007 – The Sensorites
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor meets the Sensorites
Cast
Doctor William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman) Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright) William Russell (Ian Chesterton)
Others Stephen Dartnell — John Ilona Rodgers — Carol Lorne Cossette — Maitland John Bailey — Commander Martyn Huntley — First Human Giles Phibbs — Second Human Ken Tyllsen — First Sensorite/First Scientist Joe Greig — Second Sensorite/Second Scientist/Warrior Peter Glaze — Third Sensorite/City Administrator Arthur Newall — Fourth Sensorite Eric Francis — First Elder Bartlett Mullins — Second Elder Anthony Rogers, Gerry Martin — Sensorites
Production
Writer	Peter R. Newman
Director	Mervyn Pinfield (episodes 1-4) Frank Cox (episodes 5,6)
Script editor	David Whitaker
Producer	Verity Lambert Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	G
Series	Season 1
Length	6 episodes, 25 minutes each
Date started	20 June 1964
Date ended	1 August 1964
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Aztecs The Reign of Terror

The Sensorites is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from June 20 to August 1, 1964. The story is notable for its demonstration of Susan's telepathy and references to the Doctor and her home planet.

[edit] Plot

The TARDIS travellers land on a moving spaceship and find the crew apparently dead. However, one of the crew members, Captain Maitland, regains consciousness and Ian Chesterton fully revives him and another woman, Carol Richmond. These two tell the travellers that they are on an exploration mission from Earth and are orbiting Sense-Sphere. However, its inhabitants, the Sensorites, refuse to let them leave the orbit. The Sensorites visit and stop the travellers from leaving, while sending them on a collision course, which the Doctor diverts. The travellers then meet John (whose mind has been broken by the Sensorites) and find out that he is Carol's fiancé.

Returning to plague the crew, the Sensorites freeze Carol and Maitland once more. The Doctor breaks Maitland's mental conditioning, but cannot help John. Susan's telepathic mind is flooded with the many voices of the Sensorites who remain scared of the humans and are trying to communicate with her. Meanwhile, The Doctor works out that the Sensorites attacked the human craft because John, a mineralogist, had discovered a vast supply of molybdenum on Sense-Sphere. Susan reports that the Sensorites want to make contact with travellers, asking the crew to go aboard Sense-sphere and reveal that a previous Earth expedition caused them great misery. The Doctor refuses but Susan, under duress, agrees and begins to leave the ship.

The Doctor deduces that the Sensorites need plenty of light, so Ian reduces the lighting on the ship, rendering the Sensorites helpless and rescuing Susan. The Doctor then asks the Sensorites to return his lock and is invited to go to Sense-Sphere to speak with the leader. Susan, Ian, Carol and John join him while Barbara and Maitland stay behind. John is promised that his condition will be reversed. On their journey to Sense-Sphere, the party learn that the previous visitors from Earth exploited Sense-Sphere for its wealth, then argued. Half of them stole the spacecraft, which exploded on take-off.

The Sensorite Council is divided over the issue of inviting the party to Sense-Sphere: some of the councillors plot to kill them on arrival, but some believe that the humans can help with the disease that is currently killing many Sensorites. Their first plot is foiled by the other Sensorites, but they continue to plot in secret. The humans are not told of the first plot, and John and Carol are cured. In the main conference room, Ian starts coughing violently and collapses. Suffering from the disease that has blighted the Sensorites, he is told that he will soon die.

It turns out that he was actually poisoned by drinking water from the general aqueduct. The Doctor finds the problematic aqueduct and starts work with the Sensorite scientists. The plotting Sensorites capture and then impersonate a Sensorite leader, the Second Elder and steal the new cure, before it is given to Ian, but a new one is made easily and Ian is cured.

Meanwhile, investigating the aqueduct, the Doctor finds strange noises and darkness. He finds and removes deadly nightshade (the cause of the poisoning), but on going back, meets an unseen monster. Susan and Ian find him unconscious with a ripped coat, but otherwise unharmed. On being recovered, he tells of his suspicion that some Sensorites are plotting to kill them. The plotting Sensorites kill the Second Elder and one of them replaces him in his position.

John tells the others that he knows the lead plotter, but he is now too powerful, so The Doctor and Ian go down to the aqueduct to find the poisoners. Their weapons and map were tampered with and are useless.

Elsewhere, a mysterious assailant abducts Carol and forces her to write saying she has left for the ship. Neither Susan, John or Barbara believe this so they go to investigate and find her imprisoned. Susan, John and Barbara overpower the guard and release Carol. On finding out about the tampered tools, they go into the aqueduct to rescue the Doctor and Ian. The leader discovers the plotters a little while later.

Ian and the Doctor discover that the monsters were actually the survivors of the previous Earth mission, and they had been poisoning the Sensorites. Their deranged Commander leads them to the surface, where they are arrested by the Sensorites. The Doctor and his party return to the city, pleading clemency for the poisoners. The leader of the Sensorites agrees and sends them back with Maitland, John and Carol to Earth, for treatment for madness.

[edit] Continuity

• Susan's description of her home planet as having a burnt orange sky and silver leaved trees is echoed by a similar description of the planet by the Tenth Doctor to Martha Jones in "Gridlock". It also bears similarities to the description given to Grace in the 1996 telemovie.
• In the Doctor Who Confidential episode, You've Got the Look (released to accompany "The Impossible Planet"), Russell T Davies said that he wanted the Ood to resemble the Sensorites, and that he likes to think they come from a planet near the Sense Sphere. This was later confirmed in the Tenth Doctor episode "Planet of the Ood", in which the Doctor visits the Ood's homeworld (the Ood-Sphere) and mentions that he once visited the Sense-Sphere in the same system.
• Susan's experiences here carry over into the Big Finish Productions audio story Transit of Venus. It takes place directly after this story, despite the fact that the ending of The Sensorites seems to lead directly into The Reign of Terror. However, this inconsistency is explained in the audio play.
• One of the creatures in the episode Kidnap attacks the Doctor, and he states later that it attacked him under his heart - suggesting that he has only one heart. The Doctor's having two hearts did not appear in the series until much later.

[edit] Susan's telepathy

• This episode is known for Susan's use of telepathy. The earlier conception of Susan's character spun her as a less ordinary girl who had unusual abilities, of which Susan's ability in this story may been seen as one of the few remnants. At the end of the story, Susan loses her telepathy because according to the Sensorites, the Sense Sphere "has an extraordinary number of ultra-high frequencies, so I won't be able to go on using thought transference." However, the Doctor says that she has a gift and "when we get home to our own place, I think we should try to perfect it."
• The spin-off media have more explicitly clarified that Time Lords have limited telepathic abilities.

[edit] Production

• Jacqueline Hill does not appear in episodes 4 and 5, though she was still credited on-screen.
• Designer Raymond Cusick used almost all curves in his sets for the Sense Sphere, feeling that this would give a more alien look.

[edit] Cast notes

• Arthur Newall also appeared as a Sensorite in this story, not a Dalek as is commonly believed.
• Stephen Dartnell appears as John. He had previously appeared as Yartek in The Keys of Marinus.
• John Bailey, who plays the Commander, returned to the series to play Edward Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks and Sezom in The Horns of Nimon.

[edit] Broadcast and reception

The third episode was postponed by one week following the overrun of sports programme Grandstand.

[edit] In print

The serial was novelised for Target Books by Nigel Robinson in February 1987 as Doctor Who: The Sensorites.

Doctor Who book
The Sensorites
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	118
Writer	Nigel Robinson
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Nick Spender
ISBN	0-491-03455-5
Release date	February 1987 (Hardback) 16 July 1987 (Paperback)
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

[edit] VHS, CD and DVD releases

• A restored and VidFIREd version of this story was released on VHS in November 2002.
• In July 2008, the original soundtrack was released on CD in the UK, with linking narration provided by William Russell.
• The story is scheduled to be released on DVD in the UK on 23 January 2012 ^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Sensorites at BBC Online
• The Sensorites at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The Sensorites at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Sensorites on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki

[edit] Reviews

• The Sensorites reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Sensorites reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

[edit] Target novelisation

• On Target — The Sensorites

[hide]

Series Doctor Who DVDs Country United Kingdom Release date 16 January 2012 No. of discs 1 Rating Uk dvd rating 12.png Original RRP £13.27 Subtitles English Region 2 PAL Aspect ratio 16:9 Running time 60 mins approx Cover blurb It's Christmas Eve, 1938, when Madge Arwell comes to the aid of an injured Spaceman Angel as she cycles home. He promises to repay her kindness - all she has to do is make a wish. Three years later, a devastated Madge escapes war-torn London with her two children for a dilapidated house in Dorset. She is crippled with grief at the news her husband has been lost over the channel, but determined to give Lily and Cyril the best Christmas ever. The Arwells are surprised to be greeted by a madcap caretaker whose mysterious Christmas gift leads them into a magical wintry world. Here, Madge will learn how to be braver than she ever thought possible. And that wishes can come true... Special features Users who have this • The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe Prequel • The Best of The Doctor • The Best of The Companions • The Best of the Monsters

Reprinted from Wiki with thanks and respect

A UNIT soldier walks, as if in a trance, through the woods, his right arm twitching spasmodically. Nearby, the TARDIS materialises, and the Doctor and Sarah step out. The Doctor explains that the coordinates were set for Sarah's time but the linear coordinates were off, so they could be miles from London. In any case, Sarah is glad to be back on Earth. The Doctor detects an odd reading of energy or radiation nearby.

The Doctor and Sarah meet a group of four men in white suits and opaque helmets. When the Doctor asks them for directions, they start shooting at them with their index fingers. The Doctor and Sarah duck and run, with the four in pursuit. Sarah slips down a hillside and clings to a cliff ledge. The Doctor helps her up; at that point, they see the soldier, jerkily making his way towards the cliff's edge. The Doctor shouts at him to stop, but he pays no heed, running right over the cliff and falling to his death.

The Doctor searches the body, finding a wallet full of shiny, freshly minted coins, all dated the same year. They also spot a casket-shaped pod nearby, which the Doctor finds familiar. Before he can identify it further, shots ring out: the white-suited men have found them again. They run once more through the countryside, avoiding their pursuers and reaching a village, which Sarah recognises as Devesham, which lies about a mile from a Space Defence Station.

The village, however, is deathly quiet, and seems unpopulated. The Doctor decides to try the local pub, the Fleur-de-Lys, but it is also empty, and the Doctor finds the same freshly minted coins in the register. Sarah then spots the white suits coming down the street, accompanied by the "dead" soldier. A Ford Transit pick-up truck arrives, carrying what seem to be villagers, all in a trance-like state. They are helped off the vehicle by the white suits, and distribute themselves around the village. Mr Morgan, the landlord of the pub, enters it along with several other people while Sarah and the Doctor hide in the store room. The villagers take their seats silently, waiting motionless until the clock strikes eight, when they suddenly come to life, acting normally.

The Doctor intends to get to the Space Defence Station and contact UNIT. He leaves, telling Sarah to meet him at the TARDIS if anything goes wrong. However, the "dead" soldier finds her in the store room and questions her. Morgan suggests that Sarah might be part of "the test". But when Sarah asks what test, he tells Sarah that she should go.

Outside, Sarah hides behind the lorry, observing one of the white suits turn around. Behind the opaque visor is nothing but a slab of plastic and electronics. Sarah runs for the woods, reaching the TARDIS. She spots a similar pod just next to the time machine and goes to examine it, leaving the TARDIS key in the lock. Suddenly, the TARDIS dematerialises without her, and as Sarah is still trying to understand why, a hand reaches out from the pod. Startled, Sarah sees a man lying inside, but when she goes closer, he grabs her around the throat. She breaks free and runs.

At the Defence Station, the Doctor asks a soldier on guard where the command officer is, but the soldier just stares ahead, unresponsive. Also inside the building, Senior Defence Astronaut Guy Crayford is addressed by a disembodied voice. The voice, named Styggron, tells him that there is a random "unit" within the complex and orders him to check.

The Doctor enters an office marked with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's name, but it is empty. Crayford enters, and points a gun on him. The Doctor introduces himself as UNIT's scientific advisor. Crayford has heard of him, but as the Brigadier is in Geneva, and Colonel Faraday is in command, there is no one to confirm the Doctor's identity; he could be an impostor. Before Crayford can have the Doctor taken to detention, the Doctor flips the desk over and runs. However, despite making it outside, he is recaptured. Sarah sees this and sneaks into the building, going to the Doctor's cell and unlocks the door, unaware that from behind a wall a stony alien face is observing them.

Styggron contacts Crayford again, complaining about a second random unit. Crayford identifies this random units as the Doctor and Sarah. At that moment, the alarm sounds indicating the Doctor's escape. Crayford sends his UNIT soldiers to stop them. Hiding in a storage cupboard, the Doctor tells Sarah about Crayford. She replies that it is impossible: Crayford was in deep space while testing the XK-5 Space Raider when it vanished, presumed destroyed. The Doctor and Sarah venture out to find Sergeant Benton standing in the reception area, who points a pistol at them. Styggron wants the Doctor captured alive. When Crawford cancels the kill order, Benton becomes dizzy, giving the Doctor and Sarah a chance to run away. Crayford orders Harry Sullivan to cordon off the perimeter road.

The two decide to return to the village and warn London, while being pursued by tracker dogs. Sarah twists her ankle while running through the woods and this slows her down. The Doctor hides Sarah in a tree, taking her scarf to draw the dogs away. He then hides in a stream, the dogs losing his trail. Unfortunately, when the soldiers turn back, they spot Sarah, and capture her. Styggron tells Crayford to locate, but not seize the Doctor. He has other plans for him.

Meanwhile, in an alien-looking room, Sarah is strapped down to a table. Harry tells her it is no use to struggle, and under Styggron's order, commences the scan. In the village, the Doctor finds the telephones are not working. He meets Morgan, who tells him the lines are down after a gale. Styggron speaks to another of his kind, Chedaki, who feels that the time for experiments are over, but Styggron insists that they must confirm their techniques are flawless if they are to conquer worlds other than Earth. Styggron contacts Crayford and tells him to commence the final test.

In the pub, the Doctor finds more oddities: an unused dart board, plastic horse brass on the wall and a tear-off calendar with only one date on every page - Friday 6 July. The telephone rings, and the call is for the Doctor. It is Sarah, who tells the Doctor she was captured but managed to escape. She asks the Doctor to meet her by the Village shop and to be careful of the robots. He hangs up the call, then finds that the telephone has stopped working again. The Doctor meets Sarah, who explains how she escaped. The Doctor remarks on the providence of her finding the only telephone in the village that worked, and believes they are being tested to find out how smart they are.

