The Tardis lands on the planet Dido, which The Doctor claims to have visited before. Ian and Barbara, while out exploring the cave that the Tardis has landed in, are menaced and later attacked by the alien creature Koquillion on the ledge of a cliff. Barbara falls off the cliff during the attack, but Ian is able to beat off Koquillion's attack and return to the Tardis to elicit The Doctor's help.
Barbara makes her way to a crashed spaceship that was seen earlier in the episode. There, she finds a teenage girl by the name of Vicki. Vicki and Bennett, who appears to be crippled by his injuries, are all that is left of the crew of the spaceship. The crew are kept as virtual prisoners in the ship by Koquillion, who claims that the natives of Dido would kill them if not for his protection. A rescue ship is on the way to rescue both Vicki and Bennett.
Ian and The Doctor make their way out of the cave and to the spaceship. Once there, it's revealed that Koquillion and Bennett are one and the same, as Bennett is using the ruse to cover up his crimes of murdering not only the entire spaceship crew but also the native Didoans. A surprise appearance by a couple of native Didoans, who apparently were not all dead and Koquillion/Bennett is defeated. Vicki joins the Tardis crew, as the Didoans prevent the rescue ship from landing.
Despite what sounds like an interesting story, the reality is that The Rescue simply exists to introduce us to the new companion Vicki. The whole Koquillion/Bennett twist is something I could see coming from a mile away, and truthfully it just isn't that interesting. The surprise appearance by the native Didoans seems to come out of nowhere, a convenient way for the writers to get out of a tight spot that they had written themselves into.
The only two things that I found worth taking from The Rescue are these - at two episodes it doesn't take long to get through. The other is, as it turns out, the wonderful addition to the Tardis crew in the person of Vicki.
