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The Waters of Mars is the second of the 2009 Specials leading up to the end of the David Tennant era. It aired on 15th November 2009 on BBC One.

Synopsis

Mars. 2059. Bowie Base One. Last recorded message: "Don't drink the water. Don't even touch it. Not one drop."

Plot

The TARDIS arrives on Mars and the Doctor steps out in his spacesuit, seemingly just to relax and enjoy the landscape. Stumbling across a base inhabited by a team from Earth, the Doctor is detained by a remote-controlled robot called "GADGET" and brought inside. The base commander, Adelaide Brooke, is at first suspicious of the Doctor, but after a tense interrogation, decides to trust him. The Doctor learns that the date is 21st November 2059, and that this is in fact Bowie Base One, the first human outpost on Mars. History has it that on this date the base was destroyed in a mysterious explosion and Brooke and her crew were all killed. Unwilling to break the laws of time and interfere with fixed points in history, the Doctor decides to leave. However, at the very same moment a crisis is developing: two crewmembers, Andy Stone and Maggie Cain, have been infected by a mysterious life form which takes over their bodies and causes them to gush copious amounts of water. Adelaide confiscates the Doctor's spacesuit, reasoning that he could be responsible for the infection in some way, and orders him to come with her and another crewmember, Tarak Ital, to investigate.

The infection spreads, with Andy passing on the condition to Tarak. The two men are contained in the base's "bio-sphere" section while Maggie is secured in the medical wing. In a conversation with colleague Yuri Kerenski, the organism occupying Maggie's body reveals its desire to reach Earth, a planet rich in water. The crew plan to evacuate in an escape shuttle, and the Doctor breaks the news to Adelaide that she must die today, on Mars, if events are to unfold as they should. However, he also tells her that her death will inspire her descendants to travel further into space and establish peaceful relations with numerous extraterrestrial species. Unwillingly, Adelaide lets him leave. As the Doctor is making his way back to the TARDIS, Maggie breaks out of confinement, infiltrates the shuttle and infects pilot Ed Gold, Adelaide's deputy. Before the condition takes a hold over him, Ed manages to trigger the shuttle's self-destruct mechanism, which traps the infection on Mars but also leaves the surviving crew with no means of escape. The destruction of the shuttle is witnessed by the Doctor who, overcome by defiance against time itself, returns to the base to save the others.

Realising that there is no way to change the course of history, Adelaide activates Bowie Base's self-destruct sequence. The infected personnel mount the roof of the control centre and exude more water, which pours into the room and claims GADGET's operator, Roman Groom, and Steffie Ehrlich. However, the Doctor uses GADGET to access the TARDIS, operate its controls remotely and transport the time and space machine into the base, rescuing Adelaide, Yuri and Mia Bennett from the resulting nuclear explosion.

The TARDIS materialises outside Adelaide's house on Earth. Mia and Yuri are shocked by their experiences on Mars and Doctor's power and depart, bewildered. In a conversation with Adelaide, the Doctor reflects on why he ultimately decided to save her and the others. He argues that the Time Lords' rules were only valid while their civilisation existed, and that since he is the last of his race he has total authority over time. He proudly declares himself the "Time Lord Victorious" and remarks that with this power he will now be able to save influential figures such as Adelaide as well as "little people" the likes of Yuri and Mia. Scolding the Doctor for his new found arrogance, Adelaide returns home and commits suicide, reverting the changes that the Doctor has made to the timeline.

Only now understanding the full impact of his actions, the Doctor is overcome with horror and realises that there will be a price to pay for his interference. Ood Sigma appears in the street, prompting the Doctor to ask him whether he has finally gone too far — whether the time has come for him to die. Unresponsive, Sigma vanishes, and the Doctor staggers back into the TARDIS to the ominous sound of the Cloister Bell. With a defiant "No!", he begins to work the machine's controls.

Cast

• The Doctor - David Tennant
• Adelaide Brooke - Lindsay Duncan
• Ed Gold - Peter O'Brien
• Tarak Ital - Chook Sibtain
• Andy Stone - Alan Ruscoe
• Maggie Cain - Sharon Duncan-Brewster
• Mia Bennett - Gemma Chan
• Yuri Kerenski - Aleksander Mikic
• Steffie Ehrlich - Cosima Shaw
• Roman Groom - Michael Goldsmith
• Emily Brooke - Lily Bevan
• Mikhail Kerenski - Max Bollinger
• Ulrika Ehrlich - Anouska Strahnz
• Lisette Ehrlich - Zofia Strahnz
• Adelaide's Father - Charlie De'ath
• Ood Sigma - Paul Kasey
• Young Adelaide - Rachel Fewell

Crew

References

• Adelaide was 10 years old when the Earth was stolen by the Daleks, she witnessed one herself.
• Whilst on Earth when the Doctor is in the TARDIS the cloister bell is audible.

Earth history

• Adelaide Brooke says that the last forty years on Earth have been chaos, with massive climate change, ozone degredation, and "the oil apocalypse"; humanity "almost reached extinction" during this period. Andy's obituary mentions "appalling storm conditions" in 2040, and climate change affecting agriculture in 2045.
• Maggie believes the Doctor may be a Philippino or Spanish astronaut, as the Philippines are rumoured to be building a Mars rocket and Spain have a "space link" that they managed to keep secret. Andy Stone's sister worked for the Spanish space programme. Ed Gold believes the Doctor is from a non-state independent group, referring to the Branson Inheritance.
• Various lunar missions have been carried out, including ten German missions and Project Pit Stop, establishing a refueling station on the moon. Mars was landed on in 2041, with Adelaide Brooke as part of the crew. Thirty years after 2059, Brooke's granddaughter Susan will pilot the first lightspeed ship.
• At least one of the webpages -- the one showing Brooke's granddaughter -- dates from the 2080s or later, suggesting the Internet still exists in some form in the late 21st century.

Locations

• Bowie Base One is Earth's first off world colony.

• "Bowie Base One" is a reference to the David Bowie song "Life on Mars", which is also the name of a BBC TV series set in 1972 starring John Simm, who currently plays The Master.

• Bowie Base One is located on Mars in the Gusev Crater.

Races and Species

• The Doctor mentions the Ice Warriors and suggests that they may have frozen the Flood.

Robots

• The Doctor said that he hates "funny robots" but notes that he'd be okay with a robot dog.
• Gadget was built by Roman Groom using parts from the drones that constructed Bowie Base One.

Story Notes

• This story was initially envisaged as a Christmas special, several festive references remain, such as the crew on Mars preparing for Christmas dinner, and it snowing when the Doctor arrives back on Earth as he exclaims how he likes snow.
• This story was originally entitled; Red Christmas.
• As Lindsay Duncan has been cast as a companion, she is the oldest actor to play a companion on television since the beginning of the series, although this title will be taken away from her in the next episode when Bernard Cribbins becomes the Doctor's companion.

Ratings

• 9.1m
• 33.9% of TV share

Filming Locations

• Victoria Place, Newport
• National Botanic Gardens of Wales, Carmarthenshire
• Taff's Well quarry, Cardiff, Wales

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

• If no Human had ever heard of the Ice Warriors then how can the events of NA: The Dying Days not be known by the Humans? The novels may not be considered canon, by the current production team, also that event may have been in flux. It is never explicitly stated that Humans have never heard of the Ice Warriors. When the Doctor mentions them, Adelaide simply states, "I haven't got time for stories."

• After the explosion of the shuttle, several fires are burning all around the site. Taking into account the initial explosion was fueled by the base's oxygen, and given that Mars has no appreciable atmosphere, how can these smaller fires burn in the vacuum? Because Mars does have an atmosphere, albeit one with a pressure roughly equivalent to one hundredth that of Earth's atmosphere.

• Given that Mars's thin atmosphere consists primarily of carbon dioxide, with a very small concentration of oxygen (which is required for combustion), how can the smaller fires after the explosion burn? There is a lot we don't know about Bowie Base One. We don't know what sort of fuel they're using, we don't know how the self-destruct mechanism on the rocket works.

• In Father's Day The Reapers turned up due to Rose saving her father when somebody who was dead is now alive - surely this should be the case now for Yuri and Mia as they should have died but are now alive. The Reapers only showed up in Fathers Day due to Rose saving her father's life, as then, that altered the timeline meaning that in the future Rose wouldn't have travelled to the past to save her father, causing a paradox, the Doctor only changed the future when he saved Adelaide's life. Had Adelaide's granddaughter travelled back in time to save her grandmother, for instance, that would more likely have caught the Reapers' attention. Also, as Adelaide almost immediately kills herself, thereby maintaining the timeline, there was no need for the Reapers to appear.

• The news article on Adelaide claims that she was born in 1999 and yet was also 10 when her parents died in 2008. (There was clearly a typo in the article in regards to either the year or her age.)

• The news article identifies The Stolen Earth as occuring in 2008, instead of 2009 (as the show's been a year ahead since Aliens of London). The production team have deliberately stated that Series Three occurs within a space of a few days to rectify the year-off discrepancy that Aliens of London introduced, so the Whoniverse timeline is in sync with ours again. (Two explanations: either the article we were "seeing" had some sort of typo, or the events of The Stolen Earth actually did happen in 2008.)

• The news article on the mission refers to "Dr Tarak Ital MD." It would be correct to write either the "Dr" or the "MD," but both at once is redundant and grammatically incorrect. Ital's obituary also misspells "Havana". It is correct if the person has both an MD and a PhD.

• The article on Susie Fontana Brooke's first "Faster then Light" flight lists Adelaide's team at the end as hers.

• Why would the Doctor comment on Mia's age when Roman is two years younger than her?

• When it is revealed that Maggie is one of the creatures, the outer shot shows her hair back while in the closer shot, it is around her face.

Continuity

• The Doctor speaks partially to the events of DW: The Fires of Pompeii.
• There is a flashback to (which includes a cameo by a Dalek) DW: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End
• The spacesuit the Doctor wore was the same suit from DW: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.
• Mars appears not to have much of an atmosphere, however NA: The Dying Days suggests otherwise.
• SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic is also (partially) set in 2059.
• Carmen's prophecy "he will knock four times" is mentioned from DW: Planet of the Dead.
• Sound clips of the Doctor talking about the Time Lords and The Time War are used from DW: Gridlock, Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords

International broadcasts

• ABC1 - Australia : 6th December 2009^[1]
• BBC America: 19th December 2009
• Space - Canada: 19th December 2009^[2]

Plot

After his regeneration from their previous adventure, the Doctor starts behaving erratically. He goes to the wardrobe and looking for a new outfit and finds a glaring, mismatched, brightly coloured coat to which he immediately takes a shine. Peri tells him that he could not go outside wearing such an awful garb, to which the Doctor takes offence.

Two twins, Romulus and Remus Sylveste, receive a visitation from a mysterious old man called Professor Edgeworth. They question how he managed to get inside their house; he tells them he will return when their father is there, then proceeds to abduct them and the trio disappear. They arrive on a spacecraft in deep space. Edgeworth then communicates with his superior, a slug-like creature called Mestor, who instructs Edgeworth to take the twins to Titan 3.

In the console room, the Doctor has a funny turn, quoting a poem about a Peri — a good and beautiful fairy in Persian mythology, but one which used to be evil. The Doctor accuses her of being evil, and of being an alien spy before rushing toward her and throttling her. He catches a sight of his own manic face in a mirror and collapses in a heap, releasing Peri. When she tells him that he tried to kill her, he initially denies he could be capable of such an act, but seeing how terrified of him she is, decides he must become a hermit on the desolate asteroid Titan 3.

The twins' father contacts the authorities; he found Zanium in their room — a sure sign of intergalactic kidnap. A Commander Lang begins the pursuit and soon finds a suspicious ship previously reported missing. He tries to contact it, but it enters warp drive — something that class of ship is not designed to do.

On Titan 3, as the Doctor contemplates a thousand years of solitude and Peri expresses her disapproval, they hear the crash landing of a craft. Examining its wreckage, they find the concussed body of Commander Lang. They take him back to the TARDIS where he reveals his whole squadron has been destroyed. Believing the Doctor to be responsible, he points his gun at the Doctor and threatens to kill him…

Peri pleads with Lang, telling him that the Doctor had in fact saved him, but he faints away. The Doctor is not keen to treat Lang, more concerned for his own life, but eventually agrees to Peri's persuasion.

Edgeworth argues with Romulus and Remus, making them do Mestor's work. He scolds them for setting up a distress signal, so they are not allowed to use electronic equipment to solve the equations they have been set. An image of Mestor appears and gives the twins a more blunt threat — work for him or have their minds destroyed.

On the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor and Peri see a building — something which has no place on an uninhabited asteroid. Leaving Lang behind, they find a tunnel which may lead to the building, but on exploring find two aliens wielding guns. The Doctor cowers in fear and pleads with them not to shoot him. They are led off and are brought before Edgeworth. The Doctor claims to be a pilgrim to Titan 3, but Noma, one of the aliens, says they are spies and should be shot. The Doctor suddenly recognises Edgeworth as an old friend - Azmael, master of Jaconda, whom he last saw two incarnations ago. When the Doctor sees Romulus and Remus and discovers it is Azmael who has abducted them, he is disgusted. Azmael teleports away with the twins and the aliens, leaving the Doctor and Peri locked in the building. The Doctor starts to break the lock's combination, but Peri discovers Noma has set the base to self-destruct. The Doctor improvises a solution to teleport them back to the TARDIS. Peri makes a successful return, but the Doctor has not appeared when she sees the base explode on the scanner…

A glimpse of the Doctor is seen appearing in the TARDIS; he was delayed returning because he was using Peri's watch to synchronise their arrival, but the watch had stopped. The Doctor is surprised at Peri's compassion when she thought he had died.

On Jaconda, Mestor is seen putting one of the bird-like Jacondans to death for a petty offence of stealing a few vegetables. Soon, the TARDIS arrives, but instead of the expected beautiful planet the Doctor is expecting, he, Peri and Lang find a desolate wasteland covered with giant Gastropod trails. The Doctor is reluctant to go to the palace, scared for his own life, but is persuaded to take Lang there in the TARDIS. In the palace corridors they see murals depicting Jaconda's history, depicting the slugs of myth - but it appears that they are now all too real. After avoiding Gastropods, Lang gets stuck in their slime trail.

Azmael takes the twins to his laboratory and shows them a store room full of Gastropod eggs. Mestor arrives and tries to persuade them that his aims are benevolent. Azmael begs him to stop reading his thoughts and stop Noma watching his every move. He agrees and leaves. Azmael explains to the Twins that Mestor usurped him as leader of Jaconda and outlines a plan to draw two outlying planets into the same orbit as Jaconda. The Twins' genius is required to stabilise those planets in their new orbit. The Doctor, leaving Peri and Lang behind, finds Azmael's lab. In a manic fit of pique, he attacks Azmael, but is restrained by a Jacondan and the Twins. The Doctor apologises to Azmael but demands to know what is going on.

Meanwhile, Peri is captured by Jacondan guards and brought before Mestor. When Lang escapes to Azmael's lab and informs them what has happened, the Doctor finally shows compassion for her when he thinks she might die…

Mestor refrains from killing Peri immediately, finding her appearance pleasing. Jacondan guards arrive in Azmael's lab and seize the Doctor. The Doctor tells Mestor that he ought to allow him to assist with the dangerous operation of moving the planets, as a single mistake could blow a hole in that corner of the universe. Back the laboratory, Azmael informs the Doctor the details of the plan to bring the planets into the same orbit — they will be placed in different time zones using time travel technology that Mestor stole from Azmael. The Doctor realises that, as the other planets are smaller than Jaconda, bringing them closer to Jaconda's sun will lead to catastrophe. The Doctor enters the egg storeroom, and is disturbed that they have no nutritional mucus. He tries to cut one open with a laser cutter; the shell is impenetrable, but the egg reacts slightly to the heat. The Doctor realises they have been designed to withstand the heat of an exploding sun — the explosion of the Jacondan sun will scatter the eggs throughout the universe. When they hatch, the Gastropods will conquer the universe.

The one remaining Jacondan in the lab collapses dead, his mind burnt out. Mestor had been using him as a monitor, and knows the full details of what has been discussed. Peri, Lang and the Twins return to the TARDIS, whilst the Doctor and Azmael go to confront Mestor. When Mestor refuses to abandon his plans, the Doctor hurls a vial of acid taken from the lab at him, but a force field protects Mestor from any harm. Mestor threatens to possess the Doctor's mind and body, and demonstrates by taking control of Azmael's body. Azmael tells him to destroy Mestor's body before he can return to it, which he does with a further vial. Then Azmael, in his last regeneration, forces himself to regenerate — killing himself — and in doing so destroys Mestor. Dying, Azmael says he has no regrets and that one of his fondest memories was a time spent with the Doctor by a fountain.

The Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS; Lang decides to stay behind on Jaconda to assist with their rebuilding. When Peri tells the Doctor off for being rude, he reminds her that he is an alien, with alien sensibilities: "I am the Doctor… whether you like it or not!"

[edit] Cast notes

• Maurice Denham makes a guest appearance as Azmael. See Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who
• Colin Baker also provides, uncredited, the voice of a Jacondan at Freighter Control in part three.
• Dennis Chinnery had previously appeared as Gharman in the Tom Baker story Genesis of the Daleks.

[edit] Continuity

• The Doctor states that he has regenerated twice since his last encounter with Azmael. This means that this last time (including the incident at the fountain) occurred during the Doctor's fourth incarnation.
• The Doctor is unusually violent at the start of this episode, even attempting to strangle Peri. The intention was to create a Doctor that was initially unlikeable, but would gradually reveal a kind-hearted soul (glimpsed in Revelation of the Daleks). This was also intended to be a contrast to the instantly likeable Tom Baker and Peter Davison Doctors. However, in later interviews, director Peter Moffatt said that the original idea was merely to have the Doctor in a much more energetic state than he was during the Fifth Doctor's début story Castrovalva. Colin Baker said during a 2003 documentary celebrating the series' 40th anniversary that "the idea was that over the many, many years I would be playing the part, the outer layers would gradually peel away, revealing the kind-hearted soul."
• Eric Saward intended for Azmael to be the hermit to whom the Doctor had spoken in his youth, referenced in The Time Monster. Anthony Steven misinterpreted the request and instead made Azmael a former academy tutor of the Doctor.^[2] The Hermit character had already been introduced as K'anpo Rinpoche in Planet of the Spiders ten years before.

[edit] Production

• Anthony Steven worked very slowly on the scripts, offering many strange excuses (purportedly saying that his typewriter had literally exploded) and turning them in at a very late stage. Compounding things were the fact that the scripts were viewed as being of poor quality and too much for the show's budget by script editor Eric Saward, who was forced to rework them at great length in a very short amount of time.^{[citation needed]}
• At least one aspect of Steven's original script featured the Jaconda and Gastropods being dropped totally early in the fourth episode without resolution to the plot, with the final battle taking place in another dimension against a being called Azlan who was controlling Mestor all along.
• The cat badge worn by the Sixth Doctor on his lapel for this story was hand-made and painted by Suzie Trevor, and purchased for the programme from a specialist badge shop in central London. For each subsequent story, the Doctor was to wear a different cat badge to symbolise that he was a "travelling cat of different walks."
• Besides being adjusted for the new Doctor, the opening credits underwent additional modifications with this episode. A prism-colour effect is added and the series logo takes on a somewhat bluish hue (which also results in it appearing slightly curved in comparison to the version introduced during Tom Baker's era). The theme music remains the same version as that introduced in 1980. Prior to this, the opening sequences of the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Doctor eras had incorporated a still photograph of the lead actor. For the Sixth Doctor opening this was changed to using two photographs - one of the Doctor with a serious expression which changes to a second image showing the Doctor smiling. This limited animation would continue with the opening sequence for the Seventh Doctor.
• Fandom often holds the serial in a very low light, being regarded as one of the very worst serials in the history of the series (indeed in SFX #150 new series producer Russell T. Davies cites this story as "the beginning of the end" of Doctor Who). A 1997 poll by Doctor Who Magazine ranked the serial the second worst of all time (the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time was ranked lowest), while a 2003 poll by fansite Outpost Gallifrey ranked it worst of all, below even Dimensions in Time.

[edit] Outside references

Shortly before the Doctor assaults Peri in a paranoid rage, he quotes the line "One morn a peri at the gate Of Eden stood disconsolate" and asks Peri to identify its author. The answer is Thomas Moore, in his poem Lalla Rookh.

The first two instalments of the BBV Stranger video series appear to borrow the premise of the Doctor's desire to become a hermit to atone for mistakes he has made. Since the Stranger is played by Colin Baker and his companion Miss Brown is played by Nicola Bryant, it is often viewed as a "What-If" scenario, despite the fact that the BBV production could not legally use the Doctor Who characters.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
The Twin Dilemma
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	103
Writer	Eric Saward
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
ISBN	0-491-03124-6
Release date	October 1985 (hardback) 13 March 1986 (paperback)
Preceded by	The Time Monster
Followed by	Galaxy 4

A novelisation of this serial, written by Saward, was published in hardback by Target Books in October 1985, and in paperback in March 1986. The cover illustration originally featured Colin Baker. However when Baker's agent enquired about a royalty, the decision was taken to not feature him on the cover and a replacement was commissioned. This adaptation is notable for Saward's convoluted attempt at explaining in detail how the regeneration process works.

[edit] Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases

• This story was released on VHS in May 1992. The tape was available exclusively through branches of Woolworths as part of a special promotion. A general release followed in February 1993.
• A Commentary with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Kevin McNally was recorded in April 2008 for a planned DVD release on September 7 2009. This will also be the last of the Colin Baker years of Doctor Who to be released onto DVD.

[edit] References

The War Games

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

050 – The War Games
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor and his friends are caught in the middle of World War I... or are they?
Cast
Doctor	Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
Companions	Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
	Wendy Padbury (Zoe Heriot)
Guest stars
David Savile — Lt Carstairs Jane Sherwin — Lady Jennifer Buckingham Noel Coleman — General Smythe Richard Steele — Commandant Gorton Terence Bayler — Major Barrington Hubert Rees — Captain Ransom David Valla — Lieutenant Crane Esmond Webb — Sgt Major Burns Brian Forster — Sergeant Willis Pat Gorman — Military Policeman Peter Stanton — Military Chauffeur David Garfield — Von Weich Gregg Palmer — Lieutenant Lucke John Livesey, Bernard Davies — German Soldiers Philip Madoc — War Lord Edward Brayshaw — War Chief James Bree — Security Chief Vernon Dobtcheff — Chief Scientist John Atterbury — Alien Guard Charles Pemberton — Alien Technician Bill Hutchinson — Sgt Thompson Terry Adams — Corporal Riley Leslie Schofield — Leroy Rudolph Walker — Harper Michael Lynch — Spencer Graham Weston — Russell David Troughton — Moor Peter Craze — Du Pont Michael Napier-Brown — Arturo Villar Stephen Hubay — Petrov Tony McEwan — Redcoat Bernard Horsfall — First Time Lord Trevor Martin — Second Time Lord Clyde Pollitt — Third Time Lord Clare Jenkins — Tanya Lernov
Production
Writer	Malcolm Hulke Terrance Dicks
Director	David Maloney
Script editor	Terrance Dicks (uncredited)
Producer	Derrick Sherwin
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	ZZ
Series	Season 6
Length	10 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	April 19–June 21, 1969
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
The Space Pirates	Spearhead from Space

The War Games is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in ten weekly parts from April 19 to June 21, 1969. It was the last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor, and of Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines as companions Zoe Heriot and Jamie McCrimmon. It is the 50th story of the series, and the last Doctor Who serial to be recorded in black and white.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Synopsis

On an alien planet the Doctor uncovers a diabolic plot to conquer the universe, with brainwashed soldiers abducted from Earth forced to fight in simulated environments, reflecting the periods in history from whence they were taken. The alien's aim is to produce a super army from the survivors, to this end they have been aided by a renegade from the Doctor's own race the 'Time Lords'.

Joining forces with rebel soldiers, who have broken their conditioning, the Doctor and his companions foil the plan and stop the fighting. But the Doctor admits he needs the help of the Time Lords to return the soldiers to their own times, but in asking risks capture for his own past crimes including the theft of the TARDIS. After sending the message he and his companions attempt to evade capture, but are caught.

Having returned the soldiers to Earth, the Time Lords erase Zoe and Jamie's memories of travelling with the Doctor, and return them to the point in time just before they entered the TARDIS. They then place the Doctor on trial for stealing the TARDIS and breaking the rule of non-interference. The Doctor presents a spirited defence citing his many battles against the evils of the universe. Accepting this defence the Time Lords announce his punishment is exile to Earth. In addition the operation of the TARDIS is wiped from his memory and his next regeneration is imposed.

[edit] Continuity

• Patrick Troughton later reprised the role of the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. In the second of these, he expresses knowledge of events of the final episode of this serial, on the face of it a chronological impossibility, and in the last he is on an assignment for the Time Lords, which is incompatible with the events seen here. These facts gave rise to the Season 6B theory, enabled by the aforementioned lack of on-screen depiction of the regeneration.
• The Doctor again faces trial in The Trial of a Time Lord, the beginning of which refers to this previous trial.
• The time machines designed by the War Chief and used by the War Lords are called SIDRATs, an inversion of the name TARDIS. Though this name is used only once, and then merely in passing, on-screen during the serial (and pronounced "side-rat")^[1], the expanded acronym is revealed to stand for "Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter" in the 1979 novelisation by Malcolm Hulke. It is repeated in the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Exodus by Terrance Dicks, which forms a sequel to The War Games.
• The Second Doctor's appearance in Terrance Dicks' BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Eight Doctors, occurs during this story.

