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Mawdryn Undead is the third serial of the 20th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was originally broadcast in four twice weekly parts on BBC One from 1 to 9 February 1983.
The serial is set in an English boarding school and a spaceship above the Earth in 1977 and 1983. In the serial, the scientist Mawdryn (David Collings), whose people on board the ship have been afflicted by a mutation that constantly causes their bodies to renew themselves, seeks to die using the regenerative abilities of the alien time traveller the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) to stop this process and allow them to die.
Mawdryn Undead is the first of three loosely connected serials in which the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall) attempts to compel the alien Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson) to kill the Doctor, and it introduces Turlough as a regular character. Nicholas Courtney is reintroduced as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who was last seen in the series in the 1975 serial Terror of the Zygons.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, Tegan Jovanka and Nyssa find the TARDIS stuck in the warp ellipse of a starliner trapped in time. Materialising aboard, they find a transmat device with separate endpoints to Earth in 1977 and 1983 is creating the interference. Turlough arrives from the 1983 transmat, feigning lack of comprehension of the situation. The Doctor instructs Nyssa and Tegan to stay aboard the TARDIS while he returns with Turlough to 1983 to fix that transmat point, hoping it will allow the TARDIS to escape. Instead, the TARDIS materialises in 1977 at Turlough's school. Coincidentally the Doctor's old friend from UNIT, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, is now a maths teacher at the school and is surprised to learn some trauma in the past has made him lose the memories of the last few years; as a result, he does not remember the Doctor at all. However, as the Doctor talks about Tegan, about himself and his former companions, the Brigadier starts regaining some memories.
In 1977, Nyssa and Tegan leave the TARDIS and find a horribly disfigured man in the transmat capsule, who claims to be the Doctor in the midst of a regeneration. They seek out help from the younger Brigadier, and the "Doctor" urges all three to return with him to the starliner via the TARDIS. In 1983, the Doctor detects the TARDIS' movement, and he, Turlough, and the older Brigadier also return to the starliner via the transmat. The Doctor regroups with his companions; realising two versions of the Brigadier are aboard, he instructs them all to keep the two separated, as, should they touch, it could release a potentially catastrophic energy discharge due to the Blinovitch limitation effect.
The figure posing as the Doctor is forced to reveal himself as Mawdryn, one of several scientists aboard the liner who were trying to discover the Time Lord secret of regeneration. Their experiments failed, and he and his fellow scientists have become immortal in this painful state and seek to die, but the Doctor determines the only way to do so is to give up his remaining regenerations. He attempts to leave with his companions, but finds that Nyssa and Tegan suffer the same affliction as Mawdryn, ageing and de-ageing rapidly once in the Time Vortex, and quickly returns to the ship. The Doctor agrees to give up his regenerations and prepares to transfer this energy, with the Brigadier at the machine controls. Meanwhile, the Brigadier from 1977, having been left alone, bursts in upon them. The two Brigadiers reach out to touch, and the flash of energy occurs just at the right moment before the Doctor gives up his regenerations, ending Mawdryn's and his colleagues' lives as requested, restoring Nyssa and Tegan, and saving the Doctor. The younger Brigadier passes out from shock, and the Doctor suspects this was the trauma that caused him to lose his memory. The TARDIS crew return the Brigadiers to their proper times, and the Doctor accepts Turlough's request to join his crew, unaware of the Black Guardian's influence.
David Collings, who played Mawdryn, also appeared in the Fourth Doctor serials Revenge of the Cybermen (1975) as Vorus and The Robots of Death (1977) as Poul, and would himself play an alternative Doctor in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who Unbound audio play, Full Fathom Five. Angus MacKay previously played Borusa in The Deadly Assassin (1976). John Nathan-Turner felt that Mark Strickson's blond hair didn't stand out well enough from Peter Davison's blond hair. He initially asked Strickson to shave his head, but when Strickson declined, Turner decided that Strickson's hair should be dyed red.
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