282 Terror of the Autons: Episode Four

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 282
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: 23 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

The Brigadier saves the Doctor from the phone cable. Unit finds the tour coach and lays on an RAF strike against it. Jo accidentally sets off the daffodil the Doctor found by using a radio to contact the Brigadier near it. The Daffodil spits a layer of plastic over her nose and mouth but the Doctor sprays solvent over it dissolving it. The Master arrives and takes them prisoner, escorting them to the coach which causes the Brigadier to cancel the air strike. The Master drives to the radio telescope to summon the Nestenes to Earth, but as he's doing so the Doctor & Jo escape. The Doctor & Brigadier confront the Master causing him to abandon his plan which breaks the Nestene's link to the Autons which are battling Unit troops. The Master escapes to the coach, but emerges and is shot. However it's revealed to be a disguised Rex Farrel while the Master drives the coach away. The Doctor looks forward to his next encounter with the Master.

An all action finale including an RAF jet attack and pitch battle between Unit troops & Autons while the Doctor tries to get the Master to stop what he's doing..... and succeeds by pointing out a gaping flaw in the Master's plan that just hasn't occurred to him. Of the three new characters introduced in this story, the Master does the best being unveiled as an old school, moustache twirling villain... Jo doesn't get a lot to do but still gets hypnotised, captured, ask for explanations and do things by accident meaning she has effectively ticked every box that Terrance Dicks & Barry Letts asked her to. Captain Yates fares worst of the three, effectively being just another "interchangeable Jimmy". He'll get more to do as time goes on, but his real glory days are 3 years in the future. If anything here he hogs screen time that Benton could have filled just as usefully. And the story itself? A nice little romp with some interesting little set pieces. Most of the time that would do us fine especially as nobody really puts a foot wrong during it. The problem effectively comes from how I'm watching these stories for the blog: I've literally seen it straight after Inferno, which is in a different class entirely dramatically. Inferno is decent, adult, intelligent and tense. Terror of the Autons is a little bit of light fluff by comparison. Now I feel bad for condemning it for coming having the misfortune to come directly after one of the greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, because by most other standards it's not that bad at all.

The Terror of the Autons Target book was the first to bear the logo used from Season 11 onwards, albeit without the famous diamond background, when it was released in 1974. A colour restored video release arrived in 1993, by which time I'd already seen it in black & white thanks to a friend recording it off UK Gold for me. A new recolourisation was released on DVD on May 9th 2011 as part of the Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set, where it appeared with a new special edition of Spearhead from Space, it's predecessor. Still think this set should have been called Auton Invasions in homage` to the Target Book!

281 Terror of the Autons: Episode Three

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 281
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: 16 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

The Doctor & Jo leap from the police car but are pursued by the Auton who is knocked over a cliff by a pursuing Unit staff car. Returning to base Unit plots their next move. The Doctor attempts to take off in the Tardis using the captured dematerialisation circuit but fails. Unit is visited by a man from the ministry bringing reports of unexplained deaths. Seeing that the first two are McDermott & Farrel Sr, both with links to the plastics factory the Doctor & Jo visit Farrel's widow who tells them of Colonel Masters who works with her son and gives them the troll doll. Out on the streets men with huge grinning false heads are handing out daffodils. The Doctor's lab is visited by a telephone engineer who installs an extra long phone lead for him. Returning to HQ the Doctor and Brigadier visit Farrel plastics finding it deserted. They find a plastic daffodil, a receipt for a coach hire and an Auton hiding in the safe waiting for them. Meanwhile Jo is attacked by the doll, activated by the heat from the Doctor's Bunsen Burner which Mike is using to make Cocoa. The Master rings the Doctor to gloat and using a device activates the telephone cable which comes to life trying to strangle the Doctor.

this episode is slightly less frenetic than the last two, but only just. It's more figuring out what the Master's scheme is: the Auton in the safe is his way of saying hello, serving as a guard/nasty surprise for whoever may have tried to open the safe and the doll has already done it's job, killing Farrel sr, Jo & Mike activating it is a bit of an accident. Yes the telephone wire is left specifically for the Doctor and as it tries to kill him the Pertwee gurning makes a return to our screens! We see the start of the Doctor's name droping habit in this episode too, stating he goes to the same club as the visiting civil servant's boss. Larger and more recognisable names will follow later....

Filming the location scenes for this episode did not go well. First Nicholas Courtney, who was suffering from depression, was rendered too unwell to work and then Katy Manning, on her third day filming, sprained her ankle. Nicholas John, Production Assistant, teased her that she would be recast, leaving Manning upset and earning John a few words from the show's star, protective of his new co-star. It's worth noting that Nicholas John was the brother of Caroline John, the actress who had played the Doctor's previous companion Liz Shaw!

There's some familiar faces in this episode stuntman Terry Walsh is an Auton Policeman while regular extra Pat Gorman is the Auton Leader. Hayden Jones supplies the Auton Voice, the first time normal Autons are heard to speak. He was meant to play the Master's disguise as a telephone engineer but was offered the larger role of Lenny Vosper in the next story the The Mind of Evil. Another actor who Barry Letts had used previously was slated to appear in this episode: Bill McGuirk, who'd been a Guard in The Enemy of the World, played a policeman who is suspicious of the coach and is killed for his curiosity. His scenes ended up being cut.

280 Terror of the Autons: Episode Two

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 280
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: 09 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

The Doctor throws the bomb into the river where it detonates. He frees Jo from the Master's hypnotic influence. The Master demonstrates a new plastic chair to McDermott which folds up and kills him. Later the Master & Rex Farrel are visited by his Father, who isn't impressed with the Master. Farrel leaves with a sample of the Master's new toy troll doll. Unit tracks the missing Philips to Rossini's circus which the Doctor Visits, being captured by Rossini and strongman Tony. Jo knocks Tony out and frees the Doctor. They are threatened by a grenade wielding Philips. The Doctor tries to free Philips, who dies when he sets the grenade off. The Doctor enters the Master's Tardis and steals his dematerialisation circuit. Menaced by the circus performers the Doctor & Jo are rescued by the police. When they are driven to a remote quarry the Doctor asks to see their warrant cards. The Policeman turns round and is unmasked as an Auton.

This story is a distinct change of pace from the last season moving a long at a fair lick. In some ways it almost feels like a bunch of set pieces strung together and essentially it is: The Master is setting a series of traps for the Doctor: "escaped the bomb I sent you? Never mind here's my grenade wielding hypnotised scientist. Got out of that too? I've sent some Auton Policeman to get you!"

Joining us this episode is Roy Stewart, as Tony the circus Strong Man, who memorably played Toberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen while George McDermott is played by Harry Towb who was (rather briefly) Osgood in The Seeds of Death

279 Terror of the Autons: Episode One

EPISODE: Terror of the Autons: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 279
STORY NUMBER: 055
TRANSMITTED: 02 January 1971
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Barry Letts
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: Mannequin Mania Box Set - Spearhead from Space / Terror of the Autons
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

Like Spearhead from Space & Inferno, I've seen Terror of the Autons recently when it was released as part of the Mannequin Mania Box Set in May. So I know what's coming here....

At the Rossini Brothers Circus a Tardis materialises disguised as a modern horse box. From it emerges the Master who hypnotises Luigi Rossini (aka Lew Russel) the Circus' owner and forces him to co-operate in robbing a museum to gain the last remaining Nestene Energy Unit. The Doctor is working on the Tardis creating a lot of smoke from the dematerialisation circuit. A young woman who he Doctor mistakes for the tea lady enters and, believe the circuit is on fire, douses it with a fire extinguisher ruining the Doctor's work. She is Jo Grant, who is his new assistant assigned by the Brigadier. She brings him a report of the robbery, which concerns him. At a nearby radio telescope, technician Goodge complains to Professor Philips about the lunch his wife has made him. The Master arrives, shooting Goodge with an advanced weapon, linking the sphere to the telescope & hypnotising Philips. The Doctor & the Brigadier are arguing about Jo: The Doctor says he needs a scientist while the Brigadier quotes Liz Shaw as saying he needs someone to pass test tubes and say how brilliant he is! Jo brings them a report of a disturbance at the telescope. They go to telescope, meeting Captain Mike Yates who's already there. As the Doctor climbs to the control cabin he sees a Time Lord, dressed in a suit, hovering in mid air. He has brought the Doctor a message: The renegade Time Lord known as the Master is on Earth. The Master has booby trapped the door with a Volatiser grenade rigged to some string: the Doctor dives in the door and catches it. When Captain Yates comes through the door he's sat on the floor dismantling it. They find a Goodge's shrunken corpse in his lunch box. The Master goes to see Rex Farrel, the head of a plastics firm. The Doctor & Captain Yates tell Jo about the Nestenes. The Brigadier starts a search of plastic factories which Jo takes part in. The Master hypnotises Farrel. Jo visits Farrel plastics where she is caught, hypnotised, interrogated and sent back to Unit hq with instructions & no memory of anything that happened. Philips' car is found with the Unit box for the energy unit inside. Mr McDermott comes to see Farrel, concerned at what's going on at the factory and Masters arrival. He wants to summon Farrel Sr to straighten the situation out but Rex doesn't want his father involved. The Master is busy in the factory activating Autons. The Unit box is brought to their HQ. Jo tries to open it with her skeleton keys but the Doctor realises it's a bomb......


As a season opener introducing a pile of new characters it does the job perfectly, returning a memorable foe from the first Pertwee season to our screens.

Quite a lot to get through today......

Here's how the story has it: Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks got talking and compared the Doctor/Brigadier relationship to Sherlock Holmes & Doctor Watson. This led to the question of who was the Doctor's Moriarty ? Terrance Dicks is reported as naming the character The Master, continuing the academic theme of the Doctor's name, while Barry Letts knew who he wanted to play him: Roger Delgado. A very well known television actor who, famed for his role as Spanish ambassador Mendoza in the ITC Sir Francis Drake series he'd acted with Barry Letts many years ago. Indeed he'd recently (1969) he'd appeared in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) with Nicholas Courtney. (and a young, thin clean shaven Brian Blessed. The episode is the 11th of the series: "The Ghost who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo" which is well worth a watch). He appeared on the Radio Times cover, surrounded by the rest of the cast, to promote this story an incident that led people to believe Jon Pertwee was departing Doctor Who which annoyed the lead actor somewhat. When a special cover was used to promote the tenth anniversary story, The Three Doctors, Barry Letts made sure Pertwee was in the centre of the picture.

And because Robert Holmes is writing the Master's first appearance, he indulges his love of killing characters in interesting ways and gives the Master one of his little signatures: Killing people by shrinking them. Here he uses a short stick with a glowing end but it's clearly an earlier version of his Tissue Compression Eliminator. Curiously the Master's next death by shrinking won't be seen for a good long while yet, he doesn't do it again while Pertwee is the Doctor reserving it for Robert Holmes' later Doctor Who script The Deadly Assassin.

Needing a replacement companion for Liz Shaw, Letts & Dicks created the character of Jo Grant along what they saw as more traditional lines: her job was to scream and ask the Doctor to explain things. Reportedly the short sighted Katy Manning was the last actress they auditioned for the job.

Captain Mike Yates was created to fill the gap between Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, still without a first name, and Sergeant Benton. Benton, an enlisted man wasn't even some rank grades beneath the Brigadier. The British rank system runs thus for officers:

Field Marshal
General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Brigadier
Colonel
Lieutenant-Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant

with the enlisted men beneath that.

Sergeant Major
Sergeant
Corporal
Private

Yates plugs the gap nicely. Two actors were in serious contention for the role: Richard Franklin and Ian Marter. Marter was unable to commit to a long term engagement but Barry Letts remembered him and cast him in the next story he directed, The Carnival of Monsters, before casting him as companion Harry Sullivan in Tom Baker's last story.

Several of the rest of the guest cast also have form with Barry Letts: Christopher Burgess, playing Professor George Philips was Swann in The Enemy of the World and returns as and Barnes, the deputy leader of Lupton's little gang in Planet of the Spiders. Andrew Staines, appearing in just this episode as Goodge, was also in The Enemy of the World as Benik's Sergeant, is the Bernice's Captain in Carnival of Monsters & is Keever, another member of Lupton's gang in the Planet of the Spiders. We also spot Who regulars Dave Carter as the Museum Attendant and Michael Wisher as Rex Farrel (see The Ambassadors of Death for both) while David Garth, the Time Lord, was previously Grey in The Highlanders.

Like the Silurians & Ambassadors of Death this episode survives as 16mm film from BBC Enterprises and low grade NTSC video tape. These were combined for a recolour in the early 1990s that was released on video, a second unseen recolour that was scheduled to be part of the aborted 1999 repeat season and a third recolour that was released on DVD. However a short segment, of Jo meeting the Doctor, survives as 625 line video thanks to being used by Nationwide in their article on Katy Manning's departure from Doctor Who in 1973.