[edit] Firsts

• For the first time, this serial names the Doctor's race as the "Time Lords". Although his home planet (Gallifrey) is seen, it would not be referenced by name until The Time Warrior (1973). His reasons for leaving Gallifrey, and the fact that he stole the TARDIS, are also revealed.
• Aside from the Doctor and Susan, the War Chief is the second person of the Doctor's race (after the Meddling Monk) to appear in the television series.
• Again the concept of regeneration is presented but not named in this serial, following The Tenth Planet/The Power of the Daleks. The process was eventually named in Planet of the Spiders, then retrospectively attributed to the earlier two changes of actors — first by series fans, then later by the early-'80s production team in The Five Doctors. Until that point, there was some fan controversy over whether the Second Doctor had actually regenerated or merely had his appearance changed.
• While Troughton's Doctor is sentenced to a forced regeneration at the end of this serial, we do not actually see him regenerate into the Third Doctor (who first appears — briefly wearing the Troughton costume — in the next serial, Spearhead from Space). The only other Doctor not to receive an on-screen regeneration is the Eighth Doctor, who has already regenerated into the Ninth Doctor at the start of the 2005 series.
• In the first Episode, the Second Doctor kisses Zoe. [1] This display of platonic affection is the first time that the Doctor kisses one of his companions, though as the series went on it would be far from the last.

[edit] Lasts

• In the final episode, the Time Lords wipe Zoe's mind and return her to the Wheel, where she encounters Tanya Lernov, a character from The Wheel in Space. A set from The Wheel in Space was rebuilt and actress Clare Jenkins (Tanya) rehired for this one scene.^[2] The Big Finish Productions audio drama Fear of the Daleks shows an older Zoe having detailed dreams of her adventures with the Doctor, suspecting that something is blocking her memory, and seeing a psychiatric counsellor in an effort to understand the "dreams".
• This marks the last appearance of the TARDIS Control Room until The Claws of Axos in 1971, though the removed TARDIS console would be seen in the Doctor's UNIT headquarters laboratory in The Ambassadors of Death, and in a hut on the grounds of the titular project in Inferno.
• Episode 10 is the last episode of the original series to be produced in black and white.

[edit] Production

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the War Games
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	70
Writer	Malcolm Hulke
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	John Geary
ISBN	0-426-20082-9
Release date	25 September 1979
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks

[edit] Commercial releases

This serial was released in the UK February 1990 in a two-tape set in episodic form. It was re-released in remastered format in September 2002. Since this VHS re-release, better quality film prints of the story have been located at the BFI, and were used for the DVD release.^[6] The DVD will be released on July 6th 2009 and is a 3 disc set,^[7] with a commentry provided by Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Philip Madoc, Graham Weston, Jane Sherwin, Terrance Dicks and Derrick Sherwin.

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Hulke, was published by Target Books in September 1979, entitled Doctor Who and The War Games. Despite the length of the serial, Hulke was allotted only 143 pages in which to adapt the 10-episode script, the third longest Doctor Who serial. By comparison, the later novelisation of the second longest serial, the 12-episode The Daleks' Master Plan, was published in two volumes, each of which were much longer than Hulke's book, while four books were used to novelise the longest serial, the 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The War Games at bbc.co.uk
• The War Games at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• The War Games at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• Doctor Who Locations - The War Games
• Doctor Who Restoration Team - The War Games

[edit] Reviews

• The War Games reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• The War Games reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

[edit] Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the War Games reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the War Games

Synopsis

On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok is almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escapes by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She makes it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, are planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stows aboard, as does Mel, while the Doctor follows them in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Mel have won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner has the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turn up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they kill the Tollmaster when he refuses to co-operate.

The holiday vehicle from Nostalgia Tours meets an unfortunate collision with an American space satellite and is diverted off track, landing at a holiday camp in South Wales rather than Disneyland. However, the basic but cheerful Shangri-La holiday camp is happy to accommodate the visitors led by the ebullient Burton, who assures the travellers of a warm welcome while they wait for the driver, Murray, to repair their innocuous seeming transport. Mel gets close to Delta and uncovers the truth of her situation, including the hatching of the egg into a bright green baby that starts to grow at a startling rate. The Chimeron Queen supports this development with the equivalent of royal jelly given to bees.

Delta tries to take her mind off the situation and goes to the Shangri-La dance, instantly capturing the heart of Billy, the camp’s mechanic – and making an enemy of the smitten Rachel (or Ray), who loves Billy herself. Ray confides her situation to the Doctor, and they both stumble across a bounty hunter making contact with the Bannermen to tell them of the Chimeron’s whereabouts. It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive. Delta and Billy head off on a romantic countryside ramble the following morning, but the Doctor wastes no time in persuading Burton to evacuate the camp, helping Murray repair the ship, and then heading off to find the young lovers while there is still time. Once they are found, everyone returns to the camp but the situation has become dire. The Bannermen have destroyed the Navarino bus with all its official passengers inside, taking Mel as a hostage, as Gavrok tries to work out how to capture the Chimeron. The Doctor’s early attempts to intercede are futile, but he does rescue Burton and Mel from the Bannermen.

Two Bannermen are holding prisoner two aging American agents, Hawk and Weismuller, who were tracking the missing satellite when they first arrived. The Bannermen were instructed by Gavrok to wait for the Doctor, Burton and Mel on the side of the road. Just before they left the Americans, they place a joined head lock device to prevent them from escaping. While the two Bannerman were placing a tracker on the Doctor, riding Billy's motorbike with Burton and Mel, in an attempt to disguise an ambush attempt, Ray manages to rescue Hawk and Weismuller head locks with an Allen key. They all make contact with the mysterious beekeeper Goronwy, who hides them for a while in his house.

As the two Bannerman find that the Americans have been set free, they track the Doctor’s party to Goronwy House. As they were closing in to the house, the Chimeron child Princess made a high pitched scream of warning which traumatised the ears of the two Bannermen, allowing Delta was able to shoot one of them, while the other escaped to inform Gavrok of the location of Delta and the Princess. At Shangri-La, before leaving to attack Goronwy House, Gavrok booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor. As Gavrok and his Bannermen approached Goronwy House shooting, and crashing into the rock-and-roll-music-filled house, only to have honey broken over them in the process. This then set Goronwy's bees on the honey-covered Bannermen. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and his party made it to Shangri-La to set up a defence. Billy rigged up the Shangri-La sound system to amplify the perfectly pitched scream of the Chimeron child Princess – a sound which is excruciatingly painful to Bannermen.

Goronwy explains to Billy the purpose of royal jelly in the lifecycle of the honeybee, provoking the mechanic to consume Delta's equivalent that she has been feeding her daughter, in the hope of metamorphosing into a Chimeron.

As Gavrok and his band of Bannermen attack Shangri-La, the amplified scream of the Chimeron princess traumatised the attackers, including Gavrok, who becomes so stunned that he falls into the beam of the booby-trap he placed on the TARDIS and is incinerated. Other Bannermen are so traumatised that they are easily rounded up. Delta and Billy leave together with the child and the prisoners, heading for an intergalactic war crimes tribunal. To their delight, The Doctor shows Hawk and Weismuller the missing satellite nearby. All is well and the next bus of holidaymakers, this time human, arrive at Shangri-La as the Doctor and Mel slip away.

[edit] Continuity

• The Seventh Doctor's question mark handle umbrella makes its first appearance in this story.
• Sylvester McCoy can be seen wearing his glasses in certain long shots of him riding a motorcycle (consequently, the only time the Seventh Doctor is seen wearing spectacles, though he does produce a pair for use as an aid to hypnosis in the extended version of Silver Nemesis).
• The Navarinos are also featured in the novel Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman.

Production

Preproduction

• This was the first three-part story since Planet of Giants (1964), not counting the 3 x 45 minute episodes of The Two Doctors, which had been broadcast 2 years previously, and the first intended to be this length (Giants had been recorded as a four-parter and cut).
• Working titles for this story included The Flight of the Chimeron^[5]. The eventual title is a reference to the British band Echo and the Bunnymen. The story title makes a single substitution using the phonetic alphabet and a slight change in the final word of the title.
• The character of Ray was originally created as a new companion for the Doctor as Bonnie Langford had announced she would be leaving the series at the end of the season. The serial, with the working title, The Flight Of The Chimeron, was originally scheduled to end the season. However, as the serial neared production, Langford had not yet decided whether she would leave at the end of Season 24 or during Season 25; that, plus the rescheduling of Delta and the Bannermen to earlier in the season and the decision by script editor Andrew Cartmel to create another replacement companion named Alf (later renamed 'Ace'), led to the idea of Ray as a new companion being abandoned^[5].

Casting

• Features guest appearance by Ken Dodd, Don Henderson, Hugh Lloyd, Richard Davies, and American stage and screen actor Stubby Kaye. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

Production

• The scenes at the Shangri-La holiday camp were shot on location at the Butlins Holiday camp on Barry Island, Wales. The holiday camp is no longer there, but the island was used again, this time as a stand-in for a bomb site in 1941 London, in the 2005 series episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".^[6]
• The soundtrack of this serial contained a higher-than-usual number of recognizable pop songs, although due to licensing costs all were re-recorded by "The Lovells", a fictional group created by the show's incidental music composer Keff McCullough. The songs featured in the serial were: "Rock Around the Clock", "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", "Mr. Sandman", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "That'll Be the Day", "Only You", "Lollipop", "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again".
• The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles.
• The guitar the Doctor is seen hugging at the end of the story is a Fender Stratocaster, although the model is not one available at the time the story was set.

Commercial releases

The story was released on VHS in March 2001 in the UK and June 2002 in North America, but music clearance issues prevented the release of the serial in Australia. A commentary by Sylvester McCoy, Sara Griffiths, Chris Clough and Andrew Cartmel has been recorded for the DVD release. The DVD will be released on June 22 2009.

In print

Doctor Who book
Delta and the Bannermen
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	131
Writer	Malcolm Kohll
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Alister Pearson
ISBN	0-426-20333-X
Release date	19 January 1989
Preceded by	Paradise Towers
Followed by	The War Machines

A novelisation of this serial, written by Malcolm Kohll, was published by Target Books in January 1989.

"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four special episodes to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which serve as lead actor David Tennant's denouement as the Tenth Doctor. He is joined in the episode by actress Michelle Ryan, who plays one-off companion to the Doctor Lady Christina de Souza. The episode was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts: the first writing partnership since the show's revival in 2005.

The episode depicts Christina fleeing the police from a museum robbery by boarding a bus that accidentally travels from London to the desert planet of San Helios, trapping her, the Doctor, and several passengers on board a damaged bus. After the bus driver dies trying to return to Earth, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Captain Erisa Magambo (Noma Dumezweni) and scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Lee Evans), attempt to return the bus to Earth while preventing a race of metallic stingray aliens from posing a threat to Earth. At the end of the episode, one of the passengers delivers a warning to the Doctor which foreshadows the remaining three specials.

"Planet of the Dead" is the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition, after a positive reaction to the visual quality of spin-off series Torchwood and the financial viability of HDTV convinced the production team to switch formats. To ensure that the desert scenes looked as realistic as possible, the production team filmed in Dubai for three days, sending several props—most notably, a 1980 double-decker Bristol VR bus—to the United Arab Emirates for filming. After the bus was unintentionally damaged in Dubai by a shipping container, Davies rewrote the script to explain the damage in the narrative.

Reaction to the episode was mixed: the audience gave the episode an Appreciation Index of 88^[3]—considered excellent—but critics gave average reviews to the episode. The consensus among critics was that it was enjoyable as a whole but that it was only an average script. The main point of praise was Evans' performance alongside Dumezweni in scenes set on Earth, which countered their criticism of the events on San Helios as being relatively boring.

Plot

The episode begins with a young thrill-seeking burglar, Lady Christina de Souza (Ryan), stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan from a museum. She then narrowly evades the police by riding on a London bus on which the Doctor (Tennant) is also travelling, shortly before the bus suddenly passes through a wormhole and arrives on the desert planet of San Helios. The Doctor and the other passengers find that the wormhole is still present, but deduce that the bus had protected them like a Faraday cage after the bus driver is killed trying to cross back on foot, evaporating to a skeleton instantly. Seeing the driver's skeleton coming out on the other side of the portal, the police call in UNIT, commanded by Captain Erisa Magambo (Dumezweni) and aided by scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor (Evans), to close the wormhole. Trapped on a heavily damaged bus, the other passengers introduce themselves: Angela (Victoria Alcock) is a middle-aged mother travelling home to her family; Lou (Reginald Tsiboe) and Carmen (Ellen Thomas) are an elderly couple who win £10 each time they play the National Lottery due to Carmen's low-level psychic abilities; Barclay (Daniel Kaluuya) was travelling to a friend's house to ask her on a date; and Nathan (David Ames) was travelling home to watch television. The Doctor and Christina decide to scout the planet, spotting an approaching storm, while Nathan and Barclay try to fix the bus.

As they travel, the Doctor learns of Christina's troubled history, and appreciates her callousness and aptitude to the alien situation. The Doctor and Christina encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Tritovore explain that they were making a routine goods collection from the planet but crashed in an unfamiliar environment; a year previously, the planet housed a hundred billion inhabitants and a thriving ecosystem. The Tritovore send out a probe to investigate the cause, and discover a large swarm of metallic stingray-like aliens who routinely create wormholes and destroy ecospheres as their biological imperatives. To rescue the Tritovore and the bus passengers, Christina uses her burglary skills to retrieve a crystal which powers the spaceship (together with the pedestal it is located on), unintentionally awakening a stingray that kills the two Tritovore.

The Doctor attaches parts of the pedestal to the bus and uses the chalice of Athelstan as an interface to the technology. This allows the bus to fly through the wormhole, with the stingrays in hot pursuit. Taylor quickly closes the wormhole but not before three of the stingrays pass through it. After UNIT has shot down the stingrays and the passengers have been debriefed, Christina asks the Doctor to let her travel with him; he rejects her because he does not want to lose another companion. The characters part ways. The Doctor recommends that UNIT hire Barclay and Nathan, Christina is arrested by the police for the theft and Carmen has a premonition that visibly unnerves the Doctor:

You be careful, because your song is ending, sir. It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times.

—Carmen, "Planet of the Dead"^[4]

As a final act of kindness, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to release Christina from her handcuffs. The pair part on good terms as she flies away in the bus as the Doctor enters his TARDIS and dematerialises.

Production

Writing and casting

Ryan and Tennant reviewing the script before filming in Butetown on 28 January 2009.

Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its 2005 revival.^[5] "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories—Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories—and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept—such as Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code" or Agatha Christie and a murder mystery in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"—and instead was a deliberate "clash [of concepts] with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", citing the serial Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.^[6] The episode includes a common feature of Davies' writing in that there is no clear antagonist: the Tritovore are eventually sympathetic to the protagonists and the stingrays are only following their biological imperative.^[7][8]

Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word—"joyous"—was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" [had] a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme.^[5] The starting point for the story was Roberts' first novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.^[5]

Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" which the Doctor could relate to because they both rejected their heritages. The episode's director James Strong described the character as reverting to a traditional romantic-based companionship—rather than the platonic companionship of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the fourth series—while still being a unique companion:^[9]

It's back to basics: she's probably more of a traditional, romantic kind of Thomas Crown Affair kind of heroine, if you like. [...] It echoes to me of Rose, in that there may be a good old fashioned romantic connection between them. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, but whereas Rose was a very ordinary, normal girl, Lady Christina is a lady, she comes from a very privileged, very elite background. She's different to any of the companions we've ever had in that she doesn't particularly want to get caught up with the Doctor. She's got her own thing going on, so she's very much a match for the Doctor and very much an equal. Often in an adventure the Doctor will take control and everyone will do what he says. She's very much in control – the two of them are in a sparring way, battling against each other to get through this adventure.

—James Strong, Digital Spy interview.^[9]

Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left".^[5] Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.^[6][10]

The episode was influenced by several works: Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black.";^[11] the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives";^[5] and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including aliens that were recognisable to the audience as animals from Earth, such as the Judoon.^[7] Carmen's warning evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and Donna in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood".^[7] Tennant explained the prophecy meant that the Doctor's "card [had become] marked" and the three specials would thus be darker—characterising "Planet of the Dead" as the "last time the Doctor gets to have any fun"—and that the subject of the prophecy was not the obvious answer:

David Tennant

Really, from this moment on, the Doctor's card is marked. Because when we come back in "The Waters of Mars", it's all become a little bit darker.

Julie Gardner

And as we know, David, he really does knock four times.

Tennant

Yeah, absolutely, and if you think you've figured out what that means, you're wrong!

Gardner

But when you do figure it out, it's a sad day.

—David Tennant and Julie Gardner, Doctor Who: The Commentaries, "Planet of the Dead"^[8]

Filming

The two major filming locations of the episode: the desert of Dubai was used for scenes on the "planet of the dead"; and the Queen's Gate Tunnel in Butetown, Cardiff was used for the majority of Earth-bound scenes.

Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008—four days before scheduled—because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time.^[12] Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed.^[13] The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.^[14]

Production began on 19 January in Wales.^[2][10] The special was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high-definition television resolution.^[15] The move to HD had previously been resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive to create in high-definition than in standard-definition. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.^[8]

Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff,^{[location 1]} which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown^{[location 2]} was closed for four nights to accommodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir (formerly Alphasteel) steelworks in Newport,^{[location 3]} which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accommodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.^[8]

The 200 bus—so named after the episode's landmark—in dock at Dubai City Port, after a container was accidentally dropped on it.

Filming in Dubai^{[location 4]} took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port.^[7][16]After an emergency discussion by the production team, they agreed that the damage was unintentionally artistic and decided to include the damaged bus in the episode;^[7] instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff—which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule—the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite part of the script to accommodate and mention the damage to the bus.^{[7][8][17][18]} James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine:

One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus [...] it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph—and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in [...] and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. [...] He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert—yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def.

—James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.^[14]

A notable use of lens flares being used in the episode for artistic effect. Strong sought to maximise—rather than minimise—effects such as these because it disguised the fact it was filmed in a studio and allowed the viewer to suspend their disbelief more easily; this specific shot was highlighted by Strong and Tennant as an example of how it was correctly utilised.^[8]

The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left most of the footage shot unusable.^[14] The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia".^[7] To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite—a 360-degree background image—, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the latter also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.^[8] After filming ended, editing and post-processing took place until two days before transmission, leaving the BBC to resort to using an unfinished copy to market the episode.^[7][8]

200th story

"Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the third series finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords".^[19] Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial—arguing that it "felt like four stories" to him—and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others.^[19] Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark—specifically, the bus number is 200^[20]—and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such.^[19] Doctor Who Magazine's editor Tom Spilsbury aknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.^[21]

€Broadcast and reception

Overnight figures estimated that the special was watched by 8.41 million people, a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far. The initial showing had an Appreciation Index of 88: considered excellent.^[22][23] A BBC One repeat, two days later, gained an overnight figure of 1.8 million viewers.^[22] The special was therefore the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by the premiere of the new series of Britain's Got Talent.^[23] The final viewing figure for the initial broadcast was 9.54 million viewers on BBC One and 200,000 viewers on BBC HD, making it the fifth most watched programme of the week and the most watched programme ever aired on BBC HD.^[24] Including repeats in the following week and viewings on the BBC iPlayer, 13.89 million viewers watched the episode in total.^[25]

The episode received average critical reviews. Simon Brew of science fiction blog Den of Geek said the episode was "by turns ambitious and predictable" but "still quite entertaining". The first part of the review mentioned an objection from his wife that the bus trapped in the sand "[looked] really fake", despite the episode being actually filmed in Dubai, and then mentioned Brew's appreciation of the concept of people stranded in the desert and concluded that "made a fair fist of it". Brew positively reviewed Michelle Ryan's performance—comparing her performance to be on par to her role in Bionic Woman rather than her role as Zoe Slater in Eastenders—and Lee Evans' performance as Malcolm Taylor, calling him the highlight of the episode because of his dialogue. He closed his review by saying that ""Planet of the Dead" was passable enough": he thought it "never really gelled" for him; but he thought it was overall entertaining and was excited for the remaining three specials as a result of Carmen's prophecy.^[26]

Charlie Jane Anders of io9 "mostly loved "Planet Of The Dead"", commenting that it was a standard Russell T Davies script that had the "elements of a cracking good story":

POTD was pretty much everything you've come to expect from Russell T. Davies' Who: crazy adventures, slightly cartoony characters, clever dialogue, moments of sheer silly fun, a childlike solemnity, a miraculous save, bombastic music, and one woman who's held up as being the most special person ever.

It didn't hurt that POTD had all the elements of a cracking good story: The Doctor and friends trapped on an alien planet, on the other side of the universe, with no easy way to get home. Alien creatures who might be hostile. A deadly swarm coming to tear our heroes apart. And UNIT on the other side of the wormhole, trying to come to grips with this almost unimaginable threat.

—Charlie Jane Anders, io9^[27]

She compared it to two previous episodes, "The Impossible Planet" and "Midnight", both of which she enjoyed. She criticised three aspects of the episode: Lady Christina, who was the "first RTD heroine who actually filled [her] with revulsion", leaving her hoping that the character would be killed off-screen, Malcolm's reluctance to close the wormhole and the implausibility of only three stingrays travelling through it. She thought that the episode was "a pretty solid adventure with a cool set of monsters".^[27]

Ben Rawson-Jones of entertainment website Digital Spy gave the episode two stars out of five. He characterised the episode as being "as hollow as a big chocolate Easter egg" because it was "lacking in the enthralling drama and compelling characterisation that has been the lynchpin of the Russell T Davies era". His main criticism was towards Ryan's character, describing the romantic tension between Christina and the Doctor as "feeling forced" and arguing that Ryan was "utterly unconvincing" as Christina. Conversely, he was appreciative of Strong's direction and the UNIT subplot. Specifically, he approved of Evans' performance, noting that "the fact that Malcolm names a unit of measurement after himself is both inspired and hilarious". His review ended by describing the episode as "lifeless for much of the hour" and expressing his hope that the ambiguous entity from Carmen's premonition would "hurry up".^[28]

Orlando Parfitt of IGN gave the episode a 7.1 (Good) rating out of ten. Parfitt called it a "straightforward story" that did not elevate to the level of excitement typically seen in Doctor Who until the episode's climax, instead describing the majority of the story as being "taken up with Tennant and Ryan standing in the desert, swapping flirtatious banter in between proclaiming how dire their situation in between", and criticised the writing of the part of the episode where the bus was on San Helios, claiming that plot devices such as the Tritovore or Taylor being held at gunpoint and ordered to close the wormhole as "feel[ing] forced and unnaturally shoe-horned into the script". His praise of the episode went to Ryan and Evans: although he thought of Christina as a "shameless Lara Croft ripoff", he said that the character "still proves a sexy and wise-cracking counterpart to the Doctor"; and Evans' acting alongside Dumezweni highlighted his "undeniably great comic acting" as opposed to his "love-it-or-hate-it" stand-up comedy. The last paragraph of his review focused on the climax, which he thought was "a cracker [that] just-about makes up for the previously plodding plot", and described the entire episode as having "enough enjoyable moments" to entertain fans before the transmission of "The Waters of Mars".^[29]

DVD and Blu-Ray release

"Planet of the Dead" will be released on DVD on 15 June 2009,^[30] and on Blu-Ray on 29 June 2009.^[31]

Synopsis

The Doctor answers a summons and finally returns to his homeworld, Gallifrey, seat of the Time Lords. However, when the President of the High Council is assassinated, he becomes the prime suspect, while an old enemy lurks in the shadows, pulling the strings.

[edit] Plot

The Fourth Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey after receiving a mysterious summons from the Time Lords. Along the way, he has a precognitive vision about the President of the Time Lords being murdered.

As soon as the TARDIS materialises within the Gallifreyan Citadel, an alarm sounds and it is surrounded by soldiers. Their leader, Commander Hildred, reports to Castellan Spandrell. Both note that the TARDIS is a Type 40, which is no longer in service. Since the arrival is unauthorised, the soldiers are ordered to impound the TARDIS and arrest the occupant. The Doctor overhears this, and realises that the Time Lords did not summon him. Someone has gone to great lengths to set him up.

Spandrell goes to see Coordinator Engin in the Archives Section, leaving Hildred in charge. Hildred and his troops enter the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to sneak out and make his way to a service lift that leads to the main tower. A soldier is present, and threatens to place the Doctor under arrest. However, the soldier is quickly killed by a phantom-like figure who disappears before the Doctor can get a good look at him. The Doctor sends the lift on its way, in an attempt to fool the soldiers into thinking he has fled deeper into the Citadel. All of this has been observed by the Doctor's old adversary, the Master, who is wearing a black hood that conceals his features. "Predictable as ever, Doctor," he snorts, before returning to the shadows.

