Dear Johnny Fanboy,

Why do the Time Lords go to all the trouble of sending the Doctor to the planet Solos to deliver a message in Doctor Who: The Mutants without bothering to tell him what the message is or even who it is for? Not a very effective delivery service, is it? I'd use DHL next time, chaps! Even when the package eventually opens itself for Ky, all it contains is a bunch of old tablets, the significance of which is not immediately apparent.

It would have been so much easier for the Time Lords to have simply materialised the artefacts in front of Ky. Or, even better, they could have sent a messenger of their own, like those in Terror of the Autons and Genesis of the Daleks, to say to Ky: "Right, pay attention. Your people are mutating because of a change in your planet's climate. But that's OK, because ultimately you'll all evolve into super-energy-beings. Got that?" But then, of course, there would have been no story, would there?

Martin Greaves

Johnny Fanboy replies:

Why do the Time Lords operate in such a roundabout fashion? Well, as the Third Doctor himself comments in The Five Doctors, "Because they delight in deviousness, that's why." Or, as the Fourth Doctor angrily declares in The Brain of Morbius, they prefer to get him to do all the "dirty work [that] they won't touch with their lily-white hands."

From the The Deadly Assassin onwards, it is implied that all of the Doctor's missions for the Time Lords were, in fact, carried out at the behest of the Celestial Intervention Agency. This group is notoriously secretive and underhanded, so it is hardly surprising that they would go to such lengths to ensure that no direct link can be traced between their organisation and the liberation of the Solonians.

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