The Krotons

The Krotons is the fourth serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 28 December 1968 to 18 January 1969. In the serial, the time traveller the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his travelling companions Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury) battle alongside the Gond race against the crystalline aliens the Krotons, who enslaved the Gonds in their city for thousands of years. Plot On an unnamed planet, a race called the Gonds are subject to the mysterious Krotons, unseen beings to whom they provide their brightest intelligences as "companions". Thara, son of the Gond leader Selris, is the only one to object to this practice; those who have become companions before have never been seen nor heard from again. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive in time to witness the death of the chosen companion Abu, who is vaporised by smoke sprayed from nozzles on either side of the doorway from which he emerges, and intervene to save Vana, the other selected for this fate, using her survival as a means to convince Selris and the Gonds of the malign influence of the Krotons on their society. The Doctor calls it "self-perpetuating slavery" by which the brightest in Gond society have been removed. Similarly, there are large gaps in their knowledge, especially relating to chemistry. This situation has been in existence for many years since the Krotons arrived in their spaceship, releasing a poison that polluted the lands beyond the Gond city – which the Gonds call "the Wasteland" – and killed much of the population.