Evil space god wants to redecorate the universe with pyramids. The Doctor is not amused. Sarah Jane is not impressed. Mummies are very, very confused.
Short Synopsis
The Doctor and Sarah Jane stumble into a Victorian estate plagued by ancient Egyptian artifacts and some very stiff walking mummies. Turns out, it’s all the work of Sutekh the Destroyer, a being so powerful and so cranky that even Time Lords whisper his name while hiding under the bed.
Extended Storyline
The adventure begins when the Doctor, scarf trailing behind him like an aristocratic comet, detects a disturbance in the space-time continuum and lands in 1911 England. There, he and Sarah find Professor Marcus Scarman’s old mansion, which is giving off definite “haunted house but with hieroglyphics” vibes.
Inside, archaeologist Dr. Warlock (no, not that Warlock, sadly) and a butler with a permanent expression of “I didn’t sign up for this” are dealing with the fact that Scarman has gone missing in Egypt. Or rather, he went digging in a pyramid and is now possessed by Sutekh, the last of the Osirans — ancient alien beings the Egyptians once mistook for gods. Sutekh isn’t your friendly neighborhood deity, though. He’s the embodiment of destruction, imprisoned by his own people, and frankly bored out of his cosmic skull.
Scarman (now reanimated, desiccated, and fully evil) shows up back at the estate, controlled by Sutekh. He’s accompanied by robot mummies, which are less terrifying ancient corpses and more “hulking bodyguards wrapped in Tesco’s toilet paper aisle.” These mummies are strong enough to crush people like soda cans, but also slow enough that Sarah could probably jog away in platform boots if she wasn’t too busy screaming.
The Doctor, of course, is familiar with Sutekh’s reputation. How familiar? He immediately goes into Gothic Overdrive™, delivering ominous lines like: “Your evil is my good. I am Sutekh the Destroyer!” (Okay, that one was Sutekh himself, but the Doctor quotes plenty of “we’re all doomed” material with equal relish.) The Time Lord is genuinely rattled, which makes the audience think: “Oh no. If he’s scared, we’re really in trouble.”
Sutekh, meanwhile, is monologuing through Marcus Scarman like he’s Alexa gone malevolent. He wants to be freed from his prison inside a pyramid on Mars, and he’s using Scarman, the robot mummies, and some nifty Osiran tech to make it happen. His end goal? Destroy absolutely everything. Not rule it. Not enslave it. Just straight-up nuke the lot.
Sarah Jane does her best to keep up, though she spends most of the time alternating between getting captured and getting sarcastic. Highlights include her dressing up in Victorian garb and declaring she looks like “a rejected extra from Upstairs, Downstairs” (not verbatim, but you get the vibe).
Things escalate as the Doctor is captured, strapped to a chair, and subjected to Sutekh’s “mind probe” — which looks suspiciously like a very shiny hairdryer strapped to Tom Baker’s head. The Doctor nearly collapses under Sutekh’s sheer force of boredom and evil, but manages to survive long enough to plan a counterstrike.
Cue plenty of running around corridors (this time disguised as Egyptian tombs), fights with robot mummies, and lots of the Doctor scowling into the middle distance about the futility of existence. Eventually, the Doctor sabotages Sutekh’s plan by delaying a missile launch (the Osiran version of “delete system32”) just long enough to stop the pyramid on Mars from being blown open.
The result: Sutekh, still trapped in his cosmic prison, is dragged down a “time corridor” at the speed of eternity — which is to say, very slowly and with lots of echoing sound effects. Marcus Scarman collapses into dust, the mummies shut down, and the estate returns to its default setting of “creepy but at least not apocalyptic.”
The Doctor, still shaken, delivers the most cheerful of closing lines: “Sutekh is defeated.” Then he slumps back into the TARDIS like a man who just realized he forgot to pay his utility bill.