He decides to take Sarah to the TARDIS and use the radio there. However, the TARDIS is gone. The Doctor is puzzled: the ship is not programmed to auto-operate, unless... he asks Sarah for her TARDIS key, and when she claims she has lost it, the Doctor tells her she never had it. When Sarah put the key in the lock, she released the TARDIS's pause control and it continued its journey to Earth. This is not Earth, this is not a real forest, and she is not the real Sarah. Moreover, the real Sarah wasn't wearing a scarf, which the Doctor took off to draw the dogs away. The Doctor grabs the duplicate by the shoulders and demands to know where Sarah is. The duplicate pulls free, but falls to the ground, her face popping open and revealing the electronics underneath.

The android Sarah rises to its feet and starts to fire its pistol at the Doctor's retreating form. Chedaki tells Styggron that it was a foolish experiment. The Doctor could undo their plans. Styggron dismisses this; both the village and the Doctor will be destroyed by a matter dissolving bomb. The real Sarah is being kept alive so Styggron can test the virus he intends to use to cleanse the Earth of human life. All the while, Sarah is feigning unconsciousness and listening. When the coast is clear, she gets up and sneaks away.

The Doctor watches the pick-up drive into the village and evacuate the androids to the Kraal base. The Doctor is grabbed from behind by Styggron, who gets two white suits to tie him up while the Kraal places the bomb at the Doctor's feet. Luckily, Sarah too has made it back to the village, and uses the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to cut his bonds. With seconds to spare, they run into the base and shut the door, as the village dissolves into a wasteland.

However, the two are surrounded by androids, who escort them to a cell. The Doctor tells Sarah that he should have realised — the radiation levels he picked up when they landed were those of Oseidon, the Kraal planet. The levels are increasing and the planet will soon be uninhabitable, which is why the Kraals are invading Earth. The duplicated village and their androids were a training ground.

Crayford enters the cell and tells the Doctor that it is all for the best. Soon, the Kraals will send his ship back by space-time warp so he can make a normal landing. He has recently established radio contact with Earth, and fed them a story of how his ship was trapped in an orbit around Jupiter and he survived by rationing his supplies and recycling his water. The world's attention focused on his landing, the space shells containing the androids will be taken for meteorites, who will emerge and pave the way for the main invasion fleet. He is helping the Kraals because while Earth left him for dead, they rescued his ship and reconstructed his body. The Kraals only want to survive, and have also promised him no humans will be harmed as long as they obey.

Styggron gets "Harry" to place a drop of the virus in a jug of water to be taken to the cell. Meanwhile, although the sonic screwdriver is useless on the door, the Doctor has managed to remove a floor plate, intending to use the wiring below to electrocute their android guard. "Harry" enters with the water, and also to take the Doctor away. Before he goes, he tells Sarah not to waste the water and mentioned it is very good electrolyte.

The Doctor is strapped down to the Kraal analysis table which will copy all his knowledge and experience. Despite what Styggron has told Crayford, he reveals that does intend genocide. Earth's resources are too limited to be wasted on an "inferior species". The virus, distributed by androids, will wipe the Earth clean in three weeks, then burn itself out. Styggron will then signal the invasion fleet. Styggron leaves the machine to do its work, and when it finishes, the stimulation will make the Doctor's head explode.

Sarah rigs the wiring beneath the cell floor, then sets a small fire to lure the android guard in. He steps in the puddle of water, and is electrocuted when Sarah applies the power cable. She makes her way to the Doctor and turns off the scan. She helps the disorientated Time Lord out of the base, heading for Crayford's rocket before it takes off. The rocket is launched, and the G-forces start to crush them.

Sarah blacks out, but is awakened by the Doctor. He tells her that was nothing; there is a more dangerous ride ahead. Before the rocket lands, the pods will be ejected, and the Doctor and Sarah will ride two of them to Earth to warn the real Defence Station, although he cannot guarantee they will survive the trip down. As they talk, neither notices a nearby pod open slightly to reveal an android Doctor. On Earth, Matthews at the Defence Station's scanner room picks up Crayford's rocket. Grierson, the man in charge, informs Colonel Faraday. Meanwhile, having found the TARDIS in the woods near Devesham, Benton and Harry have been searching for the Doctor and Sarah, but to no avail. Benton is worried, as he has never known the Doctor to leave the TARDIS key in its lock.

Faraday welcomes Crayford home on the radio, but the signal is broken up by the "meteor shower" of pods which, unusually, slow down as they enter the atmosphere. Some of the pods land in a nearby field, and one opens up to reveal the Doctor. However, he is unable to find Sarah. Sarah, having landed elsewhere, finds the TARDIS in the woods. As she looks around, the Doctor taps her on the shoulder. However, this Doctor is an android, and behind it a pod opens to disgorge another Sarah replica. The real Sarah runs for it. The XK-5 re-establishes contact and comes in for a landing. Harry and Faraday head for the rocket, not knowing that Styggron is there with Crayford.

The real Doctor enters the Station, and recognises the "dead" soldier. Showing him a pass, the Doctor tells the soldier that if he sees the Doctor again today he is to report it to him immediately. The Doctor goes to the scanner room, leaving the soldier puzzled. When Benton tells him where Harry and Faraday are, the Doctor contacts them on the radio and urges them not to enter the rocket. He will meet them at the lift.

While the Doctor gives Grierson some instructions for modifying the radar dish, an android Matthews has incapacitated Benton and introduced an android replacement. Grierson says that if the Doctor points the dishes down here, it will jam every piece of electronic equipment for miles. Faraday returns to the scanner room, demanding an explanation. The Doctor tells them about the Kraal invasion. However, the Doctor is too late: Harry and Faraday have been replaced, and the android Doctor is pointing a gun at him. He slams the door in the android's face and leaps through a window. Outside, he meets Sarah. The Doctor tells Sarah their only chance is to stop the androids before they take over the complex, and runs back towards the scanner room, bluffing his way past "Benton" by posing as his duplicate. Sarah climbs up the rocket towards the real Harry and Styggron.

Grierson finishes his modifications, but is shot in the shoulder by the android Doctor before he can turn on the power. The android is about to shoot the original when Crayford enters, saying that Styggron promised no killing. The "Doctor" calls him a fool, and tells him about the virus. Crayford cannot believe this, but the real Doctor tells him that his rocket was actually hijacked by the Kraal, and they did not reconstruct but merely brainwashed him. Realising the truth, Crayford rushes out, distracting the android long enough for the Doctor to make his move. In the struggle, the Doctor manages to activate the power to the radar, jamming all the androids in mid-step.

In the rocket, Sarah unties Harry and Faraday. Styggron enters, holding a ray gun on them, but Crayford appears and attacks him. The two grapple, and Styggron shoots Crayford. The Doctor makes his own entrance, punching the Kraal, who falls on the vial of virus, cracking it open. Styggron shoots the Doctor before he dies. Sarah is horrified, but the real Doctor shows up — he had programmed his duplicate to distract Styggron. As proof, the android disintegrates into its component parts.

Sarah and the Doctor make their way back to the TARDIS. Sarah says she is going to take a taxi home, but when the Doctor offers to take her home instead, she smiles, "How can I refuse?" The two enter the ship and it vanishes.

[edit] Continuity

• This story marks the last appearances of John Levene (Sergeant Benton) and Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan) in the series. The characters were mentioned (but did not appear) in Mawdryn Undead (1983). Harry was said to be working with NATO and doing something "hush-hush at Porton Down". Benton was said to have left the army and become a used car salesman.
• This story also marks the first appearance of The Doctor's grey coat, with its black elbow patches. This version of his costume would alternate with others for the next couple of seasons.

[edit] Production

• Working titles for this story included The Kraals, The Kraal Invasion, and The Enemy Within.
• Location filming for the Kraal-replicated village of Devesham took place in East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire, a few miles from Didcot.
• The story was influenced by the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and would be the last Terry Nation script for Doctor Who for four years until his final script for the series, Destiny of the Daleks (1979). This was the first script by Nation since The Keys of Marinus (1964) that did not feature the Daleks.
• Nicholas Courtney was unavailable to play Lethbridge-Stewart, so his character was re-written as Colonel Faraday.
• Kenneth Williams briefly mentioned viewing episode two of this story in his diaries, writing on 29 November 1975 "Dr Who gets more and more silly."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Cast notes

• Ian Marter would continue his acting career and go on to write several Doctor Who novelisations, an original novel featuring Harry and an unused screenplay, Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, the last with Tom Baker. He died in 1986 from diabetes-related health complications.
• Milton Johns' had appeared as Benik in The Enemy of the World. His next appearance in Who would be as Castellan Kelner in The Invasion of Time.
• Only three Kraals are seen throughout the story. Styggron was played by Martin Friend. Marshal Chedaki, was played by Roy Skelton. The silent Kraal underling that appears in one scene was played by the series' long time stuntman Stuart Fell.

[edit] Outside reference

• Near the end of Part Three just after Sarah frees the Doctor from the machine, the Doctor tells her, "Listen! Once upon a time, there were three sisters, and they lived in the bottom of a treacle well! Their names are Olga, Masha, and Irina." This is a conflation of the dormouse's story in chapter seven of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Anton Chekhov's play, Three Sisters.

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in November 1978. The novelisation was later designated number 2 when Target opted to number the first seventy-three novelisations alphabetically; however no edition using the number was ever released.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Android Invasion
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	(Assigned 2, but never used)
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Roy Knipe
ISBN	0-426-20037-3
Release date	16 November 1978
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

DVD & VHS release

• This story was released on VHS in March 1995.
• The story has been announced for DVD release on 9 January 2012 alongside Invasion of the Dinosaurs, coupled as the "UNIT Files" box set. ^[4]

References

External links

• The Android Invasion at BBC Online
• The Android Invasion at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The Android Invasion at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• The Android Invasion reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The Android Invasion reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Android Invasion reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Android Invasion

reprinted from wikipedia with respect and thanks

Synopsis

The Doctor and Sarah arrive in 1970s London to find that it has been evacuated, due to the mysterious appearance of dinosaurs. It turns out that the dinosaurs are being brought to London via a time machine in order to further a plan to revert London to a pre-technological level.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive in a deserted London plagued by looters and lawlessness where UNIT is assisting with maintaining martial law. The regular army, headed by General Finch, has evacuated the entire city and issues a command that any looters in London will be shot on sight. The Doctor and Sarah are soon arrested on suspicion of being looters themselves but are identified from the photographs by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who is heading up the UNIT operation, and arranges that the pair are freed to help combat the monsters that have necessitated the evacuation of London. Dinosaurs have started appearing all over the city – but that is not all, as the Doctor comes across a medieval peasant from the days of King Richard, who disappears in a time eddy. It seems the dinosaurs have been present for several months, but nobody can account for their sudden appearance or the havoc they are causing. The British Government has been relocated to Harrogate during the crisis, and the army has taken charge to ensure an orderly evacuation and to try and maintain some sort of control in the city. The dinosaur appearances are various – pterodactyls, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex – but the creatures seem to vanish as mysteriously as they appear.

The Doctor ventures out around the city with a UNIT escort, hoping to learn more of the curious phenomenon, and they encounter a Stegosaurus moments before it disappears. He starts to suspect someone is deliberately bringing the dinosaurs to London – and in a hidden laboratory a pair of scientists, Butler and Professor Whitaker, are shown operating the Timescoop technology that is making the situation possible. They are being aided by Captain Mike Yates from UNIT, who is revealed to be recovering from a nervous breakdown caused by the events depicted in The Green Death. Mike feels the Doctor could help them achieve Operation Golden Age, but Whitaker is unconvinced, and tells Mike to sabotage the stun gun, which the Doctor is building for use on the dinosaurs. He does this, imperilling the Doctor when he encounters a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but the situation is saved and the creature is stunned and captured. Hours later, however, General Finch sets it free, evidently part of the conspiracy too.

Sarah Jane has meanwhile set off to gather her own evidence and meets with Sir Charles Grover, an ecologist MP who is acting as Minister with Special Responsibilities in London. She is drugged by him and when she wakes up is astounded to find herself on a vast spaceship. The crew include Mark, Adam and Ruth, all famed British minor celebrities who have adopted new aliases and lives. They tell her they en route for a New Earth where mankind can begin again, closer to nature. They left Earth three months earlier and the ship is one of a fleet that is carrying over two hundred people to a new life. Sarah is committed to the re-education programme to enable her to think like them.

The Doctor now focuses on more searches of London using his new vehicle, the Whomobile, as transport. Under Trafalgar Square tube station he finds the base used by Whitaker and Butler, but is scared away when they use a pterodactyl to defend their lair. When he returns with the Brigadier, the signs of occupation have been removed. Operation Golden Age is revealed to be a broad conspiracy containing Whitaker, Butler, Yates, Grover and Finch as its core co-ordinators. They have emptied London to enable it to revert to a more natural state, after which the people on the spaceships (in reality they are in vast bunkers and not in space at all) will be allowed out and enabled to repopulate a clean and free planet. Whitaker also works out how to reverse time, so that soon none of humanity apart from their own chosen specimens will ever have existed.

Finch tries to frame and discredit the Doctor, whom he knows will not support their plans, and the Doctor soon twigs that an over-zealous Yates is the UNIT mole. Sergeant Benton lets the Doctor escape, for which Finch threatens a court martial. The Doctor uses his freedom to track down more monsters, but when he is recaptured the Brigadier asserts his authority and takes the Doctor into UNIT custody rather than the regular army’s.

Sarah has meanwhile escaped from the fake spaceship having learnt its true nature, but is apprehended by Finch, who tracks her down and returns her to Whitaker’s custody. While she is away Mark works out that the ship is a fake too and exposes this to the other passengers, but he is not believed. When Sarah is returned to the ship she and Mark use the fake airlock to convince Ruth and the others of the depth of the deception

Shortly afterward Finch and Yates reveal their hands to the Doctor, Benton and the Brigadier, and reveal the nature of their plans. The Doctor and the Brigadier get away once more and head back to the base, evading dinosaurs en route, where they confront Grover and Whitaker. The duped environmentalists from the fake spaceship also appear, along with Sarah, and demand an explanation. In the ensuing fight Whitaker and Grover are transported back through the Timescoop to the Golden Age they sought to bring to modern Britain.

