The Doctor and Peri land at the CAGE — not the name of an obvious trap, as Peri assumes, but the College of Advanced Galactic Education, a university which has bestowed the Doctor with an honorary doctorate. However, the Doctor has arrived a day early to inspect the reason why he's received an honorary doctorate, only to find an old enemy at work behind the scenes. If only we knew who.
WARNING! There are unmarked spoilers below! Read at your own risk!
Tropes
- The Bus Came Back: The Rani returns!
- Call-Forward: The Rani ends the story trapped and screaming that she'll be the cause of his death, which she knows full well will happen.
- Cliffhanger: Played for Laughs. The final episode ends with the Doctor accepting his honorary degree, then unfurling a very long piece of paper which had his acceptance speech. Halfway though the second sentence, the ending theme interrupts and begins playing.
- Grand Theft Me: Poor Peri scores a rare hat trick of continuous stories where she's possessed by the bad guy.
- Have We Met Yet?: This Rani knows what the Doctor will later get up to, but the Doctor doesn't.
- Heel–Face Turn: The older people possessing Peri and the Rani's students realize that The Rani never planned to give them the antidote to prevent them from aging to death, and then team up with The Doctor to trap her for the Galactic Police to pick her up.
- Heel Realisation: After listening to Peri's recording about how she and the Doctor go from planet to planet saving and helping people, the elderly rich people possessing Peri and her friends realize that they can't continue living through younger people and stealing their life from them, especially if they are helping others. The fact that The Rani didn't intend to prevent them from aging to death was the icing on the cake in making Countess-Peri and friends team up with the Doctor and save everyone.
- Mobile Maze: The CAGE's walls are intended to move around to meet the demands of daily use.
- The Nth Doctor: The Rani is now played by Siobhan Redmond.note
- Obvious Trap: The fact that CAGE sounds like one is lampshaded, and the trope is zig-zagged. They arrive, assume it is one, find out it isn't, but they are still in danger from the Rani anyways.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Well, more like powered by forsaken teenagers and young twentysomethings.
- Spoiler Title: Doctor Who writers sure do love these, no matter the medium. This story is no exception.