Chancellor Goth arrives outside the TARDIS to see the situation for himself. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is watching a news broadcast by a reporter he recognises as Runcible (whom the Doctor nicknames "the Fatuous"), a classmate from his days at the Academy. It is revealed that the President is set to retire, and he is to name a successor before he does. Runcible is talking to Cardinal Borusa, one of the Doctor's former teachers. He asks Borusa who the Presidential successor will be, but Borusa brushes him off.

The TARDIS is transmatted to the museum, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to steal a set of traditional Gallifreyan robes to mingle with the crowds. Meanwhile, deep within the archive tower, the Master, revealed to be horribly emaciated, confers with an unseen accomplice. He says that the trap has been set, and they must make sure the Doctor dies quickly.

At the Panopticon, the disguised Doctor briefly converses with Runcible before the outgoing President makes his entrance. The Doctor scans the area and notes a camera stationed on an unguarded catwalk. He also spots a sniper rifle next to the camera. The Doctor fights his way to the catwalk, warning that the President is about to be killed. Unfortunately, for the Doctor, the assassin is actually among the delegates. He pulls out a pistol and shoots the President dead. The crowd sees the Doctor on the catwalk with the rifle and assume he is the assassin.

The captured Doctor insists that he is innocent. Eventually, Spandrell starts to believe him and orders Engin to assist him in an independent investigation. Meanwhile, Goth and Borusa debate over the Doctor's impending trial. Goth notes that the election for a new President will occur in forty-eight hours, and he is eager to see the Doctor executed before then. Borusa, however, wants to ensure that the Doctor receives a fair trial, according to law. The Doctor surprises everyone by invoking Article 17: he will run for President, which will mean he can only be tried if he loses the election. The Master and his assassin are not pleased with this turn of events.

The Doctor returns to the scene of the crime with Spandrell. They discover that the sight on the Doctor's rifle was fixed, making it impossible for this weapon to have killed the President. They conclude that the real assassin would have been caught on tape by a nearby video camera, but when they inspect the camera, they find the shrunken body of the technician inside. The Doctor then realises that the Master is behind this. Runcible attempts to take the tape from the camera to the archives for review, but he is killed by a spear to the back.

The Doctor realises that the Master sent the Doctor the premonition of the assassination through the Matrix, a vast computer which turns thought patterns into virtual reality. He decides to enter the Matrix as a means of tracking the Master. Engin warns him that if he dies in the virtual world, he will die in the real world as well.

The Doctor enters the Matrix and finds himself in a forbidding landscape of crumbling white cliffs and sparse vegetation. The disembodied laughter of some unknown presence echoes off the canyon walls. The Doctor is then engaged in a series of surrealistic sequences. First he nearly walks into the open jaws of a hungry crocodile, which simply disappears into thin air. He is then attacked by a masked samurai warrior and falls from a cliff into unconsciousness. He revives upon an outdoor operating table with a masked surgeon standing over him. The surgeon tries to inject him with a substance from an extremely large hypodermic needle. The Doctor pushes the surgeon away and runs off to find himself in the midst of a World War I battle. Shell and machine gun fire is heard and gas canisters explode all around. A soldier and his horse stumble out of the smoke wearing gas masks. The Doctor runs bewildered until he comes upon a train track, the rail of which closes upon one of his boots and traps him. A group of three masked men appear and one attempts to run him down with a mine train.

The train disappears before hitting the Doctor and he works his foot free. The Doctor realizes that his surroundings are but an illusion and tries to deny their existence, but passes out from the strain. Recovering consciousness he becomes aware of the two large black eyes of his unknown adversary in the side of a cliff, telling him that he is the creator of this world and that there is no escape. The Doctor, dehydrated and thirsty, hears the sound of running water, but when he attempts to dig into the ground to locate its source he is greeted by a red-nosed clown peering through a window, laughing at him. He is then strafed by machine gun fire by a masked pilot in a biplane, eventually receiving a bullet wound in the leg. The Doctor tries to deny the existence of the wound, and it disappears. However, the disembodied voice of the assassin reminds him that this is his reality, and his rules, and the wound reappears. The Doctor declares that he will then fight the assassin in his reality.

In the real world, Engin tells Spandrell that the Doctor’s adversary is using a lot of energy to maintain the virtual environment, so the Doctor can defeat him if he provides an adequate distraction.

Inside the Matrix, the dry barren virtual environment merges into a thick, sticky jungle, and the assassin soon appears dressed as a big game hunter, a mesh veil obscuring his face. The assassin concludes that the Doctor will need water, and, leaving his backpack behind him, goes off to contaminate the local supply with poison from a small bottle. The Doctor finds the assassin's backpack and takes a grenade and some twine, setting up a makeshift booby trap. The assassin returns and trips it, setting off an explosion which wounds him in the abdomen.

Fearing that his protégé might lose, the Master sends a hypnotised guard to kill the Doctor's physical form.

Back inside the Matrix, the Doctor continues to be hunted through the virtual jungle. Coming to the pool of water, he finds dead, floating fish and the empty bottle and realises that the water has been poisoned. He finds a small amount of uncontaminated water and drinks it through a reed, then uses the reed and some thorns off of a nearby tree to make a blowgun, dipping the ends of the darts into the remnants of the poison from the bottle. The Doctor climbs up into a tree and shoots the assassin in the leg with a dart. The assassin fires his rifle and hits the Doctor in the arm, causing him to fall out of the tree. Ripping his pants leg open to reveal a potentially fatal wound, the assassin injects himself with an antidote while the Doctor again escapes.

In the real world, the hypnotised guard makes his way to the Matrix chamber, but Spandrell manages to shoot him before he can sabotage the Matrix link.

Back in the Matrix, the Doctor has made it to a gas-filled marsh, where the assassin reveals his true identity: Chancellor Goth. Goth tries to shoot the Doctor but ignites the marsh gas, setting himself on fire. Goth falls into the water to extinguish the spreading flames. The Doctor comes out of hiding to confront him, but is caught by surprise by Goth and tackled. Intense hand-to-hand combat ensues, with Goth seeming to gain the upper hand. He attempts to drown the Doctor.

However, the strain of fighting and keeping up the virtual reality overcomes Goth. The Doctor breaks free and hits Goth over the head with a large stick. The Master, realising that Goth has been effectively defeated, decides to hedge his bets and tries to trap the Doctor in the Matrix by overloading the neuron fields, even though this will also kill Goth. Engin manages to get the Doctor out, but Goth is not so lucky. The Master then injects himself with a hypodermic needle.

The Doctor and Spandrell, accompanied by soldiers, manage to make their way to the chamber where the Master and Goth were accessing the Matrix. They find the Master slumped in a chair without a pulse and Goth dying. Goth reveals that he found the Master, near death, on Tersurus. The Master was nearing the end of his twelfth and final regeneration. Goth went along with his schemes mainly for power: he knew the President had no intention of naming him as a successor, but if a new election was held, he would be the front runner. Before he dies, Goth warns that the Master has a doomsday plan.

When Spandrell relates the story to Borusa, the Cardinal orders that a cover story be created to maintain confidence in the Time Lords and their leadership. The official story will be that the Master arrived in secret to assassinate the President, and Goth heroically tracked him down and killed him but perished in the attempt. The charge against the Doctor will be dropped on condition that he leave Gallifrey.

Attempting to piece together what the Master and Goth were planning, the Doctor inquires as to what becoming the President entails. He is told that the President has access to the symbols of office: the Sash and Great Key of Rassilon. As Engin plays the records of the Old Time, which describes how Rassilon found the Eye of Harmony within the "black void", the Doctor realises these objects are not ceremonial. The Doctor inspects the hypodermic needle, and realises that it contained a neural inhibitor. The Master is still alive.

The Doctor, Spandrell, and Engin arrive at the morgue, to find that the Master has revived and killed Hildred. Armed with Hildred’s staser pistol, the Master seizes the Sash from the President's corpse and traps the three in the morgue. The Doctor explains what he has deduced: that the Eye is actually the nucleus of a black hole, an inexhaustible energy source that Rassilon captured to power Gallifrey, and the Sash and Key are its control devices. The Doctor deduces that the Master was planning to steal this energy to gain a new cycle of regenerations. However, if the Eye is disrupted, Gallifrey will be destroyed and a hundred other worlds will be consumed in a chain reaction.

Inside the Panopticon, the Master makes his way to the obelisk containing the Eye. He unhooks the coils that connect it to Gallifrey, and is prepared to access the energy. The Doctor makes his way to the Panopticon via a service shaft. The Citadel begins to quake, and cracks appear in the floor. The Doctor and the Master fight, until the Master loses his footing and falls into a chasm. The Doctor reconnects the coils and saves Gallifrey, although half the city is in ruins and many lives have been lost.

The Doctor is now free to return to his TARDIS. He bids farewell to Borusa, Spandrell, and Engin, but also warns that the Master may not be dead. He had harvested some energy from the obelisk before he was stopped, and may have been able to channel it. As the Doctor’s TARDIS dematerialises, Spandrell and Engin witness the Master sneak into his own TARDIS – disguised as a grandfather clock – and make his escape. Spandrell concludes that it is only a matter of time before the two enemies cross paths again.

[edit] Cast notes

Bernard Horsfall guest stars as Chancellor Goth. He had previously appeared as an unnamed Time Lord (credited as 'Time Lord 1') in the serial The War Games prompting some speculation that they were the same character. Other parts played by Horsfall in Doctor Who were Gulliver in The Mind Robber and Taron in Planet of the Daleks.

[edit] Continuity

• This is the only serial of the original Doctor Who series in which the Doctor does not have a companion. This was reportedly at Tom Baker's request as he wanted to try a solo adventure. In addition, some have suggested that the production team hoped to discourage Baker's interest in solo serials, but his enthusiastic reaction to the scripts seems to have belied this.
• Although this story was well-received, the experiment of the Doctor without his companions was not repeated until the revived series episode "Midnight" in the 2008 series. Robert Holmes later stated how difficult it was to write a script without anyone for the Doctor to share his thoughts and plans with (the character is seen to talk to himself more than usual).
• The planet Tersurus, where Goth says he found the Master, is seen in the 1999 charity spoof Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. How the Master arrived there in an emaciated state is described in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel.
• The character of Borusa reappears in The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors. In each subsequent story, the character is played by a different actor, Borusa having regenerated. He has also been promoted in each interim, a cardinal here, Chancellor, President, and Lord High President in the later serials, respectively.
• Earth is referred to as Sol 3; this name is again used in "Last of the Time Lords".^[1] The Factfile for that episode on the official BBC Doctor Who website, compiled by fan Rob Francis, refers to the term as Earth's Gallifreyan name.^[2] It is used as such again in "Voyage of the Damned".
• The Doctor's trial and subsequent exile to Earth by the Time Lords and the later lifting of that sentence are mentioned.

[edit] Notable additions

• This is the first story to state that there is a limited number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate, and that this number is twelve. None of the Time Lords who are killed in this story are seen to regenerate, and the Doctor does qualify (in The War Games) that his people can live forever "barring accidents." In The Brain of Morbius, the fourth Doctor states that his people chose to not live forever because "death is the price of progress."
• This episode is one of the very few where we see the written Galifreyan language by way of a note to the authorities the Doctor leaves in the Tardis. The handwriting, done with a quill pen, resembles random stylized penstrokes shaped like the upside down capital letter L.
• The source of the Time Lords' power and that of the TARDIS is the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that lies beneath the citadel on Gallifrey. The Eye (or a link to it) is seen inside the TARDIS in the 1996 television movie. Whether the Eye survived the destruction of Gallifrey mentioned in the 2005 series is not clear, though the TARDIS is seen twice ("Boom Town", "Utopia") drawing its power from the time rift in Cardiff.
• This story introduces Rassilon who, along with Omega (introduced in The Three Doctors) would become the central figure in Time Lord mythology. When Rassilon's name is first mentioned, the Doctor inquires who he is.
• One of the artefacts that controls the Eye of Harmony is the Great Key of Rassilon, a large ebonite rod. Confusingly, there are two other Keys of Rassilon mentioned later in the series. One, also known as the Great Key, whose location is known only to the Chancellor, resembles an ordinary key and is a vital component of the demat gun (The Invasion of Time). The other, simply called the Key of Rassilon, gives access to the Matrix (The Ultimate Foe).

[edit] Production

• Working titles for this story included The Dangerous Assassin (which Holmes changed to "deadly" because he thought it "didn't sound right"). The final title is a tautology: a successful assassin must, by definition, be deadly. However, since Time Lords can in general survive death, and the assassin's victims do not, he is perhaps "deadly" in that sense.
• The story drew considerable hostile commentary from Mary Whitehouse, who particularly objected to the extended freeze frame of Goth drowning the Doctor at the end of episode 3.

[edit] Outside references

• The story was largely inspired by the film and book The Manchurian Candidate, down to the inclusion of a CIA.
• The serial begins with Tom Baker doing a voiceover introduction referring to Time Lords in the third person, over a text crawl similar to that seen in the opening of Star Wars (although The Deadly Assassin predates the premiere of Star Wars by six months). The 1996 television movie, "Father's Day", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" are the only other stories so far that begin with a voiceover.
• See also: Simulated reality

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	19
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Mike Little
ISBN	0-426-11965-7
Release date	20 October 1977
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the Mutants
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in October 1977, entitled Doctor Who and The Deadly Assassin.

[edit] Broadcast

This serial was repeated on BBC One in August 1977 (04/08/77) to (25/08/77) on Thursdays at 6.20pm.

The cliffhanger to Episode 3 — where Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater in an attempt to drown him — came in for heavy criticism, particularly from television decency campaigner Mary Whitehouse. She often cited it in interviews as one of the most frightening scenes in Doctor Who, her reasoning being that children would not know if the Doctor survived until the following week and that they would have this strong image in their minds during all that time. After the episode's initial broadcast, the master tape of the episode was edited to remove the original ending. However, off-air U-matic recordings of the original broadcast exist with the ending intact, and have been used to restore the ending on the VHS and subsequent DVD release.

[edit] VHS and DVD release

• This story was released in March 1989 in edited omnibus format in the US only.
• It was released in episodic format in the UK in October 1991. It was also re-released & remastered for the W H Smith exclusive Time Lord Collection in 2002 with a better quality freeze frame cliffhanger for Episode 3.
• DWM 404 confirmed this story for 2009 DVD release. Play.com has it listed for 11th May and Amazon.co.uk have this listed for a 4th May release.

Season 6B

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors

Season 6B or Season 6 (b) is a popular fan theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An example of fanon, it is a hypothetical series of adventures of the Doctor that takes place between the last serial of Season 6, The War Games (first broadcast in 1969), and the first serial of Season 7, Spearhead from Space (first broadcast in 1970). This unconfirmed piece of continuity was first used by fans, notably Paul Cornell, to explain away certain continuity problems in the programme.

Although the majority of stories in the series were constructed to leave short gaps (or no gaps at all) between episodes, the Season 6B hypothesis inserted a sizeable gap in which untold stories and previously unknown companions could be inserted into series continuity, in a number of novels and other productions. Other potential gaps in the eras of other Doctors have been identified, and utilised in the same way.

Season 6B is not to be confused with 6B, the production code for the Doctor Who serial Earthshock (1982).

[edit] Continuity problems

The conclusion of The War Games sees the capture of the Second Doctor by his people, the Time Lords, who put him on trial for interfering with the universe contrary to Time Lord policy. This was the first time the Time Lords had appeared in the programme, and also the first time the Doctor had revealed he was one of them (prior to this the other members of the Doctor's race to appear on television, the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Meddling Monk, were not explicitly identified as Time Lords). The Time Lords return his companions Jamie and Zoe to their own times and wipe their memories of their experiences with the Doctor bar their first adventure with him. They then sentence the Doctor to exile on Earth, as well as forcing him to regenerate. The first part of Spearhead from Space follows on from this, introducing the Third Doctor, who does not actually appear on screen at the end of The War Games, one of only two occasions (the other being the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth) that a regeneration has not been shown to completion on screen in one form or another.

Patrick Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor in the anniversary stories The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the latter story, illusions of Jamie and Zoe are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories and therefore Jamie should not have recognised Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

However, it is not explained how the Second Doctor could know of Jamie and Zoe's memory wipe, since he was told of it only just before his forced regeneration and exile, and consequently there does not seem to be any time to fit in the events of The Five Doctors between his trial and Spearhead from Space. Conversely, if this Second Doctor came from a time before The War Games he would have had no knowledge of the memory wipe because, from his perspective it had yet to happen.^[1]

Troughton once again returned to the series in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors, where the Second Doctor and Jamie are on a mission for the Time Lords. This caused confusion among fans, since Jamie did not find out about the Time Lords until just before he was sent back to his own time. Robert Holmes, who wrote The Two Doctors, stated on occasion that he believed the Doctor had long been a discreet agent of the Time Lords, undertaking missions for them despite his autonomous status. However, this was still at odds with what had been seen on-screen in The War Games. (Holmes felt that the Second Doctor had lost half a life due to the events of The War Games and came up with an idea to extend his life span).

Coupled with this were other, more minor problems - the visibly aged appearance of the now grey-haired Troughton and Frazer Hines (who played Jamie) and the second Doctor's confidence in his ability to control his TARDIS time machine, which would hardly have been justified given what was seen on-screen during his own era.

[edit] Season 6B

To account for these apparent discrepancies, the "Season 6B" theory was proposed. It was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.^[2] The hypothetical "Season 6B" takes place off-camera between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, and has Troughton's Doctor working as an agent of the Time Lords, specifically their covert organization the Celestial Intervention Agency, who grant him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. The Second Doctor who shows up in The Five Doctors comes from this period, and is therefore aware of Jamie and Zoe's mindwipe.

The plausibility of the theory is aided by the fact that we never actually see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee. The end of The War Games merely sees Troughton vanish into darkness and the opening of Spearhead from Space sees the Pertwee Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS already transformed. The Third Doctor also carried a ring, a bracelet, and a watch which homed in on the TARDIS, none of which he had at the close of The War Games.

During this time, the Second Doctor apparently regains Jamie and Victoria Waterfield (who is mentioned as being away studying graphology in The Two Doctors) as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS, and undertakes the mission which was related in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tire of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or, as is more likely, the Doctor rebels and attempts to escape once more. This results in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space. To explain why the Sixth Doctor does not remember his own past in The Two Doctors, it is also suggested that the Time Lords wiped the Second Doctor's memory of the events of Season 6B — the Third Doctor did claim significant memory loss in Spearhead. (The Discontinuity Guide acknowledged that alternatively, this could be due to the fact that the Doctor is injected during The Two Doctors with "siralanomode"; a fictitious drug that the Doctor states can affect one's memory.^[2])

Although the specifics of Season 6B were first laid out in The Discontinuity Guide, the idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor had already been introduced in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, and he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers (TVC #934-#936). In this story, the Doctor investigates tales of scarecrows walking. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, and we learn that the Doctor escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space.

[edit] Adoption in tie-in fiction

Some parts of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players are set in this period, as is the whole of World Game. Both books are written by former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks. Dicks co-wrote The War Games and his adoption of the Season 6B hypothesis is seen by some as lending authorial legitimacy to the idea.

In World Game, it is revealed that at the conclusion of the Second Doctor's trial, he was actually sentenced to death. However, the Celestial Intervention Agency required an operative who could discreetly investigate temporal disturbances but could also be disavowed. The CIA approaches the Doctor and the Time Lord High Council, proposing that the Doctor's sentence be commuted if he becomes their agent.

To test this arrangement, the Doctor is first sent via time ring to 1915 France (Players) and subsequently given a Type 97 TARDIS and a supervisor/companion in the politically ambitious Time Lady Serena (World Game). Although the relationship between the two was more antagonistic, over the course of the mission they begin to appreciate each other's talents.

At the conclusion of World Game, Serena sacrifices herself for the Doctor's principles, while the Doctor uses what he learned of Gallifreyan politics from her to negotiate with the CIA, agreeing to their terms, but demanding the return of his TARDIS and Jamie. The CIA also agree, giving him a Stattenheim remote control and fitting the TARDIS with an override to give them ultimate control. They alter Jamie's memories so that he believes Victoria is away studying graphology, and the novel leads into the events of The Two Doctors.

[edit] BBC website

The BBC Doctor Who website uses excerpts both from The Discontinuity Guide and The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. The mention of Season 6B on the site could be taken as the BBC lending legitimacy to the theory. However, the BBC has never made a clear statement on canonicity, and the site also contains material which is explicitly non-canonical. The exact position remains unclear.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5.

[edit] External links

• Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC website
• The WHOniverse's timeline
• Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures timeline
• Outpost Gallifrey timeline (not current with World Game)

The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are amongst the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for.

They were created by Dr. Kit Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the programme) and Gerry Davis in 1966, first appearing in the serial, The Tenth Planet, the last to feature William Hartnell as the First Doctor. They have since been featured numerous times in their extreme attempts to survive through conquest.

A parallel universe version of the Cybermen appeared in the 2006 series' two-part story, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". These Cybermen also appeared in the two-part 2006 season finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". This then carried through to the spin-off Torchwood in the episode "Cyberwoman". They would later return to the revived series in the 2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor", introducing two new variants of the race; the Cyber-Shades and the Cyber-King.

[edit] Physical characteristics

An original Cyberman from The Tenth Planet

While the Doctor's other old enemies the Daleks were on the whole unchanged during the original series' twenty-six season run, the Cybermen were seen to change with almost every encounter. The Cybermen are humanoid, but have been cybernetically augmented to the point where they have few remaining organic parts. In their first appearance in the series, the only portions of their bodies that still seemed human were their hands, but by their next appearance in The Moonbase (1967), their bodies were entirely covered up in their metallic suits, with their hands replaced by two finger claws, but changed back to regular five-fingered hands in The Invasion (1968). As they are relatively few in number, the Cybermen tend towards covert activity, scheming from hiding and using human pawns or robots to act in their place until they need to appear. They also seek to increase their numbers by converting others into Cybermen (a process known as "cyber-conversion").

It is presumed (and often implied) that there are still organic components beneath their suits, meaning they are actually cyborgs, not robots: in The Tenth Planet, a Cyberman tells a group of humans that "our brains are just like yours", although by the time of Attack of the Cybermen, their brains seem to have been replaced with electronics. Also in this same story, two human slave-prisoners of the Cybermen on the planet Telos, named Bates and Stratton, reveal that their organic arms and legs have been removed by the Cybermen, and replaced by Cyber-substitutes. In Earthshock (1982), the actors' chins were vaguely visible through a clear perspex area on the helmet to suggest some kind of organic matter. In The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), veins and brains were visible through the domed head of the Cyberman Controller and similarly, in Attack of the Cybermen (1985) and "The Age of Steel" (2006), the Cyber-Controller's brain is visible through the dome. The first is a Mondas Cyber Controller, while the second involves alternative Earth's John Lumic. However, in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), the Doctor says they are "total machine creatures".

The audio play Real Time implies that the converted victim's face remains beneath the Cyberman faceplate, although the audio plays, like all non-televised spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity with regards to the television series. The Virgin New Adventures novel Iceberg by David Banks states that some Cybermen experience rare flashes of emotional memory from the time before they were converted, which are then usually suppressed. The parallel Earth Cybermen in the 2006 series are usually constructed from human brains bonded to a Cyberman exoskeletal shell with an artificially grown nervous system threaded throughout ("The Age of Steel"), although direct grafting of cyber-components is another method of conversion ("Cyberwoman").

Although the Cybermen often claim that they have done away with human emotion, they have exhibited emotions ranging from anger to smug satisfaction in their confrontations with the Doctor (although this is only clearly present during their appearances in the 1980s). Some Cybermen in the early stories were even given individual names such as "Krang". Some parallel Earth Cybermen did retain some memories of their pre-conversion lives, although their emotional response varied. In "Cyberwoman", the partial conversion led to a degree of insanity in Lisa Hallett, which was retained even after she transferred her brain into a cyberman body. In "Doomsday", Yvonne Hartman is able to retain at least some elements of her personality in order to prevent the advance of a group of other Cybermen, and is last seen weeping what appears to be either an oil-like substance or blood. In the same episode, the Cyber-Leader expresses clear frustration at the humans' refusing to surrender, although in a later scene he criticizes the Doctor for showing emotion. In "The Age of Steel", the Doctor is able to defeat the Cybermen by shutting down their emotional inhibitors, enabling them to "see" what had become of them. Their realization of what they had become led them to either simply shut down out of sheer horror, or partially explode. Lastly, when the first Cyber Leader is killed, his head explodes with some white liquid leaking down his body; there are references in that episode to a patented Cybus Industries mixture of chemicals used to preserve the brain.

The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Killing Ground by Steve Lyons suggests that some Cybermen imitate emotions to intimidate and unnerve their victims. The Big Finish Productions audio play Spare Parts (set on Mondas in the early days of cyber-conversion) suggests that the Cybermen deliberately remove their emotions as part of the conversion process to stifle the physical and emotional trauma of becoming a Cyberman. The conversion process in the parallel Earth is termed "upgrading".

