The Doctor and Jo turn up in what appears to be a cargo hold of a boat in 1926, except it's not, as the plesiosaur that turns up halfway through the episode demonstrates. The crew catch the Doctor and think he's a stowaway, so the usual chasing-about ensues and ends with the Doctor being locked up. Fortunately, Jo's an escapologist, so they're soon free... to walk in on the same conversation they walked in on before!
Meanwhile, traveling showman Vorg and his lovely assistant have arrived on the absurdly-named Inter Minor to spread the gospel of entertainment to the gray-faced bureaucrats that live there. He has a device called a miniscope that contains a bunch of captured creatures from all over the Universe. But something's wrong with the machine; a strange blue box has lodged itself in one of the control circuits!
The Doctor and Jo eventually work out what's going on and escape from the human pen, only to wind up facing off against the Drashigs, the best monsters (as opposed to aliens) from the Pertwee era (mostly because their competition is an Ogron pillow-god and a bunch of fake dinosaurs, but I digress). Back in the real world, the bureaucrats decide that Vorg can't transport livestock to their planet without a permit, and so the logical thing to do is bring in an enormous eradicator gun and vaporize the thing. Because apparently murder is an appropriate punishment for customs violations. The gun doesn't work because the miniscope has plot armor, but one of the bureaucrats later decides to sabotage the gun and lure the Drashigs out into the real world to create a panic. The Drashigs chase the Doctor throughout the mini-scope's interior and eventually out into the real world, where they're destroyed by Vorg, who just happens to know how to fix and use an eradicator gun. The bureaucrat who sabotaged the gun conveniently gets killed and eaten, Vorg starts conning the locals into giving him enough money to leave, and the Doctor and Jo set off on another adventure.
Things that make no sense about Carnival of Monsters:
Why is the clock in the cabin wrong? It re-sets every 15 or so minutes like the rest of the ship, so it should be right...
The miniscope contains Ogrons, Drashigs and Cybermen (only sighting of a Cyberman during Pertwee's run!!), which are all from different planets, but it also has the SS Bernice and a dinosaur, which are both from Earth. Given that Vorg says he knows Tellurian carney-lingo (see next complaint), it's plausible, but still... Earth gets overused in Doctor Who.
The TARDIS doesn't translate carney-lingo. Presumably it doesn't translate Pig Latin or Cockney rhyming slang, either. (Not a complaint about the serial, but rather a question about how the bloody thing works.)
What is wrong with the Functionaries?
Why didn't the ship shake like crazy when the Functionaries manhandled the miniscope away from the cargo thruster?
Why are there panels that allow the mini-scope's occupants to travel from one "circuit" to the next?
Given the amount of booze Major Daly consumes in his time-loop (the guy is drinking at the very least two glasses every twenty minutes), shouldn't he have a very severe case of alcohol poisoning by now? Or does that somehow get re-set too?
Okay, now that that's over with...
This serial is easily the greatest Third Doctor serial I've ever seen. No wonder RTD tried to re-make it as "The Long Game" with limited sucess (and that was still one of the better Ninth Doctor stories). Come to think of it, Joss Whedon did something kind of similar in Buffy's "Lie to Me," but only tenuously "kind of." It's written by Robert Holmes, who will shortly produce even greater things in the form of Seasons 12-14. It features Ian Marter, soon to be Harry Sullivan, and Michael Wisher, soon to be Davros, and the two never meet here. Despite the silly cliffhangers, this is a fantastically fun and remarkably complex story that anybody who's never even heard of Doctor Who before can watch and enjoy. There are a few gimmicks that the fans will appreciate - the cyberman cameo, the line about television not being political (Barry Letts' run as producer marked the only time the show was ever really political), the line about the sonic screwdriver only working on electronic locks (clearly it gets an upgrade or seven in the next two hundred years), etc, but you could still use this to introduce Doctor Who to an unfamiliar audience. The only downside is that they'd come away thinking it's all this good...
10/10
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