Back at UNIT HQ, the Brigadier confirms to the Doctor that the crisis is over, but there are still some human casualties to deal with. Finch will face a court martial while Yates is being offered the chance to resign and given extended sick leave. The Doctor reflects that people like Grover may have had good motivations in wanting to fight pollution and environmental degradation, but they took their schemes too far and endangered all mankind and its civilisation. He decides it is time for a holiday and offers to take Sarah Jane to the holiday planet of Florana.

[edit] Continuity

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2011)

• Sarah Jane Smith refers to her encounter with real dinosaurs in a conversation with Rose Tyler during the episode "School Reunion". The Seventh Doctor also mentions the events of this story to Ace in The Happiness Patrol.
• A clip on the website of The Sarah Jane Adventures refers to the events of this story as having been explained as mass hallucinations caused by a contaminated water supply.
• An alternative version of the events of this serial is mentioned in the Big Finish Doctor Who Unbound audio play Sympathy for the Devil.

[edit] Production

• Working titles for this story included Bridgehead from Space and Timescoop.
• The first episode has the story title contracted to Invasion in an attempt to conceal the central plot device. However this was undermined by the BBC listings magazine Radio Times who gave the full story title.
• In the original novelisation, no reference is made to the "Whomobile" and the Doctor uses a military motor bike with electronic scanning equipment attached to it.
• Malcolm Hulke protested against the use of the title Invasion of the Dinosaurs, preferring the original working title of Timescoop, and felt the contraction for the first episode was silly, especially because the Radio Times listing used the full title. In a response letter after transmission script editor Terrance Dicks pointed out that all the titles used for the project had originated in the Doctor Who production office. He agreed that the contraction to Invasion was a decision he now regretted but noted that "Radio Times are a law unto themselves".
• Locations used in London included: Westminster Bridge, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Haymarket, Covent Garden, Southall and Wimbledon Common

[edit] Missing Episodes & Archive

• All episodes of this story bar episode 1 exist on their original PAL colour master tapes, with the first episode only existing as a monochrome 16mm film print. There is a longstanding fan myth that the tape of episode 1 was erased by mistake, having been confused with an episode of the Patrick Troughton serial The Invasion. In reality, BBC Enterprises issued instructions to wipe all six episodes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs in August 1974, just six months after the story's transmission; for reasons unknown, however, only episode 1 was actually junked. As far as the BBC was concerned, the story had been wiped in its entirety; researchers for the 1976 documentary Whose Doctor Who found that none of the episodes was listed as existing in the BBC library.^[4]
• The surviving film recording of Episode 1 is the only telerecording of a Season 11 episode known to exist.
• A black-and-white film print exists of the film sequences from part one. This includes one scene of a scared scavenger stealing money from a dead milkman's satchel omitted from the transmitted version, this would have been part of the deserted London montage. The black-and-white prints were used as practice for the film editor to make cuts before they cut the colour negatives.
• Colour 35mm film sequences from Episode five also exist.
• Episode 3's first edit (also known in the BBC as a 71 edit) also exists, without sound effects or music on the soundtrack.

[edit] Cast notes

• John Bennett would later return to Doctor Who as Li H'sen Chang in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
• Peter Miles has also appeared in Doctor Who in other roles in Doctor Who and the Silurians and Genesis of the Daleks.
• Martin Jarvis had earlier appeared as Hilio in The Web Planet and would later appear as the Governor of Varos in Vengeance on Varos.
• Carmen Silvera had previously appeared in The Celestial Toymaker.

[edit] Reception

After the episodes were broadcast, many children viewers of the show complained that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was actually an Allosaurus.^[5]

Doctor Who: The Television Companion (by Howe and Walker, BBC Publishing, 1998) quotes a contemporary review (from a fanzine) that describes the dinosaur special effects thus: "After escaping they [the Doctor and Sarah] came up against the first dinosaur and, oh dear, shades of Basil Brush! A glove puppet nervously skiing about London streets didn't exactly fill me with fright..."

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in February 1976 as Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion. In 1993 it was reprinted with the title Doctor Who - Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The novelisation features a prologue about the dinosaurs and ends with the Doctor consulting the Book of Ezekiel to determine the final fate of the Golden Age time travellers. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by actor Martin Jarvis was released on CD in November 2007 by BBC Audiobooks.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	22
Writer	Malcolm Hulke
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0-426-10874-4
Release date	19 February 1976
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

[edit] VHS and DVD release

This was the final complete story to be released by BBC Worldwide on VHS, in 2003.

The story is to be released on DVD in the UK on 9 January 2012 alongside the 1975 Tom Baker story The Android Invasion, together forming the U.N.I.T Files box set.^[6] The DVD will feature a restored black-and-white version of Episode 1 as the default and also a 'best-endeavours' attempt at colour recovery of this episode as a branched-extra feature.^[7]

In contrast to other wiped colour episodes from the Pertwee era where the missing colour information had been inadvertently recorded on the surviving black and white film copies as a sequence of visual artifacts/dots or chroma dots, in the case of Episode 1 of this story this information was found to be incomplete, and only the red and green colour signal information was recoverable, requiring the missing blue signal information to be obtained via other means.

The new colour version of Episode 1 featured on the DVD thus employs approximated blue colour information, and although the outcome is not up to normal DVD quality, it gives an impression of what the episode would have looked like when originally broadcast.^[8]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Invasion of the Dinosaurs at BBC Online
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Fan reviews

• Invasion of the Dinosaurs reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Dinosaurs reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Dinosaurs

with thanks to the official bbc site

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
224 – "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe"
Doctor Who episode
Cast
Doctor

    Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)

Production
Writer     Steven Moffat
Director     Farren Blackburn[1]
Executive producer(s)    

    Steven Moffat
    Piers Wenger
    Caroline Skinner

[2]
Series     Specials (2011)
Length     60 min
Originally broadcast     25 December 2011[3]
Chronology
← Preceded by     Followed by →
"The Wedding of River Song"     Series 7

"The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which the Doctor visits Earth and an alien forest. The episode was shown in the United Kingdom on Christmas Day on BBC One,[4] BBC America in the United States[5] Space in Canada,[6] and on ABC1 in Australia.[7] It is the seventh Christmas special since the show's revival in 2005.

The episode features Claire Skinner, Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong. A sneak preview was aired on 18 November 2011 for Children in Need.[8]
Contents
 [hide]

    1 Plot
        1.1 Prequel
        1.2 Episode
        1.3 Continuity
    2 Production
        2.1 Cast notes
    3 References
    4 External links

[edit] Plot
[edit] Prequel

On 6 December, a prequel to the episode was released online.[9] The Doctor is seen on a spaceship holding a red button which, when he lets go, will cause the space ship to explode. While holding the button, he has phoned the TARDIS to speak to Amy Pond asking her to rescue him, although he does not have his co-ordinates. Amy cannot fly the TARDIS, and she is not on the TARDIS. The Doctor wishes Amy a Merry Christmas before letting go of the button, and the spaceship explodes.[10]
[edit] Episode

During the Christmas season of 1938, the Doctor finds himself on a damaged alien spacecraft in Earth's orbit. He escapes the exploding ship and the fall to Earth by rapidly donning an impact space suit, though in his haste, the helmet is put on backwards. On crashing to Earth, he is found by Madge Arwell, wife of Reg and mother of two children, Lily and Cyril. She helps the Doctor, stuck and unable to see while in the impact suit, to his TARDIS, and the Doctor promises to repay her for her kindness.

Three years later, during World War II, Reg is reported killed in action when the Lancaster Bomber he was piloting disappeared over the English Channel. Madge is told this via telegraph just before Christmas, but decides not to tell her children, hoping to keep their spirits up through the holiday. Madge and the children evacuate London to a relative's house in Dorset, where they are greeted by the Doctor, calling himself "the Caretaker"; Madge does not recognise him from their previous encounter.

The Doctor has prepared the house specially for the children and the holiday; though the children are pleased, Madge privately explains about Reg's death to the Doctor and insists he not overindulge the children. During the first night, Cyril is lured into opening a large glowing present under the Christmas tree, revealing a time portal to a snow-covered forest. The Doctor shortly discovers Cyril's absence and follows him with Lily; the two eventually track Cyril down to a strange lighthouse-like structure. Madge, finding her children missing, soon follows them into the forest, but is met by three miners in space suits from the planet Androzani Major.

At the lighthouse, Cyril is met by a humanoid creature made of wood; it places a simple band of metal around his head like a crown. Lily and the Doctor arrive, followed by another wood creature, but find that they have rejected Cyril as he is "weak", as is the Doctor. The Doctor concludes that the life forces of the trees in the forest are trying to escape through a living creature, the crown acting as an interface. Meanwhile, Madge, holding the miners at gunpoint, is taken back to their excavation walker and told that the forest of the planet they are on is scheduled to be melted by acid rain within minutes, killing anything within it. The miners are teleported away safely before the rain starts after helping Madge to locate where her children are.

Madge, using the little knowledge she knows of flying a plane from Reg, directs the walker to the lighthouse and safely reunites with her children as the acid rain starts. The wood creatures identify her as "strong", and the Doctor realises they consider her the "mothership", able to carry the life force safely. Donning the band, Madge absorbs the life force of the forest, allowing her to direct the top of the lighthouse as an escape pod away from the acid rain and into the time vortex. To get them home, the Doctor directs her to think of memories of home, allowing Madge to revisit her fond memories of Reg, shown on screens within the pod. She realises that she will have to recall the moment of Reg's death, but the Doctor forces her to continue to do so; Lily and Cyril come to learn the truth as they witness his last moments aboard the Lancaster bomber.

Soon, the escape pod safely leaves the time vortex, landing just outside the house in Dorset, and the life force of the forest have converted themselves to ethereal beings within the time vortex. The Doctor steps outside while Madge starts to explain Reg's death to Lily and Cyril, but he returns to interrupt her and to tell her to come outside. There stands Reg and his Lancaster; he had followed the bright light of the escape pod into the time vortex and came out safely along with the pod at Dorset. The family has a tearful reunion as the Doctor watches.

As Madge and her family turns to celebrate Christmas, the Doctor attempts to slip away, but Madge catches him, and as she sees the TARDIS realises that he is the man in the space suit from three years back. She insists on him staying for Christmas dinner, but when the Doctor reveals he has other friends out there that believe he is dead, Madge convinces him to go to see them at Christmas. The Doctor offers Madge his help if she ever needs it again.

Later, the Doctor arrives outside Amy and Rory's home, two years since he left them there. Amy pretends to be angry at him for leaving them the way he did, but explains that River Song told them about his faked death, and Rory reveals that they have been setting a place for him at their Christmas dinner table every year. Having remarked earlier in the episode how "humany-wumany" it is to cry because of happiness, the Doctor finds himself shedding a tear of happiness in reaction to Rory's remark, and grins in wonder, and then steps inside to join them for dinner.
[edit] Continuity

    The three tree harvesters are from Androzani Major in the year 5345, a planet already featured in the serial The Caves of Androzani.
    The Doctor also mentions the Forest of Cheem, which appeared in the Ninth Doctor episode The End of the World. He also mentioned that one of them fancied him, which was Jabe Ceth Ceth Jafe, who sacrificed her life for him.
    Amy Pond tells the Doctor that two years have passed since Lake Silencio ("The Impossible Astronaut"/"The Wedding of River Song").

[edit] Production
The Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre's preserved Lancaster bomber Just Jane, used in the programme

The BBC announced in September 2011 that production had started for the special and filming was due to be complete by mid October 2011.[11] However, filming was disrupted on 30 September due to a 24-hour protest at BBC Wales because of compulsory redundancies.[12] The story is partly inspired by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (from The Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis.[13] C. S. Lewis died the day before the very first episode of classic Doctor Who aired. Filming of some scenes involving Alexander Armstrong took place in and around the Lancaster bomber 'Just Jane' at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre on 3 October 2011.[14] External footage of the lighthouse building took place in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.[15]
[edit] Cast notes

Alexander Armstrong previously appeared in Doctor Who episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" as the voice of Mr Smith, an alien computer, his character from The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Arabella Weir previously appeared as an alternate incarnation of the Third Doctor in the Doctor Who Unbound audio drama Exile.[16]

Claire Skinner is placed in the opening titles instead of Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, whose appearance in the episode was not reported before broadcast. Gillan and Darvill are, however, credited above Skinner in the episode's end credits.
[edit] References

    ^ Golder, Dave (21 September 2011). "UPDATE: Doctor Who Christmas Special Director Revealed". SFX. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ "Steven Moffat on the New Exec". BBC. 21 July 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
    ^ Seale, Jack (29 November 2011). "Christmas TV: scheduling confirmed for Doctor Who, Strictly and Downton". Radio Times. Immediate Media. Retrieved 29 November 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who: Christmas Day at 7:00pm". BBC. 29 November 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who Christmas Special" (Press release). BBC America. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe - December 25th at 9pm ET!". Space. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
    ^ http://www.abc.net.au/tv/doctorwho/christmas2011/
    ^ Golder, Dave (27 October 2011). "Doctor Who Christmas Special Clip During Children in Need". SFX. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
    ^ "Adventure Calendar 2011". BBC. 1 December 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ "The Prequel to The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe" (Video). BBC. 6 December 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ "Christmas Special: The Stars! The Story!". BBC. 20 September 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
    ^ Jeffery, Morgan (30 September 2011). "'Doctor Who' Christmas special filming disrupted by BBC Wales strike". Digital Spy. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who Christmas special cast to include Bill Bailey and Claire Skinner". Metro. 21 September 2011. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who Christmas Special role for Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre". Skegness Standard. Retrieved 30 November 2011.
    ^ who "Look what's landed for Dr Who Xmas special!". The Forester. 22 September 2011. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
    ^ "Doctor Who Unbound — Exile". Big Finish. Retrieved 25 October 2011.

