big difference is that the people here already believed they were living in a utopia. What happens to the frail excuse of “helping the oppressed” when the society doesn’t feel oppressed? How do you help the happy?

It's something I don’t have a clear answer on, but it keeps nagging at my mind. This story just begs you to ask those kinds of questions. And because of that, this story has matched its inspiration. Which is quite the accomplishment! Is it perfect? No. It does dawdle, and it has the previously mentioned plot holes, but it is also thought-provoking. And that is worth quite a bit too.

I found the story engaging and easy to follow even without visuals. I was engrossed in the mundane and highly detailed dystopian world building. It is so perfectly summed up by mindless civilians singing "we are, we are all happy to work!"

The Macra go from being portrayed as these huge crab monsters hidden away from society to super intelligent parasites which burrowed into the control centre of the entire civilisation, keeping themselves hidden through a mixture of mind control and intimidation. This works extremely well... In fact I'd go as far to say that this has shot right up my list of stories I am most desperate to see return - one day perhaps.

It taps into a kind of political nightmare, the natural feeling that we could somehow become boxed in by our society and controlled by vitriolic powerful figures to live out their bidding.

We get some nice moments for our companion dynamics in this story. I love how Ben is tricked into doing the Macra's bidding and how Jamie and Polly handle this.

It is taking me a long time to make my way from season to season in this marathon - but stories like this is what it’s all about, rejuvenating my enthusiasm with the project. It is total classic.

It is a decent little story. I find it especially fun that it's sort of a take on Orwell's 1984, with The Controller standing in for Big Brother and the obvious lie the oppressed people are made to believe, to show the regime's totalitarianism and fascism, is "There's no such thing as Macra" in place of "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia"
It can drag a bit at points, however, and it is very convenient how The Doctor gets allowed full access to the mine operation room, with no supervision, which they try to address, but fail to do so convincingly, merely hinting at a loosening of The Macra's control over certain people, without ever making it explicit enough.

7/10

A really clever and thought-provoking tale about a major cover-up in a human colony. It’s quite reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, with the colonists brainwashed into believing everything is fine and “There’s no such thing as Macra”, and I like that Ben becomes brainwashed by the Macra too. It raises the personal stakes nicely, and adds an interesting bit of conflict between Ben, the Doctor and his friends.

No such thing as macra so this story is just called terror so terror is an amazing story I highly recommend probs the best s4 story so far

Oooh this one is really cool! The premise might seem a bit basic but it really hooked me, we've got a space colony where everyone's lives are very tightly controlled, but that tries to maintain the illusion of happiness. A man named Medok has uncovered a conspiracy to hide the existence of these giant crabs called Macra, and the Doctor wants to help him pursue it.

The whole thing's really engrossing! I particularly liked the plot point where companion Ben is subjected to brainwashing and slowly works his way out of it throughout the course of the story. The animation, while still kinda lacking in character acting, helped sell the scale of the story really well, with bigger sets and bigger monsters. This is just a standard Doctor Who story done well enough to elevate it to absolute classic territory for me, one of my favorites alongside The Mind Robber and The War Games.

Another note is that this was the first story that was actually written with Jamie as a consistent cast member in mind, as the previous two scripts kind of had to awkwardly stuff him in at the last minute; it's nice to see him doing more, with a particular highlight being the scene where he gets mistaken for a dancer and escapes by doing a dance called the "Highland Fling," where at the end of the dance, you fling yourself out of the room.