This motive behind the removal of emotions is made more explicit in "The Age of Steel" where it is done by means of an emotional inhibitor. In that episode, the deactivation of their emotional inhibitors drives the converted Cybermen insane when they realise what they have become, killing them. This motive may also be applicable to Mondas Cybermen, given their forcible conversion of other lifeforms to Cybermen to maintain their numbers, despite the fact the Mondasians appear to have originally willingly converted themselves as a survival mechanism.^{[citation needed]}

Cybermen have a number of weaknesses over the years. The most notable weakness is the element gold. Their aversion to gold was not mentioned until their attempt to destroy the planetoid Voga (the so-called "Planet of Gold") in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). Initially, it was explained that, due to its non-corrodible nature, gold essentially chokes their respiratory systems. For example, the glittergun, a weapon used during the Cyber-Wars in the future, fired gold dust at its targets. However, in later serials, gold appeared to affect them rather like silver affects werewolves, with gold coins or gold-tipped bullets fired at them having the same effect. The revived series' Cybermen have no such weakness, though the tie-in website for the episode makes mention of it.^[1] Cybermen are also rather efficiently killed when shot with their own guns. Other weaknesses from early stories include solvents, gravity based technology, and excessive levels of radiation. In "The Age of Steel" an EMP grenade is shown to disable a Cyberman and shut down its emotional inhibitor. Their armour is often depicted as flexible and resistant to bullets, but can be penetrated by gold arrows and projectiles made of gold. The Parallel Earth Cybermen are bullet-proof and are very resilient, but are not indestructible — they are vulnerable to heavy explosives, electromagnetic pulses and specialised weaponry, as well as Dalek weapons.

[edit] Costume details

The design of the Cybermen acted almost as a guide to prevailing fashion at the time of transmission. Nearly all were silver in colour and included items and material such as cloth, rubber diving suits, PVC, chest units, tubing, practice golf balls, cricketers' gloves, and silver-painted Doc Martens boots.^[2] A BBC Cyberman costume from the black & white era of TV has recently been discovered.^[3]

The 1980s design used converted flight suits painted silver. Unlike the Doctor's other foes, the Cybermen have changed substantially in appearance over the years, looking more and more modern, although retaining certain commonalities of design, the most iconic being the "handle bars" attached to Cybermen heads, that were supposed to aid with their hearing, their round eyeholes and their chest units. Completely black-coloured Cybermen were seen briefly in "Attack of the Cybermen".

A Cyberman head from the 1975 serial Revenge of the Cybermen, seen here in a display case in "Dalek" (2005).

Aside from these changes, variations in design between rank-and-file Cybermen and their leaders have been seen. In The Wheel in Space and The Invasion (both 1968), the Cyber Director was depicted as an immobile mechanism. In The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen, the Cyber Controller was a larger Cyberman with a high domed head instead of the "handle bar" helmet design. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cyber Leader had a completely black helmet except for his face. From Earthshock (1982) onwards he could be distinguished from his troops by the black handle bars on his helmet. The Cyber-Leader in "Army of Ghosts" also had black handles.

Because the Doctor is a time traveller, he meets the Cybermen at various points in their history out of sequence from the order the serials were made. This can be confusing since Cybermen from serials set in "earlier" periods of history can sometimes look more sophisticated than those from "later" periods. Lawrence Miles suggests in his reference work About Time 5 that the anachronistically designed Cybermen of Earthshock and Silver Nemesis are time travellers, like those in Attack of the Cybermen.

A Cyberman head was seen in the 2005 episode, "Dalek", kept in a display case. The text on the info card states that the head was found in a sewer, suggesting that the head was from The Invasion. However, the enlarged Cyber-Handles suggest that the head is from Revenge of the Cybermen. The info card states the head was found in 1975, the year in which The Invasion was set and the year in which Revenge of the Cybermen was broadcast.

The Cybermen returned in episodes 5 and 6 of the 2006 season of the new series, in a two-part story set on an alternate Earth. The new Cybermen were designed by production designer Edward Thomas's team and Neill Gorton at Millennium FX. The new Cyberman design is physically imposing, being about 6 feet 7 inches (2.0 m) tall. The general design is made to resemble modern consumer electronics, such as the iPod. To this extent, they are made from burnished steel instead of silver, feature the Cybus Corporation symbol on its chest, and have a general art deco design. The other distinct Cyberman design is that of the Cyber-Controller, which had glowing eyes, a transparent forehead revealing the brain, and sockets on its chest-plate providing connectors to other systems.

The Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" features a partially cyber-converted woman who lacks the outer plating of a fully converted Cyberman. Her body is encased in metal structures but much of her flesh, including her face, is visible. She also has clearly visible metallic breasts, though it is not clear how much of her own flesh has been replaced and how much is merely covered. Another character speculates she could be 40-45% human, and 55-60% Cyberman.

[edit] Voice

Early Cybermen had an unsettling, sing-song voice, constructed by placing the inflections of words on the wrong syllables. In their first appearance, the effect of this was augmented by the special effect of having a Cyberman abruptly open his mouth wide and keep it open, without moving his tongue or lips, while the separately recorded voice would be playing, and then shut it quickly when the line was finished. Although the cloth-like masks of the first Cybermen were soon replaced by a full helmet, a similar physical effect involving the mouth "hatch" opening and then shutting when the line was finished was used until The Wheel in Space (1968).

Later, the production team used special effects from its Radiophonic Workshop by adding first a mechanical larynx, then a vocoder, to modify speech to make it sound more alien and computer-like. In later stories of the original series and in the audio plays, two copies of the voice track were sampled and pitch-shifted downwards by differing amounts and layered to produce the effect, sometimes with the addition of a small amount of flanging. From Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis (1988) the actors provided the voices themselves, using microphones and transmitters in the chest units.

The voices for the 2006 return of the Cybermen are similar to the buzzing electronic monotone voices of the Cybermen used in The Invasion. They were provided by Nicholas Briggs (who performed the voices for the Cybermen in Big Finish audio stories as well as the Daleks in both the new series and the audio stories). As shown in the season 2 DVD special feature "Confidential Cut Downs," the timbre was created by processing Brigg's voice through a Moog moogerfooger ring modulator. Unusually, in "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller (John Lumic, played by Roger Lloyd Pack) retains his voice after being upgraded, but it is still electronic. In "Doomsday", a Cyberman which contains the brain of Torchwood Institute director Yvonne Hartman retains a female-sounding though still electronic voice, as does the partially converted Lisa Hallett in "Cyberwoman" when her Cyberman personality is dominant. The reason for this is that their minds are taking control of the suit into which their brain has been placed, thus allowing the Cyber-suit's design to be exploited through sheer mental power. In an effect reminiscent of the earliest Cybermen's mouths snapping open while speaking, the new Cybermen have a blue light in their "mouths" which blinks in synchronisation with their speech.

[edit] Cybermen variants

Some Cybermen are given titles, being credited as "Cyber Leader" (or variants thereof), "Cyber Lieutenant", "Cyber Scout" or the "Cyber Controller". The Cyber Controller in particular has appeared in multiple forms, both humanoid and as an immobile computer, and has also been referred to as the "Cyber Planner" or "Cyber Director". The Controller seen (and destroyed) in various serials also may or may not be the same consciousness in different bodies; it appears to recognize and remember the Doctor from previous encounters. In Iceberg, the first Cyber Controller is created by implanting a Cyber Director into the skull of a recently converted Cyberman.

The Cyber-Controller in "The Age of Steel" used the brain of John Lumic, the creator of the Cybermen in that parallel reality. In "Doomsday", a Cyber-Leader appears, and when he is destroyed, mention is made of downloading his data files into another Cyberman unit, which is then upgraded to Cyber-Leader.

The 2008 Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", featured a new variant called a Cybershade.^[4], The Doctor theorises that it is a more primitive version of a Cyberman, using the brain of a cat or a dog. In the same story a "Cyber-King" appears; according to the Doctor, it is a "Dreadnought-class" ship resembling a Cyberman hundreds of feet tall, and contains a Cyber-factory in its chest. It is controlled from within its mouth. Its right arm can be converted into a cannon, and its left into a laser.

[edit] Technology

Cybermen technology is almost completely oriented towards weaponry, apart from their own bodies. When originally seen in The Tenth Planet they had large energy weapons that attached to their chests. In The Moonbase, the Cybermen had two types of weaponry: an electrical discharge from their hands, which stunned the target, and a type of gun. They also made use of a large laser cannon with which they attempted to attack the base itself.

The hand discharge was also present in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which featured a smaller, hand-held cyber-weapon shaped like a pistol that was described as an X-ray laser. In The Wheel in Space the Cybermen could use the discharge to also operate machinery, and had death rays built into their chest units. They displayed the same units in The Invasion as well as carrying large rifles for medium distance combat. In Revenge of the Cybermen and Real Time their weapons were built into their helmets. Killing Ground indicates that this type of Cybermen also have more powerful hand weapons. Subsequent appearances have shown them armed almost exclusively with hand-held cyberguns.

The Cybermen have access to weapons of mass destruction known as cobalt bombs, which are also sometimes known as Cyber-bombs, which were banned by the galactic Armageddon Convention (Revenge of the Cybermen). A "Cyber-megatron bomb" was mentioned in The Invasion, supposedly powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth. In Earthshock, the Cybermen also used androids as part of their plans to invade Earth.

The parallel Earth Cybermen electrocute their victims by touching them and at first carried no other weaponry. In "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", the Cybermen are equipped with retractable energy weapons housed within their forearms (these were actually first shown in "The Age of Steel", but only very briefly and were not used during that episode), but also use modified human weapons to battle the Daleks. The arm mounted guns prove effective against humans but are unable to penetrate Dalek shields. Two Cybermen sent to parley with Dalek Thay at the Battle of Canary Wharf shot the Dalek but were promptly exterminated. In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" the partially converted Lisa Hallett used her electrical touch against the Torchwood team, as well as an energy beam fired from her arm which could only stun the part of the body at which it was aimed.

[edit] Cybermats

The Cybermen also use smaller, cybernetic creatures called "cybermats" as weapons of attack. In their first appearance in The Tomb of the Cybermen, they resembled oversized metallic silverfish and had segmented bodies with hair-like tactile sensor probes along the base of their heads, which were topped with crystalline eyes. The Second Doctor described them as a "form of metallic life," implying that they may be semi-organic like the Cybermen, and that they attacked by feeding off brain waves.

The second model of cybermat seen in The Wheel in Space was used for sabotage, able to tune in on human brainwaves. They were carried to the "Wheel" in small but high-density sacs that sank through the hull of the space station, causing drops in air pressure. These cybermats had solid photoreceptors for eyes instead of crystals. The Second Doctor used an audio frequency to jam them, causing them to spin, crash and disintegrate.

The third model, seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, was a much larger, snake-like cybermat that could be remotely controlled and could inject poison into its victims. It had no visible eyes or other features, and was as vulnerable to gold dust as the Cybermen were.

In Spare Parts, "mats" are cybernetically augmented creatures, sometimes kept as pets. Cybermats of a different design are used for surveillance by Mondas' Central Committee. The creatures occasionally go wild, chewing on power sources, and must be rounded up by a "mat-catcher." In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, set in the 1940s, the Cybermen create cybermats by cyber-converting local animals like cats or birds, possibly because of lack of technological resources.

In the Bernice Summerfield audio adventure The Crystal of Cantus, a Cyberman reveals that the organs of children who are too small to be fully cyber-converted are used in the creation of cybermats.

[edit] History

[edit] Conceptual history

The name "Cyberman" comes from cybernetics, a term coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948). Wiener used the term in reference to the control of complex systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. By 1960, doctors were performing research into surgically or mechanically augmenting humans or animals to operate machinery in space, leading to the coining of the term "cyborg", for "cybernetic organism".

In the 1960s, "spare-part" surgery was starting out, with the first, gigantic heart-lung machines being developed. There were also serious suggestions of wiring the nerve endings of amputees directly into machines for quicker response.^[5] In 1963, Kit Pedler had a conversation with his wife (who was also a doctor) about what would happen if a person had so many prostheses that they could no longer distinguish themselves between man and machine. He got the opportunity to develop this idea when, in 1966, after an appearance on the BBC science programmes Tomorrow's World and Horizon, the BBC hired him to help on the Doctor Who serial The War Machines. That eventually led to him writing, with Gerry Davis's help, The Tenth Planet for Doctor Who.

Pedler, influenced by the logic-driven Treens from the Dan Dare comic strip, originally envisaged the Cybermen as "space monks", but was persuaded by Davis to concentrate on his fears about the direction of spare-part surgery. The original Cybermen were imagined as human, but with plastic and metal prostheses. The Cybermen of The Tenth Planet still have human hands, and their facial structures are visible beneath the masks they wear. However, over time, they evolved into metallic, more robot-like designs.

The Cybermen attracted controversy when parents complained after a scene in The Tomb of the Cybermen in which a dying Cyberman spurted white foam from its innards. Another incident was initiated by Pedler himself, who took a man in a Cyberman costume into a busy shopping area of St. Pancras. The reaction of the public was predictable, and the crowd almost blocked the street and the police were called in. Pedler said that he "wanted to know how people would react to something quite unusual," but also admitted that he "wanted to be a nuisance."^[6] Pedler wrote his last Cyberman story, The Invasion, in 1968, and left Doctor Who with Gerry Davis to develop the scientific thriller series Doomwatch.

[edit] History within the show

[edit] Origins

Millennia ago, during prehistoric times, Mondas was knocked out of solar orbit and drifted into deep space. The Mondasians, already far in advance of Earth's technology and fearful for their race's survival, sent out spacecraft to colonise other worlds, including Telos, where they pushed the native Cryons aside and used the planet to house vast tombs where they could take refuge in suspended animation when necessary.

On Mondas, the Mondasians were dying out, and therefore, in order to survive and continue the race, they replaced most of their bodies with Cybernetic parts. Having eventually removed all emotion from their brains, to maintain their sanity, the natives installed a drive propulsion system so they could pilot the planet itself through space. As the original race was limited in numbers and were continually being depleted, the Mondasians — now Cybermen — became a race of conquerors who reproduced by taking other organic beings and forcibly changing them into Cybermen. The origins of the Cybermen were further elaborated upon in Spare Parts.

The move to "cybernise" Mondasians must have commenced on Mondas before they conquered Telos. Otherwise, there must have been some ongoing contact between Mondas and Telos after it was conquered, or the move to develop into Cybermen must have been paralleled after that point.

[edit] The Earth invasions

The Cybermen's first attempt at invading Earth, around 1970, was chronicled in The Invasion. A group of Cybermen from "Planet 14" had allied themselves with industrialist Tobias Vaughn, who installed mind control circuits in electrical appliances manufactured by his International Electromatics company, paving the way for a ground invasion. This was uncovered by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who repelled the invasion with the help of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe.

In The Tenth Planet, the First Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, met an advance force of Cybermen that landed near an Antarctic space tracking station in the year 1986. This advance force was to prepare for the return of Mondas to the solar system. As Mondas approached, it began to drain Earth's energy for the Cybermen's use, but in the process absorbed too much energy and disintegrated. The Cybermen on Earth also fell apart as their homeworld was destroyed.

In 1988 a fleet of Cyber warships was assembled to convert Earth into a New Mondas. A scouting party was sent to Earth in search of the legendary Nemesis statue, a Time Lord artifact of immense power, made of the "living metal" validium. Due to the machinations of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, however, the Nemesis destroyed the entire Cyber-fleet instead. (Silver Nemesis).

In 2012, the inert head of a Cyberman was part of the Vault, a collection of alien artefacts belonging to American billionaire Henry van Statten ("Dalek", 2005). According to its label, it was recovered from the London sewers in 1975^[7] and presumably came from the 1970 invasion attempt, although it is of a design only seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, which took place in the late 29th century (in a metafictional sense, the label is accurate, as Revenge was broadcast in 1975).

By the mid-21st century, mankind had reached beyond its planet and set up space stations in deep space. One of these, Space Station W3, known as "The Wheel," was the site of a takeover by Cybermen who wanted to use it as a staging point for yet another invasion of Earth. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe prevented this in The Wheel in Space.

The Cybermen returned in The Moonbase. By the year 2070, Earth's weather was being controlled by the Gravitron installation on the Moon. The Cybermen planned to use the Gravitron to disrupt the planet's weather patterns and destroy all life on it, eliminating a threat to their survival. This attempt was also stopped by the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly, Jamie and the surviving crew of the moonbase.

[edit] The Cyber-Wars

Five centuries after the destruction of Mondas, the Cybermen had all but passed into legend when an archaeological expedition to the planet Telos uncovered their resting place in The Tomb of the Cybermen. However, those Cybermen were not dead but merely in hibernation, and were briefly revived before the Second Doctor returned them to their eternal sleep, with help from some of the archaeologists, Jamie and Victoria.

This was short-lived, however. By the beginning of the 26th century, the Cybermen were back in force, and the galactic situation was grave enough that Earth hosted a conference in 2526 that would unite the forces of several planets in a war against the Cybermen. A force of Cybermen tried to disrupt this conference, first by trying to infiltrate Earth in a freighter and when that was discovered by the Fifth Doctor, to crash the freighter into Earth and cause an ecological disaster. Although the attempt failed, the freighter was catapulted back in time to become the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (Earthshock). Unfortunately, the Doctor's Companion Adric was trapped aboard the freighter, and died in the crash; leaving the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to mourn him.

The Cybermen faced complete defeat now that humanity was united against them in the Cyber-Wars. The glittergun had been developed as a weapon against them, with Voga, the legendary "Planet of Gold", being a major supplier of gold dust ammunition. Meanwhile, the native Cryons on the planet Telos rose up and sabotaged the Cybermens' hibernation tombs. Using a captured time travel machine, a group of Cybermen travelled back to Earth in 1985 to try to prevent the destruction of Mondas, but were stopped by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri (Attack of the Cybermen). The Cryons also finally succeeded in taking back Telos.

The Cybermen did survive, but by the late 29th century they had been reduced to small remnant groups wandering throughout space. The Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan encountered one such group during this time; and the Doctor very sarcastically pointed out their diminished state, noting that they had "no home planet, no influence, nothing!", and were "just a bunch of pathetic tin soldiers, skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship." These Cybermen had discovered that Voga had drifted through space and wandered into the solar system, being pulled into orbit around Jupiter as a new moon. They planned to restore their race's power with a plan of revenge against Voga by destroying it with Cyber-bombs. They hoped that this would disrupt their enemies' supply of gold, but their plot was stopped by the Doctor. This was their last chronological appearance to date, with the Cybermen seemingly vanishing from history after this point (Revenge of the Cybermen).

A Cyberman (of the type seen in The Invasion) also appeared in the Miniscope exhibit in Carnival of Monsters (1973). Three squads of Cybermen of the Earthshock variety, each led by a Cyber-Leader, appeared in The Five Doctors (1983) in a slightly larger role.

[edit] Parallel Earth and the Battle of Canary Wharf

In the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" two-part story, the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Mickey Smith crash down into a parallel London in a parallel universe, where the Cybermen are being created on modern-day Earth. These alternate Cybermen were created as an "upgrade" to humanity and the ultimate move into cyberspace, allowing the brain to survive in an ageless steel body. These Cybermen also referred to themselves as "Human Point 2 (Human.2)" and "deleted" all those deemed incompatible with the upgrade. They could electrocute humans with a touch.

These Cybermen were created by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius whose company, Cybus Industries, had advanced humanity considerably. To find a way to survive, he perfected a method to sustain the human brain indefinitely in a cradle of chemicals, bonding the synaptic impulses to a metal exoskeleton. The Cybermen "handle bars" were part of a high-tech communications device called an EarPod. Also created by Lumic, the EarPods were used extensively in the place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be directly downloaded into people's heads.

Lumic began to trick and abduct homeless people and convert them into Cybermen, and assassinated the President of Great Britain after the President rejected his plans. Using the EarPods, Lumic took mental control of London, marching thousands to be cyber-converted. He was betrayed by an old friend who damaged his wheelchair's life-support systems. He had told the Cybermen that he would upgrade 'only with my last breath' and since that moment was at hand he was involuntarily upgraded into the Cyber-Controller, a superior model of Cyberman. However, the Doctor and his companions, having accidentally landed on the parallel Earth, managed to foil his plans. They freed London from mental control and disabled the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, causing them to go insane and in some cases explode. Lumic himself fell to his apparent death into the burning remains of his factory. A human resistance group, the Preachers, then set about to clean up the remainder of Lumic's factories around the world.

These Cybermen reappeared in the 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday". It is to be noted that these Cybermen also use energy weapons built into their right arms. However, in "The Age of Steel" after the conversion sequence, the newly created Cybermen can be seen to have the retractable weapons in place after exiting the conversion chambers. Having infiltrated that world's version of the Torchwood Institute and discovering a breach between universes caused by the passage of an interdimensional void ship, the Cybermen used it to invade the Doctor's universe. However, the void ship's users, the Daleks, also revealed themselves, leading to all-out war across London with mankind caught in the crossfire. Eventually, the Doctor re-opened the breach, causing the Cybermen and Daleks (who had been saturated with background radiation from the Void) to be sucked back into it. The breach then sealed itself, leaving the Cybermen and Daleks (except the Cult of Skaro, who used their emergency temporal shift function to escape) seemingly trapped in the Void forever.

[edit] Torchwood Three Incident

Lisa the "Cyberwoman"

In "Cyberwoman" it was revealed that at the height of the "Battle of Canary Wharf" the Cybermen had begun to directly convert whole bodies using regular Earth technology, rather than transplant their brains into parallel earth Cyberman shells. One of their victims, a woman called Lisa Hallett, was only partially converted when the power was shut off and she was rescued by her boyfriend, Ianto Jones.

Jones took her to Torchwood Three in Cardiff along with a cyber-conversion unit which he made into a life support system for her under her directions. He tried to find a cure for her condition, calling on cybernetics expert Dr Tanizaki. Unfortunately Hallett's Cyberman personality asserted itself, leading to her killing Tanizaki and trying to take over Torchwood Three as a staging area for a new Cyberman army. She eventually transplanted her own brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl whom she let into the base, and was shot to death by the other members of the Torchwood team.

[edit] The CyberKing

A small handful of the Cybermen t

Synopsis

The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the mercenary Lytton, stranded on planet Earth and in the employ of the Cybermen. A plot is being hatched that aims to change the history of Earth in favour of the Cyber-race, and the Doctor finds himself on an alien planet he has visited before as he tries to defeat his enemies and work out who he can trust to help him.

[edit] Plot

In the London sewer system, a worker vanishes and another is beaten to death.

The Doctor is repairing the chameleon circuitry in the TARDIS's roundels, using his new sonic lance. He ponders why he has not worked on this before. Peri questions his new energy levels; he reassures her he is stable and would never hurt her.

Lytton is organising what he claims is a £10 million diamond heist on the Bank of England. He explains the plan: his merry band of four shall go into the sewers, and use plastic explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the vault, escaping with the diamonds, and no one (in theory) should get hurt. Down they go into the sewers, with Payne agreeing to stand on lookout by the manhole. As the others move away, no one notices the tall, black figure silently advancing behind Payne...

The Doctor says he is taking Peri somewhere nice and peaceful, to treat her after the awful time they both had on Jaconda. After a very difficult trip through the Time Vortex, he shows Halley's Comet to her, inadvertently revealing that he plans to take her to Earth. It is soon clear that being so close to the comet upsets her (as does, undoubtedly, the fact that they nearly crash into it), so he steers away from it. The TARDIS then picks up a distress signal coming from London, in 1985; they both agree that they have to investigate this.

The TARDIS lands in 76 Totter's Lane, London, a scrapyard that the Doctor finds oddly familiar. As he and Peri begin to leave the scrapyard the chameleon circuit turns the time machine into a stove with an attractive (or cloying) floral pattern (much to Peri's mirth). The Doctor, slightly defensive, says that the TARDIS is slightly out of practice when it comes to choosing new forms. (They both fail to notice two policemen, who are walking past them.) As the pair move through the streets, the Doctor scanning for this signal, Peri reveals how worried she is for him: his memory is in pieces, and he keeps calling her the names of his previous companions. He assures her he is fine. After tracing the signal to an abandoned warehouse that does not contain anyone; he remarks how foolish he was for not realising what has happened. After dashing back to the scrapyard, they eventually find a door in the TARDIS's new form and take off.

Meanwhile, Lytton's group are not faring well in the sewer: Russell has cold feet, and Griffith is doing all of the wall-demolishing single-handedly (much to his annoyance). Lytton does not seem to be noticing these things, and seems almost to be waiting for someone.

Onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains that the alien has put relays around the city, making it hard for them to trace his signal (and thus help him). Peri points out a vital clue: such an extraterrestrial would surely leave a time trace; the Doctor starts tracking down that very thing.

The TARDIS then lands, disguised as a pipe organ, in the garage containing the manhole Lytton's crew have descended. There, the two policemen seen earlier accost them, but the Doctor (unseen) knocks one of them out in the sewer, and Peri handcuffs the other to a railing and takes his gun. They then descend the manhole.

In the sewer, Lytton's trio discover a tall, black figure advancing towards them. Although Lytton insists that all is fine, Griffith panics and shoots his (previously unseen) gun at the tall figure; prompting Lytton to take out his own firearm and threaten Griffith, in order to stop him firing at the figure. Suddenly, the wall behind them slides open and an entire army of silver giants is revealed. Then Lytton offers their Leader his weapon, saying that he offers his life to the Cybermen. The Cyber Leader effortlessly crushes Lytton's gun, eliciting a scream from Griffith...

