part 3

Quick replay of Four smacking the snot out of his companion. The general draws his sword and rushes at Four, but Four’s new boyfriend Farrah stops him. The “princess” was actually an android – how shocking - and the Doctor’s busted a big hole in the back of its head. He says that the android was probably sent as an assassin, and they decide to postpone the oath-swearing until they can figure out who’s really who. Grendel offers to leave his own personal guard with the new king, but nobody’s having any of that. Grendel wants to know what the king has to say about all this, and Four introduces himself as the king’s Doctor and says he’s not well and needs to rest.

Back at the lab, Lamia has called Romana in and wants to know what the Segment is. Romana has been taking advanced-level classes in Pretending to Be an Idiot from Four, so she innocently says she found it the other day and thought it was pretty. Grendel comes blustering in, all pissed that his assassination plot was foiled by some weirdo guy calling himself a Doctor. Romana continues to play dumb, but Grendel thinks that she’s connected to him somehow. He even does that weird thing where you grab someone by the chin and stare into their eyes, which if you’ve ever tried to do it in real life doesn’t really work.

K9 returns to the Doctor to tell them he’s located Romana, and to take a look at the android, which he says has about three hours before it breaks down. Romana’s being examined by Lamia, who has hooked up a bunch of electrodes to her head and found that she’s some kind of alien. Grendel tells her to knock it off and make a new assassin android that looks like Romana. Back with Four (oh hell, we’re doing that rapid-fire switching back and forth that means no real action is going to happen for awhile), the general’s complaining that the android’s too smart. “You can’t trust them, you know,” he tells Four.
“Funny. You know, that’s just what some androids say about people.”
One of Grendel’s manservants comes slouching in with a message for the Doctor. Farrah makes a game attempt at running him through, but Four stops him. Farrah sulks because it’s been quite awhile since he was allowed to stab anything. Slouchy says that Lamia is concerned about Grendel because now that an android has been crowned king blah blah blah bloo I have no idea and it probably doesn’t matter.
“Can he be trusted?” Farrah whispers to the general.
“Who?” asks the android slyly, “The servant or the Doctor?”
Four comes back to tell them that Lamia’s offering them Romana in exchange for a written promise of Grendel’s safety. Four says he’s going to go make the exchange at some pavilion, and that he needs to go alone.
“For some reason,” he says, “They always want you to go alone when you’re walking into a trap.”

Grendel and Lamia are showing off their new Romana android, which is programmed to kill when it hears the Doctor’s voice. It turns out the manservant was making a recording of the Doctor’s voice to train it with.
“Supposing he doesn’t speak?” she asks. Oh, dear – do you know him at all, Romana?
“You see before you the complete killing machine,” says Grendel, “As beautiful as you and as deadly as the plague.” Maybe Four will adopt this one as his new Companion. When they go out, Romana snags one of the little hygenic tools and puts it up her sleeve before the guards escort her back to the Prince’s cell. Having already used the Time Lord Emergency Directive One (steal anything that looks useful), she moves on to Emergency Directive Two – psychological manipulation. She negotiates with Lamia for awhile, trying to turn her against Grendel, but Lamia says she’d rather be used by Grendel than not have him at all. Well, that sounds …. healthy. That avenue having failed, Romana busts out her new toy and starts picking locks. The Prince wakes up and, despite her protests, gives her the “leave me – save yourself!” speech. They scrape the very bottom of the cliche barrel and find the ‘act like you’re sick so the guard opens the door’ bit sticking to the side. Romana blows off the dust and puts it into operation, and escapes. She sneaks out to find the white charger tied up, and runs over to it, but then stares at it in confusion, like ‘oh shit – where’s the on button?’ She manages to mount up without any serious incidents but can’t get the thing to go. Finally she loses her temper and just kicks the thing, whereupon it charges triumphantly out the gates, with guards chasing after and Romana clutching rather desperately at the saddle.