A secret meeting at the bbc... recorded for you...

the true future about doctor Who Confidential

info to follow

Doctor Who Confidential Still Canselled

Cast:
   
Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith); Jeremy James (Josh Townsend); Sadie Miller (Natalie Redfern); Caroline Burns-Cook (Claudia Coster); Juliet Warner (Ellie Martin); Mark Donovan (DI Morrisson); Moray Treadwell (Will Butley); Steven Wickham (Mr. Sharpe); Jane McFarlane (Nurse Jepson); Robert Curbishley (Read); Wendy Albiston (Meg Hawkins); Toby Longworth (Wong Chu); Maggie Stables (Mrs Lythe)
Writer:
    Barry Letts    
Recorded:
    27 February 2002
Director:
    Gary Russell    
Released:
    8 August 2002
Music:
    Davy Darlington    
No. of Discs:
    1
Sound Design:
    Davy Darlington    
Duration
    73' 18"
Cover Art:     Lee Binding    
Production Code:
    SJ02
           
ISBN:
    1-903654-93-9
Synopsis
The body of an old man is found floating in the Thames ­ although the DNA of the corpse corresponds to an 18-year old friend of Josh and Ellie. Sarah Jane heads towards West Yorkshire in a bid to discover what killed the man, why someone is kidnapping homeless teenage boys and whether there is a link between that and the retreat of philanthropist Will Butley which hosts The Huang Ti Clinic. Sarah discovers that there is more to ancient Dark Sorcery than she may have otherwise believed.

Reprinted from Wiki Pedia with thanks and respect

Sarah Jane Smith: Comeback is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It stars Elisabeth Sladen reprising her role as Sarah Jane Smith.

[edit] Plot

Six months after the last part of her investigative television series for Planet 3 Broadcasting went out, Sarah Jane Smith is running scared. Meeting new friend Josh Townsend, she finds herself investigating mysterious events in the village of Cloots Coombe.

[edit] Cast

• Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
• Harris - Robin Bowerman
• Mr Venables - Alistair Lock
• Josh Townsend - Jeremy James
• Bank robber - Matthew Brenher
• Bank robber - David John
• Mr Hedges - Nicholas Briggs
• Natalie Redfern - Sadie Miller
• The Squire - David Jackson
• Rev. Gosforth - Peter Sowerbutts
• Ellie Martin - Juliet Warner
• Maude - Patricia Leventon

[edit] Trivia

• Another employee of Planet 3 Broadcasting is Francis Currie.
• Sadie Miller (Natalie Redfern) is the real life daughter of Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith).
• In the opening scene, Sarah Jane Smith refers to three characters who appeared in the 1981 spin-off special K-9 and Company: her aunt Lavinia Smith (who has very recently died), Brendan Richards (who is said to be in San Francisco) and Juno Baker.

[edit] External links

• Big Finish Productions - Sarah Jane Smith: Comeback
• Sarah Jane Smith: Comeback at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Autobiography

Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography was released posthumously on 7 November 2011 by Aurum Press Ltd.^[154] The BBC will be releasing an audio CD version of the book on 1 December 2011. ^[155]

You and Who is now available to pre-order
(with a provisional publishing date of December 12th 2011)
from the Hirst Books website:
http://www.hirstpublishing.com/You_and_Who_edited_by_JR_Southall/p384445_4969072.aspx

The legend Babelcolour gives a reading on his YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefWXQNHdZ8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It looks like there'll be an 'official launch' at the Hirst Books Christmas Event in Newbury, on Saturday 10th December, where I'll be signing copies of You and Who, hopefully alongside other, more respectable Hirst authors, such as Michael Troughton and John Leeson, potentially - but not Colin Baker, alas, who'll be appearing in panto in Mansfield that day! More news as and when.

“It's a wonderful idea, and I'll be sure to buy the book.”
Robert Shearman
(author The Chimes of Midnight, Dalek, Tiny Deaths, Love Songs For the Shy and Cynical)

You and Who is the definitive volume on what it means to be a Doctor Who fan.
The book has been written almost entirely by previously unpublished authors, from the ages of six to sixty, and comprises more than sixty-six essays on the subject of how and why it is that we have come to love Doctor Who.
Whether it be a tale of meeting the sixth Doctor, building up a huge library of VHS tapes, or discovering the programme through satellite channel repeats, there's a story in here that almost any fan will recognise as their own.
Beautifully written, filled with warmth and generosity, witty and delightful, You and Who is a book that no Doctor Who fan should be without.

Available 1 12 2011 from Hirst Publishing.
The proceeds will be donated to Children in Need.

- J.R. Southall

So, here is the contents page! I've arranged the order of the submissions into that which I think best serves the material (and the authors), and I've tried to ensure that no essays too similar sit right next to one another in the book - unless I've specifiaclly wanted them to do so (there were a couple of instances of this). Wow! If your name's on this list, this must be pretty exciting stuff...

5     Introduction
11     Spoilers! by Cameron Sinclair Harris
16     Dear Doctor, by Chris Orton
19     The Taking of Planet Wilf (Part One), by Andrew Philips
24     Teatime and an Open Mind, by Stuart Humphryes
28     The Complete History of Doctor Who (1963 – 1989), by Jonathon Lyttle
41     The “Matt Smith” Generation, by Abby Dorey
44     An Unearthly Show, by J.R. Southall
49     I Was a Teenage Time Lord, by Rob Irwin
54     Voted Most Quotable Show Ever, by Mike Morgan
56     I Am a Doctor Who Fan, by Mark Hevingham
61     Loving the Hated, by Matthew Kresal
65     A Fireplace and a Rug, by Will Brooks
68     The Life and Times of a Whovian, by Daniel J McLaughlin
72     The Third Era, by Julio Angel Ortiz
76     Still Seeking Susan, by Richard Kirby
79     Further Reading, by Stephen Candy
81     The Trip of a Lifetime, Indeed! by Larry Mullen
84     Good Old Tom-Boy! by Dez Skinn
87     The Doctor, Me and Everyone Else, by Adam Ray
90     After All, That’s How It All Started! by Andrew Clancy
97     “Don’t Worry, He’ll Just Regenerate!” by Daniel Peat
100     Getting a First Look Through Repeats, by Joseph Channon
102     Every Child Should See a Doctor, by Vince Stadon
106     Who On 2 (Or, How I Fell in Love With an Old, Dead Thing), by Nicholas Blake
116     The Unconventional Hero, by Rik Moran
120     Tears Before Bedtime, by Greg Dunn
123     Mission to the Unknown, by Andrew Curnow
127     All Thanks to Patrick... by Paul Butler
129     Police Public Call Box – Out of Order, by Robert Morrison
138     A Prescription for Nostalgia, by Kristan Johnson
147     Now Here’s a Funny Idea... by Nicholas Peat
150     Shaping a Childhood, by Amanda Evans
152     A Special Time, by Richard Angell
154     Loving Who, by Cindy A. Matthews
157     Doctor Who and My Ongoing Quest to Like All Things, by Tom Henry
161     Infinite Dimensions in Space and Time: When the TARDIS Landed in Mexico, by Fernanda Boils
164     Through the Wilderness, by Dave Workman
166     Why Doctor Who is Like Christmas! by Nicola J. Johnson
169     “Do You Want to Come With Me?” by Grant Webb
172     A Madman With a Box Opens My Box, by Michael Russell
176     The Day I Met the Doctor, by Simon Hart
179     Who, Where and When, by Alex Storer
184     Choices, by Michael M. Gilroy-Sinclair
186     An American on Gallifrey, by Nicholas A. Tosoni
190     That Battered Blue Box, by Lucy Horn
193     Growing Up With the Doctor, by Antony Cox
198     The Day the Music Died, by Tony Green
202     Time and Again, by John G. Wood
206     Stranger in Space, by Greg Walker
208     Doctor Who is Responsible for Everything! by Mikael William Barnard
214     Why I Like Doctor Who, by Andrew Bowman
215     What’s Wrong With It, by Eamon Jurdzis
218     Me and Who, by Ben Jones
223     1993 Was the Year of the Tin, by Lissa Levesque
229     A Death in the Family, by Brendan Jones
234     Just Vinegar, Please, by Emma Lucy Whitney
238     We Walk in Eternity, by Matthew Crossman
240     Take Home and Keep, by Michael Bellamy
243     The Daisyest Daisy, by Jef Hughes
246     Genesis of My Enlightenment, by Neil Thomas
252     “I Just Do the Best I Can,” by Andrew Orton
256     I Think I’m Rather More Expendable than You Are, by Christopher Bryant
260     Whose Time Is It Anyway?, by Paul Driscoll
262     The Taking of Planet Wilf (Part Two), by Andrew Philips
269     The Doctor’s An Alien – So Am I, by Steven Ray
270     It’s Got Daleks In It! by Andrew Tomlinson
274     I Love Doctor Who, by Elizabeth Tomlinson

Taken from http://www.nicolabryant.net

Nicolas own site

Nicola is probably best known to the public for her work in Television. Her first professional role was as the American companion Peri in Doctor Who opposite Peter Davison and Colin
Baker.

"I grew up in a small Surrey village just outside Guildford. My parents, Sheila and Denis had two daughters. I came along first and then three years later, my little sister Tracy arrived. Both sets of grandparents and many aunts and uncles all lived in the same village. It was a great way to grow up. It gave both my sister and I such freedom. Only once you reached your teens did the cosiness start to feel a little claustrophobic but that's all a part of growing up.

I started dance classes at the age of 3 and piano a year later. When friends visited we would spend the day choreographing little shows that we would perform that evening for our long suffering parents. All I knew was that I wanted to be a dancer. I wanted to be on stage.

I always wanted to go to ballet school and although at age 10 I auditioned and was accepted into several schools I couldn't go because I suffered so badly from asthma, which ran in the family. I was so upset by this that my mother got me involved in a local amateur dramatics company and I soon started to fall in love with acting. Once I had completed my formal education I auditioned for all the London drama schools eventually accepting a scholarship to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

It was in my final year at Webber Douglas that a production of the American musical
"No, No, Nanette" was staged. We all had to audition for the parts and I got the role of Nanette, much to everyone's surprise, including my own.

Weeks later I had completed my diploma at Webber Douglas and I was out in the big wide world of professionals, searching for work. At that time of course there was the catch 22 situation that you needed to work to get your equity card but you couldn't get work without an equity card. To make matters worse there were very few jobs that would give you a card. Well, to cut a long story short, Terry Carney called me to audition for the part of "Peri" the new American companion in Doctor Who. I was incredibly lucky to get that chance and after 3 months of auditions in which the producer John Nathan-Turner saw literally hundreds of girls from the States and Canada, I finally got the part. It was a wonderful time, in which I made a lot of friends and worked with some amazing people.

I then spent nine months in the West End with Patrick McNee at the Savoy Theatre in the thriller "Killing Jessica" directed by Bryan Forbes. After a leading role in the West End and playing the companion in Doctor Who my career was well and truly launched.

Since then I’ve been lucky enough to have had a very varied career, travelling the world and working with some wonderfully talented people in various mediums; stage, television, audio and film.

This year I have made appearances in the soon to be released TV series 'Love in Hyde Park'; in the sit-com 'My Family'; and the controversial drama documentary on Princess Diana’s inquest, 'There are Dark Forces'.

Presenting the  Frazer Hines DWPA  interview podcast recorded at whoovers 3 - 2011

Biog taken from his own site

http://www.thespeakersagency.com/speakerprofile/189/Frazer%20Hines/

Frazer (born in Horsforth, Yorkshire) is a British actor best known for his roles as Jamie McCrimmon in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and Joe Sugden in Emmerdale Farm (later just Emmerdale).

At the age of eight, after studying acting at the Corona Academy, he made his acting debut. He later appeared in the first Hammer horror film X The Unknown (1955) and then Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York (1957) followed by The Weapon, starring Lizabeth Scott, in the same year. By the end of the 1950s he had appeared in twelve films. In 1960 he appeared in the eight-part serial The Young Jacobites for the British Children's Film Foundation. His television roles included Jan in The Silver Sword (1957-8), Tim Birch in Emergency Ward 10 (1963-4), and Roger Wain in Coronation Street (1965).

In Doctor Who he played the part of Jamie McCrimmon, a companion of the Second Doctor, from 1966 to 1969 as well as reappearing in The Five Doctors (1983) and The Two Doctors (1985).

After his three-year stint as Jamie he resumed the life of a jobbing actor (appearances include The Last Valley (1970) with Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, and Zeppelin (1971) with Michael Yorke) until he was cast in the new soap opera Emmerdale Farm as Joe Sugden in 1972 — a role he played until 1994. In between making episodes of Emmerdale, as it was renamed in the 1980's, he has continued a career in the theatre and made occasional appearances in other TV shows.

Hines was a noted amateur horse jockey, and still maintains a great interest in horseracing through his breeders club at Newmarket. Other interests include cricket, fine dining, women and wine.

Hines has recorded linking narration for many Second Doctor serials which no longer exist in video form; the soundtracks, along with Hines' narration, have been released on CD by BBC Audio. He has also appeared in several of Big Finish's Doctor Who audio plays. Among his many theatre credits are twenty eight consecutive pantomimes in which he has played everything from Buttons to Fleshcreep. He is an accomplished after dinner speaker and co-owns a record company in Australia with his nephew Clive.

info to follow

The Curse of Clyde Langer is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which will broadcast on CBBC on 10 and 11 October 2011.^[1] It is the second story of the fifth and last series.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Part One

At school, Clyde shows Rani The Silver Bullet, a comic he made. While Sarah Jane has a talk with Mr. Chandra on Sky's first day at school, a strange storm interrupts the meeting, when fish begin to fall out of the sky. According to Mr Smith, it is normal for the weather to be raining fish though the fish that day was abnormally large. Thinking it might be related to an old superstition involving a totem pole, the gang visits a museum that just opened an exhibition of totem poles and other such items. Before the entrance, a homeless woman begs for money, which Clyde gives to her, stating it probably wasn't her fault she is out in the streets. While in the museum, Clyde gets a splinter from an old Mojave totem pole.

Dr Madigan explains the legend of the totem pole. Hetocumtek was a vicious warrior who fell out of the skies and tried to enslave the people on the Mojave plains. The Native American medicine men tricked the warrior, imprisoning him inside the totem pole. Sarah Jane suspects that Hetocumtek is both a warrior god and an alien. Having detected no alien signs of any kind the gang leaves.

That night, Clyde finished his comic and signs his name on it before falling asleep. He fails to notice that his name on all of his documents, including his comic, begins to mysteriously glow orange.

Walking to Sarah Jane's house, Clyde shows her The Silver Bullet. She at first takes interest in his comic. At the mention of his name, Clyde's name glows orange in Sarah Jane's eye. Suddenly, Sarah Jane takes a dislike of Clyde as she orders him to leave her house. At the front of the Chandra's residence, Clyde tries to tell Rani and Haresh his problem he had with Sarah Jane only to face the same conflict when Haresh says his name as it glows in their eyes. Haresh then expels him from school.

