Meglos is the second serial of the 18th season of the science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 27 September to 18 October 1980.
As the Doctor heads off to find Zastor, Romana stumbles across dangerous vegetation – deadly bell plants – and then the Gaztaks, waiting patiently for Meglos to return to their spaceship.
When the Tigellans discover that the Dodecahedron is missing and sound the alarm, Meglos hides away, but the real Doctor arrives at the same time and is accused of theft.
Zastor and Deedrix are arrested in a Deon coup, with other Savants expelled to the hostile surface of the planet, while the Doctor himself is prepared for sacrifice to Ti.
In a subsequent mix-up, Romana overpowers Caris, letting Meglos escape and reunite with the Gaztaks, who have staged an attack on the city to rescue him.
Lexa realises her mistake but does not live long to regret it when she is shot dead while protecting Romana from a wounded Gaztak who was left behind.
Grugger’s ship touches down on Zolfa-Thura and Meglos wastes no time in restoring the Dodecahedron to full size and placing it at a spot equidistant between the Screens.
He reveals his race perished in a civil war over the control of the crystal, which can power a weapon strong enough to destroy planets.
[3] This story features the only use in Doctor Who of a camera-linking system known as Scene-Sync that allowed the use of non-static shots of characters superimposed onto a miniature set.
The exact scale motion was achieved by trial and error, involving minute adjustments to the voltage delivered to the slave camera's motors.
An audiobook of the Target novelisation was released by BBC Audio on 1 July 2021 read by Jon Culshaw and John Leeson.
Paddy Kingsland and Peter Howell's incidental music for the serial was released as part of the compilation album Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 4: Meglos & Full Circle in 2002.