Lamia’s wandering around in the pavilion when the door slams shut in front of her. Four is standing behind it. She wants to know if he’s got his end of the bargain, and he shows her a scroll of paper, and continues the undermining Romana started by asking if she’d like to go into exile with Grendel. He sends her to go get Romana. Lamia fetches the android and comes back to find the Doctor and K9 waiting. The dog is hardly necessary, you can totally tell it’s not Romana by the way it doesn’t immediately slap Four in the face and demand to know why he took so damn long to rescue her. Four silently hands over the scrolls, then crouches by K9 and asks him a question. When he speaks, the beam the Romanabot shoots goes over his head and he immediately runs to lure it into a position where K9 can shoot the living hell out of it with a laser. Outside, Grendel hears her screaming and orders his guards to start shooting indiscriminately. “Guards!” he cries, “Shoot indiscriminiately – nay, wildly - into the air!” Lamia runs out to escape K9 and of course runs directly into the crossfire. Peasant down! Grendel yells for Four to come out peacefully, and that they totally won’t shoot him full of holes with a dozen or so laser crossbows because he promises he totally won’t. Four hops up and heads for the door, and when K9 protests, he biffs him on the head and keeps going. He opens the door and of course a dozen or so laser crossbows start shooting at him. He slams the door, then opens it again long enough to stick his head out and yell, “LIARRR!” He has K9 cut the hole in the wall with his laser, in another bit of impressive and extremely dangerous-looking pyrotechnics, then he punches out the bit of wall left and crawls through. He sprints off and leaves K9 in the dust, his (mysteriously healed) scarf-ends flapping behind him. The guards are just gearing up to pursue when a white horse comes charging out of nowhere. The guards, thinking it’s the princess, stop shooting, and Romana gets Four up into the saddle while K9 mows the guards down.
“I hope you know how to stop this thing,” the Doctor grumps and they ride off into the sunset.

Farrah and the general are laying out battle plans in front of the android king when Four and Romana bust in. She’s very impressed by the king android, whom Four introduces as George.
“And what about these?” she asks of the other guys.
“Oh, they’re real, I think,” says Four, and Farrah and the general rush to introduce themselves. Romana tells them the Prince is locked up and not well, and Grendel comes riding up under a flag of truce. Farrah draws his sword and is all jazzed about finally killing something, but the general says he’s under a flag of truce, so he can only disarm him. Sulking, Farrah flicks his hair out of his eyes and brings Grendel in. He’s tied the white flag onto the end of a spear, so I’m not entirely sure he understands the meaning of the whole ‘truce’ thing. Four spirits Romana off into another room, partly to keep her away from Grendel and partly so he can do a dramatic entrance and scare Grendel. Grendel takes Four off into another room and tells him that he’s made himself very important in the court – as long as the android-king is running. If the android were to break down completely, he says, Four would be in very great danger. He proposes that they should both “unmake” their kings, kill the real and fake Reinharts, and put Four on the throne since he’s such an extraordinary and clever fellow. Four gasps, grabs Grendel’s shoulders in glee, then rushes out and announces, “The Count has just offered me the throne!” This constitutes capital treason and gives Farrah an opportunity to finally kill somebody, but he’s thwarted yet again when Grendel stabs the android in the chest with the spear and dives out through a back door. Farrah must have the swordplay equivalent of blue balls by now, always pulling that thing out and never getting to use it. They chase him out and Farrah grabs a crossbow and aims. Four calmly shoves him off the balcony. When he flips out, Four explains that Grendel grabbed Romana on the way out, so they’re back to square one, only with no android king.

part 4

After Romana’s abduction, they all head back into the room with the now-destroyed android king, and Farrah remarks wonderingly about how ballsy Grendel is. Back at his castle, Grendel, chucks Romana back in the cell with the Prince and reveals his new plan: put Reinhart on the throne and then marry him to Romana, kill the prince and marry Romana himself. Um. Won’t the Tarans find it kind of weird that he’s marrying a chick who looks exactly like his sister? Never mind, I really shouldn’t apply logic to this episode. Out in the hallway, Grendel screams at his servants, just in case you didn’t know by now that he’s kinda evil. The high priest comes in with a shiny new hat and Grendel tells him he needs him to perform a marriage. Then he basically tells him the rest of his eeeeeeevil plan, saying he’ll need to do the first marriage, then funeral rites for the dead king, then another marriage between himself and ‘Princess Strella’. This priest is seriously the biggest idiot I’ve ever seen – Grendel keeps telling him his eeeeeeeevil plans and the poor old guy’s like ‘buh? huh? That’s highly irregular. Okay, let’s do it.’