Getting ready for her first day of school, Sky enters the attic. Sarah Jane tells her she will return to the museum to see if there are any connections between the totem pole and the fish incident. When she mentions Clyde to Sarah Jane, she is instructed to stay away from him. Unaffected by the curse, Sky notices the sudden hatred Sarah Jane has for Clyde.

At the park, Clyde is treated kindly by Steve until his name is said. Barely escaping from Steve and his gang who was chasing after him, he enters the museum. Asking Dr Madigan about curses, Sarah Jane enters the museum where she advises her to keep away from Clyde. Dr Madigan, who said his name, orders the security guards to throw him out.

Clyde returns home where he sees his mum with an envelope addressed to him. Realizing what has happened, he begs her to let him stay after she called the police to capture him. Finally escaping, he walks out of Bannerman Road. Out in the streets in the middle of the rain, the homeless woman he helped offers to assist him as she holds out her hand.

[edit] Part Two

While his friends all turn on Clyde as a result from the curse, he meets a mysterious girl on the streets that helps him through the hardship of losing his friends and loved ones. She introduces herself as Ellie. Fearing the curse will do the same to her, Clyde introduces himself as Enrico Box. Ellie tells him about the Night Dragon, how people mysteriously disappears because of the Night Dragon.

At the museum, lightning bursts out of the totem pole. Sarah Jane was called in to investigate the suspicions. Scanning, Sarah Jane receives detections of alien energy. She then sees one of the faces' eyes on the pole glow orange. Meanwhile, Sky at school notices how Sarah Jane and Rani hates Clyde but both fails to think of a reason why.

Sarah Jane suddenly tears up in the attic although she doesn't know why. The same thing occurs to Rani later in the car as well as Clyde's mum when Sky visits her. All of them feel as if they are missing a person in their life yet they do not realize who it is.

Clyde and Ellie visits Mystic Mags, who tells them the Night Dragon is coming and that it will take one of them. She also foresees something else that has put a mark on Clyde, a curse.

The totem pole back at the museum begins to cause the weather to rain and thunder heavily as the faces begins to become alive. Within the rain, Clyde and Ellie connects with each other, keeping themselves warm by burning The Silver Bullet.

Back in the attic, Sarah Jane and Rani share their tearing experiences. Sky, after being informed that Hetocumtek is getting stronger, discovers that Clyde activated the warrior god when he receives a splinter, creating the curse. She realizes that as long as Clyde is out in the streets, the alien warrior god will get stronger. Sky also sees that his name is the key to stopping Hetocumtek. She manages to convince Sarah Jane and Rani to say his name repeatedly to break the curse upon them.

Clyde draws a portrait of Ellie and shows it to her. She then kisses him and tells him she will be back, leaving to get coffee. Sarah Jane and the gang arrives, bringing Clyde to the attic, though it was without choice. There, Mr Smith transports the totem pole to the attic where it begins to fight back, creating lightning and destruction. Clyde, holding onto the pole, shouts, "My name is Clyde Langer!" disintegrating the pole.

Clyde, welcomed back by his friends and family, tries to search for Ellie. He asks many people only to find they do not know where or who she is. Clyde suggests they use Mr Smith to track her, but Rani points out her name on a sign, indicating that Ellie took the name. A man there saw Ellie board a truck named "Night Dragon Haulage". He explains that the truck driver occasionally would drive some people to other places for a better life. At night in his room, Clyde reminisces about Ellie as he stares at his portrait of her.

[edit] Cast Notes

• Jocelyn Jee Esien previously appeared as Carla Langer in The Mark of the Berserker and The Empty Planet.
• Angela Pleasence appeared in the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespeare Code" as Elisabeth I.
• Sara Houghton is the daughter of Doctor Who writer Don Houghton.

[edit] Reception

Charlie Jane Anders of io9 thought this story to be as good as stories in the parent show Doctor Who.^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Curse of Clyde Langer on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "The Curse of Clyde Langer: Part 1" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Curse of Clyde Langer: Part 2" at the Internet Movie Database

Doctor Who Has been mentioned on BBC Points of View Twice in two weeks. heres my thoughts...

Contact the Points of View team by email: pov@bbc.co.uk

Telephone: 0370 908 3199 (calls are charged at local rate, mobile tariffs will vary)

Or write to us at POV, BBC Birmingham, Birmingham, B1 1AY

You can also send your opinions via video-phone or webcam. Send your video submissions to pov@bbc.co.uk.

Reprinted from Wikipedia with thanks and respect

Sky (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

Sky is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which was broadcast on CBBC on 3 and 4 October 2011.^[1] It is the first story of the fifth and last series.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Part One

A meteor crashes in the middle of a junk yard to reveal a metal man. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane discovers a baby on her doorstep in the middle of the night who can create power surges. Sarah Jane calls Rani and Clyde over for them to help her and after Clyde shows his paternal side, Sarah Jane and Rani travel to the site of the meteor crash. There they are met by Professor Celeste Rivers who investigates the site with them. Sarah Jane and Rani find a homeless man who saw the metal man and describes him to them; they then discover that the metal man is heading to Bannerman Road.

Meanwhile an alien woman named 'Miss Myers' appears at a nuclear power station and discovers that there was a power surge in Bannerman Road. She makes her way to the Chandras' residence and Gita announces that Sarah Jane has just fostered a baby, as Gita had seen Sarah Jane earlier. Miss Myers makes her way to the garden where Clyde and the baby named Sky are to discover that the metal man is about to attack them. Miss Myers saves Clyde and Baby Sky and takes them to the Power Station. Miss Myers reveals that she is Sky's mother and is also an alien.

Sarah Jane and Rani return to the house to discover that Clyde and Sky have gone. Mr Smith locates Clyde at the power station and Sarah Jane and Rani make their way to the station. They find Clyde, Sky and Miss Myers who reveals that her species, the Fleshkind, are fighting a war against the Metalkind. She also reveals that Sky is a weapon who will put an end to the war and as she says this the metal man walks in. Sky then transforms from a baby into a twelve-year-old girl.

[edit] Part Two

At Miss Myers' command, Sky unintentionally attacks the metal man with a burst of energy. Miss Myers reveals that Sky was made and "grown" in a Fleshkind laboratory as a weapon to destroy the Metalkind. Sarah Jane and the gang escapes with Sky before Miss Myers could get ahold of her. Miss Myers then tells the metal man he would help her get Sky and has him wired up.

Sky, who is still experiencing the world and words around her, is brought into the attic where Mr Smith scans her. He concludes that Sky's metamorphosis was caused by her synthetic DNA and was done to maximize her effectiveness as a bomb. Full activation would not only destroy the Metalkind but Sky herself as well. Although there is no cure for the energy from the Metalkind's presence would activate Sky's power, she can still be "defused". However, only Miss Myers can disarm her genetic trigger. Sky agrees to go there, stating that she might die anyway.

Back at the power station, Sarah Jane tells Sky to stay with Clyde and Rani. With the absence of Sarah Jane at the time, Sky escapes, running inside the factory, trying to help Sarah Jane. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane, who is taken to Miss Myers, learns that the damaged metal man is wired up to the nuclear core in order for him to act as a homing device. Miss Meyers also reveals she reprogrammed his mind as he swears veangance on all flesh kind, including Earth's inhabitants, thus bringing their war to Earth. Believing that the Metalkind will be destroyed upon their arrival on Earth, she activates the calling of the Metalkind. Downstairs, Sarah Jane meets up with Sky, who tells her she must save Earth and goes up to the nuclear core room. Sarah Jane then orders Clyde and Rani to shut down the nuclear reactor in the control room before heading after Sky, whose activation started from the presence of the metal man and Metalkind's portal opened by Miss Myers.

In the control room, Clyde and Rani discover the Nuclear Rod Regulation System and removes the rods based on the order of the visible spectrum. They were successful in closing the reactor as the portal closes with a large power outage. The energy from the portal backlashed on Sky, destroying her genetic programming as a bomb. Miss Myers doesn't want the child anymore for she is no longer a weapon. The metal man, who reveals that he saved some of the portal's energy, breaks loose and uses the energy as he takes Miss Myers with him.

Sarah Jane explains Sky's appearance to Gita and Haresh back at Bannerman Road, telling them the adoption agency had a mixup. Some traces of Sky's electric powers are still present. In the attic, Sarah Jane finds the Shopkeeper and the Captain, previously met in Lost in Time. He reveals it was him who placed infant Sky on her doorstep. The Shopkeeper, answering Sarah Jane's question of their existence, tells her that he and the Captain are "servants of the universe". He then gives Sky the decision to leave with him in which she declines and stays with Sarah Jane as her adopted daughter. He then disappears before Sarah Jane could ask him any further. She then says they will find out who he is soon....

[edit] Continuity

• The Shopkeeper and his parrot, The Captain, previously appeared in Lost in Time.
• Rani suggests that the Doctor was the one who left Sky on Sarah Jane's doorstep. Rani met the Tenth Doctor in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, and the Eleventh Doctor in Death of the Doctor.
• Miss Myers intends for her daughter to be used against the Metalkind. The idea of a child being used as a weapon from birth first appeared in "A Good Man Goes to War", with the Silence and Madame Kovarian kidnapping the infant Melody Pond and turning her into a weapon to kill the Doctor.
• Rani tells Sky about how Luke was created by aliens to invade the Earth while Clyde tells Sky about when they fought the Bane, both shown in the pilot episode "Invasion of the Bane".

[edit] Production

This was the first story to be aired following the death of Elisabeth Sladen.

[edit] Notes

The ending credits for part one has mistakenly been put onto part 2 ending credits Luke Smith (Tommy Knight) and Baby Sky did not appear in part 2 and The Shopkeeper from Lost in Time was uncredited.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Sky (TV story) on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "Sky: Part 1" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Sky: Part 2" at the Internet Movie Database

This Doctor Who-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Taken from Wikipedia with thankks and respect.

The Wedding of River Song

"The Wedding of River Song" is the thirteenth and final episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 1 October 2011.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor, aware of his death at the fixed point of time on 22 April 2011 at Lake Silencio, attempts to track down the Silence to learn why he must die. He encounters the Teselecta shapeshifting robot and its miniaturised crew who are currently posing as one of the members of the Silence; through them, the Doctor is led to the living head of Dorium Maldovar, one of the Doctor's allies taken by the Order of the Headless Monks. Dorium reveals that the Silence is dedicated to avert the Doctor's "terrifying" future, warning him that "On the fields of Trenzelor, at the fall of the Eleventh, a question will be asked - one that must never be answered. And Silence must fall when the question is asked." The Doctor continues to refuse to go to Lake Silencio until he discovers his old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, has passed away. The Doctor then accepts his fate. To avoid crossing his own time stream, he gives the Teselecta crew the envelopes to deliver to Amy, Rory, River Song, Canton Everett Delaware III, and a younger version of himself, inviting them to witness his death.

As shown in "The Impossible Astronaut", the Doctor joins his friends at Lake Silencio and then approaches the astronaut, now known to be a younger version of River Song trained to kill the Doctor by the Silence and Madame Kovarian. River does not want to kill him but is unable to fight the suit's control. The Doctor shows River her future self, sentenced to Stormcage prison for killing him, as evidence that her killing him is inevitable and that he forgives her for it. River, in the astronaut suit, surprises the Doctor by draining the suit's weapons systems and averting his death, despite his warning against interfering with a fixed point. Time becomes "stuck", and all of Earth's history begins to happen all at once, fixed at 5:02 p.m. on 22 April 2011.

In a time-confused London, Winston Churchill takes the Doctor, his "soothsayer", out from his locked cell to ask him about the stuck time. The Doctor explains the preceding events, but notices they have lost track of time and tally marks are appearing on his arms, indicating the presence of the Silence. After they observe a nest overhead, they are rescued by Amy and an a number of her soldiers. Due to the effects of the crack in her bedroom, Amy is cognisant of the altered timeline, though she has failed to notice that her trusted captain is Rory. Amy takes the Doctor to "Area 52", a hollowed-out pyramid among the Giza Necropolis, where they have captured over a hundred Silence and Madame Kovarian. River is also there, aware her actions have frozen time and refusing to allow the Doctor to touch her, an event that would cause time to become unstuck. They all wear "eyedrives"—eye patches identical to the one worn by Madame Kovarian that function as external memories, thus enabling them to remember the Silence.

They soon come to realise that this was a trap arranged by Kovarian, as the Silence begin to escape confinement and overload the eyedrives, torturing their users. The Doctor and River escape to the top of the pyramid while Amy and Rory fight off a wave of Silence and Amy realises who Rory is. Madame Kovarian discovers her own eyedrive is being overloaded; she dislodges it, but Amy forces it back in place with the intention of killing her, explaining that this is revenge for her taking Melody away. Amy and Rory regroup with River and the Doctor. River tries to convince the Doctor that this frozen timeline is acceptable and that he does not have to die, but the Doctor explains that all of reality will soon break down. The Doctor marries River on the spot, whispers something in her ear, declaring that he had just told her his name. He then requests that River allow him to prevent the universe's destruction. The two kiss, allowing reality to return to normal. At Lake Silencio, River kills the Doctor.

Some time later, Amy and Rory are visited by River, shortly after the events of "Flesh and Stone" in River's timeline. When Amy explains that she had recently witnessed the Doctor's death and regrets killing Kovarian, River reveals that the Doctor lied when he said he told her his name, instead saying "Look into my eye". The Doctor had in fact enlisted the Teselecta to masquerade as him at Lake Silenco, with the Doctor and his TARDIS miniaturised inside it ever since. The three celebrate the news that the Doctor is still alive. Elsewhere, the Doctor takes Dorium's head back to where it was stored; the Doctor explains that his perceived death will enable him to be forgotten. As the Doctor leaves, Dorium warns him that the question still awaits him, and calls it after him: "Doctor who?"

[edit] Prequel

A prequel to this episode was aired after the previous episode, "Closing Time". It was the fifth prequel in the series, the first four being for the episodes "The Impossible Astronaut", "The Curse of the Black Spot", "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler". The prequel shows Area 52, with a clock stuck at the time of the Doctor's death, Silence kept in stasis and River Song wearing an eye patch in the same fashion as Madame Kovarian.^[2] As all of this is happening, there is a voice-over of the children, the same as that from "Night Terrors" and the conclusion of "Closing Time". They sing "Tick tock / goes the clock" three times, and then "Doctor, / brave and good, / he turned away from violence. / When he / understood / the falling of the silence."

