Reason for watching this episode: the debut of K-9! Other reasons for watching this episode: nonexistent. It...isn't what I would call, oh, let's face it, good. Four and Leela get a distress signal from a base of some sort on Titan, which it turns out is being infected by a sort of electric bacteria thing (I would say virus, but "electric virus" has different connotations and just sounds silly anyway), whereupon the Doctor is...er...mind-impregnated by "the nucleus" of the virus species. Which infects other people by shooting electricity into their eyes, obviously. Thankfully, Leela is immune, possibly because the virus really likes advanced intellects and she is more of an instinctual person, possibly because of some flimsy genetic thing that is never explained. But the point is, the virus is infecting everybody and then, because the Doctor is feeling just a bit under the weather (read: self-induced coma due to being mind-impregnated), it is the obvious decision to go to a nearby hospital ship, taking with them The Only Other Uninfected Person On The Base. Guess what it turns out he actually isn't?

At the hospital ship, there is a very smart and very German-accented doctor who specializes in...something complicated to do with the brain, I don't remember, and his talking mechanical dog. Both the doctor and the dog are actually quite helpful, but they are trapped in a horrible, horrible episode, poor things, so, once the not-all-that-uninfected-after-all guy starts infecting everybody, they are forced to clone the Doctor and Leela, shrink the clones down to microscopic size, and inject the clones into the Doctor's brain to destroy the nucleus. But don't worry! The clones will only last for about ten minutes. It's not like they'll have to worry about morality or anything.

Have I mentioned Leela's role in all of this? So far, it is mostly: 1) huddle and cling to the Doctor's scarf (no, seriously), 2) whine about Sensing Danger, and 3) not understand anything anybody says. On the other hand, she does get to say "Doctor! I've found the solution! Knife them in the neck!", and she's the one to come up with the ultimate solution (blow the base up), so it's not all bad. After a lot of cringe-worthy things involving inexplicable makeup and incubation hives, the virus is destroyed and the doctor asks that the Doctor and Leela take K-9 with them, as he is going to go back to Earth and won't need a robot dog any more, or something. The Doctor, Leela, and K-9 are all delighted by this, which is actually quite understandable, as K-9 is the bomb.

There's something to do with a glowing skull that contains the essence of the ancient evil race of the Fendahl which possesses a lady and makes monster slug things appear in the spacious mansion of an eccentric scientist and his crew, and an awesome old lady who grumbles about having the Second Sight and really likes rock salt, which mostly made for a decent episode, although K-9 stayed in the TARDIS the whole time for some reason, but what I am actually going to talk about here, much to my chagrin, is how whoever wrote this seemed to really like the dynamic between Four and Leela. I may, of course, be reading far too much into this--lord knows I'm capable of it--but, man, I swear there is at least a bit of it there. Let me elaborate.

I can't give exact quotes and transcripts, because I don't have immediate access to them and am lazy, but one of the first things we see the Doctor do in this episode is compliment Leela on her new dress, making her grin, of course. He does not compliment her on her new hairstyle, because it's kind of awful. Later, in an effort to pull the Doctor away from the nasty glowing skull trying to kill him, Leela somehow manages to pull them both down so they fall and he lands on top of her; the Doctor is remarkably blase about all this, although he looks at her funny when she tells him he's heavy. (Unless I'm misremembering that, but she does say it.) Later still, in the scary woods when they're hiding behind a tree, she tells him not to worry, because she'll protect him; he gets a bit ruffled by this, but doesn't bother to correct her. And in the end, of course, when they're back in the TARDIS and she's put her hair back in its proper order (thank god), he compliments her on her new dress again, only she's actually changed back to the original, now, so she gets snarky at him and inside I die a little. SEND HELP. It was bad enough with Two and Jamie! Or is "icky het" a fair trade-off for "icky old guy"? The world may never know. Actually, I'm not utterly opposed to het, I just...don't like shipping the Doctor with anyone other than the Master. It feels Weird. I can only imagine how much trouble I'm going to have with Romana.