159 The Faceless Ones: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Faceless Ones: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 159
STORY NUMBER: 035
TRANSMITTED: 22 April 1967
WRITER: David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Gerry Mill
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Faceless Ones: Episode Three

And now I get to watch the new titles & music together cos we're back on DVD for episode 3!

The Doctor stoppers up the gas nozzles and blocks the camera causing Spencer to investigate at which point he seizes the pen device and stuns Spencer. Jamie & Samantha talk with Inspector Crossland who shows them a photo of Gascgoine who Jamie confirms is the body they found. The Doctor arrives and goes to see the Commandant with Crossland while Jamie & Samantha go to the Chameleon tours hanger. The Doctor convinces the Commandant that he is telling the truth by exposing "Meadows" as he demonstrates the pen. Meadows flees and the Doctor is given the run of the airport. Samantha finds a stack of written unsent postcards which she and Jamie take to the Doctor. Crossland goes to the plane while The Doctor & Jamie search the hanger. Blade abducts Crossland when the plane takes off. The Doctor & Jamie find the hidden room at the hanger and the monitor link to the sickbay which they leave to visit but the Doctor is knocked to the floor by a device Meadows planted on him earlier. Crossland watches a monitor on the plane in disbelief as all the passengers vanish.

They're not doing badly with the story: it's part three and the mystery is still ongoing. You know the beings are aliens now but you still don't know why they're doing this or where their victims have gone. No Ben and Polly this episode..... in fact we won't be seeing them again for a few episodes.

This episode is one of a pair, with Evil of the Daleks 2, recovered in the mid 80s. The DWAS were contacted in 1985 by someone who claimed to have these episodes. Details were passed to the BBC and contact was made with the individual leading to a VHS of Faceless Ones 3 being made available to a 1987 convention. Afterwards the episodes were traced back to collector Gordon Hendry, who unaware of their rarity had lent them to someone. The episodes were returned to him and then copied by the BBC. Episode 3 has some damage sustained to it which were repaired for it's commercial releases as part of Reign of Terror boxset along with the surviving episodes of that story, and episodes 1 of both this story and The Web of Fear and as part of the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set.

158 The Faceless Ones: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Faceless Ones: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 158
STORY NUMBER: 035
TRANSMITTED: 15 April 1967
WRITER: David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Gerry Mill
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones
TELESNAPS: The Faceless Ones: Episode Two

"Polly" says her name is Michelle and she comes from Sweden which she demonstrates with her passport and work permit. The Commandant is satisfied and wants the Doctor & Jamie detained but they make a run for it. Blade & Spencer's patient is suffocating but Nurse Pinto arrives to assist wanting to know why they were twenty minutes late. Technician Meadows is lying in the medical centre too: devices are attached to the patient's and his heads. The Doctor & Jamie hide behind papers in the airport: the Doctor has found an advert for Chameleon tours that interests him. In the medical centre, the patient's face changes to become Meadows. He sits up, has his senses calibrated and is tested on his recall of Meadows memory. Ben finds the Doctor & Jamie: they have another go at questioning "Polly" during which time she lets slip about the body before being summoned by Captain Blade. Inspector Crossland, from Scotland Yard, arrives seeking his colleague Inspector Gascgoine who has disappeared. Neither the Commandant or Miss Rook his assistant know where he is. The Doctor and his friends split up: he goes to talk to the Commandant, Ben to the hanger while Jamie watches "Polly"/Michelle. While there Liverpudlian Samantha Briggs arrives wanting to know what's happened to her brother Brian who has disappeared after taking a Chameleon Tour to Rome. She's had one post card but he's overdue and there's no trace of him in the hotels. Jamie befriends her. The Doctor's chat with the Commandant goes badly and he flees the control room. Ben discovers a crate with Polly in it in the Chameleon hanger and calls the control room for help. The Doctor has entered the now deserted Chameleon Tours office behind the check in desk and discovers a monitor on which he observes Ben who is rendered unconscious by a futuristic pen like device wielded by Spencer. He also finds postcards and foreign stamps. Crossland finds Jenkins at passport control but Jenkins doesn't recognise the photos of Brian Briggs & Gascgoine. He does mention the incident with the reported body earlier and gives Crossland a description of the Doctor & Jamie. A new Chameleon tours rep hands out postcards to the next group of travellers for them to write before they leave causing Samantha to realise Brian's postcard must have been written before he left and posted by someone else. The Doctor arrives at the hanger, finds the pen device and then Meadow's body in a crate. A voice calls out to the Doctor asking for help and saying it's suffocating but as he investigates he is gassed!

We're still at the mystery stage of the story, but we now know enough to join up a few of the dots and put together that Chameleon tours are abducting people and replacing them with the "thing" we saw at the start of the episode. Fab moment as the Doctor, Jamie & Ben confer in a photo booth and get their photo taken!.

A few episodes ago a new title sequence for Doctor Who came into use. Now we get revamped theme music too. The forefront of the music is the same, but the background has lost the hiss and gained a different sound instead. My wife said she couldn't tell the difference but if you listen to last episode's sequence then this you'll hear the change.

One of the writers of this story, David Ellis I know little about. This is his only Doctor Who script, but Wikipedia makes it clear he'd made other submissions and IMDB shows he had other television scripts produced. He's writing with Malcolm Hulke, an experienced television writer who'd written science fiction before. He'll be back for several more stories at the end of the 60s and at the start of the early 70s. Your attention is drawn to The 1962 Avengers Episode The Mauritius Penny which he co-wrote with his lodger at the time future Doctor Who Script Editor Terrance Dicks. They'll co-write on Hulke's next Doctor Who project in a couple of years time.

157 The Faceless Ones: Episode One

EPISODE: The Faceless Ones: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 157
STORY NUMBER: 035
TRANSMITTED: 08 April 1967
WRITER: David Ellis & Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Gerry Mill
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Faceless Ones: Part One

The Tardis lands on the runway at Gatwick airport. Discovered by the police, the time travellers scatter with Jamie remaining with the Doctor while Ben and Polly are each left by themselves. The airport Commandant orders the Police Box removed. Polly hides in a storage area, belonging to Chameleon Tours, where she witnesses a man in a suit being shot by a futuristic gun held by a man wearing an airline pilot's uniform. She finds Jamie & the Doctor on the runway and tells them what happened. They return to the store room where the Doctor notices that the body has been electrocuted and is concerned by the gun. However they are being observed by Captain Blade and Pilot Spencer, the murderer. The travellers leave to inform the authorities but Polly lags behind and is kidnapped by Spencer. The Doctor & Jamie can't get past immigration control where the man in charge, Jenkins, informs the Commandant about his suspicious visitors. Spencer tells Blade that Polly has been processed and will be on the next flight. The Doctor convinces him to visit the storage area but no body can be found. The Doctor tries to interest the Commandant in the unused foreign stamp found in the body's pocket and the burn marks but he has them taken back to immigration. The Doctor and Jamie spot Polly in immigration but she denies knowing them. Blade and Spencer lead a disguised figure from the hanger to the airport's medical unit. What little we can see of the figure looks hideously burned and misshapen.

Oooh, a mystery episode. Sometimes it's clear from the go what's going off but all we know from this episode is that someone's been murdered in the Chameleon tours hanger, Polly can't recognise her friends after a visit to Chameleon tours and the staff at Chameleon tours are helping some strange being. So I think we'll note that the Chameleon tours place might be a bit dodgy! Polly gets a bit to do this episode, but Ben all but vanishes after the first few minutes, popping up to look in the door of Chameleon tours then leave again. However this episode effectively marks the start of the great Doctor/Jamie partnership with Jamie innocently putting his foot in it and the Doctor trying to cover up after him. It's probably the first episode he gets anything real to do after his debut (with the exception of the "Piper" stuff in Moonbase) and he's superb with the Doctor here.

The major filming location for this story is Gatwick Airport. The intention had been to film at Heathrow, the then only designated London Airport, but they refused but Gatwick was happy to accommodate the Doctor Who team. Doctor Who would finally visit Heathrow (and use Concorde) 15 years later in Timeflight.