[edit] Continuity

Several scenes from the episode reuse footage from "The Impossible Astronaut" leading up to and immediately following the Doctor's death. The Doctor tells Dorium Maldovar, "I've been running all my life, why should I stop?", a precursive echo of his early, pre-death dialogue in "The Impossible Astronaut": "I've been running all my life...and now it's time to stop". Following the death of actor Nicholas Courtney, the Doctor learns in this episode that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has died peacefully in a nursing home.^[3] He last appeared in Doctor Who in Battlefield, and the character's final appearance came in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Enemy of the Bane.

When listing all the things he could do with the TARDIS' ability to travel in time, the Doctor suggests visiting Rose Tyler in her youth (which Jack Harkness admitted in "Utopia" to having done) to help her with her homework, attending all of Jack Harkness' stag parties in one night (several of his marriages are mentioned or alluded to in Torchwood episodes "Something Borrowed" and Children of Earth), and returning to Queen Elizabeth I (met in "The Shakespeare Code", and mentioned in "The End of Time, Part I", "The Beast Below" and "Amy's Choice").

When the Doctor awakens in Amy's rail car office, he tries to remind her of the crack in her wall ("The Eleventh Hour") and fiddles with one of her TARDIS models ("The Eleventh Hour", "Let's Kill Hitler"). Amy's sketches include a Cyberman's face ("The Pandorica Opens") a Dalek ("Victory of the Daleks", "The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), herself seated in the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Silurian ("The Hungry Earth", "Cold Blood", "A Good Man Goes to War"), herself wielding a cutlass and sporting a tricorn hat ("The Curse of the Black Spot"), a Smiler's face ("The Beast Below"), a vampire girl ("The Vampires of Venice"), the first time she met the Doctor ("The Eleventh Hour"), Rory and another centurion ("The Pandorica Opens"), a side of the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Weeping Angel's face ("The Time of Angels", "Flesh and Stone", "The God Complex"), and the TARDIS.

Winston Churchill and River Song describe Cleopatra as, respectively, "a dreadful woman but excellent dancer" and "a pushover". River posed as Cleopatra in "The Pandorica Opens". The Fourth Doctor claimed in The Masque of Mandragora to have learned swordsmanship from a captain in Cleopatra's bodyguard. Mickey Smith implied in "The Girl in the Fireplace" that the Doctor had had some romantic history with Cleopatra and that he affectionately called her 'Cleo'. River Song states that she used her hallucinogenic lipstick on President Kennedy; she used the lipstick on guards and Romans in "The Time of Angels" and "The Pandorica Opens".

A Silent calls Rory "the man who dies and dies again". Rory dies in "Cold Blood" and appears to die in "Amy's Choice" and "The Doctor's Wife". In reference to the Doctor telling River his name, she reprises the line "Rule One - The Doctor lies" from "The Big Bang" and "Let's Kill Hitler". In "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", River whispers something in the Doctor's ear that makes him trust her, which the Doctor states just before her death was "my name" and that "There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name".

The Doctor also refers to the events and conversation shortly before her death in "Forest of the Dead", stating "You, me, handcuffs - must it always end this way?" when he is handcuffed in the pyramid and reversing part of his final exchange with her in the Library during their conversation by Lake Silencio ("Time can be rewritten" / "Don't you dare!", with the first line spoken by the Doctor in the Library and River by the lake). The episode's main plot centers around the damage caused by River when she tries to re-write a fixed point in time. The Doctor tries to do this himself in "The Waters of Mars" but fails when Adelade kills herself in order to keep history the same. Fixed points in time have also been mentioned in "The Fires of Pompeii" and "Cold Blood".

[edit] Outside references

Charles Dickens describes his upcoming Christmas special featuring ghosts from the past, present and future, alluding to A Christmas Carol.

[edit] Production

[edit] Cast notes

Within the alternate London several previous characters reappear, including Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) from "The Unquiet Dead", Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) from "Victory of the Daleks", and the Silurian doctor Malohkeh (Richard Hope) from "Cold Blood". William Morgan Sheppard is credited for his brief appearance in the background of the Doctor's death scene, reprised from "The Impossible Astronaut".

Mark Gatiss previously played Professor Richard Lazarus in the episode "The Lazarus Experiment", and provided the uncredited voice of Danny Boy in "Victory of the Daleks" and "A Good Man Goes to War"^[4] along with a number of roles in audio dramas based on the show. He has also written for the revived series of Doctor Who. He is credited in this episode under the pseudonym "Rondo Haxton", an ode to the American horror actor Rondo Hatton.

American television hostess Meredith Vieira recorded her report of Churchill's return to the Buckingham Senate in front of a green screen while filming a segment for The Today Show’s "Anchors Abroad" segment.^[5]

[edit] Reception

Dan Martin of the Guardian noted that the episode "moves along the bigger, 50-year story and effectively reboots the show. After seven years of saving the Earth/universe/future of humanity," the show now has new impetus. Martin stated that the revelation that silence will fall when the oldest question in the universe is asked - "Doctor Who?" - will safeguard the programme for future generations.^[6]

Gavin Fuller of the Telegraph called the revelation of the Doctor escaping death by using the Teselecta a cop-out and likened it to serials of the thirties where scenes were cut and shown later to create a cliffhanger. However Fuller praised the episode as visually clever and noted that the question "Doctor Who?" harkens back to 1963 and the original theme of the show. Fuller concluded by surmising that Moffat is obviously plotting story arcs in the episode, hinting that the question will be asked at the end of the Doctor's eleventh incarnation.^[7]

Neela Debnath of the Independent stated that the series finale was a brainteaser which refused to tie up loose ends neatly. Debnath comments that Moffat is trying to return to the epic story telling that the series once had, spreading it over several series rather than episodes. Concluding, Debnath noted that the episode was underwhelming in terms of drama but overwhelming in terms of information.^[8]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Eleventh Doctor

• "The Wedding of River Song" at the Internet Movie Database
• The Wedding of River Song on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "The Wedding of River Song" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage

From Wikipedia with thanks

Colony in Space is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in 6 weekly parts from April 10 to May 15, 1971.

[edit] Synopsis

Three Time Lords meet at an observatory and discuss the theft of confidential files relating to "the Doomsday Weapon." They begrudgingly realise that only one man can help them — and the Doctor, accompanied by Jo, is temporarily released from his exile and sent in the TARDIS to the desert planet of Uxarieus in the year 2472. There he finds an outpost of human colonists living as farmers. The colony is not a success — the land seems unusually poor and recently they are being besieged by representatives of rapacious mining corporations, and more recently, ferocious reptiles. The colony's governor, Robert Ashe, makes them welcome, and explains the colonists fled a year ago to the planet to escape the overcrowding and pollution on Earth.

Two colonists die in a reptile attack that night, and the next morning a man named Norton arrives at the settlement, claiming that he is from another colony that was wiped out by the reptiles. While the Doctor is investigating the dome of the dead colonists he is surprised by a mining robot controlled by Caldwell, a mineralogist for the IMC. Caldwell invites the Doctor to talk to his bosses and hear their side of the story. His superior, Dent, is a ruthless mining engineer, who has been using the mining robot to scare and now kill the colonists - something which Caldwell finds repellent. Dent knows the planet is rich in rare minerals and wants it for IMC and his greedy troops agree that this should be done at any cost.

The original inhabitants of the planet, known to the colonists as primitives, have a truce with the colonists - but this is tested when Norton kills the colony's scientist and blames it on a primitive, whom he insists are hostile. Later, Norton is seen communicating with Captain Dent, implying that he is in fact a spy sent from IMC to further disrupt the colonists and not the sole survivor of a similar colony as he claimed. The Doctor meanwhile returns to the central dome of the colonists, having evaded an IMC attempt to kill him, and explains to Ashe that the miners are behind the deaths. An Adjudicator from Earth is sent for to deal with the complex claims over the planet - and when he arrives it turns out to be the Master. In this alias he determines that the mining company's claim to the planet is stronger.

The Doctor and Jo have meanwhile ventured to the primitive city. From images on cave walls they interpret it was once home to an advanced civilisation that degraded over time. In the heart of the city, in a room filled with massive machines and a glowing hatch, they encounter a diminutive alien known as the Guardian. It warns them that intruding into the city is punishable by death, and lets them go, but warns them not to return.

The Master's adjudication is heard by a returning Doctor and Jo. Still in the Adjudicator's guise he tells Ashe that an appeal will fail unless there are special circumstances, such as historical interest and is intrigued when Ashe tells him about the primitive city. By this ploy he finds out more about the planet and the primitive city while Ashe is drawn away from the Doctor, who begins to lose his credibility with the colonists. The Master then manipulates the Doctor into accompanying him to the primitive city.

The situation between colonists and miners has meanwhile reached flashpoint with a pitched battle between them. Dent and his forces triumph and he stages a false trial of Ashe and Winton, the most rebellious of the colonists, sentencing them to death but commuting the sentence if all the colonists agree to leave the planet in their damaged old colony ship which first brought them to Uxarieus.

Inside the city, the Master tells the Doctor that the primitives were once an advanced civilisation. Before their civilisation fell apart, they built a super-weapon that was never used - and he wants to claim this weapon for himself. The room with the machinery in the city is the heart of a weapon; so powerful that the Crab Nebula was created during a test firing. The Doctor rejects the Master's overture to help him rule the galaxy using the weapon, stating that absolute power is evil and corrupting. The Guardian appears, demanding an explanation for the intrusion. The Master explains that he's come to restore their civilisation to its former glory. The Doctor argues against him, and the Guardian recalls that the weapon led his race to decay, and its radiation is ruining the planet. It instructs the Doctor to activate the self-destruct, which he does. The city begins to crumble, and the Guardian tells them they must leave before it is too late. While the Doctor and the Master flee the decaying city, they find Caldwell and Jo, and the four get out before the city explodes.

The colonists' ship has meanwhile exploded on take-off as Ashe predicted it would. However, the colony leader was the only one to die. He piloted the ship alone to save his people. Winton and the colonists now emerge from hiding and kill or overpower the IMC men, with Caldwell having switched sides to support the colonists. Amid the confusion, the Master manages to make his escape.

With the battle over, the Doctor explains that the radiation from the weapon was what was killing their crops but this limiting factor has now been removed. Earth has agreed to send a real Adjudicator to Uxarieus, and Caldwell has decided to join the colonists. He tells them that he can help them with their power supply. The Doctor and Jo return to the TARDIS, which returns to UNIT Headquarters mere seconds after it left. Having accomplished what the Time Lords intended, the Doctor is once again trapped on Earth.

[edit] Continuity

• This is the first time since season six that the Doctor travels to another planet in the TARDIS.
• Excepting a brief CSO shot of one wall in Terror of the Autons, this is also the first time that the inside of the Master's TARDIS (a redress of the Doctor's TARDIS set) is shown.

[edit] Production

• Working titles for this story included Colony.
• Script editor Terrance Dicks has frequently stated that he disliked the original premise of the Doctor being trapped on Earth, and had meant to subvert this plan as soon as he felt he could get away with it. He recalls in a DVD documentary interview (on the Inferno release) having had it pointed out to him by Malcolm Hulke that the format limited the stories to merely two types: alien invasion and mad scientist, and says he'd immediately responded, "Fuck Me! You're right!" (on the The Invasion release). The story is one of the first to use the show for social commentary - in this instance, the dangers of colonialism.^[4]

[edit] Cast notes

See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

• Bernard Kay appears as Caldwell. This is his fourth and final appearance on the series.
• Director Michael Briant spoke the commentary accompanying a propaganda film watched by the Doctor on the IMC spaceship in Episode Two. This was a late cast change, and was originally intended for Pat Gorman – who was subsequently still credited on Episodes One and Two as 'Primitive and Voice'.

[edit] Broadcast and reception

16mm colour film trims of location sequences for the story still exist and short clips from this material was used in the BBC TV special "30 years in the Tardis" (1993).

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in April 1974 as Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. This was the first serial of the 1971 series to be so adapted; as a result, Hulke breaks continuity by having Jo Grant introduced to the Doctor for the first time, even though on television her introduction was in Terror of the Autons (and this would be reflected in the later novelisation of that serial). There is another extensive Malcolm Hulke prologue as an elderly Time Lord describes the Doctor-Master rivalry to his assistant and learns of the theft of the Doomsday Weapon files. There have been Dutch, Turkish, Japanese and Portuguese language editions. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by actor Geoffrey Beevers was released on CD in September 2007 by BBC Audiobooks.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	23
Writer	Malcolm Hulke
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0-426-10372-6
Release date	April 1974

[edit] VHS and DVD releases

• Although the PAL mastertapes had been wiped NTSC copies were returned to the BBC in 1983 from TV Ontario in Canada. In November 2001, this story was released together with The Time Monster, in a VHS tin box set, entitled The Master. A new transfer was made from the converted NTSC to PAL videotapes but no restoration work was carried out for this release.
• The story has been scheduled for release on DVD in the UK on 3 October 2011. The single disc release will contain four seconds which were missing from VHS & US masters of the story and which restores two lines of dialogue.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Colony in Space at BBC Online
• Colony in Space at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• Colony in Space at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

[edit] Reviews

• Colony in Space reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Colony in Space reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

[edit] Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon

reprinted from the guardian news page

he BBC is to axe Doctor Who Confidential, the BBC3 spin-off from its sci-fi drama, as part of the corporation's ongoing cuts programme.

Doctor Who Confidential, which features behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Doctor Who as well as interviews with the cast and crew, has aired in an early evening slot on BBC3 since 2005, when the corporation revived the main series with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Time Lord.

However, with the corporation facing budget cuts of up to 20% across its output as part of its Delivering Quality First initiative, BBC controller Zai Bennett has chosen to axe the show at the end of its current series.

Bennett is understood to be pursuing a strategy of focusing investment on original commissions in post-watershed time slots. Since taking over, he has decommissioned shows including Ideal, Hotter Than My Daughter, Coming of Age and long-running sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.

Speaking last month at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Bennett said: "It's about focusing my budget on 9pm and 10.30pm; those are the time slots that count. Budgets are tight, so we have to be sensible with the money we have."

Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, will unveil the corporation's cost-cutting strategy – the outcome of the DQF process – on 6 October. It is thought to include proposals to exploit greater "synergies" between BBC1 and BBC3, with the digital channel acting as a "nursery slope" for its terrestrial cousin. BBC3 will also fill a greater proportion of its 7pm to 9pm slots with repeats of BBC1 shows.

A spokeswoman for the BBC said: "Doctor Who Confidential has been a great show for BBC3 over the years but our priority now is to build on original British commissions, unique to the channel."

from wikipedia.

"Closing Time" is the twelfth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 24 September 2011.

[edit] Plot summary

Nearly two hundred years have passed for the Doctor after leaving Amy and Rory in "The God Complex"; and the Doctor is on a farewell tour as he knows he has one more day in his relative time before his death (depicted in "The Impossible Astronaut"), saying goodbye to his past companions. He stops by Craig ("The Lodger"), finding he is living with his girlfriend Sophie, moved into a new home, and now raising their baby, Alfie. Craig, tending to Alfie alone while Sophie is away for the weekend, suspects the Doctor is investigating something alien. As the Doctor leaves, he notices an strange electrical disturbance in the area, and decides to investigate.

Craig, while at a new department store with Alfie, discovers the Doctor working in the toy department. The Doctor reveals that he has traced the electrical disturbances to the store and using the job to allow him to investigate more. The Doctor and Craig enter a lift and find themselves teleported to a Cyberman spacecraft, but the Doctor manages to reverse the teleporter and disables it. As Craig returns home, the Doctor sees Amy and Rory shopping, but stays out of their sight.

The Doctor continues to follow rumours of a store clerk's disappearance and of a "silver rat". With Craig's help, the Doctor enters the store and catches a Cybermat, which has been siphoning small amounts of energy to the spacecraft. The Doctor also encounters a malfunctioning Cyberman in the building's basement, and is curious how it arrived in the store. At Craig's house, while the two are distracted, the Cybermat reactivates, but they are able to stop it, and the Doctor reprograms the unit to track down the Cybermen signal.

The Doctors leaves on his own to locate the Cybermen at the store, but Craig shortly follows, bringing Alfie along. The Doctor finds the spaceship actually sits below the store, underground, accessed by a tunnel from a changing room. The ship has been slowly siphoning energy from the store's power lines, reactivating its crew. The Doctor is captured by the Cybermen, who tell him that their ship crashed long ago, but with this new energy, will soon have enough power to convert the human race.

Craig, leaving Alfie with a store clerk, follows the Doctor into the tunnel, and is also captured and placed into a conversion machine. The Doctor reveals his own impending death and urges Craig to fight, but the conversion appears to be complete until Alfie's cries over the closed-circuit television echo in the ship. Craig fights the conversion, sending the rest of the Cybermen into overload as they painfully experience the emotions they have repressed. The Doctor and Craig escape via the teleporter as the ship explodes, the blast contained by the cavern. The Doctor slips away unseen, but Craig returns home to find that the Doctor has used time travel to clean the mess from the previous night. The Doctor tells Craig that Alfie now has a much higher opinion of his dad. The Doctor leaves just before Sophie returns.

Nearby, the Doctor tells the TARDIS he knows this is his last trip in her and offers some parting words to a small group of children. In the far future, River Song, recently made a Doctor of Archaeology, reviews eyewitness accounts from those children, and also notes the date and location of the Doctor's death. She is interrupted by Madame Kovarian and agents of The Silence; Kovarian tells River that she is still theirs, and will be the one to kill the Doctor. They place her in an astronaut's suit and submerge her in the lake to await the Doctor.

[edit] Continuity

Two hundred years have passed for the Doctor since the events of "The God Complex", taking him to the age his older self was in "The Impossible Astronaut".^[2] Multiple events in the episode correspond to those of "The Impossible Astronaut": the Doctor takes from Craig's home the "TARDIS blue" envelopes he uses to bring Amy, Rory, River, Canton Delaware and his younger self to Lake Silencio; Craig gives him the Stetson hat he wears at the start of that episode^[3]; and the "impossible astronaut" is confirmed to be River Song.

The Cybermen, like those in "A Good Man Goes to War", do not bear the Cybus Industries logo on their chests. Cybermats are shown for the first time in the revived series. In the classic series, they appeared in Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen.^[3]

The Doctor stops by to see Craig before he dies, as the Tenth Doctor popped in on his former companions before regenerating in The End of Time.^[4][5] The Doctor claims to be able to "speak 'baby'", as he did in "A Good Man Goes to War". The Doctor expresses his dislike for Craig's "redecorated" house in a variation of lines spoken by the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, and Craig explains to the Doctor that the reason his house looks different is that it is a different house from the one he had in "The Lodger"; Craig also remarks that he has inspected the upstairs level, alluding to the false story shown in "The Lodger".^[6] The Doctor echoes himself in the classic series serial Revenge of the Cybermen when he recites the mini-poem "Not a rat, a Cybermat" from the novelization of Revenge of the Cybermen.^[7][8]

Amy appears in an ad for Petrichor perfume, with the tagline, "For the girl who's tired of waiting." The concept of petrichor was used as a psychic password in "The Doctor's Wife" and means "the smell of dust after rain".^[6][9] The Doctor frequently refers to Amy as "the girl who waited".

[edit] Production

Writer Gareth Roberts said in an interview that he was considering bringing the character of Craig back when James Corden was cast and he saw his performance, saying that "it already felt like he was one of the Who family". It was also his idea to bring back the Cybermen, because there were no other returning monsters in the series and he thought "there should be a sense of history about the Doctor's final battle to save Earth before he heads off to meet his death".^[2]

[edit] Cast notes

This episode marks Lynda Baron's third involvement with Doctor Who, having provided vocals for the "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon", heard in The Gunfighters, and appeared in Enlightenment as Wrack. The accompanying Doctor Who Confidential to "Closing Time" is entitled "Open All Hours" in honour of Baron's role in the sitcom of the same name.^[6] BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James appears in a non-speaking cameo role, as a man shopping for lingerie.^[10]

[edit] Broadcast and reception

"Closing Time" was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 24 September 2011^[11] and in the United States on BBC America on the same date.^[12] It achieved overnight ratings of 5.3 million viewers, coming in second for its time slot behind All-Star Family Fortunes.^[13]

[edit] Critical reception

The episode received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the comic interplay between Smith and Corden. Jack Pelling of Celluloid Heroes Radio praised Roberts' deftly crafted comic script, and described it as "one of the most enjoyable episodes of Doctor Who in recent years".^[14] Dan Martin of The Guardian questioned the decision to air a standalone episode as the penultimate show of the series, calling "Closing Time" "something of a curiosity" as well as writing positively about "Smith and Cordon’s Laurel and Hardy double act".^[3] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph awarded the episode three out of five stars, comparing Smith's performance favourably to that of Patrick Troughton.^[15] Neela Debnath of The Independent said it was an "intriguing change of pace" and succeeded with "great comedic moments" and the "brilliant chemistry between the Doctor and Craig". She praised Corden for excelling after his "average" performance in "The Lodger".^[16]

Patrick Mulkern, writing for Radio Times, thought that the ending was an "emotional overload...but what better way to deal with the emotionally deprived Cybermen?" He was pleased with the "sweet cameo" from Amy and Rory and the "tense coda" with River Song and Kovarian.^[17] IGN's Matt Risley rated the episode 7.5 out of 10, praising the chemistry between Smith and Corden as well as Smith's interaction with the baby, but was disappointed with the Cybermen, who he said "never really delivered on the threat or horror fans know they're capable of".^[18] SFX magazine reviewer Rob Power gave the episode three and a half out of five stars, saying it "[worked] wonders" as a light-hearted episode before the finale and with "properly bad" Cybermen. Though he thought the Cyberman lacked "real menance" and Craig escaped in a "cheesy way", he considered the main focus to be on the Doctor's "farewell tour" and praised Smith's performance. He thought that the moments of "sad-eyed loneliness and resignation" added weight to "what would otherwise have been a paper-thin episode". He also praised the ending for bringing things together for the finale, though he thought the final scene with River Song felt "a little tacked-on".^[9]

[edit] References

1. ^ "Open All Hours". Gareth Roberts. Doctor Who Confidential. BBC. 24 September 2011. No. 12, series 6. 4:52 minutes in. "The Doctor allows Craig to come along and play the part of his companion [...]"
2. ^ ^{a b} "An interview with Gareth Roberts". BBC. 17 September 2011. Retrieved 18 September 2011.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Martin, Dan (24 September 2011). "Doctor Who: Closing Time – series 32, episode 12". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
4. ^ The End of Time. Russell T Davies (writer), Euros Lyn (director). Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One. 25 December 2009–1 January 2010. No. 4, season Specials (2008–10).
5. ^ The Eleventh Doctor tells Jo Grant in Death of the Doctor that he visited her and each of his companions.
6. ^ ^{a b c} "Closing Time - Fourth Dimension". BBC. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
7. ^ Anders, Charlie Jane (24 September 2011). "Doctor Who: the Godfather of Soul". io9. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
8. ^ Novelisation of Revenge of the Cybermen by Terrance Dicks
9. ^ ^{a b} Power, Rob (24 September 2011). "Doctor Who "Closing Time" TV Review". SFX. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
10. ^ "Doctor Who Confidential: Open All Hours". BBC. 22 September 2011. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
11. ^ "Network TV BBC Week 39: Saturday 24 September 2011" (Press release). BBC. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
12. ^ "Season 6: Episode 12 "Closing Time"". BBC America. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
13. ^ Golder, Dave (25 September 2011). "Doctor Who "Closing Time" Overnight Ratings". SFX. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
14. ^ Pelling, Jack (24 September 2011). "Review: Doctor Who- Closing Time". Celluloid Heroes Radio. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
15. ^ Fuller, Gavin (24 September 2011). "Doctor Who: Closing Time, BBC One, review". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 Septembe 2011.
16. ^ Debnath, Neela (25 September 2011). "Review of Doctor Who 'Closing Time'". The Independent. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
17. ^ Mulkern, Patrick (24 September 2011). "Doctor Who: Closing Time review". Radio Times. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
18. ^ Risley, Matt (25 September 2011). "Doctor Who: "Closing Time" Review". IGN. Retrieved 25 September 2011.

• "Closing Time (Doctor Who)" at the Internet Movie Database

reprinted from wikipedia with thanks and respect

The God Complex

"The God Complex" is the eleventh episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 17 September 2011.

[edit] Plot summary

The TARDIS, while traveling to a new planet, arrives in what appears to be a 1980's Earth hotel, but the Doctor recognizes it as an alien structure specifically designed to take that appearance. They soon meet a group of four, humans Rita, Howie, Joe, and the alien Gibbis, each who had previously been taken from their routine lives and found themselves in the hotel. The four explain that there is a minotaur-like beast in the hotel that consumes others. It does this by enticing them to enter one of the many rooms in the hotel which contains their greatest fears, upon which they become brainwashed to "praise him" and allow themselves to be taken, their bodies left without any signs of life; many others have experienced this, and photos of them and their fears cover many of the hotel's walls. The hotel is inescapable — its doors and windows walled up — and its halls and rooms can change on a whim. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory soon find the TARDIS has also disappeared, and the Doctor warns them from opening any door they are drawn to, for fear of being possessed.

As the Doctor tries to ascertain the situation, Joe, already possessed, has been drawn away from the group and is killed by the beast. Howie soon becomes possessed after entering a room against the Doctor's warnings. The remaining group set up a trap to lure the beast into the hotel's parlor using Howie's voice, upon which the Doctor questions the trapped creature and learns it is in agony wishing for its end. The Doctor realises the hotel is really a prison for the creature, and the "fears" in each room are harmless illusions. Howie escapes from the group, allowing the beast to escape and chase him down, killing him before the Doctor can save him. While exploring more of the hotel, both Amy and the Doctor are separately lured to look into two specific rooms, facing their own fears. Rita soon follows the fate of Joe and Howie.

The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Gibbis regroup, and the Doctor surmises that the other three believed that some higher fate controlled their lives. The hotel and its rooms were, by design, meant to challenge their faith by fear to allow the beast to possess them. The Doctor identifies that Gibbis has survived due to the extreme cowardice of his species, while Rory lacks any such faith to be broken. However, the Doctor realises that it is Amy's faith in him that is being challenged; Amy soon becomes possessed like the others. As the beast comes for Amy, the Doctor and the others grab her and take her to the room of her entrancement. Inside, they find the illusion of young Amy, Amelia, still waiting for the return of her "raggedy Doctor" ("The Eleventh Hour"). The Doctor asserts to Amy that he is "not a hero" but "just a mad man with a box" to break her faith in him; her faith broken, the beast outside the door collapses on the floor.

As they watch, the hotel is revealed to be part of a large simulation; the Doctor identifies themselves aboard an automated prison spaceship, and the beast as a relative of the Nimon, a creature that feeds off the faith of others. The ship's automated systems had provided it "food" by bringing aboard creatures who had a strong faith. The Doctor identifies Amy's faith in him as the cause of their arrival on the ship. The beast mutters that "death would be a gift" for the Doctor before it passes away. The Doctor finds his TARDIS nearby, offering Gibbis a lift home. He then takes Amy and Rory back to their home on Earth, believing it best for the two to stop traveling with him for fear that their faith in him would lead to their deaths. The Doctor sets off alone in the TARDIS, contemplating these recent events.