Lytton's two policemen comrades - as well as the two sewer workers we saw at the beginning - are being converted into Cybermen. Lytton manages to talk his way out of the same procedure, explaining that he detected the Cybermen's transmissions and deliberately contacted them, bringing along humans for them to convert as a sign of goodwill. He identifies himself as a warrior mercenary from Riften V and points out that he could easily have alerted Earth authorities to the Cybermen's presence but chose not to. The Cyber Leader accepts the logic of his argument and decides to report to the Controller on Telos.

On Telos, a work party of slaves plants explosives in the ground. Three of them make a break for it, but one is killed and the decapitated Cyber-head, which they require for the next stage of the escape, is destroyed. The two survivors, Bates and Stratton, hide nearby, but without a third pilot and a Cyber-head, they're still as good as prisoners. The other slaves' spirits have been completely crushed; nobody else has tried to escape. In Cyber Control, the Controller receives a report of the escape attempt, and decides to analyse Bates and Stratton's behaviour as they attempt to survive and escape.

The Doctor and Peri are captured by Russell, who frisks the Doctor and finds Payne's gun. The Doctor manages to surprise and overpower Russell, who eventually admits that he's an undercover policeman who infiltrated Lytton's gang to find out who he was. After a raid on an electronics warehouse -- which the Doctor and Peri realise supplied Lytton with the parts he needed for his intergalactic transmitter -- the police heard Lytton's name whispered on the streets, but could find no records of his existence at all. It was as if he'd just arrived from another planet. The Doctor warns Russell that this is exactly what he did -- and he's a ruthless, professional killer...

Bates and Stratton use their mining tools to destroy and decapitate a Cyberman sent out to recapture them. Bates intends to clean out the head so Stratton can use it as a disguise; as prisoner and escort they stand a better chance of getting into Cyber Control. But the destruction of the scout is detected, and the Controller decides that Bates and Stratton are too resourceful and must be destroyed.

Back on Earth, the Cybermen detect temporal distortion nearby, and send scouts to investigate. The Doctor, Peri and Russell encounter one, and the Doctor destroys it by plunging his sonic lance into its chest unit. The Cybermen detect this, and the Leader decides to close down this base and send the partially converted humans to their mothership. The Leader himself takes a squad out to investigate the scout's destruction, and when they find an alien artefact was responsible Lytton soon guesses who the "alien" is. He's surprised to learn that the Cybermen already know of the Doctor. The Cyber Leader decides to alter his plans and capture the Doctor and his TARDIS.

The Doctor, Peri and Russell emerge from the sewers, closely followed by the Cybermen. But the Doctor has accidentally left the TARDIS doors open and Cybermen have already entered the ship. Russell destroys one by shooting it through the weak point in its mouth panel, and shoots another with the first Cyberman's gun. But before Peri can shut the doors the Cyber Leader and his patrol arrive, and while Russell is distracted a third Cyberman emerges from the corridors and strikes him upon his neck, killing him instantly. Peri approaches Russell and the Cybermen then close in on Peri...

The Doctor threatens to destroy the TARDIS unless the Cyber Leader agrees to spare Peri's life. He does so, giving the word of the Cyber Controller that she will not be harmed -- and the Doctor realises that, by implication, not only did the Controller survive their last meeting but these Cybermen have somehow travelled through Time. He sets the coordinates for Telos, and he, Peri, Griffiths and Lytton are locked up in a nearby storeroom. Lytton returns the Doctor's sonic lance so he can sabotage the navigational controls and shift the TARDIS slightly off course, and reveals that the Cybermen haven't developed their own theories of Time travel; they simply stole a ship which was forced down on Telos for repairs. The Doctor, attempting to explain the history of the Cybermen to Griffiths and Peri, is forced to admit that their home world Mondas was destroyed while attacking Earth -- in 1986, which in their terms is next year. The Doctor assures them that Earth survived with minimal damage; the surviving Cybermen evacuated to Telos, wiped out the indigenous Cryons and transformed their refrigerated cities into cryogenic tombs in which to hibernate and recover their strength. Bates and Stratton continue to approach Cyber Control despite Stratton's conviction that the plan will never work. The reactivation of dormant Cybermen is halted when too many are found damaged or dead; some are going rogue in the tombs and destroying everything they encounter.

The Doctor is forced to switch off the distress call he'd surreptitiously activated, but thanks to his earlier sabotage the TARDIS (in the form of a set of iron gates) materialises in the tombs rather than in Cyber Control. While the Cyber Leader reports for further instructions, the Doctor notices a stench of decay in the air -- and realises that Lytton knows more about it than he's saying. A rogue Cyberman suddenly bursts out of a tomb and attacks them, and in the confusion Peri, Lytton and Griffiths escape. Peri, separated from the others, is attacked by yet another rogue Cyberman -- and is rescued by two Cryons...

Griffiths and Lytton hide in the tunnels outside the tombs, where they are contacted by a Cryon named Threst -- who welcomes Lytton by name. Lytton admits that he's been working for the Cryons all along; it was they who picked up his distress call from Earth, and on their behalf he intends to steal the Cybermen's time machine. Since the Cryons can only survive in sub-zero temperatures they will be unable to help, and Lytton thus brought Griffiths along to act as his bodyguard, in return for which the Cryons will pay him the equivalent of two million British pounds in uncut diamonds. Griffiths is reluctant to risk his life, but Lytton points out that his only two alternatives if captured are death -- or conversion into a Cyberman.

The Doctor is locked up in a storeroom with a Cryon prisoner, Flast, and upon learning that some Cryons survived the Cybermen's attempt at genocide he also realises that they must be responsible for the damage to the Cybermen in the tombs. He's less pleased by Flast's revelation of the Cybermen's plans -- since they stole their time machine they don't fully understand the principles of Time, and intend to change history by preventing Mondas from being destroyed...

Lytton and Griffiths emerge onto the surface of Telos, where Bates and Stratton confront them. Griffiths is shocked to learn that Bates and Stratton are partially cybernetic; they were sent to the work parties when the conversion process failed. Lytton points out that the time vessel requires a crew of three and suggests that they join forces. Meanwhile, Peri is held in the Cryon base by Rost and Varne, who are unable to help her rescue the Doctor, as they would perish in the heat of Cyber Control. They admit that Lytton is working for them to prevent the Cybermen from leaving Telos -- upon abandoning the planet the Cybermen intend to destroy it to observe the effect on its atmosphere.

Flast explains to the Doctor that the Cybermen intend to divert the course of Halley's Comet, causing it to collide with Earth. The Doctor suddenly realises that the Time Lords have once again manipulated him into this situation so he can clean it up for them. Flast points out a potential weapon; the storeroom contains canisters of vastial, an unstable mineral which explodes upon reaching fifteen degrees above zero, and she's managed to open one. The Doctor uses his sonic lance to pick the lock of the storeroom door, and uses a small amount of vastial to destroy the guard outside. Flast takes the sonic lance, turns it on and buries it in the open canister of vastial, hoping to spark an explosion, which will destroy Cyber Control. She is unable to leave the sub-zero storeroom but urges the Doctor to escape without her.

Lytton and his companions enter Cyber Control, but as Lytton is guarding their backs he is attacked and overpowered by Cybermen and the others have no choice but to carry on without him. Lytton is taken back to the control room and tortured, and when he refuses to speak he is taken to be converted into a Cyberman. Rost and Varne learn of Lytton's capture while taking Peri back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he finds two Cybermen on guard and is reunited with Peri. Rost and Varne help him break into a tomb, which they have already sabotaged, and the Doctor activates the distress call in the dead Cyberman inside, luring the two guards away from the TARDIS and into a trap. In the ensuing battle, Varne is killed but both Cybermen are destroyed. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Peri insists that they rescue Lytton first, and the Doctor, who was fully prepared to leave Lytton to his fate, is startled to learn that he was working for the Cryons all along. He agrees to see what he can do.

Bates, Griffiths and Stratton finally reach the landing pad, but just as they're within sight of their goal Bates is killed by an electrified door -- which opens to reveal a Cyberman who guns down Griffiths and Stratton. Meanwhile, the Cybermen detect the Doctor's escape and question Flast; when she refuses to speak they fling her into the corridor, where her body boils away in the heat. As the Cybermen begin checking the vastial stores, the Cyber Controller learns that the TARDIS has been moved and returns to the control room. The sabotaged vastial container, hidden in the back of the storeroom, has begun to steam...

The TARDIS, once again in the form of a police box, materialises in the control room. The Doctor emerges to find Lytton partially converted, and as he tries to free him from the processing machine Lytton, drugged and partially converted, begs the Doctor to kill him. The Cyber Controller arrives, having guessed that the Doctor's emotional weaknesses would draw him back to rescue his friend. As the Controller approaches, however, Lytton attacks him, puncturing his hydraulic valves with the knife the Doctor was using to pry him free from the processing machines. The Controller strikes back, snapping Lytton's neck and killing him, while the Doctor grabs the Controller's gun and shoots the Cyber Leader, who staggers back into his Lieutenant, causing him to accidentally fire his gun at point-blank range, killing them both. The Doctor then shoots the Cyber Controller, destroying him once and for all. Peri emerges from the TARDIS and practically drags the Doctor away from Lytton's body.

As the TARDIS dematerialises, the sonic lance finally heats the vastial to ignition point, and the resulting chain reaction destroys all Cyber Control and the stolen time machine as well. The Earth is safe and the web of Time has been preserved... but at a great personal cost, as the Doctor blames himself for misjudging and failing to save Lytton

Continuity

• This story takes place immediately after The Twin Dilemma. Peri is still worried about the Doctor's problem regenerating, and the Doctor says they need a rest after Jocanda. This story has been criticised for relying heavily on elements from Doctor Who's past, confusing all but hardcore fans of the series.^[1]

Starring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith with Andrew Sachs and Laura Solon

Starring PETER DAVISON
Featuring BEN JONES and LALLA WARD
With CIARA JANSON as AMY

118. Doctor Who: Key 2 Time - Destroyer of Delights

Starring PETER DAVISON
Featuring DAVID TROUGHTON and JASON WATKINS
With CIARA JANSON as AMY

Synopsis

With the TARDIS stuck at the bottom of a cliff, the four time travellers have ingratiated themselves into an unoccupied Roman villa. The owner, Flavius Giscard is away campaigning in Gaul. As the Doctor and Ian recline, Barbara and Vicki walk to the nearby Roman village. At the market they are spotted by two slave traders, Didius and Sevcheria. When they return to the villa the Doctor announces that he is off to Rome, some miles away, and will travel there with Vicki. Later that evening Barbara and Ian, now alone, are relaxing when the two slavers burst in upon them. They are soon overpowered and taken prisoner. Ian is sold to one slave owner, while Barbara is to be traded with another and sent to Rome.

The Doctor and Vicki are en route for Rome when they find the murdered body of a lyre player named Maximus Pettulian. The Doctor is holding the man’s lyre when a Centurion arrives and mistakes him for the dead man who is late for an engagement in Rome. The Centurion thus accompanies them to Assysium. Once stationed at an inn there, the Centurion makes contact with the mute assassin Ascaris, who killed the real Pettulian, and instructs him to kill the Doctor. The assassin draws his sword and heads off to the Doctor’s chambers.

The Doctor overpowers the assassin and, along with Vicki, drives him away through an open window. It seems the Centurion has fled, and the Doctor concludes the soldier was in league with the assassin. He decides to maintain his alias as Pettulian and head onward to the city of Rome. Barbara is meanwhile already in the city and is soon sold in open auction for 10,000 sesterces to a man named Tavius, who is highly placed in the court of the Emperor Nero. She is to be a handmaiden to Nero's wife, Poppaea. Tavius is a kindly man but warns that if she tries to escape her slavery that she will be killed.

The Doctor and Vicki arrive at Nero’s court too and encounter Tavius, who seems to imply to the Doctor that Pettulian is part of a secret network in which he is also a player. Further discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Nero himself, a laughable excuse for a leader who seems arrogant, vain and selfish. The Doctor cleverly avoids an extended lyre concert and then have the freedom of the court. On one walk around they find the body of the Centurion who imperilled them earlier.

Ian has been confined to a galley in the Mediterranean but the craft soon runs into rough seas and is broken up. He is washed to the nearby shore and there is found by another survivor of the galley, Delos, who has saved his life and removes the last of his chains. They agree to head for Rome in search of Barbara. When they reach there, however, they are captured by some centurions. Taken to the arena they are set to be trained as gladiators – and their first opponents will be the lions.

It becomes apparent to the Doctor that Tavius had the Centurion murdered and that he too is expected to fulfil some sort of action. Nero decides the Doctor must fulfil an obligation too, and organises a banquet in his honour at which he must play the lyre. He also takes a shine to Barbara and starts to pursue her romantically – and literally – much to the anger of Empress Poppea, who decides to have her poisoned at the Pettulian banquet. Barbara has just left the banquet chamber when the Doctor arrives there, warning the Emperor that he has learnt his wine could be poisoned. It has been, as part of Poppea’s plan.

The Doctor is soon put to perform centre stage and picks up his lyre with the warning that only those with the most sensitive and perceptive hearing will be able to discern its subtle melody. He then creates absolutely no sound but has created a climate in which no-one wishes to make themselves out to be philistines by not appreciating the music. Nero is not convinced, however, and in private fumes against the deception. He decides to have Pettulian fed to the lions.

Meanwhile, at the arena itself Ian and Delos have been trained as gladiators and are set to fight each other. With Nero watching them they are told to battle to the death.

Delos and Ian decide to fight their way out of the arena instead, and Ian is able to shout to the watching Barbara that he will be back to rescue her before he and Delos flee. The Emperor calls off his soldiers when it becomes clear they cannot be caught, planning to have him killed when he returns to rescue Barbara. A crowd of soldiers are arranged at the palace.

The Doctor has meanwhile found the architectural plans for Nero’s new Rome, and deduces that since the year is 64 AD that the Emperor is planning to destroy the city. Tavius arrives and warns the Doctor that the Emperor is planning to kill him too, advising him to fulfil his mission and kill Nero soon. It seems that Pettulian was an assassin all along. The Doctor and Vicki decide to leave quickly but before departing accidentally set fire to Nero’s architectural plans. The Emperor notices this and decides to burn down the city, thanking the Doctor and deciding after all to spare his life. A rabble are bribed into starting the blaze and while anarchy rages Ian is helped into the palace by Tavius, who reunites him with Barbara. Under Tavius’ eye the two are allowed to escape and make their way from Rome and back to the villa. Delos helps them get clear of the palace, parting from his friend Ian. The Doctor and Vicki also escape the city, watching it burn from a nearby hill.

By the time the Doctor and Vicki return to the villa, Ian and Barbara have spruced themselves up, and the Doctor mistakenly assumes that they have not even left the villa. All four leave in the TARDIS but have barely begun to travel when a strange force starts dragging the ship to an unknown location.

Synopsis

The TARDIS crew is still missing Susan Foreman when the ship lands on a planet the Doctor eventually recognises as Dido, a world he has visited before. The trio soon encounter two survivors of a space crash, Vicki and Bennett, who are awaiting a rescue ship, due to arrive in three days time. Vicki and Bennett live in fear of Koquillion, a bipedal inhabitant of Dido which is stalking the area. Koquillion encounters the time travellers and attacks, pushing Barbara over a cliff and temporarily trapping Ian and the Doctor. Vicki finds Barbara injured and rescues her from Koquillion, and they share reminiscences. Vicki’s father was amongst those who died when the survivors of the crash, save Bennett and Vicki, were lured to their deaths by the natives of Dido. She is evidently very lonely, having befriended an indigenous Sand Beast for company. However, when Ian and the Doctor reach the ship tempers are fraught because Barbara mistook the Sand Beast for a threat and killed it.

The Doctor enters Bennett's room, and finds things are not as they seem. The supposedly crippled Bennett is missing, and a tape recorder hides his absence. He finds a trap door in the floor of the cabin and follows it to a temple carved from rock where he unmasks Koquillion as Bennett. Bennett reveals he killed a crewmember on board the ship and was arrested, but the ship crashed before the crime could be radioed to Earth. It was he who killed the crash survivors and the natives of Dido to cover his crime. He has been using the Koquillion alias so that Vicki would back up his story. Just as Bennett is about to kill the Doctor, two surviving native Didonians arrive and force Bennett to his death over a ledge. With no living family and nothing left for her on Dido, Vicki is welcomed aboard the TARDIS.

Production

The series would not feature another two-part serial until a decade later with The Sontaran Experiment, although the format would become a regular feature in the Fifth Doctor era of the 1980s.

Alternative titles

• The story had the working title Doctor Who and Tanni, which was the original name for Vicki.
• The 1973 Radio Times 10th anniversary special called the story The Powerful Enemy, as it titled all the early stories by the title of the first episode. Some subsequent listings repeated this error, as did the story's broadcast on some American PBS stations.

Cast notes

To preserve the mystery of its true identity, Koquillion was originally credited as being played by "Sydney Wilson" — a name made up by the production team in tribute to two of the creators of Doctor Who, Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson. This was the first instance of an alias being used, in the credits, for a cast member in order to conceal a plot twist in Doctor Who.

Doctor Who book
The Rescue
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	124
Writer	Ian Marter
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Tony Clark
ISBN	0 426 20309 7
Release date	August 1987 (Hardback) 21st January 1988 (Paperback)
Preceded by	The Macra Terror
Followed by	Terror of the Vervoids

Commercial releases

This story was released in 1994, on a double VHS With The Romans. It has also been anounced by the BBFC website that 'The Rescue' along with The Romans will be released on DVD on 23 February 2009. The DVD will have a commentary track featuring star William Russell, designer Ray Cusik & director Christopher Barry.

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Ian Marter (the actor who played companion Harry Sullivan during the Fourth Doctor era), was published by Target Books in August 1987, nearly a year after his death. Marter died soon after completing the manuscript, which was subsequently edited (with some new material added) by Nigel Robinson, editor of the Target Books line. According to Robinson, he did not have to do too many changes to Marter's manuscript, although he did have to remove an apparent reference to fellatio in an early chapter.

TRANSIT OF VENUS

Performed by William Russell as Ian Chesterton with Ian Hallard as Joseph Banks

Warriors' Gate is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from January 3 to January 24, 1981. The serial is the last of three loosely connected serials known as the E-Space trilogy and the last to feature Romana and K-9 as companions.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Synopsis

At a null point in space and time on the interface between our universe (n-space) and E-space (exo-space), a slaver cargo vessel becomes trapped. It manoeuvres the timelines using members of the leonine Tharil race as navigators – and they too are the cargo of the grim vessel, held in cryogenic storage in its hold. A Tharil named Biroc flees the craft on the time winds, leaving it moored and trapped, and ventures to the TARDIS, which has also become trapped in a time rift in this strange dimension. The creature manifests itself in the TARDIS console room and imparts to the occupants the warning that he is a shadow of his own past -- and of their future; and that the others that are following him should not be trusted. The Tharil then disappears, with the Doctor in pursuit. Romana, and Adric are left worried about K-9, whose memory wafers have been shredded by the time winds.

The commander of the slave ship, Rorvik, is increasingly angry about their entrapment in the void and the general apathy of his crew toward their condition. When the ship picks up another object in the void, he and two of his crew members use a portable mass detector to track down the TARDIS. Romana steps outside to confront them and is persuaded to return to their ship with them to examine the damaged warp drive of their ship. Rorvik has, however, worked out she may be a time sensitive like the Tharils and is interested in her for potential profit. Adric and K9 both venture separately into the void in her pursuit.

The Doctor has meanwhile reached a vast stone archway in the void, containing an abandoned banqueting hall, decaying skeletons and partially functioning robot knights known as Gundans. They were built by slaves as part of a revolt against a previous tyranny that ended in a massacre at the feast in the same hall. The slavers used the time winds to descend on worlds and enslave the populations. K9 arrives at the Gateway too and begins to help the Doctor repair the Gundan, which has worn itself out. However, before they can obtain any more information Rorvik arrives with some of his crew and seizes control at the point of a gun. Romana has been taken back to the slaver ship for use as a navigator, while Rorvik has used the portable mass detector to isolate the Gateway. He becomes angry when a Gundan comes to life and walks out of the room straight through a solid mirror, and challenges the Doctor to explain the situation. His response is to walk through the mirror: a step the human slavers behind him cannot take.

Back on the slave ship, a Tharil called Lazlo, who had been left for dead by the slavers when his revivification process seemingly failed, frees Romana from certain death in the navigator’s chair. She hides in the hull of the ship and there finds Adric, and together they work out the slave ship is made of the incredibly dense dwarf star alloy, the remnants of a collapsed star. This heavy metal is the only thing that can hold the Tharils trapped in a single timeline. When they meet K9, the badly damaged robot informs them of dimensional instability and the imminent collapse of the void, which is contracting upon itself. The sheer weight of the slave ship is damaging the delicate balance holding the dimension together. Romana is shortly afterward separated from Adric and K9 and reunited with Lazlo, who takes her through the mirrors too.

Beyond the mirror the Doctor has found Biroc, who explains he was able to pass through because his hand was caught in the time winds. They enter an elegant mansion, seemingly frozen in time, where the Tharil explains that his people were the notorious slavers of the Gateway whose rule was overthrown by the use of the Gundans. As the sorry tale of the decay of their society is retold, the Doctor is reunited with Romana but in a bizarre twist they are returned to the reality of the decaying Gateway in the void once the Tharils’ story has been told – and once more find themselves prisoners of Rorvik.

Based on the reports of the shrinking of the Gateway, the Doctor deduces that the slave ship is indeed the cause of the problems and – more worryingly – there is not much time before the Gateway retracts into nothing. Adric has meanwhile hidden himself inside the MZ, a vast portable cannon which the slavers are going to use on the Gateway and the mirrors in an effort to escape the void. When the weapon reaches the Gateway he uses it to free the Doctor and Romana, and the time travellers flee into the void. When the slavers set out in pursuit they find their ship has moved much closer to the gateway – proof positive that the dimension is shrinking and therefore doomed. In frustration Rorvik fires the MZ at the mirrors, but succeeds only in destroying the weapon. The crazed and infuriated slaver now decides to use his ship’s engines to back-blast through the mirrors and escape the void. It is a foolish move: the backblast from the mirrors engulfs and destroys the ship and all its crew.

The Tharil slaves have, however, been freed by Lazlo and Romana, who has formed an empathy with the race. She elects to voyage through the Gateway with them and help the Tharils. The Doctor gives her K9, who will be restored beyond the Gateway, though he can never return. After they depart, the Doctor uses the knowledge he has gained from the Tharils to successfully pilot the TARDIS through the Gateway and back into N-Space.

[edit] Continuity

This serial comprises the third and final leg of an extended adventure generally known as the "The E-Space Trilogy"; the trilogy began in Full Circle, and continued in State of Decay.

The multi-coloured scarf can be seen on the hatstand.

[edit] Departures

This story was the last story to feature Lalla Ward as Romana. Two months after her departure, Ward went on to marry her co-star Tom Baker in 1981, but the marriage lasted less than two years. Ward is one of two former companions to ever be married to an actor who played the Doctor. The other was Jean Marsh, who played the First Doctor's companion, Sara Kingdom, was married to Jon Pertwee, although the marriage occurred prior to Pertwee landing the role of the Third Doctor.

Ward was seen again as Romana on television in The Five Doctors (1983) (via footage of her and Tom Baker from the unaired story of Shada (1980)) and reprised her role in the Children in Need charity special Dimensions in Time (1993). She continues to participate in the world of Doctor Who by attending conventions, recording audio commentary on DVD releases, performing in several Big Finish audio dramas and by appearing in the BBC's online drama webcasts.

This story was also the last television story of the classic series to feature the character of K-9 Mk. II, played by John Leeson. Leeson, who left the series at the end of Season 16, returned for Season 18 on the understanding that K-9 would be written out toward the end of the season.^{[citation needed]}

The character of K-9 (Mk. III and Mk. IV), voiced again by John Leeson would return in the 1981 spin-off episode, K9 & Company, the 1983 anniversary special, The Five Doctors and the 2006 episode "School Reunion". He would later pop up twice in the first series of spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. He also appears in the Series Four Finale, Journey's End.

Romana and K-9's journey in E-space is continued in two BBV audio plays.

[edit] Production

Working titles for this story included Dream Time.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and Warriors' Gate
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	71
Writer	Stephen Gallagher
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
ISBN	0 426 20146 9
Release date	15 April 1982
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the State of Decay
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken

Commercial releases

• This story was released on VHS in October 1997.
• A DVD commentary has been recorded with actors Lalla Ward and John Leeson Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead Visual Effects Designer Mat Irvine and Director Paul Joyce and was released on January 26th 2009 in a box set with Full Circle & State of Decay.

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Stephen Gallagher under the pseudonym "John Lydecker", was published by Target Books in April 1982.

Continuing the Doctor's adventures in E-Space, the Doctor, Romana, K-9, and their newest companion/stowaway, Adric, arrive on a planet experiencing what appears to be a feudal period. The population scratches out a living as subsistence farmers under the thrall of three local lords, Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon, who dwell in a shadowy tower. Adding further fear to their lives, they experience a yearly ritual called "the Selection," in which a sample of young villagers are taken to the tower, never to be seen again. This selection process is enforced by a thuggish band of guards led by Habris.