This episode always resided in the BBC Film & Video archive, but a cut copy also exists in Australia (around the death of the man at the start) which lead to rumours that the BBC's copy was cut: It isn't. Faceless Ones 1 was one of the last episodes to be released on VHS in the Reign of Terror boxset along with the surviving episodes of that story, episode 3 of this one and The Web of Fear 1. Released on the 24 Nov 2003, the closest Monday to the show's 30th anniversary (Videos & DVDs are nearly always released on a Monday) this set was *VERY* poorly distributed and is the only release during the Internet stores age that I've had to buy in store (HMV Richmond) after Blackstar completely failed to send my preordered copy! A year later all three Troughton episodes were re-released on DVD in the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set

156 The Macra Terror: Part Four

EPISODE: The Macra Terror: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 156
STORY NUMBER: 034
TRANSMITTED: 01 April 1967
WRITER: Ian Stuart Black
DIRECTOR: John Davies
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Macra Terror
TELESNAPS: The Macra Terror: Part Four

The Doctor reverses the gas flow causing fresh air to be pumped into the old tunnel allowing Jamie to escape. He ends up in a dance rehearsal where the guards find him. Ben reluctantly identifies him: His real personality is reasserting itself. Jamie is taking to the Pilot but the Doctor arrives and takes the Pilot, despite the Controllers protests, to see the Macra. The Pilot is horrified as Controllers voice becomes increasingly desperate ordering them to be destroyed. They are captured and locked in the pipe room with Jamie & Polly. Gas is pumped in. However Ben is now completely back to normal and frees them, causing the Macra's gas supply to be destroyed. The Tardis crew sneak away during the celebrations afterwards.

A pretty standard "wrap it up" episode 4 punctuated by some odd inserts of colony life, especially the dance competition Jamie wanders into. It's not 100% clear what's happened to the Macra: have they been destroyed or are they merely entombed in the tunnels unable to escape without a better supply of gas? Incredibly the Macra do return, in the 3rd series of the new Doctor Who during the episode Gridlock. Reports that they come back as a result of a drunken "which rubbish Doctor Who monster can you bring back" competition cannot be confirmed.

Chicki is back in this episode: I'm assuming she's one of the dancing girls as she's not identified by name. However Sandra Bryant, who played her in Episode 1, had since had a lucrative offer of work and was released to take it up so Karol Keyes plays her here, making her the first Doctor Who character, other than the title role, to be credited to two different performers.

This is Ian Stuart Black's last script for Doctor Who: he would later novelise all three stories he wrote. The Macra Terror is one of five stories to have it's soundtrack released on audio cassette in the 1990s. Colin Baker provided the narration and amongst those five stories it's the only one to retain that narration for it's later release on CD in the early 2000s.

No episodes of the Macra Terror exist. It's the tenth story to hold that unfortunate distinction but there's only one more to come.

Elizabeth Sladen

You don't need to be told that Elizabeth Sladen died last week, to much mourning in the press. Here's what BBC News had to say plus the Guardian's article and Obituary.

I've found two very decent tributes from David Tennant and Tom Baker on their websites.

Today it's been announced that the Hand of Fear is to be repeated on Monday 9th and Tuesday 10th May on BBC4.

155 The Macra Terror: Part Three

EPISODE: The Macra Terror: Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 155
STORY NUMBER: 034
TRANSMITTED: 25 March 1967
WRITER: Ian Stuart Black
DIRECTOR: John Davies
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Macra Terror
TELESNAPS: The Macra Terror: Part Three

Polly screams that the Macra are in control. She, the Doctor & Jamie are sent to the mine where they were reunited with Medok. The Doctor supervises from the control room while the others go bellow. The Gas mined is poisonous to humans and Polly wonders what it's for. The Doctor deduces a formula from the gauge readings in the control room which infuriates the pilot claiming the formula is a secret known to only 2 people. Jamie steals keys from a guard and makes an escape into a sealed tunnel. Medok follows Jamie and is killed by a Macra. Ben is questioned because he failed to stop Jamie escaping. The Doctor discovers the gas is being pumped into the old tunnel for some unknown reason as Jamie, weakening in the poisonous atmosphere, collapses.

OK, so what's this business with the formula about? It's really not clear from the episode. I'm guessing that the mined gas is being processed before being pumped into the shaft where, surprise surprise, the Macra seem to be hiding.

Two long running Who supporting artists make their debut in this series: Terence Lodge, Medok, will later appear as Orum in what's one of my favourite Pertwee stories, Carnival of Monsters, and Moss in the recently released on DVD Planet of the Spiders. Ian Fairbairn, Questa, then becomes a Camfield regular as Gregory in The Invasion, in my absolute favourite Pertwee story Inferno as Bromley & the Penetration Announcer and in Camfield's Tom Baker swansong The Seeds of Doom as Chester.

154 The Macra Terror: Part Two

EPISODE: The Macra Terror: Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 154
STORY NUMBER: 034
TRANSMITTED: 18 March 1967
WRITER: Ian Stuart Black
DIRECTOR: John Davies
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Macra Terror
TELESNAPS: The Macra Terror: Part Two

Medok and the Doctor are found by Ola & the guards and taken to the pilot. Medok claims the Doctor was trying to get him to give himself up. Medok is sent to the correction hospital for treatment while the Doctor is returned to his friends. The Controller instructs the pilot to give the Time Travellers High Powered Adaptation. As they sleep they hear hypnotic voices. Jamie wakes, breaking his conditioning but Ben has fallen under their control. The Doctor deactivates the device conditioning Polly and hypnotically deprograms her. Ben clashes with the others and accuses the Doctor of sabotage. Ola is summoned and takes Jamie & The Doctor away. Medok has resisted treatment and so is sent to the pits for life. Polly seeks her friends but is followed by Ben. While hiding on a construction site she sees a Macra. Ben initially denies their existence but attacks the Macra when it seizes Polly. They encounter a second Macra and make a run for it, but when they return to The Pilot Ben once again denies the Macra's existence. The Doctor insists on speaking to the Controller who is revealed to be an old man, who is promptly attacked by a Macra.

I'm a bit unsure what to make of this one. It's a little light on appearances by the Macra and once again we have someone under an outside influence (War Machines). I've only just listened to it and have trouble feeling quite how it all fits together.

Graham Leaman appears in this episode as the controller. His IMDB entry makes him out to an actor that appeared in many things without ever starring. He's got FIVE Doctor Who credits to his name: The Macra Terror as the Controller, Fury from the Deep as Price, The Seeds of Death as the Grand Marshall and Colony in Space & The Three Doctors as a Time Lord, probably the same Time Lord. Peter Jeffrey, the pilot, meanwhile is a genuine star name. He's been in everything and will return to Doctor Who in a scene stealing moustache twirling performance as Count Grendel of Gracht in The Androids of Tara, the fourth story of Season 16s Key To Time. He's got a great guest role as Eric, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Yes Minister Christmas Special "Party Games" which is well worth watching.

153 The Macra Terror: Part One

EPISODE: The Macra Terror: Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 153
STORY NUMBER: 034
TRANSMITTED: 11 March 1967
WRITER: Ian Stuart Black
DIRECTOR: John Davies
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Macra Terror
TELESNAPS: The Macra Terror: Part One

First things first: new titles! Macra Terror 1 doesn't exist, but many other later Troughton episodes do including Krotons part 2 which the BBC have put on YouTube so you can see what's going on. It's hard to describe exactly what's happening - so watch it. The major feature here is the inclusion of the Doctor's face which becomes a feature of the remaining sequences in the original series. I like the way the face dissolves into the logo too. One of my favourite versions. It's important to note that at this point the music is still that used for the original version: that subtly changes slightly later on.

A man, Medok, stares straight ahead as a heartbeat like sound is heard. Elsewhere a band play and majorettes perform. One man, The Pilot, congratulates another, Barney, on his band for the competition. Medok pushes through the crowd pursued by guards. Barney calls after him assuring him the treatment is for his own good. Medok sees the Tardis materialise and is apprehended by Jamie and Ben. The guard leader, Ola, thanks them and takes them to the city where they are received as honoured guests by the Pilot. A picture of the controller appears on a screen and a voice thanks them. The travellers enjoy the colony's hospitality but elsewhere Medok is questioned: he believes he's seeing creatures invade the camp at night. The Doctor comes to talk to Medok but this allows him to escape. The Time Travellers are taken to the labour centre to learn more of the colony and what they do there. Medok is hiding there and explains to the Doctor that anyone who sees the creatures is detained in the correction hospital. At night the Doctor sneaks out avoiding the guards and find Medok. Together they witness a pair of glowing eyes emerging out of the mist and a giant claw snaps at them.

Bit of an odd one this. As soon as you encounter the colony with it's sickly sweet holiday camp atmosphere and little songs on the public address announcements you know something can't be quite right. How it ties in to the crab claw we saw at the end of the last episode isn't obvious till the end of the episode. In an odd way this feels more like an episode of The Prisoner, still 6 months in the future at this stage, than an episode of Doctor Who.

The minor character Chicki is played by Sandra Bryant, previously Inferno bar manager Kitty in the War Machines. I mention this as it will become important when Chicki reappears in episode 4!

152 The Moonbase: Part Four

EPISODE: The Moonbase: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 152
STORY NUMBER: 033
TRANSMITTED: 04 March 1967
WRITER: Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Morris Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Moonbase: Part Four

As we kick off let's spare a moments thought for the *LAST* appearance of what's become an old friend: The original Doctor Who title sequence. It's started everyone of the show's 152 episodes to date and is the title sequence used on the most number of Who episodes. Tom's is on 144 broadcast episodes and even if you lump all 3 versions of the Starfield sequence together that was only used on 128!

The Cybermen attack the base's communication aerial cutting them off from Earth. They reactivate Doctor Evans in sickbay, who knocks out his guard and enters the control room. A rescue ship from Earth is spotted, but it suddenly veers off course towards the sun: It has been deflected by the Gravitron under Evans' control. The other controlled crew members are also reactivated but Jamie and Ben barricade them into sickbay. The Cybermen puncture the base's dome with a laser cannon causing it to depressurise and the crew to seize oxygen masks. Fortunately Benoit & Hobson seal the hole with a tea tray over the hole. Evans has been rendered unconscious and the crew seize control of the Gravitron. Cybermen reinforcements arrive but further attempts to attack the dome prove futile as the beam is now deflected by the Gravitron. The Doctor gets the Gravitron lowered to an angle where the Cybermen are repelled from the surface of the moon. As the base crew celebrate, the time travellers slip away and return to the Tardis. In flight the Doctor activates the time scanner to look into the future: they see a giant crab like claw on the scanner screen.

Whereas the first 2 episodes were the Cybermen operating in stealth, then the third had them out in the open, this episode has them attacking en mass. Personally I felt they worked better up close and personal but there's something to be said for seeing lots of an alien race on screen at once. The shot of their laser cannon being fired is a pretty good effect for the time. Amongst the Cybermen on the moon is a young John Levene. He'll get to be a Yeti in Web of Fear, which gets him noticed by our old friend Douglas Camfield who casts him in the minor role of Corporal Benton in The Invasion. Benton is then brought back in the third Pertwee story as a Sergeant and becomes a familiar face on our screens for the next few years. Meanwhile playing Jules, one of the scientists that went out onto the moon's surface in episode 2 and fell under Cyber control, is actor/writer Victor Pemberton. He'll shortly start serving as the show's assistant script editor, stepping up into the full role for Tomb of the Cybermen when everyone plays musical chairs for one story, and writes Fury from the Deep for season 5. He's gone on to have an extensive writing career to the extent that my Mother has borrowed books he's written from the library!

The Moonbase, in it's printed form as Doctor Who & The Cybermen, was the second Troughton novel published by Target, but probably my first encounter with the Second Doctor. I got a copy from the book shop in Brook Street, Kingston which is now the Waterstones serving the University. Mine's got the older cover on with Troughton's face and completely the wrong style of Cyberman but with the rounded Tom Baker logo rather than the block Pertwee logo or the newer cover with awful gold Cybermen. I may have read Tomb of the Cybermen (also with the wrong Cyberman on the cover) or Web of Fear first, my local library had both in Hardback. Indeed the library's copy of Web of Fear, later sold off, now sits on my book shelves here. I loved the Cybermen, it's a fabulous read and I'm delighted to find that it's being reissued on 7th of July alongside Doctor Who and the Daleks, Doctor Who and the Crusaders, Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters. The 2 surviving episodes of the Moonbase were released as part of the Doctor Who - The Cybermen - The Early Years VHS (worth it for Roy Skelton giving an airing to two of his more famous non-Who voices at the end) and then on DVD as part of Doctor Who - Lost In Time. All 4 episodes Soundtrack were released on CD as Doctor Who: The Moonbase, and will be re-released, probably as part of Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Collection: (1966-1967) 3.

2011 DVD Update

Time for an update to the 2011 DVD schedule. Here's what's planned for release over the next few months:

18/04/2011 Planet of the Spiders
09/05/2011 Mannequin Mania: Spearhead from Space & Terror of the Autons
30/05/2011 Frontios
20/06/2011 Earth Story: The Gunfighters & The Awakening
11/07/2011 New Series 6 - Part 1 Episodes 1-7 DVD and Blu-ray
18/07/2011 Paradise Towers
01/08/2011 The Sun Makers
12/09/2011 Day of the Daleks

Click the links to pre order from Amazon and make me a few pennys.

Known to be on the menu for later in the year is Revisitations III (Tomb of the Cybermen, Three Doctors and Robots of Death), Series 6 - Part 2 (episodes 8-13) and the Complete Series 6.

The Classic DW Twitter Feed keeps giving hints about next year's releases. So far we known The Sensorites, Reign of Terror, Planet of Giants, The Krotons, Ambassadors of Death (postponed from 2011), Death to the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Vengeance on Varos Special Edition, Ace boxset: Dragonfire & Happiness Patrol and (separately) Greatest Show In The Galaxy are in the works

Swincon II: The Aldbourne Adventure

Regular readers will know that I'm a Transformers fan. (Reviews at philstfreviews.site11.com and philstfreviews.blogspot.com). Every so often a group of us from one of the forum's I use (The TMUK Forum) have a bit of a meet up, and the last few years we've gathered in Swindon where I live. This year we decided to go to Aldbourne for the afternoon. Aldbourne is the major location for the 1971 Doctor Who story The Daemons. It used to be a right of passage for Doctor Who fans to visit Aldbourne, but despite living in Swindon for seven years I'd never been. So following an excellent lunch at Bottelinos in Swindon we took the bus over to Aldbourne intending to spend an afternoon wandering round the village & church and then a few drinks in The Blue Boar.

The first sign of trouble with this plan occurred when we got off the bus and looked up the road to see a crowd of people outside the pub. So we wandered up to the green and spotted a number of people milling around there..... including a couple we recognised. An older gentleman wearing a hat looked familiar: I turned to Burns and said "Isn't that Chris Barry who directed the Daemons?" Sure enough it was. Seeing Bok sitting on the green and then Bessie driving round confirmed that we had gatecrashed a Doctor Who event that we knew nothing about. Now I knew that the 40th anniversary of the filming of the Daemons was imminent, but hadn't seen that there was anything on!

We then encountered Katy Manning wandering the green, John Levene & Richard Franklin signing autographs in school hall and numerous other members of the cast. We didn't get anywhere near the pub - apparently a beer festival was underway at the same time - which is a shame because apparently the great Terrance Dicks was ensconsed within and of all the people involved in Doctor Who he's someone I really want to meet.

The event was organised by Fantom Films

The complete guest list was

Katy Manning (Jo Grant)
Richard Franklin (Captain Mike Yates)
John Levene (Sergeant Benton)
Damaris Hayman (Miss Hawthorne)
Stephen Thorne (Azal)
Alec Linstead (Sergeant Osgood)
John Owens (Thorpe)
David Simeon (Alistair Fergus - TV Journalist)
James Snell (Garvin the Verger)
Christopher Barry (Director)
Terrance Dicks (Script Editor)

I've got some photos of us at Aldbourne at http://www.flickr.com/photos/48819633@N05/sets/72157626387555237/ while Chuck Foster, of the Doctor Who News Page has some photos on his Facebook page.

151 The Moonbase: Part Three

EPISODE: The Moonbase: Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 151
STORY NUMBER: 033
TRANSMITTED: 25 February 1967
WRITER: Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Morris Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Moonbase
TELESNAPS: The Moonbase: Part Three

One of the base staff draws a weapon on the Cybermen but is quickly gunned down. The Cybermen, like the Daleks before them, recognise the Doctor. The remaining men with the virus are taken to the Cyberman spacecraft where they are operated on to install a control device. Jamie is recovering in sickbay as Ben & Polly plan how to attack the Cybermen. The Cybermen bring the controlled humans back to the base and use them to control the Graviton, intending to use it to destroy all life on Earth. Polly, inspired by nail varnish remover, is brewing up a cocktail of solvents to dissolve the Cybermen's chest units. The Doctor discovers he can interrupt the Cybermen's control using the base's communication device and wonders why the Cybermen aren't controlling the Graviton: he concludes they have a weakness for gravity. Ben, Polly & Jamie load the cocktail into spray cans. They sneak into the control room and spray it on the Cybermen killing them as the Doctor breaks the Cybermen's control. Benoit goes out onto the surface to look for the missing crew members but is pursued by a Cyberman. Ben follows him outside and kills the Cybermen with more of the cocktail. They return to the base where something is spotted on the moon's surface: An army of Cybermen is approaching the base.

