With the introduction of new
companion Vicki (Maureen O'Brien) to freshen things up, the last thing you’d
expect is the kind of naval-gazing intratextuality that preoccupies the
programme in the 1980s. But the backward glance at an entire broadcast year has
already proved too tempting. Barbara and Ian nod ironically at recurring tropes
and plotlines, the Daleks return as archvillains, the fourth wall is breached
at least twice and the tensions of maintaining a relationship with textbook
history inevitably draws the odd metatextual comment. Perhaps the most familiar
device is that of man-in-costume as monster as embodied by the plodding
circular feet of the Sensorites and the does-it-ever-come-off?
wetsuit of the Voord. So when Koquillion enters the scene – in what looks like
a future reference to Predator (1987)
– he is just another actor in a cheap suit (actually one of costume designer
Daphne Dare's better efforts). And that’s exactly what he turns out to be. The
plot hangs on a self- referential twist: Koquillion, who dresses to kill in an
attempt to evade the law, is really the marooned astronaut Bennett (Ray Barrett).
It’s a man in a monster costume and we knew it all along … right? | 