The Doctor and Romana venture out into the village (not knowing that Adric is following them), and it doesn't take long for the Doctor to realize that something is very wrong when he discovers evidence of technology considerably more advanced than what this medieval society seems capable of producing. With such technology, the Doctor and Romana wonder what happened in the course of the planet's development to cause it to evolve "backward" from a presumably advanced culture to its current rustic condition -- to be in a "state of decay." The arrival and then departure of the Doctor and Romana from the village hall is reported by the headman, Ivo, via an electronic communications device to an unseen figure called Kalmar. As the two head out of the village they are seized by cloaked figures who convey them to a secret base filled with illegal computers and other technology. Kalmar is a scientist - a heretical role in their society - and is very grateful for the Doctor's help in repairing a computer which proceeds to reveal the names of the original chief officers of the spaceship Hydrax. The faces of three senior officers are revealed as those of the Lords of the Tower.

The Lords too have learnt of Romana and the Doctor, and Aukon sends a flock of his winged servants, bats, (aka "The Wasting") to menace them as they travel a clearing near the village.

The Doctor and Romana are now seized by Habris and his guards and taken to an audience in the Tower. Zargo and Camilla entertain them for a while, then are called away to deal with a situation called the Arising. The Doctor and Romana start to snoop around and discover that in fact, the great Tower in which the Lords dwell is itself a spaceship originally from Earth, which also somehow was pulled into E-Space long ago.

Adric has meanwhile wandered into the village and finds himself looked after by Ivo and his wife Marta, both of whom are grieving for their late son who was chosen for the Selection.

In the Hydrax the Doctor and Romana discover rows of corpses drained of blood, while the craft's fuel stores are full of blood. Talk turns to vampires. They head downwards and find an amphitheatre. It is there that the Lord Aukon greets them, welcoming them to his domain.

Aukon invites the Doctor and Romana to become the first of the new servants of the Chosen Ones then tells them that he has Adric much to their surprise. When they refuse they are imprisoned. The Doctor deduces by applying principles of consonant shifting that the current lords' names are a corruption of the original crew names (e.g. "Sharky" becomes "Zargo"). Thus the Doctor realizes that the three lords might not be descendants of the original crew, but members of the original crew themselves. He is reminded of ancient Time Lord stories of the Great Vampires, a giant race of rapacious, destructive, and powerful creatures that were ancient enemies of the Time Lords themselves. He deduces that the Great Vampire escaped destruction at the hands of the Time Lords by somehow retreating into E-Space, and it managed eventually to gather enough power to pull the old Earth ship into this universe and corrupt the crew. Over time, it licked its wounds and gathered power so that it could once again feast on worlds.

Meanwhile, Adric's attempts to mingle with the natives have led to him getting caught up in the Selection. He is put under a hypnotic trance by Aukon and accompanies him to the tower. Normally, the Chosen Ones are chosen for Guards or killed if they defy the Three Who Rule, but Aukon has other plans for Adric when he finds, to his surprise, something different about the third stranger. Aukon plots to change Adric into the new Chosen.

Another rebel named Tarak, makes a solo attack on the Tower in the hope of freeing the Doctor and Romana. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, while Romana stays with Tarak to search for Adric, whom she knows now is in the Tower's Inner Sanctum. As they try to snap Adric out of his trance, they unknowingly awaken Zargo and Camilla. Tarak is literally throttled by Zargo and dies when his neck snaps on the edge of the "bed". Adric throws a knife at Zargo's heart and Camilla advances on Adric. Romana backs away but Zargo grabs her shoulder. With a toothy evil grin, he chuckles as he pulls the knife out of his heart and is about to give a fatal blow to Romana.

Romana closes her eyes as Zargo draws his arm back for a fatal blow but Aukon orders him to stop. "The boy," he says "is the first of the Chosen Ones, soon to be one of us. He is not for you!" Camilla then asks to have Romana. Aukon grabs Romana's chin and says gloatingly, "The girl is a Timelord, one of the enemies of the Great One. She is to be held for sacrifice at the time of Arising!" Romana and Adric argue about their fate. Adric says if it's a choice between death and joining the dine that means there's no sense in two of them getting the chop. Adric asks Aukon why he is being kept prisoner when Romana is the sacrifice and he is a Chosen One. "I'm sorry Timelady. One of my families died for your lot already. I reckon one's enough!" Romana asks Adric if he knows what happens to vampires when they die. Adric smugly replies "But they don't die, do they Aukon!". They are taken to the bottom of the Tower (as shown in the picture above), where Romana will be sacrificed at the time of Arising and Adric will indeed become a Chosen One.

In the TARDIS the Doctor and K-9 review the old stories about vampires. The lore that the Doctor and K-9 uncovers determines that the Great Vampires could only be defeated by metal bowships driven through their chests (rather like the wooden stakes that work on lesser vampires). He takes the craft to Kalmar's base and there uses scanning equipment to scan the Tower. Under the lake of blood he finds a restless, demonic presence, whom he determines to be the last Great Vampire. He warns it is about to be revived. Kalmar, Ivo and many other villagers agree to help him fight back. This rebel army and K9 make an assault on the Tower itself, killing collaborator guards. Ivo finds Habris and tells him "This is for my son!" and then kills him. The Doctor heads off to the peak of the Tower and, in a burst of characteristic ingenuity, the Doctor manages to rig one of the old scoutships still attached to the spaceship/tower to launch and achieve a trajectory that caused it to point back toward the ground and drive itself into the heart of the subterranean Great Vampire, thus duplicating the effect of the "metal bowships" of Time Lord history.

With the Great Vampire dispatched, the three vampire Lords crumble to dust without the power of their master to sustain them. The Doctor finds Romana and Adric. Together with K9 they leave the planet to its own fate, hoping that, now freed from the corruptive effect of the vampires, it will change direction and develop once again toward its former advanced state and even perhaps surpass it. He leaves the planet in Kalmar's hands, while hoping the next journeys in the TARDIS will take Adric home and lead the craft back out of E-Space.

Continuity

This serial comprises the second leg of an extended adventure generally known as the "The E-Space Trilogy"; the trilogy began in the previous serial, Full Circle, and concludes in Warriors' Gate.

The Doctor mentions his childhood on Gallifrey and "an old hermit who lived up a mountain behind our house [and] used to tell me ghost stories" – tales of the Time Lord's war with the Vampires. This is the first mention of the Doctor's mentor from his youth since his last regeneration. This figure, K'Anpo (or Cho-Je) is first mentioned in The Time Monster and seen in Planet of the Spiders.

The Great Vampires are mentioned by the Tenth Doctor in "The Infinite Quest".

Tie-in media

The Virgin New Adventures spin-off novel Blood Harvest by Terrance Dicks and the Missing Adventure Goth Opera by Paul Cornell are sequels to this serial. Other Doctor Who novels featuring vampires include Vampire Science and Warmonger.

Many of the novels feature references to the war between the Time Lords and the Vampires. Another anti-Vampire weapon, the N-Forms, were introduced by Russell T Davies in his New Adventures novel Damaged Goods. Bowships are mentioned in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 as one of the weapons used in the Time War against the Daleks, along with N-Forms and Black Hole Carriers.

The Fourth Doctor segment of The Eight Doctors, in which the Fourth Doctor is captured by the last few surviving vampires and is rescued by Romana and the Eighth Doctor, takes place between the destruction of the Great Vampire and the end of this story.

The Big Finish Productions audio dramas Project: Twilight, Project Lazarus, and Zagreus refer to the vampires and to their history with the Time Lords. The BBC audio webcast Death Comes to Time features a vampire named Nessican.

Production

• Working titles for this story included The Wasting and The Vampire Mutations.
• The serial was a re-written version of a story called The Witch Lords which Dicks had submitted to the series in 1977, but which had been pulled just before production and replaced with Horror of Fang Rock.
• This was one of two serials to feature a highly improved K-9 prop. The other was Warriors' Gate.

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the State of Decay
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	58
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
ISBN	0 426 20133 7
Release date	14 January 1982
Preceded by	An Unearthly Child
Followed by	Doctor Who and Warriors' Gate

Commercial releases

• This story was released on VHS in October 1997. On the video, one tiny scene is omitted that was previously on the TVOntario version. In Part 4, K-9 is perched on the thrones of Zargo & Camilla, determining the moment when the Doctor is activating the scout ship. When he tells the rebels to evacuate the Tower, a rebel lifts him down and they escape.
• A DVD commentary with Terrance Dicks, Matthew Waterhouse and Peter Moffatt has been recorded and it was released on January 26th 2009 in a box set with Warriors Gate & Full Circle.

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in September 1981. A condensed version of the book was read by Tom Baker and released on cassette.

Audio Book

• This story was released on audio cassette with linking material by Tom Baker

Plot

A new adventure for a new Doctor in a new Dimension…

The Doctor and his travelling companion, retired army officer Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, take a random trip in the TARDIS - and land on the planet Skaro. The Doctor helped the Thals to defeat the Daleks years ago, so he is surprised to find the Thal city under Dalek occupation. He determines to help them again, but what is the Daleks' purpose in keeping the Thals alive? Does it have anything to do with the Daleks' mythical creator, named in their teachings as Davros?

Cast

• The Doctor — David Warner
• The Brigadier — Nicholas Courtney
• Davros — Terry Molloy
• The Daleks — Nicholas Briggs
• Nadel — Amy Pemberton
• Gillen — Sarah Douglas
• Delt — Jeremy James
• Toloc — Christopher Heywood

Notes

• This is a sequel to Sympathy for the Devil.
• As the previous story was named after a Rolling Stones song, this play is named for a Bob Dylan song.
• In this audio drama, David Warner plays an alternative Third Doctor. He previously appeared with his "predecessor" Patrick Troughton in The Omen.
• The incident in 1972 that the Brigadier mentions is apparently an alternate version of the events of 1972's Day of the Daleks.

External links

• Big Finish Productions - Masters of War

"The Next Doctor" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was broadcast on 25 December 2008 and is the fourth Christmas special of the revived series.^[3]

David Tennant stars as the Tenth Doctor, David Morrissey plays the titular "Next Doctor", and Velile Tshabalala plays the latter's companion Rosita.^[4][5]

This special sees the return of the Cybermen, (of the design of the parallel universe's Cybus Industries Cybermen^[6][7]), following their previous appearance in the two-part finale of Series Two in 2006, "Army of Ghosts"^[8]/"Doomsday".^[9]

During its original airing, the episode had a viewing audience of 13.1 million viewers. It was the second most watched programme of Christmas Day 2008.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor lands in London on Christmas Eve, 1851, where he encounters a woman called Rosita and another man who calls himself 'The Doctor'. After failing to capture a Cybershade, the two men talk, with the Tenth Doctor believing the other to be a future regeneration. Unfortunately, the other (dubbed 'the Next Doctor') is lacking many memories. Meanwhile, the Cybermen are planning an attack with a human ally, Miss Mercy Hartigan. The Tenth Doctor follows the Next Doctor to a house of a dead man, Reverend Aubrey Fairchild, where they search for clues to what the Cybermen are planning. The Next Doctor begins to regain some of his lost memories; when the Tenth Doctor finds a pair of 'infostamps' (the Cybermen's data storage devices) the Next Doctor remembers he was holding one the night he lost his memory. The Cybermen then attack the house, but before they can kill the 'Doctors', the Next Doctor kills them with an electrical charge in the infostamp.

At the Reverend's funeral, Miss Hartigan and the Cybermen attack the mourners, sparing four who are subsequently fitted with Ear-Pods and dispatched by Miss Hartigan to their workhouses to recruit the children. Returning to the Next Doctor's home base, the Tenth Doctor is shown the other's TARDIS "Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style" - a gas balloon. Realising what has happened, the Doctor explains that the Cybermen have escaped from the Void (following the Battle of Canary Wharf) when the walls of the universe were weakened in "a greater battle". The Cybermen came upon a man named Jackson Lake, the first person to disappear, attacking him and his wife. In the confusion, Lake destroyed the Cybermen with an infostamp (one containing information on the Doctor gleaned from the Daleks), as earlier in the house, but it also backfired, overwhelming Lake's mind with information about the Doctor. In despair at losing his wife, Lake came to believe he was the Doctor. Meanwhile, the children are taken to a sluice gate to the Thames. The Doctor and Rosita investigate and are confronted by Miss Hartigan, who explains that the Cybermen offered her liberation. The Doctor returns the infostamp to the Cybermen, who download it, confirming him as their foe. Miss Hartigan orders the Cybermen to delete the pair, but Lake appears and destroys the Cybermen with another infostamp, allowing them to escape. A furious Miss Hartigan announces that "the CyberKing will rise tonight!"

Lake reveals that he and his family were attacked at their new house and the Doctor realises it may lead to the Cybermen base. There, they find a Dimension Vault, stolen Dalek technology that allowed the Cybermen to escape the Void. In the Cybermen base, the captive children are working to generate power to allow the CyberKing to ascend. Hartigan is betrayed by the CyberLeader and 'converted' to the CyberKing - thus receiving liberation from her anger and hatred. However, she proves too powerful to control, and uses her new powers to obliterate the CyberLeader. The Doctor, Rosita and Jackson evacuate the children, including Jackson's son who was abducted when he was attacked. However, the CyberKing - a giant Cyberman-shaped robot ship - emerges from the Thames and begins to lay waste to London. Using the gas balloon, the Doctor confronts Hartigan and offers her a chance to live in peace. When she refuses, the Doctor uses the infostamps to sever her connection from the CyberKing. Realising what she has become, Hartigan screams in horror destroying the Cybermen and herself. Before the CyberKing can collapse on the city, the Doctor uses the dimension vault to transport it into the Time vortex. In the aftermath, Jackson thanks the Doctor for what he has done and offers him a place at his Christmas celebration with Rosita and his son. They walk away, to a Christmas dinner in honour of those they have lost.

[edit] Continuity

• The ten genuine Doctors, to date, appear in this episode through an infostamp projection. Apart from Peter Davison's newly filmed appearance as the Fifth Doctor in special mini-episode "Time Crash", "The Next Doctor" marks the first time since Doctor Who was revived in 2005 that footage of the Doctors prior to the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston), and indeed any footage made prior to 2005, has been used within an episode. The ten Doctors were all illustrated in A Journal of Impossible Things, a book featured in "Human Nature", however only a few of these illustrations were actually shown on screen. Audio clips of Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley as the Master were used in "Utopia". The footage of the First Doctor (William Hartnell) is taken from The Time Meddler; the Second (Patrick Troughton) from The Ice Warriors; the Third (Jon Pertwee) from Terror of the Autons; the Fourth (Tom Baker) from City of Death; the Fifth from Arc of Infinity; the Sixth (Colin Baker) from The Mysterious Planet; the Seventh (Sylvester McCoy) from Time and the Rani; the Eighth (Paul McGann) from the 1996 Doctor Who television movie; the Ninth from "The Parting of the Ways"; and the Tenth from "The Family of Blood". Further footage of the Tenth Doctor appears from episodes including "Blink", "The Runaway Bride", "Voyage of the Damned" and "The Lazarus Experiment".

• When trying to trigger Jackson's memories, the Doctor refers to 'not blinking', 'weeping angels' and 'Sally Sparrow', all of which featured in "Blink". The Doctor also refers obliquely to past companions, noting to Lake that they either leave him, meet someone else or forget about him.

• The Doctor mentions the events of "Doomsday". This is the first episode since "Doomsday" that the Cybermen have appeared in Doctor Who, although the Doctor Who spin-off series, Torchwood, furthered that story in the episode "Cyberwoman". These Cybermen have survived the apparent destruction of the Void, using Dalek technology developed in the Void to pass through dimensions. It is also implied by the Doctor that the events of the fourth series allowed the Cybermen to escape the Void, as it also allowed Rose Tyler to return to her own universe.

[edit] Production

[edit] Writing

Pre-broadcast publicity, based on excerpts from Davies' book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, revealed that the Doctor would meet a man played by David Morrissey who also claims to be the Doctor. In further excerpts, Davies commented, "The best title for this episode would be The Two Doctors... but maybe not. The New Doctor, perhaps? Or The Next Doctor? I quite like The Next Doctor."^[10] The book also contained two pictures from a scene cut from the end of the previous episode, intended to segue into the special echoing the previous two series. This scene was included on the series boxset.

Following the success of last year's Christmas special, "Voyage of the Damned", which guest starred pop star Kylie Minogue as one-off companion Astrid Peth, Russell T Davies had initially felt tempted to copy this format with another high-profile guest star, but decided against it after jokingly offering up "Cheryl Cole on board the Hindenburg" as an example.^[4]

Regarding the unanswered question of why a gigantic robot in London 1851 "isn't in the history books", Davies and Gardner jokingly offer several possibilities ranging from there being alternate history of Doctor Who England, pointing out "a spaceship didn't fly into the Big Ben in 2006 either" (in the episode "Aliens of London") or that perhaps "maybe everyone was retconned by the soon-to-be-born Torchwood, or something."^[5]

Davies, from a writer's standpoint, was also unhappy with the final scene in the episode where the Doctor gets rid of the CyberKing with the convenient Dalek dimension vault but he couldn't during the writing process think of another way to stop London being crushed by a giant robot. However, after the episode was produced, a different idea came to him. In this alternate ending Davies imagines, Miss Hartigan "should have destroyed the Cybermen when she screamed... but she's still in the chair", as the CyberKing falls to the Earth, the Doctor calls out to her saying "Save them." This version would have Hartigan redeem herself as she is the one to cause the CyberKing to disappear, with no need for what Davies calls "a silly Dalek continuum dimension vault". Julie Gardner felt this would have been a superior, "marvellous" ending and Davies says he "can't bear that there could have been a better ending than we actually transmitted".^[5]

Davies also feels he would like to write a BBC Books novel, set in the midst of that brief scene where Jackson Lake is in the Doctor's TARDIS in which the Doctor takes Jackson to another planet, ending with the "no no no scene" before Jackson invites the Doctor to spend Christmas dinner with him.^[5]

[edit] Locations

Filming for this episode was conducted in April 2008 at Gloucester Cathedral ^[11][12] and St Woolos Cemetery in Newport, ^[13] and in the streets of Gloucester, where shooting was hampered by up to 1,000 onlookers. The main setting of Torchwood, their Torchwood Hub was also redesigned and used as the workshop for the children.^[5]

[edit] Casting

David Morrissey is the main guest star, playing "a character called The Doctor – a man who believes himself to be a Time Lord".^[14] He was influenced in his performance by previous Doctor actors William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker, as he believed there was "a truth" to their performances because they "never saw [Doctor Who] as a genre show or a children's show".^[15] He is joined by Velile Tshabalala as Rosita, the companion to Morrissey's "Doctor", whom Russell T Davies describes as "probably cleverer than the two of them [the Doctors] put together". For Tshabalala, the character came naturally because her "feisty cockney girl" characterisation was very "close to home" for her.^[16]

Dervla Kirwan plays Mercy Hartigan, who Russell T Davies describes in the episode's podcast commentary as "a dark a villain as you will ever have". A lot of her characterisation goes unstated, but Russell discussed it in long conversations with Dervla Kirwan and fellow executive producer Julie Gardner. Davies characterises Miss Hartigan as "a victim of abuse", for whom the subtext suggests a "terrible backstory" which is symptomatic of her being "part of [this] Victorian Age." Davies describes this as being "a powerless woman who's been in servitude or far worse all her life", but holds his tongue from saying her precise profession, relaying: "I'm talking quite discreetly around this because there are children listening and watching and there's only so far I should go." He does however explain that "She's had terrible things done to her" which is responsible for her "really twisted character where she sexualises everything." In terms of costume, "she wears red" because "everything's inflammatory with her". "And in the end, actually" Davies discusses how to escape her male oppression she "becomes a man, she becomes the CyberKing. She has to go through this extraordinary process because she's so damaged."^[5]

Design

Millennium FX's Neil Gorton's original design for the Cybershade took the existing Cyberman design and "refurbished" it by adding rivets and a copper finish. The design was cost-effective but Russell T Davies did not believe it was the right approach. He sketched a new design for the Cybershade that was "a crude version of a Cyberman, all angular and blocky, with its trademark handlebars set at a jaunty angle and shrouded in flowing black robes". Gorton used Davies' sketch to create a fibreglass mask that the Cybershade actors wore over their heads. Costume designer Louise Paige made the flowing robes, that were "light enough to not restrict movement" to complete the Cybershade costume.

Originally, Gardner relayed that there was a widespread dissatisfaction with Hartigan's CyberKing crown. The original helmet, he remarked "was like the Cyberwoman's head from Torchwood" (referring to the episode "Cyberwoman"), literally "a Cyberman's head on Dervla Kirwan" or "as if Dervla Kirwan decided to go to a [fancy dress] party as a Cyberman." Davies' response was "Oh my lord, no." The production team however worked hard, and in two days produced the final headpiece seen in the episode which Davies described as "beautiful", because it's "Victorian and it fits the design." In the scene after the headpiece is placed on her, Dervla wore black contact lenses and SFX company The Mill helped to get rid of "any traces of white" in post-production.

 Broadcast

Preliminary figures show that the episode had a viewing audience of 11.71 million during its original airing, with a peak at 12.58 million viewers, and a 50.5% share of the 18:00 timeslot it was shown. It was the second most watched programme of Christmas Day 2008, behind Wallace and Gromit's A Matter of Loaf and Death. Final viewing figures show an audience of 13.1 million viewers.

The episode had an Appreciation Index figure of 86 (considered "Excellent"), making it the second most enjoyed programme on mainstream television on Christmas Day. The only programme to score higher was Wallace and Gromit's A Matter of Loaf and Death, which scored 88. Australia, the ABC will broadcast the episode much earlier than usual on Sunday 25 January at 19:30.

Full Circle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

112 – Full Circle
Doctor Who serial
A Marshman emerges from underwater.
Cast
Doctor	Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Companions	John Leeson (K-9 Mk. II)
	Lalla Ward (Romana II)
Guest stars
Matthew Waterhouse — Adric Leonard Maguire — Draith James Bree — Nefred Alan Rowe — Garif George Baker — Login Tony Calvin — Dexeter Richard Willis — Varsh June Page — Keara Bernard Padden — Tylos Andrew Forbes — Omril Adrian Gibbs — Rysik Barney Lawrence — Marshman Norman Bacon — Marschild
Production
Writer	Andrew Smith
Director	Peter Grimwade
Script editor	Christopher H. Bidmead
Producer	John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s)	Barry Letts
Production code	5R
Series	Season 18
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	October 25–November 15, 1980
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
Meglos	State of Decay

Full Circle is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from October 25 to November 15, 1980. The serial is the first of three loosely connected serials known as the E-Space trilogy and introduces Matthew Waterhouse as the Doctor's newest companion, Adric.

Synopsis

En route to Gallifrey to return Romana to the High Council of Time Lords, the TARDIS passes through a strange phenomenon and ends up in an alternative universe called E-Space. Neither the Doctor nor Romana herself (who is a little relieved to have avoided home) can calculate why the TARDIS scanner shows the Capitol of their planet when in fact they have arrived in a verdant forest. It later emerges they have journeyed to this pocket universe through a rare space/time phenomenon known as a Charged Vacuum Emboitment.

Nearby is a small but sustainable civilisation of humanoids who live between a river and a grounded but not irreparable spaceship called the Starliner. They came to the planet Alzarius from Terradon and much of the focus of society is on repairing their craft to make it navigable once more. It is an oligarchy ruled by three self-selecting senior colonists knows as Deciders, who ensure the smooth running and order of their adopted world and lay particular store on technical ability. One of the brightest of the younger generation of colonists is Adric, who bears a Badge of Mathematical Excellence in recognition of his computational skills.

However, his brother, Varsh, has rejected the regimented society of the Starliner and leads a band of rebels called Outlers, who steal harvested riverfruit and other foods to survive. However, all is not well in the colony. Strange eggs have started to appear in the riverfruit and this is interpreted by First Decider Draith using the precious System File of the Starliner as an omen of Mistfall, a strange periodic change to the planet during which the natural balance of society is threatened. Soon Mistfall begins, and the colonists move into the Starliner to protect themselves, apparently in a well prepared manner. Adric chooses the moment of confusion to try and steal some riverfruit to prove himself to his brother. Draith gives chase to his young protégé but falls and lands in the river – only to be dragged beneath the waves by a strange force. His last words are aimed at the chief scientists of the colony: “Tell Dexeter we've come full circle!" Adric muses on this as he heads into the forest in panic, finding the TARDIS. The Doctor and Romana take him in and tend to his leg wound, which recovers remarkably quickly. The Doctor heads off to investigate the planet, while Adric attracts Varsh and the other Outlers to the protection of the TARDIS.

The two other Deciders, Garif and Nefred, have meanwhile ordered the Starliner doors closed as per procedure, knowing that both Draith and Keara, an Outler and the daughter of a prominent citizen called Login, have not entered the ship safely. Despite his worries, Login soon accepts a position as Third Decider when it is determined that Draith has died. It is as well the doors have been closed – humanoid, aggressive Marshmen begin to appear from underwater, looking threatening (as shown in the picture above); and soon scuttling Marshspiders hatch from the eggs of the Riverfruit. The Marshmen beat on the walls of the Starliner to gain entry but the fearsome primitive creatures are not admitted. The Doctor, however, gains entry to the Starliner using his sonic screwdriver, followed by a young and inquisitive Marshchild. Both of them are soon found and taken before the Three Deciders. The Doctor is appalled when chief scientist Dexeter starts to perform vivisection experiments on the Marshchild.