[edit] Continuity

Several references to past alien species are displayed throughout the wall of photos of the past victims of the beast: Tritovore, Silurian, Sontaran, Judoon, Cat Nun, and the Daleks are referenced as the nightmare faced by one of the late guests. The Doctor identifies the beast as being from a species who are close relatives to the Nimon, previously a foe in the serial The Horns of Nimon and audio drama Seasons of Fear; and the group witnesses two illusions of Weeping Angels, from the episodes "Blink", "The Time of Angels", and "Flesh and Stone".^[1] Though the audience is not shown the contents of the room that the Doctor is lured to open, the sound of the TARDIS' cloister bell can be heard.^[2] This episode is the third time in the television series where the Doctor has forced his companions to leave the TARDIS, following Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith.^[3]

Young Amelia, played by Gillan's cousin Caitlin Blackwood, is shown waiting for her "raggedy Doctor" to return from the episode "The Eleventh Hour". The Doctor, being forced to break Amy's faith in him, repeats a previous event in The Curse of Fenric where the Seventh Doctor is forced to break Ace's faith in him.^[4]

[edit] Production

Toby Whithouse originally pitched the episode for the previous series with the idea of a hotel with shifting rooms.^[5] Showrunner Steven Moffat thought that there were too many instances in which the characters were running through corridors in that series, so Whithouse wrote "The Vampires of Venice" instead and "The God Complex" was pushed to the next series.^[6] The idea to have a Minotaur be the monster came from Whithouse's love for Greek mythology.^[5]

David Walliams, who plays Gibbis in this episode, previously appeared in the Fifth Doctor audio drama Phantasmagoria where he played two separate characters.^[7]

[edit] Outside references

The hotel and setting has been compared to Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, using similar composition such as long corridor shots.^[8][9]

[edit] Broadcast and reception

"The God Complex" was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 17 September 2011^[10] and on the same date in the United States on BBC America.^[11] Overnight ratings showed that 5.2 million viewers watched the episode on BBC One, beaten by direct competition All-Star Family Fortunes on ITV1. This made Doctor Who third for the night behind The X Factor and Family Fortunes. The episode was ranked number 1 on BBC's iPlayer the day after it aired service and also was popular on social networking site Twitter, where the phrase "Amy and Rory" trended the night it aired.^[12]

[edit] Critical reception

The episode received generally positive reviews from critics. Jack Pelling of Celluloid Heroes Radio praised look of the episode, describing it as "stylishly directed by Nick Hurran, whose use of Dutch camera angles and Hitchcock zooms gave the episode an impressive, cinematic quality."^[13] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph awarded the episode 3 and a half stars, stating that "the surreal tone to the episode, helped camouflage the fact that the plot made very little sense."^[14]

Dan Martin of the Guardian was surprised by the exits of Amy and Rory stating that "since the reboot they've been big, climactic, end-of-the-universe tragedies." Martin also praised Karen Gillan for her performance and stated that her exit was "the kind of ending that would have been nice for Sarah-Jane, really." Martin also praised Smith's Doctor stating that we start to see the darkside more, particularly directed at himself and stronger than Tennant's portrayal. The main part of the episode Martin felt that it was "like a runaround bolted on to make way for the ending." Continuing to add that as has already been shown in this series the formula is not a recipe for success. Martin sums up the episode though by describing it as funny and thoughtful.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Eleventh Doctor

• The God Complex on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "The God Complex" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The God Complex" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage

Here is the explanation of the Blessing as seen in Torchwood Miracle Day

Taken from wikipedia with thanks and respect

ay of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 January to 22 January 1972.

[edit] Synopsis

Rebels from a future Earth conquered by the Daleks travel to the 20th Century to prevent that from happening. But will their actions prevent that future, or make it inevitable?

[edit] Plot

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (June 2011)

Sir Reginald Styles, a British diplomat trying to organise a peace conference to avert World War III, is in his study at the government-owned Auderly House when a soldier dressed in grey camouflage and wielding a futuristic looking pistol bursts in and holds him at gunpoint. However, before the guerrilla can fire, he vanishes, leaving Styles to shakily tell his secretary he has been visited by a ghost. As the conference is of vital international importance, UNIT is called in. The Chinese have pulled out of the conference and Styles will be flying to Peking to try to persuade them to rejoin, and nothing must interfere with the conference's success. However, when the Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier go over to Auderly House, Styles denies ever seeing the "ghost", even though the Doctor notes the presence of muddy footprints in the study.

The guerrilla reappears on the grounds in a vortex-like effect, but he is intercepted by two huge humanoid aliens, Ogrons, who attack him and leave him for dead. UNIT soldiers discover the severely injured guerrilla and take him to the hospital while the Doctor examines his weapon and a small black box that was found in a nearby tunnel system. Styles leaves for Peking, while the Doctor discovers that the pistol, which is an ultrasonic disintegrator, is made of Earth materials, not alien, and that the box is a crude time machine, complete with a miniature dematerialisation circuit. As he tries to activate it, the vortex effect appears again and the guerrilla vanishes from the ambulance. The temporal feedback circuit on the time machine also overloads — as the Doctor explains to the Brigadier, it has blown a fuse. Since everything seems to be centred on Auderly House, the Doctor decides to spend the evening there.

The night passes without incident, but in the day, three guerrillas appear from the time vortex — Anat, a woman who is in command of the mission, along with two men, Boaz and Shura. They come across a UNIT patrol and disintegrate the two soldiers while making their way to the house. In the study, the Doctor tries to reactivate the time machine, causing an alert to be sounded in the 22nd Century. Shura enters the house, but the Doctor subdues him with some Venusian karate. Shura begs the Doctor to turn off the box, as in the future, a human Controller reports to the Daleks that the machine has been activated. The Daleks command that once the spacetime coordinates of the box are confirmed, whoever is using that device must be exterminated.

In the present, Anat and Boaz enter with Jo as their prisoner and demand that the machine be deactivated. The Doctor complies, and the conversation makes it apparent that the guerrillas believe that he is Styles, whom they are apparently here to assassinate. The Doctor shows them a newspaper to convince them otherwise, and Anat demands to know who the Doctor is. When Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton enter the house to search for the missing patrol, the guerrillas usher the Doctor and Jo into the cellar where they tie them up. Finding the Doctor and Jo gone, Yates contacts the Brigadier, who tells them to search the grounds again.

In the future, the Daleks order the Controller to send troops to the frequency they detected earlier, and activate a time vortex magnetron, so that anyone travelling between the two time zones will be drawn to the Controller's headquarters. In the past, Anat sends Shura to contact the future for more orders, but Shura only manages to retrieve a bomb from near the tunnel before being attacked by Ogrons. He is wounded, but manages to stumble away.

In the cellar, Jo asks the Doctor why, if the guerrillas wanted to kill Styles, they do not just travel back to the previous day to try again, and the Doctor says that this is due to the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect". Before he can explain further, they are ushered back up to the study — the Brigadier is calling on the house phone. The Doctor is forced to pretend over the telephone that everything is fine at Auderly House. The Brigadier tells the Doctor that Styles has convinced the Chinese to rejoin the conference and that the delegates will arrive the next day. The Brigadier asks for reassurance that everything is all right, and the Doctor tells him it is, but the Brigadier gets suspicious when the Doctor asks him to also "tell it to the Marines." The Brigadier decides to go to the house and see for himself. Jo frees herself from her bonds and threatens to destroy the box the first guerrilla used, but Anat and Boaz tell her that it only worked for that person. Suddenly, the time vortex effect activates and Jo vanishes into the future, appearing in the Controller's headquarters due to the vortex magnetron.

There, the Controller ingratiates himself with Jo, who tells him everything, including the exact time and location where she came from. The Daleks use this information and send a Dalek supported by Ogrons to the present, where they attack the house. Anat and Boaz fire back, and flee towards the tunnels. The Brigadier arrives just in time to gun down an Ogron, and the Doctor commandeers his jeep in pursuit of the two guerrillas. In the tunnels he meets a Dalek, and runs away, finding Anat and Boaz just as they activate their time machines, and is swept up in the same vortex. In the 22nd Century version of the tunnels, the Doctor and the guerrillas are separated when Ogrons pursue them. The Doctor climbs out of the tunnels onto the surface, where he sees a Dalek order Ogrons to exterminate some rebels. When the Controller informs the Daleks that Jo mentioned a "Doctor", the Daleks react violently, declaring that the Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks and must be exterminated.

The Doctor stumbles into what appears to be a factory, and sees humans being used as slave labour, guarded by other humans. He is captured by an Ogron, and is being interrogated when the factory manager comes in and persuades the interrogator to let him speak to the Doctor. When they are alone, the manager asks the Doctor which guerrilla group he comes from, but the Doctor says he is not part of any group. Before any further conversation can take place, the Controller arrives, and takes the Doctor to see Jo. The manager contacts the guerrillas, who have made it back to their base with their leader, a man named Monia. The manager tells them of the Doctor, but he is discovered by an Ogron and killed. Monia decides that they must rescue the Doctor, because he seems to be the only man the Daleks are afraid of.

After an abortive escape attempt, the Doctor is strapped down to a Dalek mind analysis device, where images of the Second and First Doctors confirm to the Daleks that he is indeed their sworn enemy. The Controller bursts in, saying that using the mind analysis device will kill the Doctor. They should keep the Doctor alive for information on the rebels, and he will question the Doctor personally. The Daleks gloat to the Doctor that they have discovered time travel, invaded Earth again, and changed the course of history. The Doctor calls the Controller a traitor, and the Controller explains that at the end of the 20th Century, a hundred years of devastating worldwide wars began, killing 7/8ths of the population and forcing the rest to live in little more than holes in the ground. It was during this period that the Daleks invaded, conquering the world and using it for raw materials to fuel the expansion of their empire. Some humans cooperated — the Controller's family have been officials for three generations. The Doctor calls them a family of quislings.

The rebel guerrillas attack the Controller's base and rescue the Doctor. Monia is about to shoot the Controller but the Doctor tells him not to — the Daleks would have used somebody else in any case. The rebels take the Doctor back to their hideout and tell him the rest of the story. Styles organised the peace conference, and when Auderly House was blown up, everyone was killed. The rebels believe that Styles engineered the whole thing, and caused the century of war that followed. That was why they used Dalek-derived time travel technology to travel to the past, to kill Styles before he could destroy the peace conference. They used the tunnels because that is the only common location shared by the two time zones. The Doctor is sceptical, believing Styles to be stubborn but basically a good man. When the Doctor finds out that the rebels brought a bomb made of dalekanium with them, a powerful and unstable explosive that will affect even Dalek casings, he realises that the rebels are caught in a predestination paradox. They will cause the very explosion they went back in time to prevent, and create their own history. Indeed, back in the 20th Century, Shura has found his way into Auderly House and plants the bomb in the cellar.

The Doctor and Jo make their way back to the tunnels so they can travel back and stop Shura, only to run into an ambush the Controller has set up. The Doctor convinces the Controller that he has the means to stop the Daleks even before they have begun, and the Controller lets him go, only to be betrayed by the interrogator and exterminated by the Daleks. The Daleks send a strike force to the 20th Century to ensure their version of the future is preserved, and attack as the delegates arrive at the house. In the ensuing battle between the Daleks, Ogrons and UNIT, the Brigadier evacuates the delegates. The Doctor, back in the present, makes his way down to the cellar to try to convince Shura not to activate the bomb; Auderly House is empty, it will all have been for nothing. However, once Shura hears that the Daleks are entering the house, he tells the Doctor and Jo to leave — he will take care of the Daleks. The Brigadier tells his men to fall back to the main road as the Daleks search the house for delegates. Shura detonates the bomb, destroying the house and everything in it.

The Doctor tells Styles that it is now up to him to make the conference a success. Styles assures the Doctor it will be, because they know what will happen if they fail. The Doctor, nodding at Jo, says that they know too.

[edit] Continuity

• The Blinovitch Limitation Effect is never explicitly laid out, but the Doctor cites it as a means to explain why a time traveller cannot redo his own actions.
• Dalekanium is presented in this serial as an unstable explosive in the alternate future. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Dortmun also calls the material that Dalek casings are made of dalekanium. This is continued in "Evolution of the Daleks".
• To explain the return of the Daleks after their "final end" (as stated by the Second Doctor in The Evil of the Daleks), lines were scripted to reveal that the humanised Daleks had lost the civil war seen in Evil, placing this story after Evil in the Daleks' own chronology. However, this scene was ultimately not filmed.
• The Doctor, in an unusual instance, is seen to both hold and use a gun to eliminate an enemy, in this case an Ogron, near the end of episode 2.

[edit] Production

• Working titles for this story included The Ghost Hunters and Years of Doom.^[3]
• The production team only had three Dalek props available for use during the production of this serial, so only three Daleks appear on screen at any one time. One of the Daleks is painted gold so only two regular casings are seen in shot. Film editing is used to attempt the illusion of more than three Daleks.
• As originally written, the serial revolved around the Ogrons instead of the Daleks. It was planned to bring the Daleks back at the end of the season, in a serial called The Daleks in London by Robert Sloman. This plan was dropped when the production staff realised that the show would not have a hook to entice viewers (after the Third Doctor's introduction in Season 7 and that of the Master in Season 8), and Sloman's serial was allegedly shaping up to be too similar to The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Instead, writer Louis Marks was asked to alter his serial to include the Daleks.
• Early in the first episode, there is a scene where the Doctor and Jo are working on the TARDIS console in the Doctor's lab. A mistake by the Doctor causes another Doctor and Jo to briefly appear at the entrance to the lab. Originally the serial was to end with a scene where the Doctor and Jo went back to the lab, and saw their earlier selves working at the TARDIS console. However, the last episode was overrunning and director Paul Bernard decided to cut the scene, which he personally disliked. Script Editor Terrance Dicks tried to persuade Bernard to put it back in, but Bernard refused and producer Barry Letts agreed that it should be cut. Dicks would later restore the scene in his novelisation of the story. It should be noted that this story features the TARDIS console once more outside of the TARDIS itself, as in The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno.
• Osterley Park was originally proposed as the setting and location for Day of the Daleks. The name was changed to Auderly in the finished programme, and renamed Austerly in the novelisation.
• Terry Nation, who penned the first story The Daleks in 1963, was given an on-screen credit at the end of all four episodes of this story as having originated them.

[edit] Cast notes

• Scott Fredericks later played Max Stael in Image of the Fendahl.

[edit] In print

The novelisation of this serial, by Dicks, was published by Target Books in April 1974. There have been Dutch, Turkish, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese language editions. A Brazilian edition, separate from the Portuguese version, was published with the title Doutor Who e a Mudança da História (Doctor Who and the Change in History).

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	18
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0-426-10380-7
Release date	April 1974

[edit] VHS, Laserdisc and DVD release

• The story was first released on VHS and Betamax in an omnibus format in 1986 (with the story mistitled as The Day of the Daleks on the VHS box art) and re-released in episodic format in 1994. The previous omnibus edition VHS remained as the release for the United States and Canada.
• This story was released on Laserdisc twice, first in an omnibus format in the US in 1992, and later in episodic format in the UK in 1996.
• A DVD release has been confirmed for 12 September 2011.^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Day of the Daleks at BBC Online
• Day of the Daleks at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• Day of the Daleks at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

[edit] Reviews

• Day of the Daleks reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Day of the Daleks reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

[edit] Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks