City of Death Part 2
The Doctor, a time-traveling alien, must stop the Count and Countess Scarlioni from stealing the Mona Lisa using advanced technology, while navigating complex motives and allegiances.
The Doctor, accompanied by Romana and Duggan, finds himself caught in the Count and Countess Scarlioni's plot to steal the Mona Lisa. The trio is captured and taken to the Scarlioni's chateau, where they discover a laboratory containing a time-manipulation device. The Doctor learns that the Count has been using this technology, developed by Professor Kerensky, to create multiple copies of the Mona Lisa. The Doctor, Romana, and Duggan escape and uncover a hidden room containing six genuine Mona Lisas. They eventually thwart the Scarlioni's plan to steal the seventh Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Throughout the story, the Doctor's intellectual curiosity and Duggan's more straightforward approach to problem-solving create an interesting dynamic, highlighting their different motivations and methods.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
The Doctor, Romana, and Duggan are forcibly escorted at gunpoint into the opulent drawing room of the Scarlioni chateau. They face the enigmatic Countess and, subsequently, the calculating Count, who interrogate them regarding the stolen green bracelet. The Doctor employs his characteristic blend of disarming pleasantries and evasive non-sequiturs, attempting to portray himself as a harmless eccentric and a mere thief, with Romana as his accomplice and Duggan as the detective who "caught" them. This playful misdirection, however, fails to fool the shrewd Scarlionis. Romana, demonstrating her keen intellect, effortlessly opens a complex Chinese puzzle box, retrieving the bracelet and thereby confirming their involvement in its "theft" from the Louvre. The Count, unimpressed by the Doctor's feigned foolishness, recognizes his underlying intelligence and dramatically reveals the true scope of his ambition: not merely the bracelet, but the audacious theft of the Mona Lisa itself. This declaration elevates the stakes significantly, transforming a simple art theft into a grander, more sinister plot. As a consequence of their perceived interference and the Count's desire to keep them close, the trio is summarily ordered to be locked away, confined to a dimly lit cellar adjacent to a mysterious laboratory, effectively trapping them within the heart of the Scarlionis' operation and setting the immediate stage for their subsequent escape and investigation into the deeper purpose of the chateau's advanced technology. This imprisonment serves as the inciting incident for the Doctor's direct engagement with the Scarlionis' full plan.
The Doctor, Romana, and Duggan are violently ushered into the opulent drawing room by Hermann at gunpoint, their forced entry immediately establishing the Scarlionis' ruthless control. The Countess frames them …
The Doctor attempts to pass himself off as a simple thief while covering for Romana’s removal of the Countess’s bracelet, claiming it a shared crime to mask their involvement. The …
The Doctor, Romana, and Duggan are marched into the Count and Countess Scarlioni’s drawing room at gunpoint after their theft of the bracelet is exposed. Despite the Doctor’s attempts to …
Trapped in a cramped cellar with limited light and dwindling hope, the Doctor urges caution while Duggan grows increasingly impatient with what he sees as indecision. The Doctor’s refusal to …
Duggan’s frustration with the Doctor’s cautious methods escalates into brute force when the sonic screwdriver fails to open the locked door. In a moment of reckless action, he strikes the …
Duggan impatiently pushes for a violent escape while the Doctor insists on investigating the hidden laboratory first. Their debate quickly reveals divergent methods—the Doctor’s forensic curiosity about the lab’s unearthly …
Professor Kerensky performs a reckless demonstration of his cellular accelerator by aging an Egg into a full-grown chicken in seconds, proving the device’s temporal mechanics. The Doctor emerges from hiding …
Imprisoned in the cellar, the Doctor, Romana, and Duggan begin their investigation. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver eventually opens the cellar door, granting access to the adjacent laboratory. Romana's precise spatial observations hint at a hidden room within the chateau's structure. Inside the lab, they encounter Professor Kerensky, who demonstrates a "cellular accelerator" that rapidly ages an egg into a chicken. The Doctor intervenes, revealing the device's destructive flaw when the chicken collapses into a skeleton, and then reverses its polarity, causing the chicken to regress and vanish. He deduces Kerensky's naivety regarding the Count's true motives and the dangerous nature of his temporal experiments. Meanwhile, the Count rehearses the Mona Lisa theft using advanced holographic projections and laser-deflection technology, underscoring the sophistication and imminent threat of his plan. Back in the cellar, Duggan's brute force breaks through a hidden wall, revealing six genuine Mona Lisas. The Count appears, confirming his possession of these paintings and his intent to steal a seventh, revealing his intricate scheme to sell multiple "originals" to different collectors. Duggan's frustration culminates in him assaulting the Count, taking his gun, and the Doctor redirecting Duggan's focus to stopping the *other* Mona Lisa theft.
The Doctor confronts Kerensky over his reckless temporal experiments, dismantling the naive scientist’s belief in a flawless cellular accelerator. As Kerensky’s demonstration collapses a live chicken into skeletal remains, the …
Duggan’s patience collapses as the Doctor’s intellectual dismantling of Kerensky’s dangerous temporal experiment reaches its climax. The scientist’s reckless manipulation of time spirals into grotesque distortions of life, culminating in …
Kerensky’s temporal experiment collapses into chaos as the Doctor dismantles its flawed premise, but Romana’s measured observations reveal a critical anomaly in the laboratory’s architecture. Her precise spatial deductions expose …
Following the intense confrontation with Count Scarlioni in the secret room, the Doctor, Romana, and Duggan initiate their escape from the chateau. Their departure is not without incident, as Duggan, true to his direct and often destructive methods, incapacitates the Countess by smashing a priceless Ming vase over her head, much to the Doctor's exasperation over the cultural loss. With the immediate threat of the Scarlionis' imminent theft of the seventh Mona Lisa looming, the Doctor swiftly formulates a two-pronged strategy. He dispatches Romana and Duggan to the Louvre, tasking them with intercepting the present-day heist and preventing the final painting's acquisition. However, the Doctor reveals a separate, more enigmatic mission for himself: to meet "an Italian... Renaissance" figure. This cryptic declaration strongly implies an intention to travel through time, suggesting a deeper, historical dimension to the Scarlionis' plot that extends beyond the contemporary theft. He then enters the TARDIS, which promptly dematerializes, signaling his departure into the past to confront an earlier aspect of the mystery. This strategic split in their approach sets up parallel lines of action, with Romana and Duggan handling the immediate crisis in Paris, while the Doctor embarks on a temporal investigation, aiming to uncover the ultimate origins and motivations behind the Scarlionis' elaborate and time-spanning scheme.
Duggan chafes at the Doctor's intellectual approach and takes direct action, smashing through the cellar wall to escape confinement and probe deeper into the Count's schemes. Romana notes the Count's …
Duggan
The Doctor investigates a hidden wall of wooden doors in the secret room and discovers six identical Mona Lisa paintings behind them. Examining each closely, he confirms their authenticity through …
Duggan terminates the Doctor’s interrogation of Count Scarlioni by hurling a lamp at Scarlioni’s head and striking him unconscious. The abrupt assault disrupts the Doctor’s methodical exchange with the Count, …
The Doctor discovers six hidden Mona Lisas behind wooden doors in the Count’s secret room, confirming the Scarlionis’ plan to replace the Louvre’s painting with a seventh forgery. Duggan scoffs …