278 Inferno: Episode Seven

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Seven
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 278
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 20 June 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield (and Barry Letts - Uncredited)
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

The Doctor is found lying in a coma on the floor of his hut. As Liz treats him members of staff at the site are becoming increasingly concerned to the safety of the drilling. The Doctor wakes and attempts to explain to Liz & The Brigadier what has happened. Sir Keith Gold, his arm in a sling arrives, and together they try unsuccessfully to convince Stahlman to stop drilling. The Doctor tries to damage the drilling apparatus but Stahlman has the Brigadier arrest him. The Doctor escapes and after confronting the Primord Bromley he returns to the control room where Stahlman has sealed himself in the drillhead. The Doctor tries to convince everyone to shut the drilling down but nobody will take responsibility for doing so. When the Primord Stahlman emerges the Doctor & Sutton restrain him with fire extinguishers as Petra begins the shut down procedure. Realising that the drill will keep going for a while yet the Doctor overrides the safety procedures and shuts it down with seconds to spare before penetration. The shaft is ordered to be filled. Later Sir Keith comes to bid farewell to the Doctor. Petra Williams and Greg Sutton have already left - together. The Doctor then bids farewell to Liz and dismisses the Brigadier with a few curt remarks as he dematerialises the now working Tardis console. However it rematerialises just a few yards away on the rubbish dump and the Doctor is forced to contritely ask the Brigadier for help retrieving it as Liz watches them leave together.

This episode is driven by you knowing what will happen if the Doctor fails: you've seen it during the last few episodes and were reminded in the reprise as the lava approaches the door. But for the start of the episode he's unconscious: Will the Doctor recover in time? And when he does will people heed his warnings? Disaster is of course averted with moments to spare. In many ways this episode is just a coda to the Alternate Universe episodes: having gained knowledge there the Doctor must use it here. It needs the previous episodes to back it up which is why it didn't really work when it was released in The Pertwee years VHS along with The Daemons part 5 and Frontier in Space 6 in March 1992. It was chosen because I suspect they knew they had a good story and went for the final episode to give it closure. (in many ways Frontier 6 is also an odd choice: That's there because Pertwee thought the Draconians were his favourite monster. They're hardly in 6, 5 would have been a much better choice showing the Emperor's court). I very much suspect though that any other episode of the story seen in complete isolation would have suffered (but if pushed I might have gone for episode 3) Inferno is really a whole tale spread over the seven episodes. It's the longest Doctor Who story I'm happy sitting down to watch completely and can, given the time, watch all seven episodes on the bounce. At this point in my writing of the blog I needed to reduce the lead my writing has over publication so I can watch a certain story due out in a short while on DVD. I intended to spread Inferno out over a good few days. I ended up watching it in a day and a half, I just wanted to keep coming back for more.

I said at the top of the story it was one of my favourites and I stand by that view now. Even despite some monsters that, while adequate, aren't quite from the top drawer and some not wonderfully inspiring cliff hangers it is brilliant stuff unlike any other Doctor Who story. Buy a copy on DVD NOW!

This episode marks the departure of Caroline John from the series, without a proper leaving scene! She just disappears between series. Some have argued it makes more sense if you watch Inferno before Ambassadors of Death because at the end of that story she stays behind to help at the space research centre. Her departure was instigated by Barry Letts, who felt the character didn't work, but has been very keen to stress that he liked Caroline John as an actress and indeed later cast her in the classic serial production of Sherlock Holmes' Hound of the Baskervilles opposite Tom Baker. As it happens Caroline John was looking to leave the series anywhere: she was pregnant with her first child and wouldn't be able to be available for the filming dates. She returned to work after giving birth appearing in many television programs. I spotted her in a Midsomer Murder repeat recently and she's got a prominent on screen role as Liam Neeson's Mother in Law in Love Actually. She makes one Doctor Who reappearance in the 20th anniversary story The Five Doctors. The end of this serial also sees Douglas Camfield take another absence from the program. His imdb entry seems to indicate he did little work for the rest of 1970 but was working again in early 1971 and pretty constantly after that. We've already seen that he didn't get on with Pertwee and wouldn't return to the program till after he left but there's also stories of his wife, Sheila Dunn (who makes her last Doctor Who appearance in this episode) forbidding him to do any more due to the stress it caused him.

This is also the last seven part Doctor Who story. Seven parts was the longest format the show attempted regularly: The Daleks & Marco Polo in it's first season, Evil of the Daleks in it's Fourth then Silurians, Ambassadors of Death & Inferno in it's Seventh. From here on in it's mainly four and six parters with a few notable exceptions. This season used three seven parters partly to fill an odd number of episodes but also as a budgetary matter: The same sets stretched over a seven parter cost less money. This story uses the same five sets in nearly every episode: Control room, drill head, Brigadier's office, Reactor Room and Doctor's Warehouse. However the success of this season, reaping higher viewing figures in the winter months before tailing off slightly in the summer, insured the show's survival and gave the production team a budget increase that allowed them to do more stories in the next season which had the same number of episodes.

Having reached the end of Season Seven there an interesting observation: This is the first season since the first not to feature a returning Monster. We've seen no Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti or Ice Warriors. In fact we've not seen the inside of the Tardis either or even the exterior since the first story. The only elements used in this series from previous stories are The Doctor, Brigadier, Sergeant Benton & Unit. Recurring elements become more common, and indeed we'll get one of this season's monsters returning in the first story next year. It's not until Season 13 that we get another whole season with no recurring monsters (though Unit appear) a trick repeated several time subsequently. For Tom Baker's fame as the Doctor he only faces a familiar alien foe on five occasions and three of those are in his first season!

In addition to the final episode of Inferno showing up on the Pertwee years, the whole story was released on video in 1994 including an extended cut of episode 5 with a scene not present on the UK broadcast copy. The story was released on DVD in 2006.

When I started buying the Doctor Who books four Pertwee stories remained unnovelised: Ambassadors of Death, Mind of Evil, Time Monster & this one. Inferno was the first of them to print getting published in 1984 four years after the previous Pertwee tale, Monster of Peladon, had appeared.

277 Inferno: Episode Six

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 277
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 13 June 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield (and Barry Letts - Uncredited)
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

Escaping from the Brigade-Leader's office with the aid of Fire Extinguishers which they use to cool the Primords the Doctor & Sutton contain them using the coolant for the drill head. The Brigade & Section Leaders take Petra to the power room where she attempts to reconnect the power to the Tardis Console, but she is forced out by the Stahlmann Primord. Sutton returns with her and they activate the power making it back to the Doctor. The Brigade Leader pulls his gun on the Doctor threatening to shoot him if he won't take them with him. Liz shoots the Brigade Leader and orders the Doctor too leave as Lava pours towards the building .....

When I listened to the Abominable Snowmen I was impressed by how the tension was ratcheted up over the six episodes. It's the same here as we know the Doctor is under real time pressure to get off the Inferno Earth and return to our own before that world is destroyed. The noise just gets louder as this episode goes on, it's noticeable how much quieter it is on the real Earth during this episodes brief visit there! Douglas Camfield uses a lovely visual effect over the location footage to indicate the rising heat.

By using a parallel Universe this story allows members of the cast to play not one but two versions of themselves, so when Nicholas Courtney died earlier this year, and Liz & I decided to watch one of his stories, this was the one we chose. But he not only gets to play the Brigadier and his evil counterpart the Brigade Leader, in this episode he also gets to take the second character for a huge jump off the deep end as he sinks first into hopeless despair and then insanity in the face of his imminent death doing everything in his power to find a method of escape. It's a brilliant performance from Courtney and underlines what a good actor he was.

One of the faults Parallel Universe stories have is the inevitable sequel. Star Trek , especially Deep Space 9 repetitively returns to the Mirror, Mirror Universe and also works events from Next Generation's Yesterday's Enterprise into the main continuity, both of which devalue the original. The X-Men have returned to the Age of Apocalypse twice now. New Doctor Who flips back and forth to the universe where the Cybermen were created like it was the room next door. I very much feel it's best to do the Parallel Universe and then leave well alone. And the best way to do that is to destroy it at the end of the story, just as Doctor Who does here. Any sealed portal can always be undone, any prohibition broken. A decently apocalyptic finale should enshrine your parallel universe to one off status, not that it stopped Yesterday's Enterprise or the Age of Apocalypse from being revisited!

