Doctor Who: The Macra Terror

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The Macra Terror is the seventh serial of Season 4 of the classic Doctor Who television series, originally broadcast in four weekly parts from 11 March to 1 April 1967. It was written by Ian Stuart Black and directed by John Davies It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Anneke Wills as Polly, Michael Craze as Ben Jackson, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon

The TARDIS lands in a cheerful human colony that mines gas, where smiling routines hide a dark secret: people are being brainwashed at night, and giant crab-like creatures called the Macra control the colony from the shadows.

Order breaks down, the colonists wake up to the truth, and the travellers slip away as the colony begins a freer, more honest future. All four episodes are missing from the BBC archives, but the complete audio and a fully animated reconstruction have been released.

Episode 1

The TARDIS arrives in a bright, cheerful human colony that feels like a holiday camp (music, slogans, smiling faces) and a chase through the streets for a fugitive named Medok. The Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie are welcomed by the Pilot and the stern security chief Ola after they help recapture Medok. Everyone insists the colony is perfect and safe. Medok whispers that monsters roam at night and that Control is lying.

The travellers are given bunks and “relaxation therapy,” which is really hypnotic conditioning piped through speakers as they sleep. Ben succumbs, eyes distant, repeating the slogans about obedience and hard work; Jamie stirs and resists, and the Doctor slyly sabotages the rhythm to break the trance for Polly. The Doctor seeks Medok and learns of forbidden zones near the gas mines, where strange claws have been seen.

When Polly steps outside in the dark, something huge moves in the fog. A vast pincer slams down beside her, and she screams. Ben, under conditioning, denies what he sees and orders everyone to forget “imaginary creatures.” The Doctor realizes the colony’s happiness is enforced, the voice of Control is everywhere, and there is a name nobody is allowed to say aloud: Macra.

Episode 2

The Doctor follows Medok to the mine perimeter and sees enormous tracks gouged in the dust. Alarms blare; Ola arrests them both and drags them before the Pilot, while the disembodied Controller coos reassurance from a screen. The Doctor demands to examine the “therapy” equipment and proves it implants orders during sleep. Control responds by scheduling “correction” for the troublemakers.

Ben, still conditioned, reports the Doctor’s actions and tries to keep Polly quiet, even as she describes the claw that almost seized her. Jamie, restless and suspicious, dodges entertainment duty and ends up assigned to the pits. That night, the Doctor sneaks into the correction room and throws the rhythm off again, saving Polly and beginning to loosen Ben’s mind. He forces the Pilot to hear two versions of Control: the soothing public voice and a harsher, urgent whisper ordering more gas and tighter security.

When the Doctor and Medok range the perimeter again, a gigantic crablike shape rears from the vapours: one of the Macra, feeding on noxious fumes. Guards scatter. Medok is seized; the Doctor runs for the colony to warn them. Control floods the speakers with denials and cheery music. The word “Macra” is banned, even as their claws scrape nearer.

Episode 3

Jamie is sent down to a danger level where gas pressure is highest. He dodges supervisors, scrambles along catwalks, and watches masked workers open vents that pump poison into the tunnels. In the control centre, the Doctor traces the gas network and shows the Pilot how the colony’s chemistry has been twisted. The soothing Controller appears on the screen as a young man in fine clothes: then glitches to reveal a terrified prisoner reading lines.

The Pilot wavers. Ola storms in with guards and orders the Doctor and his friends detained, but the Doctor slips away, dragging the Pilot into a side corridor to show him the truth. They reach the real nerve center: a cavernous chamber where vast Macra stir in the fumes, their claws tapping commands, their voices leaking through machinery as “Control.” Above, Polly tries to snap Ben out of it by reminding him who he is; he falters, then angrily repeats slogans.

In the tunnels, Jamie is cornered by a looming carapace and escapes by leaping to a conveyor and vanishing into service ducts. The Doctor explains: the Macra require toxic gas to live and have turned the whole colony into a refinery feeding them. If the gas mix changes, the Macra weaken.

Episode 4

Ola declares the Doctor a saboteur and marches him to punishment, but the Pilot finally breaks and orders the guards to stand down. The Doctor races to the control room and takes over the valves, rerouting the flow to flood the mine with clean air while starving the poison vents. The Macra howl and lunge toward the centre, slamming claws onto panels.

Ola stages a last coup and locks the settings to maximum gas, but Ben, shaking off his conditioning at last, smashes the controls and takes Ola’s guards out of the room. Below, Jamie leads workers through ducts as the Doctor improvises a pressure surge that ignites the toxic pockets the Macra have hoarded. A roaring blast tears through the tunnels. The mines collapse; the control chamber buckles; the Macra fall, crushed and choking on the air they cannot breathe.

The soothing voice of Control dies mid-slogan. In the morning, the colony is quiet, then jubilant. The Pilot apologizes, Medok’s name is cleared, and entertainment becomes celebration instead of camouflage. Ben looks sick at what he did and is forgiven. The Doctor accepts no thanks and slips away with his friends. To the beat of a dance, the TARDIS dematerializes into clean, honest daylight.

Themes

As dystopian satire, The Macra Terror punches above its weight. It is less monumental than The Power of the Daleks or The Evil of the Daleks, but sharper and stranger than the colourful swirl of The Underwater Menace. Its dreamlike brainwashing, propaganda jingles, and the Doctor’s sly subversions give it an edge that sits neatly alongside the pressure-cooker thrills of The Moonbase.

In the wider canon of social-commentary tales it anticipates the bite of The Sun Makers and the candy-coated menace of The Happiness Patrol, while retaining the creep factor that later fuels The Web of Fear. It’s an oddity that lingers: clever, creepy, and quietly influential.

In the tapestry of the season, it bridges The Moonbase and The Faceless Ones, cementing the Second Doctor–Jamie partnership that will carry forward into The Enemy of the World, The Invasion, and ultimately The War Games.

Its “smiling tyranny” and mass manipulation echo back to The War Machines and look ahead to the enforced bliss of Smile and the urban nightmare of Gridlock, where the Macra themselves resurface. The colony’s cheerful conformity, nightly “corrections,” and hidden overlords sketch a template the series will revisit again and again. In that sense, The Macra Terror doesn’t just conclude an arc: it seeds future battles with systems that demand obedience over truth.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

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