This sounds and looks from the telesnaps like a cracking episode full of action and Cybermen. The Cybermen are on screen for most of the episode and up close to the humans in the base. Their previous weakness for radiation is recalled,along with a decent reason why it can't be exploited here together with a sensible line of reasoning for the attack they do use. The spray bottle used in the episode do look worryingly plastic in the telesnaps which might have been part of the reason that Gerry Davis has the fluid loaded into fire extinguishers in the novelization.

Although the episode is missing from the BBC archives, a film can for it (sadly empty of film) was found in New Zealand. Several other empty film cans have been found over the years in odd places and in one case the film that was in it (Dalek Masterplan 2: The Day of Armageddon) turned up years later. So I live in hope that somewhere in New Zealand someone is hoarding a copy of this episode as I'd love to have this one back.

Moonbase 3 was the title of a science fiction series developed by Terrance Dicks & Barry Letts during the 1970s. Several people, both in front and behind the camera, are involved in both series.

150 The Moonbase: Part Two

EPISODE: The Moonbase: Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 150
STORY NUMBER: 033
TRANSMITTED: 18 February 1967
WRITER: Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Morris Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
T ELESNAPS: The Moonbase: Part Two

Welcome to the 150th episode of Doctor Who!

Polly enters and sees the Cyberman leaving. She screams which summons the Doctor & Hobson. Hobson refuses to believe it's a Cyberman, he knows they were all killed when Mondas was destroyed. He gives the Doctor 24 hours too find the source of the infection. The Graviton keeps wandering off course and Hobson is called by his superiors. He wants to deactivate the Graviton to find the fault but his superiors won't let him. While the Doctor collects samples from the base Polly is knocked out by a Cyberman in the sickbay which ignores a terrified Jamie, who still believes he can see the Phantom Piper, and takes another crew member away. In control they detect another pressure drop in the base. The Graviton fault is traced to some damaged equipment on the surface: Jules & Franz are sent outside to fix it but are ambushed by Cybermen. Polly makes coffee for the base staff, one of whom is instantly taken ill. The Doctor deduces the virus is found in the sugar as only some of the crew are being taken ill. The Doctor then realises that the sickbay hasn't been searched: A Cyberman has been hiding in there on one of the beds and now stands revealed.

Cracking episode that. We know the Cybermen are there but the base refuse to believe the story so the Cybermen then spend the whole episode popping up here and there abducting crew members. Yes the Cyberman hiding in Sickbay at the end is a tansy bit silly but .... I watched this episode late one night and Liz actually watched it with me. She thought it quite good but thought the start of the title looked like someone's bottom and that the cameraman was fixated on Jules & Franz's bqacksides as they climbed up through the airlock!

The episode does have one of the series all time greatest lines in it as The Doctor talks to Polly in sickbay:

There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought!

Jamie was a last minute addition to the Tardis crew at the end of the Highlanders with subsequent scripts having to be amended to accommodate him usually with him steeling lines from one of Ben or Polly. Here he spends most of this episode asleep in sickbay. Is that to avoid having to invent new dialogue or has he appropriated Ben's role, who now has little to do in this episode, and that's the reason Polly watches over him. Have we acquired the phantom piper at the expense of loosing Ben hallucinating about Davy Jones?

Anyway the Cybermen are back and they've been redesigned: The lamp is shrunk so it now sits embodied in the Cyberman's forehead and used as a weapon to fire electric bolts that stun. With the lamp shrunk into the head the handles connecting it have shrunk accordingly. The mask is replaced by a faceplate keeping the same features as before. The chest unit has shrunk with the large dish like weapons now becoming a rod that slots into the bottom of the chest unit, which has a small dish embedded in the bottom of it. These are probably the most identifiable 60s version of the Cybermen appearing virtually unchanged in another story and heavily modified in a third.

149 The Moonbase: Part One

EPISODE: The Moonbase: Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 149
STORY NUMBER: 033
TRANSMITTED: 11 February 1967
WRITER: Kit Pedler
DIRECTOR: Morris Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Moonbase
TELESNAPS: The Moonbase: Part One

The Tardis lands on the moon. Something here has dragged it off course. The Time Travellers have fun in zero gravity until Jamie is knocked unconscious and rescued by two people from the nearby moonbase. The Moonbase has a Graviton which is used to control the weather on Earth: this affected the Tardis. One of it's operators is taken ill and rushed to sickbay where Jamie has been taken. The Doctor is initially mistaken as the station's relief Doctor but his medical skills can be put to use as the base's Doctor was the first affected. The base's commander Hobson speaks with Earth who aren't helpful and quarantine the base. Nills, his communications expert, is concerned because he feels they are being monitored. Base number 2 Benoit takes Polly to sickbay to see Jamie, but another member of the crew is taken ill. The Doctor goes to Sickbay with Ben to assess the situation and connects Jamie to the monitoring equipment. Doctor Evans is the worst of the crewmen affected by the virus which is leaving a pattern of glowing vein like lines on the skin. Ben is sent to the control room to see what's happening and be useful. He arrives as Hobson goes off duty, noting to Benoit that there have been sudden drops in the base's pressure. Benoit sends Ben to help Ralph in the stores. Ralph wonders if Ben is responsible for some split bags in the stores. While Ben fetches something for him Ralph disappears. In Sickbay Doctor Evans cries out and dies. The Doctor goes to find Hobson, already irate at Ralph's disappearance to break the bad news to him. Just before the Doctor returns Polly catches sight of something in the sickbay but it vanishes through a door before she can get a proper look. Hobson is angry when he discovers Evans' body gone and tells the Doctor to find it or get off the base. Jamie is hallucinating the Phantom Piper of clan Acrimony. The Doctor finds a fragment of silver cloth in sickbay and goes to look for more odd things. Jamie calls for water which Polly goes to fetch. While she is gone a tall silver figure enters sickbay: Jamie's Phantom Piper is in reality a Cyber!

Cracking stuff. Little hints right the way through of who it is causing the problems are finally revealed in the closing moments. Fresh from their successful debut in the Tenth Planet 18 episodes previously the Cybermen are back with a bit of a redesign. In fact the Cybermen are only the second monster in Doctor Who, after of course the Daleks, to make a return appearance!

The Moonbase is a reflection of popular culture at the time, the race to the moon being very much in progress with JFK's deadline of "by the end of this decade" closing in. This is the first Moonbase in Doctor Who: it won't be the last. In Seeds of Death one is controlling the T-Mat network while in Frontier in Space it's serving as a penal colony. David Tennant's tenth Doctor gets to visit the Moon in Smith & Jones, but he's in an abducted hospital building rather than a Moonbase then! Saturn's moon Titan also has a Moonbase in The Invisible Enemy. We'll also see Moonbases in several other sci-fi series including UFO (which you must see if you haven't), Moonbase 3 (or what Barry & Terrance did between seasons 10 & 11), Space 1999 (just watch the first series, not the second), Star Fleet (which is fabulous) and Star Cops (which I love).

The moon itself controls the tides on the Earth which in turn have an influence on the weather so you can see how a gravity device on the moon *might* be used to control the weather: another example of the "anchored in reality" science that Kit Pedler has brought to Doctor Who.

The Moonbase is one of two 4 part stories that has two parts missing and two existing: the other is the Crusade. When the surviving episode were released in Doctor Who - Lost In Time the missing episodes audio was included with them. Telesnaps are available for this story on the BBC website, together with brief scene descriptions. Scene timings are available on the CD. From these last two I was able to work out how many telesnaps for each scene and thus how long each telesnap should be on the screen for. I downloaded the telesnaps, put them into Powerpoint, set timings for each slide and voila: An amateur reconstruction of episode 1 of the Moonbase! Watching it back now I could make some adjustments to the timings within the scenes but overall it's not a bad attempt and has enhanced my viewing of this episode. I had several friends from the TMUK Forum in to watch this episode with me but unfortunately I didn't write down anything they said. I do recall that Ralph Burns claimed that this is his favourite episode ending ever!

148 The Underwater Menace: Part Four

EPISODE: The Underwater Menace: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 148
STORY NUMBER: 032
TRANSMITTED: 04 February 1967
WRITER: Geoffrey Orme
DIRECTOR: Julia Smith
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace
TELESNAPS: The Underwater Menace: Part Four

The Doctor & Ben find the wounded Thous and remove him to the tunnels where he gets Sean & Jacko to take him to the surface. They go to find Polly & Jamie who've gone to Zaroff's laboratory seeking them. Ben & the doctor bluff their way past the guards and sabotage the generators. Polly & Jamie are lost in the tunnels when they notice the walls start crack letting the sea water in, which floods the tunnel emerging through the statue in the temple. Damon finds Thous, Sean & Jacko in the tunnels and leads them to safety up the shaft onto the mountainside where refugees are gathering. Water floods Zaroff's control chamber separating Zaroff from the controls preventing him from activating the mechanism to lift Atlantis. Ben & The Doctor are forced to leave him and escape to the surface where they find Jamie & Polly who had feared them dead. The Tardis leaves, witnessed by Sean & Jacko, and the Doctor declares they are going to Mars. However the Tardis is shaken and is out of control.

It's a story about Atlantis: it should be pretty obvious it's going to end with it being destroyed and flooded. And that's just what happens here. Some Atlanteans escape to the surface, and you have to assume the fish people survive down there (woe betide them if they ever find a Sea Devil nest). Of course this isn't the first time this Atlantis has been flooded/sunk and you have to wonder how it got down there. For an explanation see The Daemons or The Time Monster. But not both! As I said earlier, if they're so dependant on the fish people how did they survive for so long down there? And if they've got the shaft which they use to escape in this episode, why haven't they left the city and returned to the surface before? All very odd, plot holes you could drive a submarine through. There's contemporary evidence that the script wasn't quite up to scratch and was only pressed into service when another story by Galaxy Four author William Emms fell through when he was taken ill.

The Underwater Menace was novelised by Nigel Robinson in 1988. A CD of the soundtrack, with narration by Anneke Wills, was issued in 2005 and is probably going to be reissued in a boxset shortly.

147 The Underwater Menace: Part Three

EPISODE: The Underwater Menace: Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 147
STORY NUMBER: 032
TRANSMITTED: 28 January 1967
WRITER: Geoffrey Orme
DIRECTOR: Julia Smith
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Underwater Menace: Part Three

*Finally*, after 13 episodes, a Troughton episode that exists and we can watch on DVD. I can remember watching this earliest surviving Troughton episode off it's video release, when it was part of the bonus material released with The Ice Warriors but I'm not 100% sure I've seen the DVD version before. I've certainly never listened to it in the middle of the audio episodes. So here we go:

We open with the familiar title sequence that's been with us since An Unearthly Child. This was a surprise to me when I saw early Troughton episodes that they didn't have the title sequence with his face which I was familiar with from the Krotons & the War Games.

As the Doctor and Ramo are being sacrificed the statue of Ando speaks and while the priest's heads are bowed the Doctor and Ramo escape meeting Jamie, Ben, Polly, Jacko & Sean inside the tunnels behind the statue. The Doctor sends Jacko & Sean to get the fish people to strike: the food they collect rots within hours so this will quickly bring Atlantis to a halt. The Doctor and his companions kidnap Zaroff in the market place aided by yet more dressing up from Troughton. The Doctor, Jamie & Ben leave him guarded by Ramo & Polly but he kills Ramo and escapes, taking Polly hostage but she's rescued by Jamie and the others. Zaroff goes to see King Thous but they argue. Zaroff pulls a gun on Thous and shoots him while his guards slay those belonging to the King. Zaroff proclaims that

Nothing in the world can stop me now!

It's so nice to be able to see something move again! Much better than I remember it being now I'm watching a clear cleaned up version in the context of the episodes round it. Yes the Fish People, victims of a Kirby wire ballet sequence mid episode as they pass word of the strike round, are a bit rubbish with sequins plastered all over them like a four year old has designed them but they're not in the story much. Zaroff's completely bonkers by the end of the episode, so badly gone that he gets his immortal line to utter.

King Thous is played by Noel Johnson who I will almost guarantee is a name unknown to you. However he was famous as the voice of Dick Barton, special agent. Lolem, the high priest, is another contestant in the "campest character in Doctor Who" competition. He's played by Peter Stephens who was previously Cyril in The Celestial Toymaker. Chief Surgeon Damon, who's prominently in the censor clips, is played by Colin Jeavons, later to appear in K9 & Company. He finds fame later in life as Tim Stamper, the assistant to the sinister Francis Urquart in House of Cards & To Play The King. Now Ian Richardson, who played Francis Urquart, is an actor that would have made a superb older Doctor Who. Catherine Howe, who plays servant girl Ara, was at 16 the youngest credited artist to appear in Doctor Who to date. There's been other stories with children in but none in a credited speaking role that I can think of. She left acting in the early 70s to pursue a career in folk music. Her only competitors for youngest credited actor I can think of are Sarah Prince (Karuna in Kinda) and Jasmine Breaks (the Girl in Rememberance of the Daleks) but I can't find ages for either of those performers.

Underwater Menace 3 was found in the BBC Film & Video library during Ian Levine's initial visit in 1978. No earlier Troughton episode has ever been found and the 13 episode gap between Tenth Planet 3 and this one is one of the longest standing without a complete episode being found within it. At 13 episodes it's also now the joint longest period in terms of episodes for which no episodes exist matching the 13 missing episodes between Web of Fear 1 and Wheel in Space 3 (the last 5 episodes of Web, all 6 of Fury from the Deep (11) and the first 2 of Wheel in Space(13)) . The longest gaps at the start of the missing episode hunt were 30 episodes, between Faceless One 1 and Enemy of the World 3 (5 episodes of Faceless Ones, 7 of Evil of the Daleks (12), 4 of Tomb of the Cybermen (16), 6 of Abominable Snowmen (22), 6 of The Ice Warriors (28) and 2 of Enemy of the World (30)) closely followed by the 27 episodes between Time Meddler 2 and The Ark 1 (final 2 of the Time Meddler, 4 of Galaxy Four (6), 1 of Mission to the Unknown (7), 4 of the Myth Makers (11), 12 of the Dalek Masterplan (23) and 4 of the Massacre (27)) However a significant number of episodes (11 and 5 respectively) have been discovered to plug some of those gaps.

Back to CD for the next and final episode I'm afraid. Don't worry there's only two episodes before the next on DVD and quite a while before we get a gap this big again.

146 The Underwater Menace: Part Two

EPISODE: The Underwater Menace: Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 146
STORY NUMBER: 032
TRANSMITTED: 21 January 1967
WRITER: Geoffrey Orme
DIRECTOR: Julia Smith
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace
TELESNAPS: The Underwater Menace: Part Two

The Doctor interrupts the power supply allowing Polly to be freed by servant girl Ara who hides her in the temple of Ando. Zaroff explains his plan to raise Atlantis to the Doctor which the Doctor realises will destroy Earth. Zaroff has realised this too but is quite mad so doesn't care. Ben & Jamie escape from the mines with a pair of ship-wrecked sailors who were captured, Sean & Jacko. They emerge from a tunnel into the Temple of Ando a=finding Polly and Ara who brings them food. The Doctor escapes from the lab and meets Ramo, a priest, who is worried about Zaroff's scheme. They go to see King Thous, who hands them over to Zaroff as prisoners.

Rolls along nicely this episode, not bad at all

The start of this episode (and some of the end of the previous one) survives courtesy of the Australian censors, and I can see why they cut it. It's genuinely one of the scariest things seen in Doctor Who with a bound and defenceless Polly about to undergo "The Operation" and with masked doctors approaching her with syringes. That would have scared the living daylights out of me if I'd have seen it at the time. It also proves that you don't get the whole story from the audio! The next episode of this story does survive but there's nothing in it too compare to this!

145 The Underwater Menace: Part One

EPISODE: The Underwater Menace: Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 145
STORY NUMBER: 032
TRANSMITTED: 14 January 1967
WRITER: Geoffrey Orme
DIRECTOR: Julia Smith
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace
TELESNAPS: The Underwater Menace: Part One

The Tardis crew land on a beach at the foot of a mountain and while exploring are captured one by one and taken to the city of Atlantis on the sea bed. They are to be sacrificed to the Goddess Ando. The Doctor discovers eminent scientist Professor Zaroff is there and gets a message to him, which causes him to free the Doctor and save his companions from death. Zaroff has devised a technology to harvest plankton for food and plans to raise Atlantis back to the surface. Ben & Jamie are to be sent to work in the mines, but Polly is to undergo the operation to be converted into a water breathing Fish Person, one of the creatures that harvest the plankton. The episode ends with Polly struggling against her bonds as the Doctors approach her with a needle to put her under anaesthetic.

It was almost inevitable that Doctor Who would do Atlantis at some point and here we get a post sinking Atlantis. The society here seems dependant on Zaroff's technology, which is a recent addition, so you wonder how the eeked an existence out before that..... and what they're still doing down there if they have easy access to the surface, as shown by the lift from the caves that the Time Travellers are bought down in. Hmmm, that plot element is a little odd: why have the Tardis materialising on the beech, why not have it land directly in Atlantis and Atlantis be completely isolated from the surface world?

I do wonder if Geofrey Orme has ever read the Fantastic Four. His Atlantis seems to be a cross between their Atlantis and the subterranean world of the Mole Man, also from the FF. Zaroff would seem to be inspired by mad scientists everywhere, but the name especially bring to mind Professor Hans Zarkoff from the Flash Gordon films.

144 The Highlanders: Part Four

EPISODE: The Highlanders: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 144
STORY NUMBER: 031
TRANSMITTED: 07 January 1967
WRITER: Elwyn Jones & Gerry Davis
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Highlanders
TELESNAPS: The Highlanders: Part Four

The rope is hauled up but Ben has gone, escaping from his bonds using a trick used by Houdini. He swims to shore but is caught by a red coat - actually the Doctor in disguise. They and the girls row out to the ship, supply the Scots prisoners with weapons allowing them to revolt and take the ship, with Trask going overboard. Grey is taken prisoner and Perkins, tiring of his servitude to him, elects to travel to France with the Scots. The Doctor and party take Grey to the shore, and find Jamie has travelled with them. Grey escapes at the shore but the travellers once more compel ffinch to help them find where they were captured at which point Polly returns his identity disc and thanks him for his assistance. Grey arrives with soldiers, but ffinch arrests him for his part in the deporting of prisoners to use as slaves. Jamie asks to come with the travellers and the Doctor says yes, on the condition that Jamie teaches him to play the bagpipes.

Thankfully we never see that followed up on! Best episode of the four in my opinion, liked this one.

The Highlanders is the last 100% historical story in 1960s Doctor Who. The feeling was that historical stories were less popular with the audience, and Innes Lloyd's experience making Gunfighters set him against them. So without ceremony they were dropped. And Doctor Who never looked back. From here on it's sci fi and monsters virtually all the way. We'll get past Earth settings for stories in the future but there's always a science fiction element and the one story that doesn't really have one is essentially a pastiche on the Agatha Christie Murder Mystery. But that's another 15 years in the show's future.

Here then are the times that the Doctor has visited in the Tardis prior to the present day of when the show was made:

100,000 BC An Unearthly Child
c2500 BC Dalek Masterplan - Egypt
c1200 BC The Myth Makers

64 AD The Romans
1066 AD The Time Meddler
c1190 AD The Crusade
1289 AD Marco Polo
c1454 AD Aztecs
1572 AD The Massacre 24th August 1572
c1660 AD The Smugglers
1746 AD The Highlanders (April, Battle of Culloden took place on 16th April 1746)
1794 AD Reign of Terror (Robespierre arrested 27th July)
1872 AD The Chase - Mary Celeste left port November 5th and found December 5th
1881 AD The Gunfighters
c1920 AD Dalek Masterplan - Hollywood

When you compare the dates, that's quite widely spaced out over time.

The Doctor will return to the past in The Abominable Snowman, The Time Monster, sort of in the Carnival of Monsters, The Time Warrior, The Pyramids of Mars, Masque of Mandragora, Horror of Fang Rock, Black Orchid, Mark of the Rani, Timelash, Delta & the Bannermen, Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light and Curse of Fenric. Interestingly the Remembrance visit was to a time 25 years in the past when it was shown, but that time was inside the timespan of Doctor Who being on air.

Gerry Davis, the show's script editor who did most of the work writing this story for television, novelised the Highlanders for Target books in 1984. It was released on CD in October 1999. It was later released on CD as part of the Adventures In History boxset and will be re-released as part of Doctor Who: the Lost TV Episodes Collection 3.

143 The Highlanders: Part Three

EPISODE: The Highlanders: Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 143
STORY NUMBER: 031
TRANSMITTED: 31 December 1966
WRITER: Elwyn Jones & Gerry Davis
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Highlanders
TELESNAPS: The Highlanders: Part Three

Ben, Jamie & the Laird are put in the Annabelle's hold where they find Mackay, the ship's true captain known to the McClaren's who was betrayed by Trask. Polly & Kirsty disguise themselves as orange sellers. ffinch arrives at the Sea Eagle in where the Doctor is still disguised as an old woman. Polly & Kirsty finds ffinch who tells them to talk to Grey about their friends. Perkins, Grey's clerk arrives and they talk to him. Grey is on the Annabelle compelling the prisoners to turn King's evidence or be deported to the West Indies on a seven year contract. MacKay warns against signing but all the other Scotsmen bar Jamie, the Laird and Ben do. Ben tears the contracts up. The disguised Doctor contacts the girls in the tavern and they make plans to buy weapons which the Doctor then acquires. They're going to row them out to the Annabelle. The Doctor discovers Kirsty's ring and reveals it to be Prince Charlie's. Ben is bound and thrown overboard for his disobedience.

This episode was almost as boring as the last one but towards the end Troughton starts being the Doctor rather than mucking bout disguised as a woman and it picks up rapidly then.

So did the Doctor Who team get a nice trip to Scotland to authentically location film this story? No. They went to Frensham Ponds, in Surrey for three days on the 14th, 15th & 21st November 1966. As far as I can recall Doctor Who has never been to Scotland to film despite two of it's leading men and one companion having hailed from that part of the United Kingdom.

142 The Highlanders: Part Two

EPISODE: The Highlanders: Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 142
STORY NUMBER: 031
TRANSMITTED: 24 December 1966
WRITER: Elwyn Jones & Gerry Davis
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Highlanders
TELESNAPS: The Highlanders: Part Two

Polly's visitor turns out to be Kirsty who tries to rescue her, but falls in too. ffinch finds them but he too falls in and they take him prisoner. At Inverness The Doctor, Ben, Jamie and the Laird have been thrown in a dank cell. The Doctor discovers Bonnie Prince Charles' standard on the Laird's person and calls for the guards to take it to Grey. Polly & Kirsty blackmail ffinch and steel his identity documents. Grey orders Captain Trask to load the prisoners onto his ship for deportation. Gaining access to Grey the Doctor overpowers him, hides him then tricks Perkins into believing he is ill. ffinch is found by his Sergeant who turns the situation to his monetary gain. Trask releases Grey but misses the Doctor now disguised as a scullery maid. Jamie Ben & the Laird are taken to Trask's ship, the Annabelle, where Trask punishes a fellow prisoner by throwing him bound overboard to drown.

Sorry it bored me to tears this one. You're meant to laugh at Troughton's German accent and dressing up. I didn't. Oh look it's a historical story and we're back on boats AGAIN.

Playing Kirsty is Hannah Gordon, in an early television role. She'll go on to make a name for herself in Upstairs Downstairs with Jean Marsh, of the Crusade and Dalek Masterplan.

141 The Highlanders: Part One

EPISODE: The Highlanders: Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 141
STORY NUMBER: 031
TRANSMITTED: 17 December 1966
WRITER: Elwyn Jones & Gerry Davis
DIRECTOR: Hugh David
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Highlanders
TELESNAPS: The Highlanders: Part One

Culloden, 16 April 1746. The injured Colin MacLaren, Laird of the clean MacLaren flees the lost battle with his son Alexander, daughter Kirsty and their piper Jamie McCrimmon. The newly arrived time travellers stumble upon them hiding in a cottage. While Kirsty & Polly seek water for Colin's wounds,Ben accidentally discharges a musket alerting the attention of nearby English redcoats under the command of Lieutenant Algernon ffinch. Alexander is killed defending the cottage and the others are captured despite the Doctor posing as the German Doctor von Wer. The Redcoat sergeant is ready to hang them, but they are approached by Solicitor Grey, Royal Commissioner of Prisons, and his clerk Perkins who bride the soldiers into releasing them to him. He sends the prisoners off to Inverness, where they will be put on a slave ship to the West Indies. Grey takes the Doctor with him, after the Doctor quotes a point of law to save him from the gallows. Kirsty & Polly hide in a cave and consider what to do. Polly wants to sell Kirsty's ring for money but Kirsty won't let her: her father entrusted it to her. Polly, frustrated, goes off by herself and falls into an animal trap which is then approached by someone holding a dagger.