Back at the cabin, Four and the others are discussing things like supply lines and flanks, which seems weird since they’ve got all of six soldiers and the castle’s all of a few hundred yards away. In any case, Four says he’ll sneak inside the castle and open the gates for the Prince’s forces so they can go rescue him.
“What? One man?” asks the general.
“Nooooo no no. One man and his dog!”

Grendel heads into Princess Strella’s cell to ask her one more time to marry him. When she refuses yet again, he tells her that she’s become expendable and snits off to the Prince’s cell. I am still not clear on the whole marrying-of-relatives thing here. Anyway, Grendel tells them that they will agree to get married or else he’ll kill the Princess. The Prince is in a seriously bad way, and Grendel says he won’t even have to kill him, that he’ll die of the fever that he seems to have gotten from being wounded on the arm.

Down by the castle moat, the pointy-hatted invasion party is sticking Four and K9 in a little boat to storm a sally port. They warn him that the door can withstand a battering ram. Ah, but has it ever met a screwdriver? We haven’t been seeing much of the screwdriver lately. Farrah offers the Doctor his sword, but is refused. Awwwww, rejected! Poor Farrah. Guards with crossbows walk along the walls above while the Doctor thrashes his little boat awkwardly (and noisily) down into the catacombs. He resists the urge to start singing ‘Music of the Night,’ proving that Four has more self-control than I would under similar circumstances. Upstairs, Grendel and his right-hand man talk about how evil they are, and the priest comes in, having reinflated his hat to its previous impressive proportions. Grendel says he’ll go get the bride and groom and the priest just sort of smiles like, ‘oh how lovely! I do like weddings.’ Maybe this country should consider having a master of ceremonies who isn’t entirely senile.

Four and K9 have found the door, and who needs screwdrivers when you’ve got a laser-dog? They start cutting through the wood. Grendel gets Romana and the Prince, who he has dressed up all pretty, from their cell. Somehow they managed to change clothes without removing the iron rings locked around their necks, and I must say I’m quite impressed. Subtitles claim that somewhere, church bells are “peeling” and Four is getting worried.
“Would you hurry up? A hampster with a blunt penknife could do it quicker!”
The unhappiest bridal couple in the whole wide universe wait upstairs. Somehow Grendel has found an outfit even more ridiculous than what she was wearing before, and Romana is thoroughly pissed about it. I almost want this plan to go over just to see how Grendel would react when he tries to kill Romana and just ends up with an entirely different actress on his hands. We get a pretty dramatic show of the three of them striding though some dark and creepy corridors. Down below, Four leaves K9 with the boat because he doesn’t feel like carrying him up twenty flights of stairs into the castle. He warns him not to fall overboard into the water, and K9 snits that he’s been on boats before, which allows Four to call him “you old sea-dog, you.” He dives through the hole and there’s promptly a huge crash and some screaming as he apparently falls down a flight of stairs.
“M…..Master?” calls K9, and Four pops back out of the hole, looking disheveled.
“SHHHHHHHHH!!!” He disappears again.

