The Doctor, Vikki, and Steven arrive on an alien planet populated by a bunch of robots unfortunately named “Chumblies” and a race of female aliens called the Drahvin. The Cumblies work for the Rill, who the Drahvin are in a battle with after the Rill shot them down. Of course, the Doctor and his friends get involved in the conflict and soon realize that more is going on than what they first believed.
It’s a shame that there is so much working against this episode that doesn’t even involve the episode itself. As it is, only one episode of this serial still exists, the rest are recreations, crude animations, and slide-shows with accompanying audio that really isn’t of the best quality. As a result, the episode is hard to follow and suffers from a lack of visual information, making much of the episode nonsensical. As I said, it’s a shame because it’s really not of “Galaxy 4,” but the circumstances surrounding it.
Looking past all of that, the episode itself, although hard to follow, is still not that great. There is the subversion of the ugly, repulsive Rill being a sophisticated and advanced culture, but that is mostly negated by the fact that the Drahvin are obviously evil from the very beginning.
“Galaxy 4” also suffers as its a return to the overly-padded, drawn out storylines that offer absolutely no variety in setting or in story. It’s just a substandard set of episodes even before it’s taken into account three of them are missing.
Jason Gaston 