This is my third encounter with the Highlanders and it's failed to grip me yet again. Sorry. I don't hold out much hope for the next four days.

The main historical event in this episode is over and done with before we even arrive: The Battle of Culloden effectively marking the end of the Jacobite uprising. Elwynn Jones and Gerry Davis use the battle as the starting point for the story rather than the culmination.

And a HUGE cheer please for Frazer Hines, making his debut here as Jamie McCrimmon. An actor since childhood he was initially contracted for four weeks work on this serial. However the powers that be liked what they saw and asked him to join the show as a companion, necessitating, as we'll see later, some adaptations to scripts already in progress. Jamie appears in ALL the remaining Troughton stories. That's 110 episodes between his first and last appearances making him by some distance the companion to have been in the most episodes of Doctor Who. He then reprises the role many years later in the Five Doctors and Two Doctors! The runners up are Ian & Barbara and Jo Grant were in 77 while Sarah Jane Smith was in 76 (who's also in the Five Doctors).

William Dysart, who briefly appears as Alexander in this episode, returns in the early Pertwee story Ambassadors of Death.

Although this story is completely missing from the BBC archives a small number of censor clips exist of violent moments from this episode. There's also an off cut of film, from before the Tardis materialises, showing production assistant and future director Fiona Cumming calling action.

140 The Power of the Daleks: Part Six

EPISODE: The Power of the Daleks: Part Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 140
STORY NUMBER: 030
TRANSMITTED: 10 December 1966
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Power of the Daleks: Part Six

The guards taking the Doctor, Quinn and Polly to the prison are stopped by Daleks allowing the escape of their prisoners. Janley is pleased the rebels appear to have won but Bragen wants to wipe them out too. Valmar overhears this conversation, and releases Ben reuniting him with the others in the guest quarters. Bragen announces he has taken over. The Doctor slips away as the Daleks give the order to exterminate. He is nearly captured by Kebble and two guards, but the guards are exterminated and the Doctor saves Kebble's life as they escape together. However Kebble is gunned down as they reach the visitors quarters and the Doctor & his party are forced to flee through the window. The Doctor and his friends find their way to the lab where the now deranged Lesterson is hiding. Janley is killed by a Dalek but Valmar is saved by Quinn. Lesterson tells the Doctor about the Daleks second power supply and the Doctor finds Valmar to get him to reveal the location of the cable. Quinn finds his way to the governor's office where Bragen is desperately trying to summon guards to divert the attentions of the Daleks. Lesterson sacrifices himself to allow the Doctor to sabotage the Dalek's power supply which he overloads destroying the Daleks throughout the colony and their ship. Bragen is killed by Valmar who joins with Quinn to rebuild the colony and it's wrecked power supply. The Doctor and his friends slip away, passing a wrecked Dalek beside the Tardis which moves it's eye stalk as the ship dematerialises.

If episodes still had titles then this would be "The Dalek Massacre of Vulcan". We've seen two big Dalek massacres before now: The Thals in the Dalek city halfway through the Daleks and the attacking rebels at the Spaceport in Dalek Invasion of Earth, but this takes the biscuit with bodies dropping all over the place. The Time Team used to have a count of On Screen Deaths. With just the telesnaps to go on it's hard to keep an accurate account, but I suspect it may have been difficult even with the full pictures! In many ways this story is a gold standard for Dalek and Base under Siege. Take a few Daleks and within days they've killed nearly everyone!

Power of the Daleks was the penultimate TV story novelised. Written by John Peel, it appears without the Target logo and with a different cover and spine design to the other Target books and reprints. It's soundtrack was released released on tape in 1993 with narration by Tom Baker and then on CD in 2003 with narration by Anneke Wills. Initially this was only available in a tinned two pack with Evil of the Daleks, but had a stand along release in 2004. This release was used as the basis for an MP3 CD release in 2005, Doctor Who Reconstructed: The Power of the Daleks, which paired the soundtrack on mp3 with the telesnaps in a flash animation to provide a reconstruction of the story. Unfortunately MP3 CDs didn't take off and subsequent releases were shelved. Today the Reconstructed CD fetches a penny or two (£50 on Amazon Marketplace at the time of writing). I bought one off of eBay for £30 at the point I started writing this Blog so watching these six episodes now is the first time I've experienced the story paired with the pictures. I'm presuming Power was chosen due to being a story where no episodes exist *and* where a complete set of Telesnaps exist. The other candidates using this criteria are The Savages, The Smugglers, The Highlanders, The Macra Terror and the Fury from the Deep. Given that Power has Daleks and is the first Troughton story it's a bit of a no contest. The only *slightly* annoying thing about them is the episodes being broken in two unequal halves. As they stand the episodes have a natural break in the middle with a fade to black to allow foreign broadcasters to have an ad break - why not break the episodes there?

Power of the Daleks is unique amongst the Troughton stories. There's something, or rather someone, missing. That'll be fixed in the next story, The Highlanders.

139 The Power of the Daleks: Part Five

EPISODE: The Power of the Daleks: Part Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 139
STORY NUMBER: 030
TRANSMITTED: 03 December 1966
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barr
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Power of the Daleks: Part Five

Lesterson flees the Dalek capsule deactivating the power supply and telling Janley what he's seen.Trying to talk to the examiner, he discovers the Doctor has been imprisoned. A Dalek comes out of the capsule and announces they can conserve power causing Lesterson to flee. The Dalek instructs it's compatriots that no more than three of them may be seen together. The Daleks continue their cable laying. Valmar & Kebble are assisting them in connecting it to the capsule while guarding Polly. Lesterson tries to speak to the Doctor in prison but is taken to Bragen where Janley declares him to be mad causing Bragen to have him restrained. Polly tries to convince her captors of the Daleks evil. Hensall returns from the perimeter and discovers what Bragen has been doing in his absence. The Doctor & Quinn escape from the prison. Hensall argues with Bragen and then is gunned down by a Dalek on Bragen's orders. The Doctor & Quinn return to the Lab where they free Polly. Going to the Governor's office they find Hensall dead and are apprehended by Bragen again. In the Capsule the Daleks gather preparing to kill the colonists and announce that "DALEKS CONQUER AND DESTROY!"

Episode 5 of a Dalek story and Hensall is only the second person to be exterminated! What's going wrong? They're going to make up for it in the next episode of course. And we get an explanation for the static electricity stuff that was annoying me last episode! The Daleks are charging themselves up in the ship but the static cables will allow them to travel further without having to return to the ship to recharge. That still doesn't quite fit with their behaviour in The Chase and Dalek Masterplan but it'll do for now.

For a story for which no complete episode exists, lots of bits of Power of the Daleks exist. Two clips have been in the BBC archives for years: a 40 second clip from episode 5, the Daleks Conquer & Destroy sequence from a 1968 edition of Whicker's world and a scene of destruction from episode 6 from a program called Tom Tom, again from 1968. The "Daleks Conquer & Destroy" sequence does allow us to see that our old friend the broken neck ring Dalek is in episode 5! Several more clips have come to light in recent years. In 1995 Restoration Team member Steve Roberts investigated rumours some Dalek footage was shown in an Australian program entitled C for Computer. It emerges that that title is the name of an episode of a show called Perspective and that it did indeed contain Dalek footage from episodes 4 and 5 of Power of the Daleks. In 2001 Andrew Martin, a BBC employee, found a nearly complete trailer for episode 1 attached to the end of a film recording of a different program. In 2005 a BBC program Sunday Past Times showed clips that fans quickly recognised didn't exist. Restoration Team member Paul Vanezies traced these back to a 1966 episode of Tomorrow's World. Finally a number of 8mm film clip of between one and seven seconds are in existence.

Now can we have all 6 episodes found please?