The wedding ceremony has begun, as Four sneaks around and manages to locate the fourth Segment. He sticks it in his pocket and starts looking for Romana. The wedding has just gotten to the ‘I do’ stage. After a long pause, Reinhart says he does, and the priest turns to Romana. She hesitates, and from the back of the chapel Four calls, “No, she doesn’t!” He gets up from where he’s leaning against the doorpost, and apologizes for being so late. “I always enjoy a good wedding, isn’t that right Romana?” He rushes up to the priest and asks if they already did the bit where he asks if there are any objections, and wonders if he interrupted at the wrong part, and maybe they should start over, when Grendel finally comes out of his shock enough to start screaming at him.
“You seem to make a habit of interfering in my affairs, Doctor!” Oh, don’t flatter yourself man, that doesn’t make you special. He interferes in bloody everything, it’s what he does. Grendel draws his sword and tells Four to prepare to defend himself. Four grabs several armloads of scarf and flings them over his shoulder, then looks dismayed.
“I, ah ….. I don’t have a sword.”
“Well I can’t kill you unarmed.” Grendel calls for another sword so they can do this thing properly, and Romana tells Four that Grendel is apparently the best swordsman on Tara. She asks if Four even knows what he’s doing, and he sort of flutters his hands about and makes a face like, ‘….maybe?’ If only he’d thought to bring along a certain adorable blonde swordfighter, he wouldn’t have to deal with this! Four takes his rapier and holds it awkwardly, trying to look impressive and get the hair out of his eyes at the same time, and failing to really do either. Grendel offers to give him a quick tutorial, and salutes. Four stares at him blankly, the repeats the movement, smacking the blade against a pillar on the backswing and nearly shocking himself. Grendel demonstrates the en garde, and Four imitates him, turning his back, and Grendel swats him. Four whips around and the duel really gets going and here’s where I wish I knew the words for ripostes and stuff like that, because they are honest to goodness fencing. It quickly becomes clear that Four, though he’s still pretending to bumble and getting tangled in his scarf every two seconds, is a hell of a lot better than Grendel. He does a really impressive one-two-three step and comes in under Grendel’s guard. He does this several times but never actually hits him, always stopping just short, then feints suddenly and knocks the sword out of Grendel’s hand. Opting to stall for more time, he kicks the foil to Grendel and growls to Reinhart to go open the gate. The fight’s getting really intense now, as Reinhart finds the lever and pulls it. The pointy-hats outside scramble to get inside, and holy crap, Four is really schooling this guy now. I should mention that Grendel’s using a stunt-fencer in a helmet, but Tom Baker actually appears to be doing his own fighting, which is impressive. For such a tall, gangly-looking fellow he’s really very agile. Pointy-hats charge down the corridors and YES! Farrah finally got to kill a guy. While no-one’s watching, Romana sneaks off down another corridor, heading for the cells, where Grendel’s sidekick is gearing up to kill Strella. Romana takes him down with the big embroidery frame Strella’s been working on, and grabs Strella. Swordfight continues, and now Grendel’s started playing dirty, throwing stuff at Four with his free hand. Four pursues but trips and chokes himself with his own scarf. While he’s getting sorted out, Grendel tries to get away. They’re fighting their way up a staircase to the ramparts, and Four is really out to prove that Five isn’t the only action Doctor. He tells Grendel that the castle’s been taken, and advises he surrender. The stunt fencer just shakes his head because he doesn’t have any lines, so Four yanks the helmet off to magically transform him back into Grendel’s actor, who refuses to surrender. Instead, he rushes up to plant one foot on the ramparts. Apparently Grachts never surrender. But they do run away like cowards. Posing dramatically, he bellows, “Next time! I shall not be so lenient!” And he jumps off into the moat.
“You forgot your hat!” yells Four, chucking the helmet at him.

Four heads back down to the chapel, where all of Grendel’s men have been captured and held, and chucks the foil at Farrah, who looks ready to jump him any second now. Everyone oohs and aahs over his mad skills, but Farrah seriously can’t even talk – he’s just staring at Four like an adoring puppy. AWWWW. The Prince offers him anything he wants as a sign of his thanks, but Four just shrugs him off and asks about Romana. The Prince (King now I guess) says she went down to the cells, and they remember the princess. Four grabs his sword back and charges out, bellowing “Nooooooooooooo!” Down in the cells, Romana and the Princess are chatting about needlework when Four comes bursting in. They mess with him for a minute since he can’t tell them apart, but he grabs Romana and beats a retreat, since the day is saved and now people are trying to talk to him and give him stuff, and that’s usually his cue to take off running. The Prince comes in and smooches the Princess. Upstairs, the Doctor is making Romana look around for the Segment. She says it was just in the lab but it’s gone now, and he has her use the locator. He wanders around the room for a little bit while she tries in vain to follow the signal, then she realizes he’s got it in his pocket. Is this some kind of weird foreplay, Doctor? The signal is in my pants! Get it?
“Very funny,” Romana gripes, and they go to leave. At the last second, Romana realizes they’ve forgotten K9 as well. They eventually locate him well outside the castle, where his boat is sort of drifting away. Four busts out laughing. Two more episodes to go!