A group of Marshmen have meanwhile carried the TARDIS to a settlement cave, intending to use it as a battering ram to force their way into the Starliner. Romana decides to venture outside. She is bitten by one of the Marshspiders and starts to change, seeming possessed. Adric panics and materialises the TARDIS inside the Starliner. When the Outlers emerge Login is reunited with his daughter, but the Doctor is not impressed not to be reunited with Romana. Thus he pilots the TARDIS back to the cave, and finds an alert but amnesiac Romana. The Doctor scoops up the remains of a Marshspider and then reverses his journey once more with Adric and an unconscious Romana in tow. By the time he is back in the Starliner, however, Dexeter has tried to examine the brain of the Marshchild, provoking it to attack and kill him and itself. The Doctor is so incensed he turns on the Deciders and denounces their society – revealing secret ship controls that show the Starliner has been ready to pilot from Alzarius for centuries but, for some reason, the farce of constant repair has been continued. The problem it seems is that though the Deciders understand the technical construction of the ship, no-one knows how to pilot it.

The Doctor persuades the Deciders to give him equipment to examine the cells of the marshspider and marshchild and also deduces that they are from identical DNA sources. This situation is complicated, however, when a transformed Romana releases the emergency exits and allows the Marshmen to invade the Starliner. The colonists retreat before the creatures, many of whom are more inquisitive than dangerous, but anarchy reigns. Nefred is mortally wounded while fleeing one room, but his last admission is that the colonists cannot return to Terradon, because they've never been there. It is realized that the present-day Alzarians are actually a subspecies of the Marshmen, who wiped out the Starliner's original Terradonian crew and then gradually evolved into human form to take their place.

The Doctor uses a protein serum to cure Romana, and they determine from research in the ship's science unit that the ship has been maintained for 40,000 generations by a species that has three aspects; spiders, marshmen, and the current humanoids. They are all from the same DNA and thus have come "full circle". This is the real secret of the System Files.

It is accidentally deduced that oxygen in pure form is problematic to the Marshmen, who have not the capability to cope with the gas in that concentration, and soon this non-lethal defence is used to force the Marshmen out of the Starliner. During their retreat Varsh is killed, leaving Adric in emotional turmoil. With the Marshmen returning to the swamps, the boy stows away on board the TARDIS. His fellow colonists meanwhile follow their dreams and pilot the craft away from Alzarius. The Doctor and Romana are unaware of Adric's presence as they pilot their own craft to another destination.

Continuity

• This serial comprises the first leg of an extended adventure generally known as the "The E-Space Trilogy"; the trilogy continues in the next serial, State of Decay, and concludes in Warriors' Gate.
• The Doctor briefly mentions both Leela and the Key to Time early in this serial.

Battlefield

156 – Battlefield
Doctor Who serial
A meeting with an old friend
Cast
Doctor	Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor)
Companion	Sophie Aldred (Ace)
Guest stars
Nicholas Courtney — Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Angela Douglas — Doris Angela Bruce — Brigadier Winifred Bambera Robert Jezek — Sergeant Zbrigniev Dorota Rae — Flight Lieutenant Lavel Paul Tomany — Major Husak Noel Collins — Pat Rawlinson June Bland — Elizabeth Rawlinson James Ellis — Peter Warmsly Ling Tai — Shou Yuing Jean Marsh — Morgaine Christopher Bowen — Mordred Marcus Gilbert — Ancelyn Marek Anton — The Destroyer Stefan Schwartz — Knight Commander
Production
Writer	Ben Aaronovitch
Director	Michael Kerrigan
Script editor	Andrew Cartmel
Producer	John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	7N
Series	Season 26
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	September 6–September 27, 1989
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy	Ghost Light

Battlefield is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from September 6 to September 27, 1989.

Synopsis

In response to a distress signal, the Seventh Doctor and Ace materialize the TARDIS near Lake Vortigern in England. The sound of explosions leads the TARDIS crew into the acquaintance of Brigadier Bambera of UNIT, in charge of a nuclear missile convoy. Following from the encounter, the retired Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart is informed of the Doctor's return, and a helicopter is sent to his country home to collect him, against the protests of his wife, Doris.

Later, at the Gore Crow hotel, the Doctor and Ace meet a young woman called Shou Yuing, who shares Ace's love of explosives. Meanwhile, as Bambera stops to examine a blue police telephone box, she is caught in the crossfire between two groups of armoured knights, using both swords and futuristic guns.

The Doctor shows interest in a scabbard, excavated from the battlefield. The scabbard is hot to the Doctor's touch, and the hotel owner's blind wife, Elizabeth, says she can sense it waiting for something, or someone. When the archaeologist Warmsly arrives at the hotel, he dates the scabbard to the 8th century. The Doctor senses that it has been waiting for far longer.

As Ace and Shou Yuing share a talk about explosives, a knight sails through the brewery's roof, making a huge commotion. On investigation, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing find the knight Ancelyn — who wakes, to recognize the Doctor as "Merlin". While the Doctor mulls the portent of this revelation, the party is surrounded by an ominous group of knights.

Bambera faces down their leader, Mordred. He is shocked to see "Merlin", who he believed bound by his mother, Morgaine. Following some vague threats from the Doctor, Mordred's knights retreat. Later, as Mordred begins an arcane ritual, the scabbard in the hotel flies across the room. Morgaine arrives on the scene through a rift in space and time; she proceeds to psychically taunt the Doctor.

The next day, Warmsly shows the Doctor where he uncovered the scabbard. They find a rune, which the Doctor translates to "Dig hole here." On further question, he replies that it is his own handwriting. Using a canister of Nitro-9, Ace blows an opening.

On arrival in Carbury, Lethbridge-Stewart's helicopter is shot down by Morgaine's sorcery. As Morgaine's knights hold a remembrance ceremony for the soldiers of Earth's world wars, Lethbridge-Stewart has a peaceable encounter with Morgaine — though she threatens Lethbridge-Stewart, in the event they should meet again.

The Doctor and Ace enter a chamber under the lake, finding the door keyed to the Doctor's voice. The Doctor tells Ace that this "Merlin" may well be a future version of himself. Presently, they realize that the chamber is part of an organic spaceship. They also find the body of King Arthur. When Ace removes a sword from a plinth, she activates a defence mechanism, unleashing a hostile, glowing entity. In attempt to hide, Ace enters an alcove. A door closes, and the alcove starts to fill with water. As Ace yells for help, the entity knocks the Doctor unconscious.

The Doctor recovers just in time to fiddle with a control panel, and eject Ace from the space ship. As Ancelyn and Warmsly stand at the shore, discussing the Lady of the Lake, Ace emerges, still grasping the sword. Ancelyn identifies it as Excalibur. The Brigadier arrives on-scene, in time to destroy the creature below the lake and rescue the Doctor.

Mordred and Morgaine go to the hotel, to retrieve Excalibur. When Lavel shoots, Morgaine simply catches her bullet with sorcery. Morgaine takes knowledge from Lavel's mind, then turns her body to dust. As she leaves, she pays Mordred's drinking tab by restoring Elizabeth's sight. Meanwhile, UNIT troops are staging an evacuation. The Brigadier shows off some of UNIT's specialized ammunition, and the Doctor inquires about silver bullets.

The Doctor instructs Ace to draw a chalk circle around herself, to protect against Morgaine's sorcery. He then drives off in his old car, Bessie, hoping to halt a battle between Morgaine's knights and the UNIT soldiers. A storm breaks outside the hotel, so Ace and Shou Yuing draw the circle around themselves and Excalibur. A localized night falls. Within the circle, Ace and Shou Yuing start to bicker. Ace nearly leaves the circle, before they realise they are being toyed with.

Just as Mordred and Ancelyn are about to fight, the Doctor intervenes. Mordred, however, reveals that this battle is merely a ruse to lure the Doctor, and that Morgaine has summoned the Destroyer of Worlds. Morgaine appears before Ace and Shou Yuing, and tries to entice them to hand over Excalibur. When they refuse, she unleashes the Destroyer.

The Doctor and the Brigadier capture Mordred, and set off for the hotel. Meanwhile, Morgaine is occupied with Ace's circle. On return, the Doctor finds the hotel in ruins yet Ace and Shou Yuing safe. He is pleased to hear that Ace gave up Excalibur to Morgaine, if doing so protected her. In the debris, the Doctor finds a portal to Morgaine's castle; he, the Brigadier, and Ace enter. On arrival, the Brigadier shoots the Destroyer, to no effect. The Destroyer's return volley sends the Brigadier flying through the window. Ace bursts through the portal, ramming into Morgaine, knocking Excalibur from her grasp.

Morgaine releases the Destroyer's bonds. In the confusion, she scoops up Excalibur and enters the gateway along with Mordred.

Outside, the Doctor readies the Brigadier's revolver and silver bullets — yet the Brigadier knocks him out, retrieves his gun, and faces the Destroyer alone. After some dialog, the Brigadier empties the revolver into the Destroyer's chest. The Doctor wakes to find the castle engulfed in flames. He spots the Brigadier's prostrate form, and begins to mourn his fallen friend — at which point the Brigadier stirs and rises, scuffed but unharmed.

Back at the convoy, Morgaine and Mordred attempt to detonate the nuclear missile. The Doctor confronts Morgaine, insisting that there is no honor to nuclear warfare. She agrees, then asks to fight Arthur in single combat. He tells her of Arthur's death, to her sadness. The Doctor prevents Mordred from killing Ancelyn, and asks Bambera to imprison Mordred and Morgaine.

Back at the Brigadier's house, Doris thumbs her nose at her husband by going for a drive in Bessie with Ace, Shou Yuing, and Bambera, leaving him and the other men to do the gardening and prepare supper.

Continuity

• As broadcast, this story marks a costume change for the Seventh Doctor. (Initially, The Curse of Fenric was meant as the first story of the season, and an outfit reveal was built in partway through the story.) Most of his clothing is darker, most notably his coat which is now dark brown as opposed to the light grey in previous seasons. This was to represent his darker, more manipulative character. This costume would continue until the end of the classic series' run. When the Seventh Doctor next appears in the 1996 TV movie, he is wearing a completely re-designed outfit with only his hat remaining (which was owned by Sylvester McCoy).
• It is implied that Merlin is, or will be, a future incarnation of the Doctor. It is also possible that Merlin is an alternate Doctor from the same parallel universe that Morgaine and the rest of the knights are from.
• The Doctor mentions that they are several years in Ace's future. A £5 coin is in common circulation.
• The Doctor, talking to the new Brigadier, mentions Yeti (The Web of Fear), Autons (Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Autons), Daleks (Day of the Daleks), Cybermen (The Invasion) and Silurians (Doctor Who and the Silurians).
• Bessie appears for the first time since The Five Doctors, with the numberplate 'WHO 7', though the actual car used is a different model from that featured earlier; in the Doctor's personal chronology, he was last shown using the vehicle soon after his regeneration into the Fourth Doctor in Robot (in The Five Doctors the vehicle is only used by the Third Doctor).
• This story marks the last appearance of the TARDIS console room in the classic series. The set itself which had been in use since The Five Doctors had been destroyed in between seasons so a cheap mock-up (with a curtain standing in for the wall) was used here.^{[citation needed]} The lighting in this scene is very low to disguise this, although the console itself survived and was used.
• UNIT itself would not appear again on television until the Ninth Doctor story Aliens of London, after which it would be seen in the Tenth Doctor's initial outing, The Christmas Invasion, and several subsequent stories. The organization was also referred to in the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures and represented by its medical officer, Martha Jones, in Torchwood.
• This story is the last appearance in the television series of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, after 21 years in the series since his first appearance in in 1968's The Web of Fear. The character has subsequently appeared in several spinoff stories, including short stories, novels and audio dramas. The canonicity of these is unclear. 'Sir Alistair' was mentioned in the 2008 episode, The Poison Sky, as still being an active member of UNIT and will reappear in the last story of the second season of the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures in Enemy of the Bane.

Production

Pre-production

Working titles for this story included Nightfall and Storm Over Avallion. An early version of the script was to have included the death of Lethbridge-Stewart.^[4]

The Doctor refers to one of Clarke's three laws — telling Ace that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic — to explain that Arthur's transdimensional spaceship was grown, not built, and adds that the reverse of Clarke's Law is also true. Game designer Dave Lebling wrote in the 1986 interactive fiction game Trinity, "Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology."

Casting

Guest stars making return appearances include Jean Marsh, who over twenty years earlier had played Princess Joanna in The Crusade and later, companion Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan and June Bland, who appeared in the Fifth Doctor story, Earthshock.

Archaeologist Peter Warmsly was played by the renowned actor James Ellis, best remembered for his role as Lynch in Z Cars. See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

Production

The first director approached to handle Battlefield was Graeme Harper, who had previously directed The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks for the programme in 1984 and 1985 respectively. However, Harper was committed to episodes of the Central Television drama series Boon, and unavailable to return to Doctor Who.^[5] He would, however, later return to direct episodes of the revived version of the show from 2006 onwards.

During recording of the sequence where Ace is trapped in the water tank, the tank cracked, causing Sophie Aldred to sustain minor cuts to her hands and creating a major hazard as water flooded out onto the studio floor, across which live wires were running. The moment when the tank first cracked can be seen in Part Three as the Doctor struggles with the controls and Ace is lifted clear of the water.

VHS and DVD Release

• This story was released on VHS in March 1998 with two minutes of additional footage not shown in the 1989 broadcast.
• It will be released on Region 2 DVD on December 29th 2008.

Doctor Who book
Battlefield
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	152
Writer	Marc Platt
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Alister Pearson
ISBN	0 426 20350 X
Release date	15 November 1990
Preceded by	The Curse of Fenric
Followed by	The Pescatons

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Marc Platt, was published by Target Books in July 1991.^[6] It was the last novelisation of a televised Doctor Who serial to be published in the traditional "short paperback" format Target had been using since 1973. After one more novelisation based upon the untelevised The Pescatons, all remaining novelisations would be published in paperback editions with greater page counts and a different format.

Once upon the 80’s dreary, while I watched all weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious vhs of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'


Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was watching television when you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Michael Grade, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered words, `Doctor Who No More!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, ` Doctor Who No More?'
Merely this and nothing more.

 
Much I marvelled this ungainly felow hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing Grade at his chamber door -
Man or beast above the head of pertwee above his chamber door,
With such vermance came his word again `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if  BBC director or devil! –

Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there no hope for my timelord? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Laughed the Controler `Nevermore!'

With just these words he few away.

And the BBC, never failing, still is sitting on the rights evermore, still is plotting scemeing, waiting a man, a  man to rap at my chamber door.

And This man, - lets call him Russel- his eyes a dreaming,  Dreaming of his common myth.
And the New controller will hold promice, dreams of blue lamp-light flashing;
And my soul rises from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Doctor Who – For ever more!

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: BBC Books (25 Sep 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 1846075718
• ISBN-13: 978-1846075711
• Product Dimensions: 24.6 x 19 x 4 cm

Starring Sylvester McCoy
With Terry Molloy and Neil Roberts

Ghost Light

Ghost Light was the second story of Season 26 of Doctor Who. Two stories followed it when broadcast, although it was the last story of the classic series to be produced. It was the last story filmed at the BBC studios in London.

Synopsis

The Doctor brings Ace to Gabriel Chase, an old house that she once burnt down in her home town of Perivale. The year is 1883 and the house is presided over by Josiah Samuel Smith, who turns out to be the evolved form of an alien brought to Earth in a stone spaceship that is now in the basement. Others present include the explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper, who has been driven mad by what he has seen there, and Nimrod, Smith's Neanderthal manservant.

Smith intends to use Fenn-Cooper's unwitting help in a plot to kill Queen Victoria and restore the British Empire to its former glory. His plans are hampered by Control, a female alien whose life-cycle is in balance with his own. Ace inadvertently causes the release of the spaceship's true owner - a powerful alien being known as Light.

Light originally came to Earth to compile a catalogue of its species but, on discovering that his catalogue has now been made obsolete by evolution, he decides to destroy all life on the planet. He disintegrates when the Doctor convinces him that evolution is irresistible and that he himself is constantly changing.

Control has meanwhile evolved into a lady and Smith has reverted to an earlier, primitive form. They leave in the spaceship, along with Nimrod and Fenn-Cooper, heading for new adventure.

Plot

Part 1

Fenn-Cooper has been driven mad by Light

The Doctor brings Ace to Gabriel Chase, an old house that she once burnt down in her home town of Perivale near London. The year is 1883 and the house is presided over by the mysterious Josiah Samuel Smith. It is a most mysterious place, where the serving women brandish guns and the butler is a Neanderthal named Nimrod. Other occupants include Gwendoline, the daughter of the original owners of the house who have now disappeared, the calculating housekeeper Lady Pritchard, the explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper, who has seen something which has driven him insane, and the Reverend Ernest Matthews, opponent of the theory of evolution which Smith has done much to spread.

The TARDIS arrives at Gabriel Chase. It turns out that Ace had visited the house in 1983, and had felt an evil presence, and the Doctor's curiosity drives him to seek the answers. Something is also alive and evolving in the cellar beneath the house and when Ace investigates she finds two animated and dangerous husks.

Part 2

Josiah turns into a husk

In rescuing Ace, the Doctor releases an evolving creature trapped in the cellar known as Control. The party moves to ground level and Control remains trapped in the cellar for the moment. The cellar is in fact a vast stone spaceship. The Doctor works his way through the stuffed animals in Gabriel Chase and eventually finds a human in suspended animation, an Inspector Mackenzie, who came to the house two years earlier in search of the owners. The Doctor revives him and together they seek to unlock the mysteries of Gabriel Chase.

The husks which attacked Ace were the remains of Smith, an alien who has been evolving into forms approximating a human and casting off his old husks as an insect would. For his pains Smith transforms Matthews into an ape and places him in a display case.

The Doctor helps Control release the trapped creature from the cellar, a being known as Light who takes the form of an angel.

Part 3

Light wakes up

Thousands of years in the past, an alien spaceship came to Earth to catalogue all life on the planet. After completing its task and collecting some samples, which included Nimrod, the leader Light went into slumber. By 1881 the ship had returned to Earth. While Control remained imprisoned on the ship to serve as the "control" subject of the scientific investigation, events transpired such that Smith, the "survey agent", mutinied against Light, keeping him in hibernation on the ship. Smith began evolving into the era's dominant life-form - a Victorian gentleman - and also took over the house. By 1883 Smith managed to lure and capture the explorer Fenn-Cooper within his den. Utilising Fenn-Cooper's association with Queen Victoria, he plans to get close to her so that he can assassinate her and subsequently take control of the British Empire.

Light is displeased by all the change that has occurred on the planet while he was asleep. While Light tries to make sense of all the change, Smith tries to keep his plan intact, but events are moving beyond his control. Light turns Gwendoline and her missing mother, revealed to be Mrs. Pritchard, to stone in a bid to stop the speed of evolution; while Inspector Mackenzie meets a sticky end and is turned into a primordial soup to serve at dinner. As Control tries to "evolve" into a Lady, and Ace tries to come to grips with her feelings about the house, the Doctor himself tries to keep the upper hand in all the events that have been set in motion. The Doctor finally convinces Light of the futility of opposing evolution, which causes him to overload and dissipate into the surrounding house. It was this presence that Ace sensed and which caused her to burn the house down in 1983. Also, Control's complete evolution into a Lady derail's Smith's plan as Fenn-Cooper, having freed himself from Smith's brainwashing, chooses to side with her instead of him. In the end, with Smith now the new Control creature imprisoned on the ship, Control, Fenn-Cooper and Nimrod set off in the alien ship to explore the universe.

Cast

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
• Ace - Sophie Aldred
• Josiah Samuel Smith - Ian Hogg
• Light - John Hallam
• Lady Pritchard - Sylvia Syms
• Redvers Fenn-Cooper - Michael Cochrane
• Control - Sharon Duce
• Gwendoline - Katharine Schlesinger
• Nimrod - Carl Forgione
• Reverend Ernest Matthews - John Nettleton
• Mrs Grose - Brenda Kempner
• Inspector Mackenzie - Frank Windsor

Crew

• Writer - Marc Platt
• Assistant Floor Manager - Stephen Garwood
• Costumes - Ken Trew
• Designer - Nick Somerville
• Incidental Music - Mark Ayres
• Make-Up - Joan Stribling
• Production Assistant - Valerie Whiston
• Production Associate - June Collins
• Script Editor - Andrew Cartmel
• Special Sounds - Dichttp://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=Ghost_Light&action=submitk Mills
• Studio Lighting - Henry Barber
• Studio Sound - Scott Talbott, Keith Bowden
• Stunt Arranger - Paul Heasman
• Theme Arrangement - Keff McCulloch
• Title Music - Ron Grainer
• Visual Effects - Malcolm James
• Producer - John Nathan-Turner
• Director - Alan Wareing

Continuity

• The new companion "Mel" is introduced without the typical "meeting" story, as this evidence is supposed to take place in the Doctor's future, after he has already met Mel.
• Despite references to them having met before, the Doctor has never been shown to meet Commodore Travers on screen before this.

Production

Preproduction

This story segment of Trial was originally supposed to be written by Peter J. Hammond, creator of the cult science fiction series Sapphire & Steel. Hammond's story outline, titled Paradise Five, was liked by script editor Eric Saward but disliked by producer John Nathan-Turner, who rejected it and commissioned Pip and Jane Baker to do the segment instead.^[4] Hammond later wrote two episodes of the Doctor Who spin-off drama, Torchwood.

Designed as a typical Agatha Christie murder mystery set on a space liner, the actual structure of the story (and its bubbly tone) are reminiscent of the series during Douglas Adams' tenure as script editor, during season seventeen. In the first episode, Professor Lasky is briefly seen reading a copy of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

Production

The Vervoids bear a strong resemblance to the Flatwoods monster, a common template for alien creatures.^{[citation needed]}

Post-production

This serial marked the last time the BBC Radiophonic Workshop provided a music score for the series.

As no individual title was used onscreen or on the final scripts for this story, there has been some confusion over how to refer to the story. It was initially commissioned with the title of The Ultimate Foe. However this title was later given to the novelisation of the 13th and 14th parts of the season. Writers Pip and Jane Baker repeatedly referred to the story as The Vervoids in subsequent interviews, as have other production team members, but this title does not appear to exist on any contemporary documentation.^[4] When Target Books published Pip and Jane Baker's novelisation, it was under the title of Terror of the Vervoids, which is now generally used to refer to the story (see The Ultimate Foe and Doctor Who story title controversy).

Commercial releases

• In October 1993, this story was released on VHS as part of the three-tape The Trial of a Time Lord set.
• It is also due for DVD release on September 29th2008^[5], similarly packaged with the other stories in The Trial of a Time Lord season. Special Features include: deleted and extended scenes • "The Making of a Trial of a Time Lord - Part Three - Terror of Vervoids" • "Now Get Out of That - Doctor Who Cliffhangers" (a 28-minute feature) • "The Lost Season" (an 11-minute feature) • Saturday Picture Show archival television footage • photo gallery • and trails and continuities.

Continuity

Thanks to the paradoxes of time travel, since Mel is from the Doctor's future, she has already met him, but from the Doctor's perspective he is meeting her for the first time. Most spin-off media, including the novelisation by the Bakers, have assumed that the Doctor, at the end of the trial, takes Mel back to her proper place in time and eventually travels to her relative past to meet Mel for the first time from her perspective. That meeting, never seen on screen, is related in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Business Unusual by Gary Russell and also in his audio story He Jests at Scars, which provides a semi-sequel to this TV story.

In the new series episode Journey's End, a Magnetron (possibly salvaged during The Time War) is used to move a number of planets to another spot in the universe. Since then, the technology appears to have been modified and/or improved as the planets apparently just teleport rather than being "thrown".

[edit] The Doctor

This was the last story to feature Colin Baker as the current Doctor. Baker was fired by the BBC and John Nathan Turner was ordered, reportedly by Michael Grade, to recast the lead part for the following season. Baker was offered the chance to appear as the Doctor in all four episodes of the first story of Season 24, but he declined this and the invitation to return for the traditional regeneration sequence in Time and the Rani.

Due to Colin Baker's dismissal from the role, it would turn out that the Sixth Doctor's last lines on screen were "Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice!" Although The Ultimate Foe was his last regular appearance as the Doctor on screen, the last story that Baker actually recorded was Terror of the Vervoids. Baker would reprise the role on stage, in 1989's Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure, and on screen in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time, as well as various audio adventures for Big Finish Productions.

[edit] Final appearances

This marked the last appearance to date of the Time Lords, apart from a brief flashback in "The Sound of Drums." Coincidentally, James Bree (The Keeper of the Matrix) had appeared in The War Games (albeit in a different role), which was the first serial to feature the Time Lords.

The Valeyard has not re-appeared in the television series. His sole appearance in the Big Finish Productions audios has been the Doctor Who Unbound (and therefore outside of established continuity) He Jests at Scars..., where Michael Jayston reprises the role. The character has been featured (usually in dream sequences or metaphors) in the New Adventures and Missing Adventures book ranges from Virgin Publishing and the Past Doctor Adventures from the BBC, however none of these appearances conclusively reveals his origins. The forthcoming unofficial novel Time's Champion, the late Craig Hinton's final novel completed by his friend Chris McKeon, will see the return of the Valeyard and his origins revealed.