138 The Power of the Daleks: Part Four

EPISODE: The Power of the Daleks: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 138
STORY NUMBER: 030
TRANSMITTED: 26 November 1966
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Power of the Daleks: Part Four

Lesterson cuts the Dalek's power reminding them that they get their power from him and seemingly regaining their obedience before reconnecting it. The Doctor & Ben go to see Bragen with their worries about Polly but he is far from helpful. A Dalek arrives to serve him drinks and they leave. However in the corridor they are passed by three more Daleks which arouses the Doctor's suspicions as there were only four in the capsule. Bragen too is slightly suspicious of the one in his office. The Daleks have requested more materials from Lesterson which worries him. He intends to seek the Examiner's advice but Janley persuades him otherwise by revealing Resno's death to him and using that as a hold over him. Ben & the Doctor arrive at the lab to enquire of Polly and to tell Lesterson about the increase in the number of Daleks, which further disturbs Lesterson and he collapses. Janley throws them out but while Lesterson sleeps she summons Valmar to install another Power Cable for the Daleks. The Doctor cracks the code the rebels have been using to display messages on a public board and he & Ben lie in wait for them in Rocket Room P. The rebels, and their shadowy hidden leader, enter and watch Janley and Valmar demonstrate a fully armed but controlled Dalek to them. Ben knocks the boxes they are hiding behind over and is dragged away. When the rebel leader calls the Doctor out too, he is revealed to be Bragen. Bragen has the Doctor arrested and thrown in a cell next to Deputy Governor Quinn. The Doctor tries to use a dog whistle to trigger the sonic lock but only succeeds in aggravating the colony's dogs. Lesterson ventures into the Daleks capsule and discovers a production line within producing many new Daleks.

Fabulous stuff. The Daleks in the corridor revealing there are more of them than there should be is great. At the start we've got three disarmed Daleks, and by the end there's an army of fully armed ones. Polly is absent for this episode: kidnapped half way through the last one Anneke Wills gets a week off this week. Since Ben gets hauled off half way through this one you'd be correct in thinking that it's Michael Craze's turn for a turn for a trip to the seaside next week.

The Doctor makes a lot of fuss about how the Daleks need a metal floor to move about, a limitation they had in their first few stories, all script edited by Power's writer David Whitaker. Since the Chase they've had no problem at all, generally attributed to the "power slats" that now adorn the Dalek's waist. Indeed they seem to be moving round the colony OK for the story so far. So why raise it as an issue now? And if it's become an issue how were they moving round OK before?

We also have the Dalek Capsule. Obviously there's more of it's insides seen than can possibly fit into the space shown sitting in the lab. 2 solutions exist to the problem: the capsule is the tip of the structure and the lab & colony have been built round it OR the capsule, like the Tardis and Dalek time ship, is dimensionally transcendental.

The guard that appears in this episode is Peter Forbes-Robertson who'll be back as a Time Lord in Colony in Space, and the Chief Sea Devil in The Sea Devils.

137 The Power of the Daleks: Part Three

EPISODE: The Power of the Daleks: Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 137
STORY NUMBER: 030
TRANSMITTED: 19 November 1966
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Power of the Daleks: Part Three

Hensall is pleased with the potential offered by the Daleks. The Doctor orders the Dalek to shut itself down which it seems to do only to reactivate when he leaves the room claiming that the order would have prevented it serving. The enquiry into Quinn's behaviour continues: he is found guilty and imprisoned, with security chief Bragen being made deputy governor in his place. The Doctor builds a device to interfere with the Dalek and brings it to the laboratory. It works but Lesterson smashes it and sends the doctor away before he can permanently harm the Dalek. Hensall departs for a tour of the perimeter leaving Bragen in charge. Janley meets Bragen: she is leading the rebels and he has been assisting them for his own means. She has obtained the Dalek gun that Lesterson removed and believes it will help them take over the colony. Bragen needs the Examiner restrained so Janley and fellow rebel Valmar kidnap Polly. Ben notices Polly's disappearance and worries. The Dalek pleases Lesterson with it's knowledge and persuades him to order some equipment to build a device to help the colony. When he leaves the room the Dalek activates the power to the capsule and goes inside. The Doctor & Ben discover the power connected and confront the unarmed Dalek. They are forced to leave when the other two armed Daleks appear activated. Bragen confronts the Doctor saying they have found a body in the swamps and suggesting he may not be the Examiner. The Doctor retorts that the only way he could know for sure was if Bragen was the real Examiner's killer. Bragen tells The Doctor to leave Lesterson and the Daleks alone. As he leaves a note about Polly is pushed under their door. Lesterson sees his now trio of Daleks who are pleased that "we will get our power!"

This episode moves like a piece of well oiled machinery. It does exactly what you guess it might as the Daleks slowly advance their plan, the rebels start to move and the Doctor finds his progress obstructed. Lovely scene between the Doctor & Bragen as they each call the other's bluff, and at the end as the Dalek's guard starts to slip in front of Bragen. I said last episode that you feel this isn't going to end well and you feel it even more in this episode.

Having dealt with the characters & actors who didn't trouble the scorers much in earlier episodes let's look at the rest of the cast. I'd previously quite liked Hensall but now I've discovered he's played by Peter Bathurst who goes on to play the civil servant Chinn in the Claws of Axos who is possibly the most annoying character in Doctor Who. Bernard Archard (Bragen) you'll see again as the possessed cadaver of Marcus Scarman in Pyramids of Mars. Robert Glynn (Lesterson) will be back as the High Priest in the Masque of Mandragora. He's also in the very first episode of Blake's Seven: The Way Back playing Blake's Ven Glynd. I spot that the same episode also features Robert Beatty, who was General Cutler in the previous Doctor Who story The Tenth Planet.

The "Daleks posing as your servants" idea is re-used in the new series story Victory of the Daleks, where it works fabulously well again. It's after the bit where they're busy being servants that Victory of the Daleks falls apart.

136 The Power of the Daleks: Part Two

EPISODE: The Power of the Daleks: Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 136
STORY NUMBER: 030
TRANSMITTED: 12 November 1966
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Power of the Daleks: Part Two

The time travellers suspect that Lesterson may have removed the third Dalek. Deputy Governor Quinn comes to the Examiner's quarters to speak to him but he's not there and ends up in a confrontation with security chief Bragen. Leterson finds the Doctor in the lab as Bragen arrives searching for the Doctor. The Doctor wants the Daleks melted down and leaves to get permission from the governor. Lesterson retrives the missing Dalek from a hidden compartment in the capsule and starts to reactivate it with his assistants Janley and Resno. Bragen tells the Doctor about a rebel movement but is then obstructive when the Doctor tries to see the Governor. The Doctor goes to the communication room to contact Earth but finds it smashed with the opeartor unconcious and Deputy Governor Quinn present. Bragen arrests him on very circumstantial evidence but it's noted that Quinn has a button missing that would match the one the Doctor has. The experiment with the Dalek succeeds in reactivating it but Resno is killed by it. Janley lies to Lesterson and says he is merely unconscious. The Doctor, as the Examiner, and friends attend the enquiry into Quinn's conduct which is interrupted by and excited Lesterson. He brings the now disarmed Dalek into the room. It seems to recognise the Doctor and surprises the humans when it speaks. The Doctor pleads for it's destruction but the Dalek repeatedly intones that "I am your servant. I am your servant."

Great episode but you have to hold your head in your hands and despair at the Vulcan colonists. We, like The Doctor, know that the moment the Daleks appear this isn't going to end well for the colonists. First they reactivate the Dalek, and the first thing it does is exterminate someone. Like you couldn't have predicted that! Then by the end of the episode a Dalek is telling us "I am your servant" at which point we automatically know it's lying and, and I don't think I'm spoiling the story for anyone here, a bumper round of exterminations is soon to follow.

So why don't they take the Doctor's word for it? The simple answer is that they don't know what a Dalek is. We know from watching television but for them not to know then this story must take place before Dalek Invasion of Earth which seems to be humans first public contact with the Daleks and is frequently referred to in other stories. So DIOE takes place c2164, the date on the calender that the Doctor and Ian find in the warehouse, which mean Power of the Daleks must predate that. The question then becomes do we think that's a long enough time period from now for man to be colonising other worlds? They certainly thought so in the 1960s where it was expected that moon landings would be the first step of man to the stars, but unfortunately it hasn't quite happened like that. So I dug out my seldom used, but still very good copy of Lance Parkin's History of the Universe (There appears to be an updated edition out). That dates Power of the Daleks to 2020, which was given in press material at the time. Conceivable in the 1960s you have to cast doubt on it now from a point where it looks unlikely we'll have another manned lunar flight before 2020!

Resno, who gets to be the Vulcan Dalek's first victim here, is played by Edward Kelsey who was previously a Slave Buyer in The Romans and will later be Edu in The Creature from the Pit. Christopher Barry directed all three of his appearances in Doctor who. He's the voice of Joe Grundy in The Archers, not the last Archers cast member to be involved with Doctor Who and the Daleks either, and voiced Colonel K & Baron Silas Greenback for Dangermouse!