Tonight we wish to begin examining the sad story of one of the Doctor's companions, Adric. You may already know the Doctor encountered an E-Space phenomenon while answering a summons to return Romana to Gallifrey. It is thought they were purposely avoiding a return to Gallifrey, especially as Romana chose not long after to completely shirk her responsibility to return to Gallifrey.
They come across an inhabited planet, on which lived a small confused society of primitive humanoids. They had forgotten their history and of course were unable to consult their timestream to remember their nature. The planet has a curious cyclic change lasting many hundreds of years, to which the humanoids had adapted very well. When the cycle comes full circle and the planet becomes uninhabitable in their humanoid form, their bodies mutate so they may live under water. A very interesting and fascinating form of life.
Unfortunately the poor humanoids had forgotten about this cycle, and instead fought against their already mutated bretheren.
To his credit the Doctor manages to instruct the Alzarians in their true nature. They had spent generations building a space craft with which to escape their planet, but in forgetting about the cycle of change they had forgotten how to fly the space craft. The Doctor taught them all this so they could fly their craft away from Alzarius, pursuing their dream of living elsewhere.
The documentary we found presents The Deciders, the Alzarian leadership council, as benevolent if dictatorial leaders. Many of these documentaries we've found about The Doctor pits him against authoritarian leaders. This seems to be in The Doctor's nature, if one is to go by his visits to Gallifrey. In this documentary, as in many others about The Doctors, his actions undermine of the authority of The Deciders.
The wisdom of the Council says that events like this changes the time stream of societies and civilizations. We all know that small changes can cause huge changes in the time stream. Yet the Doctor eschews the policies of the Council, and meddles with society after society. He makes a good speech every so often about not meddling, yet he does, time and again. It is sad stories such as the fate of the Alzarians which give one reason to wonder. Is it better for that society to live out the time stream in whiich they're trapped, or is it better to nudge them into a more healthy time stream?
Unfortunately for Adric he became enchanted with the Doctor, as do many other who choose to accompany him. Unlike many this ended badly for Adric as we will see in future episodes.