Whereas previously Anthony Ainley's the Master had appeared in at least one story per year, it would be another three years before he returned in Survival, the final story of the show's original run.

[edit] Production

Robert Holmes was originally commissioned to write the two episodes. Unfortunately, he died from a chronic liver ailment after completing a draft of the first and left nothing beyond a plot outline of the second. The series Script Editor Eric Saward resigned around this time due to disagreements with the producer, John Nathan-Turner, but agreed to write the final episode based on Holmes' outline, and also rewrite Holmes' draft to tie the two together, for which he was credited as Script Editor. The original ending to this segment (and, indeed, the whole Trial story and possibly the series) would have seen the Doctor and the Valeyard in an inconclusive cliffhanger, both (seemingly) plunging into a void to their deaths as an extra "hook". However, Nathan-Turner felt this was too downbeat and believed that it was important that the season did not end on an inconclusive note since it was important after the hiatus to prove the series was back in business. Saward refused to change the ending and withdrew permission to use his script very late in the day, by which point the production team had been assembled and the segment was entering rehearsals.

John Nathan-Turner commissioned Pip and Jane Baker to write a replacement final episode. For copyright reasons they could not be told anything of the content of Saward's script (and there were lawyers observing all commissioning meetings). The only similarity between the two is the announcement that the High Council of the Time Lords have resigned, which was a natural development of the earlier scripts. The new script ended on an optimistic note, with the Doctor departing for new adventures.^[4]

In keeping with this more optimistic stance, Nathan-Turner decided to amend the script at the last minute to show how Peri had not died as shown in Mindwarp but in fact, became Yrcanos's queen. Her "death" was merely a part of the Valeyard's tampering with the Matrix, with a shot from the earlier story used to show this. Nicola Bryant was disappointed to learn how the fate of her character had been changed.

Ultimately, the works of Charles Dickens are evident in the story: the fictional landscape in the Matrix resembles Victorian era Britain, and the character (and name) of Mr. Popplewick are strongly Dickensian. The Doctor also quotes the final two lines of A Tale of Two Cities, prompting Mel to chide him: "Never mind the Sydney Carton heroics!"

The working title of this story was Time Incorporated.^[4] However, this title did not appear in the final scripts or on-screen.

Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.

Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fanbase and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between cyberpunk and steampunk is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely.

Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual craftpersons into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric arrive on a spaceship which is headed for Earth. On board they meet natives of Earth from various different eras, and also three Urbankans: Monarch, Persuasion and Enlightenment. What are the aliens' intentions when they reach Earth?

Plot

The TARDIS materializes on board a vast and advanced alien spacecraft, observed by a hovering surveillance device which conveys the arrival of the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric to an observing being that is in control of the vessel. The TARDIS crew become separated and the Doctor and Tegan reach the bridge of the vessel where the green-skinned commander introduces himself as Monarch, ruler of Urbanka, and his associates and fellow Urbankans are the Ministers of Enlightenment and Persuasion. The leader is intrigued by talk of current Earth civilisation and reveals their ship is bound for Earth. Shortly afterward Enlightenment and Persuasion seemingly regenerate into human form, dressed in garments Tegan designed to demonstrate contemporary Earth fashions.

The TARDIS crew are reunited as guests aboard the ship and it soon becomes apparent that there are four distinct human cultures represented on the vessel by a small group of humans – Ancient Greeks, the leader of whom is the philosopher Bigon; Chinese Mandarins and their leader Lin Futu; Princess Villagra and representatives of the Mayan people; and Kurkutji and his tribesmen, of the very ancient Australian Aborigine culture. The Urbankans have made periodic visits to Earth, each time getting speedier in their journeys. This time they have left their homeworld after erratic solar activity, storing three billion of their species on slides aboard their craft, and it seems the current journey is their last and they now wish to settle on Earth, which they are due to reach in four days time.

The Doctor becomes suspicious of Monarch and soon learns that the Urbankan does not plan on peaceful co-existence: instead, he has developed a virus to wipe out humanity, and this will be unleashed before the Urbankans disembark. He also finds out that the humans aboard are not descendents of the original abductees, but are the original people taken from Earth and converted into androids like the three Urbankans walking around on board. The four leaders of the peoples have been given additional circuits to help them reason, but this facility can be taken away, as Bigon learns when he crosses Monarch once too often. He explained to the Doctor that Monarch strip-mined and destroyed Urbanka in a quest for minerals to improve the ship, and now plans to do the same to Earth. Monarch believes that if he can move the ship faster than the speed of light, he can pilot it back to the beginning of time and discover himself as God…

Adric, nevertheless, is rather taken with Monarch, and tensions between him and the Doctor become very strained. It takes the truth to break the alien’s hold over the boy. The Doctor now sets about over-throwing Monarch and, with the help of the human androids led by a restored Bigon, a revolution is put into effect. Enlightenment and Persuasion are de-circuited, while Monarch himself is exposed to the deadly toxin and killed. It seems he was a product of the weak “flesh time” after all, having never, as the Doctor suspected, been fully converted into an android. The humanoid androids decide to pilot the vessel to a new home on a new world, while the TARDIS crew departs. Back in the console room, Nyssa suddenly collapses to the floor in a dead faint.

Cast notes

Guest stars in this serial include Stratford Johns as Monarch and Burt Kwouk as Lin Futu. See Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

Continuity

• The Big Finish Productions audio drama Primeval provides an alternative explanation, beyond mere exhaustion, for Nyssa's collapse at the end of this story. The canonicity of the audio dramas, however, is unclear.
• When the Doctor tells Tegan "Who'll believe us? We'll be laughed at!" when she wants to get to Earth to warn them about Monarch's plan, he has clearly forgotten the purpose/existence of U.N.I.T., the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, for which he was unpaid Scientific Advisor (through most of his third incarnation). He makes use of his U.N.I.T. connections later in the season, however.
• This is the third occasion of a recurring theme where Adric 'betrays' the Doctor, or else Romana, Nyssa or Tegan, gaining the villains' trust and then later saving them. See State of Decay, Castrovalva, Kinda and, to a lesser degree, The Visitation and Black Orchid

Goofs

• The Doctor describes the Maya civilization as having reached its peak "8000 years ago"; the very earliest Maya settlements began 4000 years ago.
• The Doctor claims the population of the Earth to be 3 Billion, where as it was around 4.5 Billion by 1980, being about 3 Billion in around 1960. [1]
• Few non-indigenous Australians speak an Aboriginal language (of which around 200 exist) as fluently as Tegan demonstrated with her conversation with Kurkutji. It is almost certain that the language that Kurkutji spoke 40,000 years ago would have since evolved into a totally different language that his people would be using today.

Production

• The working title for this story was Days Of Wrath.
• Although Castrovalva was the first story aired which featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, this story was the first in the season to be produced.
• It was originally decided that after Castrovalva, the Doctor would only have two companions, Adric and Tegan. As a result, the character of Nyssa was to be written out of the series at the end of this story. However, Peter Davison strongly opposed this move because he felt that Nyssa was the companion who was "most suited to his vision of the Doctor." Given this, producer John Nathan-Turner and the rest of the production team relented.

In print

Doctor Who book
Four to Doomsday
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	77
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
ISBN	0 426 19334 2
Release date	21 July 1983
Preceded by	Castrovalva
Followed by	Earthshock

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in April 1983.

Broadcast, VHS and DVD release

• This story was released on VHS in September 2001.

• A DVD release has been confirmed for 15th September 2008.

Synopsis

Following on from The Mysterious Planet, the Valeyard and the Doctor argue about the Doctor’s involvement in those events. The Inquisitor warns them both to pay due respect to the judicial process. The Valeyard proceeds to present his second block of evidence - the Doctor's arrival on the planet Thoros Beta.

The TARDIS arrives on the planet, where the Doctor shows Peri a weapon given to him by the "Warlord of Thordon", made on Thoros Beta. He states that has come to find out how the warlords obtained such technology. They enter a cave, where Peri is grabbed by a large monstrous creature, which during a struggle the Doctor shoots with the gun.

The Valeyard accuses the Doctor of deliberately shooting the monster, but he replies that the weapon went off accidentally.

A figure arrives and accuses the Doctor and Peri of murdering the Raak, despite their protestations that it attacked them first. The figure asks if they are part of Crozier's group, and the Doctor says that he is. They flee before they can be identified as imposters, but are quickly faced by another monster, but it reacts kindly when the Doctor is nice to it. They are forced to flee further, and as they hide they see three reptilian figures being carried along by guards, the third of the figures is shown to be their old enemy Sil. The Doctor realises that Sil is probably behind the arms sales, and informs Peri that Thoros Beta is the home world of Sil's race, the Mentors.

In Crozier's laboratory, King Yrcanos is being experimented on, and the Doctor and Peri sneak inside. As the Doctor sabotages some of Kiv's equipment, Sil arrives in the laboratory. The Doctor is strapped to a table, and Crozier applies a metal helmet to his head. Crozier states that the equipment to extract the truth from a suspect, and that technique could prove fatal. He starts to probe the Doctor's mind, but Yrcanos awakes and destroys the equipment. Overpowering the guards he departs the laboratory, followed by a stunned Doctor and Peri. Yrcanos outlines his plans to attack the Mentors. The Doctor says he would enjoy that, and then collapses.

The Doctor tells the Inquisitor that he cannot remember these events. The Valeyard tells him he is in for a surprise if this is true.

Yrcanos, the Doctor and Peri go to where new slaves are brought into the base. Yrcanos plans to attack the guards and steal their weapons, but as he sneaks into the room, the Doctor calls out to the guards, giving him away. Yrcanos, unable to fight the guards, flees. Peri points a weapon at Sil, and asks the Doctor for help, but he ignores her. Peri drops the weapon and flees after Yrcanos. Sil asks the Doctor why he helped the Mentors, and he replies that the odds were on their side.

The Doctor insists that the footage is not of him, but the Valeyard tells him that the Matrix cannot lie.

Peri comes across Matrona, who allows her to join the Mentors' servants rather than turn her over to the guards. Covered with a veil, she enters the Commerce Room with Kiv's medication. The Doctor calls to her to get him a drink, so she disguises her voice to avoid being recognised. When she brings him a new drink, the Doctor uncovers her and denounces her as an enemy to the Mentors.

The Doctor tells the Courtroom that what they are seeing is all part of his ploy. He says he planned to gain the Mentors' trust so that he would be allowed to interrogate her alone, giving them a chance to escape.

Peri is lashed to rocks on the shoreline and the Doctor stands over her, accusing of being a spy. She asks why he is behaving the way he is, and the Doctor tells her that Crozier is planning to put Kiv's brain into his body unless he can help them. Crozier stops the interegation, saying that they have more effective methods of extracting the truth from Peri. As they re-enter the complex, Yrcanos attacks the guard, and threatens to kill the Doctor. However, Peri smashes the gun from Yrcanos's hands allowing the Doctor to flee. In Crozier's laboratory, the scientist prepares to transplant Kiv's brain into a recently deceased Mentor corpse with the help of The Doctor. The operation proves successful.

Meanwhile, Yrcanos, Peri and Dorf team up with members of the Alphan resistance. Agreeing to allow Yrcanos to lead them in an attack on the Mentors, they go to the resistance arms dump, but they are ambushed by Mentor guards and shot down. However, it is revealed they have merely been stunned, and they are taken to cells.

In Crozier's laboratory, Lord Kiv is rambling due to the body of the fisherman influencing his brain. Crozier makes plans to transfer the brain into another more suitable body, and suggests using Peri. The Doctor says he would prefer that she is not experimented on, but while he is trying to find another candidate, Peri is brought to the laboratory, and strapped to the operating table. Crozier begins to prepare her for the surgery.

The Doctor goes to Yrcanos's cell and tricks the guard allowing Yrcanos and Dorf to escape. Together they free the remaining resistance members. They head towards the control room from where all the slaves are mentally controlled and succeed in freeing the slaves from mental control, but Dorf is killed by a passing guard. Lord Kiv is taken to the laboratory to prepare for the operation. As the Doctor heads towards the lab, he is summoned by the Time Lords and promptly vanishes.

The Inquisitor tells the Doctor this was the result of an order from the High Council, because the result of Crozier's experiment would affect all life in the Universe.

As Yrcanos prepares his attack on the laboratory, the Time Lords capture him in a time bubble so that his attack is perfectly timed. When Kiv awakes in Peri's bald body, the time bubble dissipates and Yrcanos bursts into the laboratory. He is consumed with fury and begins firing his gun wildly.

The Doctor is shocked by what he has seen. The Inquisitor and the Valeyard tell him that it was necessary to end Peri's life to prevent the disastrous consequences of Crozier's experiment. The Doctor insists that he was fetched out of time for some other reason, and he is going to find out what.

Continuity

• Sil appeared in the previous season in the serial Vengeance on Varos.
• It's often debated amongst fandom^{[citation needed]} as to what exactly happens during this story. It is stated on screen that the Valeyard has somehow distorted events, and that the actual scenes are by and large presented correctly but merely that the Doctor's performance has been distorted to show him in the worst possible light to the court. Many such scenes are prevalent throughout the story, leading fandom to great confusion as it isn't entirely clear which bits are "real" and which were concocted by the Valeyard. There are several theories:

1. That the events seen are the true events, but distorted to show the Doctor in the worst possible light. For example, his line 'Look out behind you' is shown on screen as the Doctor giving King Yrcanos away to some guards, whereas the "true" events might very well have been the Doctor warning him of an attacker sneaking up ('Look out, behind you!'). It's all in how the line is pronounced rather than what the line is.
2. That the Doctor was fried by the "Mindwarp" machine, which is why he exhibits 'out of character' behaviour throughout the story. The event is shown on screen, but as to whether it really occurred or not is still an event of great contention.
3. That the Doctor is pretending to have been twisted by the "Mindwarp" machine, whilst really seeking to find a way to put things right. In the courtroom the Doctor claims this is the case, though he is at this stage unable to recall events.

• The Doctor meets Peri again in two spin off stories. She features in the Virgin New Adventures novel Bad Therapy by Matt Jones. A post-Mindwarp hallucination of Peri appears in the Big Finish Productions play Her Final Flight. The relationship of spin off media to the television series is open to interpretation by the individual.

Production

Music

Initially it was intended that the BBC Radiophonic Workshop would provide music scores for both this and the following segment of The Trial of a Time Lord; both were assigned to Malcolm Clarke to begin with, although Terror of the Vervoids got re-assigned to Elizabeth Parker shortly afterwards. However, fellow Radiophonic Workshop composer Jonathan Gibbs left early in 1986 and was not replaced until the following year, leaving the other composers backlogged and no-one free to do the incidental music for Mindwarp. It was suggested that Dick Mills could provide both the music and sound effects, but John Nathan-Turner rejected this idea and instead hired film composer Richard Hartley to create the incidental music for this segment. It would be the only time that Hartley worked on the series.

Casting

Trevor Laird returned to Doctor Who in the Tenth Doctor era as Clive Jones, father of the Doctor's companion Martha Jones. Similarly, Christopher Ryan returned in 2008 as Sontaran leader General Staal in The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky.

Commercial releases

In October 1993, this story was released on VHS as part of the three-tape The Trial of a Time Lord set. A DVD release is due on September 29th 2008, similarly packaged with the other stories in The Trial of a Time Lord season. Special Features include: deleted and extended scenes • "The Making of the Trial of a Time Lord - Part Two - Mindwarp" (a 20-minute feature) • "Now and Then - On the Trial of a Time Lord" (a 21-minute feature) • "A Fate Worse Than Death" Feature • Doctor Who Lenny Henry sketch • BBC Children in Need archival footage • TV Talkback archival footage • photo gallery • trails and continuities.

In print

Doctor Who book
Mindwarp
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	139
Writer	Philip Martin
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Alister Pearson
ISBN	0 426 20335 6
Release date	15 June 1989
Preceded by	Attack of the Cybermen
Followed by	The Chase

A novelisation of this serial, written by Philip Martin, was published by Target Books in June 1989 and was the final segment of the Trial arc to be adapted. Martin's novelisation adds a joke ending that gives away the revelation regarding Peri's fate in The Ultimate Foe, suggesting an entirely different outcome for the character (and for Yrcanos) than is suggested in the serial.

ERROR IN THE PODCAST.

FOR WHICH I AM VERY SORRY. JACKIE LANE HAS NOT PASSED AWAY AS IMPLIED IN THIS TPD.

PLEASE FORGIVE ANY PROBLEMS THAT THIS MAY HAVE CAUSED.

A FULL APOLOGY WILL FOLLOW IN THE NEXT TDP

The War Machines is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in 4 weekly parts from June 25 to July 16, 1966. This serial is the first appearance of Michael Craze and Anneke Wills as the companions Ben Jackson and Polly, as well as marking the departure of Jackie Lane as Dodo Chaplet. It should not be confused with the Second Doctor story The War Games.

Plot

Synopsis

When the TARDIS lands in London near the Post Office Tower, the Doctor is unsettled by it. There the Doctor and Dodo meet Professor Brett, the creator of WOTAN (Will Operating Thought ANalogue), an advanced computer that even knows what TARDIS stands for. On C-Day, WOTAN will be linked to other major computers to take them over, including those of the White House, Cape Kennedy and the Royal Navy.

WOTAN begins to have its own agenda and takes control of Professor Brett through a hypnotic beeping noise. WOTAN's hypnotic influence is exerted over many humans including Dodo until the Doctor breaks her out of it. He subsequently arranges for her to be sent to the country house of Sir Charles Summer, leader of the Royal Scientific Club, who has come to the aid of the Doctor.

WOTAN uses its hypnotised workforce in a secret warehouse near Covent Garden to construct an army of War Machines to take over the world. Major Green, the chief of security at the Post Office Tower, has been programmed to oversee the construction of the War Machines. He ensures that any intruders are dealt with and all humans continue working on the project until they drop. Polly, Professor Brett's secretary, is one such production line convert, though a friend of hers, Royal Navy Able Seaman Ben Jackson, evades the production line. He seeks out the Doctor, whom he met through Dodo before her conditioning, and helps flesh out what is known about the threat of WOTAN and the War Machines.

The Doctor alerts the army to the warehouse production factory, but their weapons are somehow disabled when they go to confront the War Machines. He knows WOTAN is behind the plot too, but can do nothing as humans cannot enter the Tower through the strong hypnotic beams being emitted. Given scientific and political support, the Doctor manages to capture a War Machine using an electromagnetic trap. He changes its programming and then uses it to enter the Post Office Tower and destroy WOTAN. This ends the threat and immediately releases the human slaves from the hypnosis.

Ben and Polly, the two "fab" young people the Doctor has befriended during the adventure, meet him at the TARDIS to explain that they visited Dodo, who has revealed that she has decided to stay in London. The Doctor thanks them and heads into the Police Box - followed by Ben and Polly, who enter the TARDIS with the intent to return Dodo's key to the old man. They are then suddenly whisked off into time and space...

Continuity

Naming issues

WOTAN is pronounced "Votan" – as, it is explained, the Norse god sometimes was. It stands, though, for Will Operating Thought ANalogue, which is indicative of its ability to connect to the human brain.

WOTAN refers to the Doctor as "Doctor Who" – the only time the character is ever given this name within the series' narrative (though he is often credited as such in the end titles). While there is nothing in the series that directly contradicts it, many fans see this as an error and several theories have tried to account for it, one noting that WOTAN may have been misinformed, since it also described the Doctor as "human". WOTAN also manages to discern the meaning of the acronym TARDIS; how it manages to do so is not explained.

[edit] Destination Earth

This serial is the first in the series to be completely set on a contemporary Earth. The previous landings of the TARDIS in the 1960s were either brief (the Empire State Building sequence from The Chase, several landings during The Daleks' Master Plan, the stop over on Wimbledon Common in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve) or exceptional (Planet of Giants, where the TARDIS crew were shrunk down to the size of insects and could not fully interact with present day humans). Here, for the first time, we see the Doctor take a leading role in the protection of the planet, which becomes a regular theme for the series from here on.

The decision to set more episodes on present-day Earth was taken because the producers felt that the audience was becoming bored with the purely historical episodes that had been a major element of the show to date. As a result, this story marks the beginning of the turn away from historical stories. The next two historical stories, "The Smugglers" (which immediately follows "The War Machines") and Season 4's "The Highlanders", were to be the last historical stories until Season 19's "Black Orchid".

[edit] Synchronicity

The episode appears to be set on 20 July 1966 - Ben and Polly leave the Doctor in the Second Doctor story The Faceless Ones set in London on the same date (see the Chronology). However, the days of the week mentioned in The War Machines mean it cannot be 1966 if they're the same in Doctor Who continuity as in the 'real' world.

Curiously, at the start of the latter serial, the Doctor comments that he feels the same sensation as he felt when the Daleks were around. While this appears to be intended to equate the War Machines and WOTAN to the Daleks, it is interesting to note that the events of the serial are revealed later in the series to happen contemporaneously with the Second Doctor serial The Evil of the Daleks.

The Past Doctor Adventures novel The Time Travellers by Simon Guerrier is set in an alternate reality where the Doctor had not been around to stop WOTAN. The villain is never referred to by name, only as "the Machine", and while he was overthrown thousands were left insane by his mind-control and Britain was reduced to a technologically backward dictatorship.

A later serial that also foreshadows the internet is The Green Death, which features a very similar computer villain. The Face of Evil also sees the Doctor encountering another such being (this time having been linked with his own brain rather than that of a human) and commenting on how familiar the threat has become.

Production

Working titles for this story included The Computers.^[1].

The idea for this story came about when Kit Pedler was being interviewed for a position as science advisor to the series. The producers asked all of the interviewees what would happen if the recently-built Post Office Tower somehow took over. Pedler suggested that it would be the work of a rogue computer that communicated with the outside world by means of the telephone system. The producers liked this suggestion and not only offered Pedler the job but developed the idea into a script (one of the few to feature a 'Story Idea by' credit).

Only one War Machine prop was actually constructed; the production team changed the numbers, to represent the different machines.

The titling style of each episode in this serial differs from the standard titles of other serials. Instead of a title overlay, after the "Doctor Who" logo has faded, the screen shifts to a solid background containing four inversely-coloured rectangles aligned down the left-hand side (reminiscent to an old-style computer punch card). The title, one word at a time, scrolls upwards - "THE", "WAR", "MACH", "INES" - with a final flash displaying the complete title on two lines. Another flash reveals the writer, the next flash reveals the word "EPISODE", and the final flash shows the actual episode number. All of the lettering displayed in this titling sequence is shown in a retro-computer font. Each of the four episodes' title sequences have slight variations to them.

Casting

• Michael Craze provided the voice of a policeman heard in Episode four.
• WOTAN received a credit as "And WOTAN" at the end of the first three episodes, the only time a fictional character was credited as itself in the series.
• Jackie Lane's contract expired midway through production of this story. She does not appear again after episode two; Dodo's off-screen departure is relayed to the Doctor by Polly.
• This is the last William Hartnell era serial, and the only serial featuring Anneke Wills and Michael Craze, to exist in its entirety.

Missing episodes

Aside from its soundtrack (recorded off-air by fans), this serial was lost in the junk of episodes in the 1970s. The master videotapes for the story were the last of those starring William Hartnell to be junked, surviving until 1974.^[2] The 16mm film telerecording copies held by BBC Enterprises were also the last of their kind to be destroyed, surviving until 1978, shortly before the junking of material was halted by the intervention of fan Ian Levine.^[3]

In 1978, a collector in Australia provided a copy of episode 2. Later in 1984 copies of all four episodes were returned from Nigeria. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 all had cuts to them, but most have been restored due to a combination of the other copy of episode 2, material used in a promotional item on the BBC's Blue Peter and censored clips from Australia. Some of the restored footage did not have its accompanying soundtrack, and so the missing sound was restored from the off-air recordings.

To date, only episodes 3 and 4, do not exist in their entirety as was originally intended. Episode 3 is missing a visual brief bit of dialogue with Krimpton talking. This was replaced in the VHS release with a combination of a shot of WOTAN with the accompanied dialogue from the off-air recordings. Episode 3 is also missing around 59 seconds worth of the battle in the warehouse. Episode 4 is missing only a small amount of material. The first instance occurs with the man in the telephone box. Part of the continuing closeup of the man talking on the telephone is missing, but this was compensated on the VHS release by continuing in audio-only over the top of the beginning of the high shot of the phone box. There are also two lines of dialogue missing when Polly reports back to WOTAN. This scene, however, has not been re-instated for the VHS release as it was felt that there wouldn't be enough visual material to drop into the gap.

The DVD release will have all of the episodes in their entirety.

Commercial releases

The serial was released on VHS in 1997, with an item from Blue Peter and a BBC1 "globe ident" (from the first part of the story) as extras. A DVD issue has been announced for August 25th 2008.

Also, in 2007, an audio CD of the serial's soundtrack, with linking narration by and bonus interview with Anneke Wills, was released.

In print

Doctor Who book
The War Machines
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	136
Writer	Ian Stuart Black
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Alister Pearson and Graeme Wey
ISBN	0 426 20332 1
Release date	16 February 1989
Preceded by	Delta and the Bannermen
Followed by	Dragonfire