276 Inferno: Episode Five

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 276
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 06 June 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield (and Barry Letts - Uncredited)
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

In the chaos following the penetration of the core Stahlmann begins exposing technicians to the slime. The Doctor rescues Sutton but Stahlmann seals himself in the drill head room. The Brigade-Leader assumes control of the situation but it quickly becomes clear it is hopeless with the Doctor predicting catastrophe. He demonstrates the Tardis console to the Brigade-leader to convince him to allow him to return and save the other Earth. Hearing Stahlmann's voice Petra opens the heat shield revealing he and the technicians have been mutated into the Primord creatures the others became. Platoon-Under leader Benton is captured by them and transformed. The Doctor and the survivors seek shelter in the Brigade-Leader's office. In the real world, Sir Keith Gold is on the way back to the complex when he is involved in a car accident. The Doctor announced he has a plan to escape just as the Primord creatures penetrate the office.

The story is transformed in this episode becoming a disaster movie. The Doctor can't save the people he's met, they're going to die when there's a catastrophic explosion. And to make it worse there's a real risk that before then they'll get transformed into a Primord (the name is never heard on screen but that's what they're called) as is shown by Benton being transformed in the episode. The Doctor's only choice is to escape back to his Earth and prevent the same thing happening there. And to do that he needs these versions of his friends to sacrifice what remains of their lives to help him escape. He can't take them with him because they've got counterparts in this world. It's interesting that when Nu Who returns to parallel universes that after the Doctor's accidental arrival on the alternate Earth the only characters that move freely between the two have no counterparts on the opposite world. Of course some of the characters on the Inferno Earth don't take this too well. And all through the episode the lack of music once again works in it's favour with the ominous rumblings and occasional explosions in the background.

An extra scene was recorded for this episode but not transmitted in the UK. The Doctor, Brigade-Leader and Section leader Shaw are listening to radio reports of destruction all over England. The radio voice is Jon Pertwee and when he heard the final version acting-director Barry Letts decided it was too obviously his star actor doing one of his silly voices and cut it. However the section made it onto the 525 line version of the tapes used for transmission in the US and appeared in the video version of this story. It was excised from the main print on the DVD but survives as a deleted scene on the DVD's special features disc.

Some of the massed ranks of the Primords we know: Dave Carter & Pat Gorman we've seen already this season while Philip Ryan was the Redcoat in The Mind Robber and Peter Thompson was a workman in The Invasion (director: Douglas Camfield). Apparently Olaf Pooley was very unhappy at the Primord makeup he had to wear. Looking at the Primord Stahlmann it's not obvious it's him at all so I'm wondering if he did actually refuse to wear it and another actor fills in.

275 Inferno: Episode Four

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 275
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 30 May 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield (and Barry Letts - Uncredited)
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

Section-Leader Liz Shaw intervenes allowing the Doctor to repair the computer. The Doctor is interrogated by the Brigade-Leader & Section-Leader. The Doctor is taken to the cells and placed with a sleeping figure. In the real world Sir Keith Gold leaves to consult with the ministry. The figure in the cell turns out to be the mutated Bromley and while fighting him the Doctor escapes. He infiltrates drilling control, disguised in a protective suit, attempting to stop penetration of the Earth's crust but is discovered and held at gunpoint as the drill breaks through.

Fab stuff again here. Very 1984/World War II film as the Doctor is interrogated by the Brigade & Section leaders. There's a nice sequence as the Doctor talks with Liz which shows there are parallels between her and her counterpart on the real Earth. Greg Sutton's insubordinate streak, criticised by both Director Stahlmann and Petra Williams, saves the Doctor's life as he tackles one of the guards holding him at gunpoint.

To do a Parallel Universe story you really need something for it to be compared to and this is the first time Doctor Who has had a large enough backing cast plus a stable setting, the Doctor's Earth exile, for it to get away with doing this. Here the recall of John Levene as Benton, and his insertion into the previous story becomes important expanding the familiar cast of supporting characters to three and presenting each of them as different versions of their normal selves: Sergeant Benton becomes the bullying Platoon Under Leader, The Brigadier the fascistic Brigade Leader and Liz becomes part of the army instead of a scientist. The in story support characters are less changed: little separates Stahlman from Stahlmann while Petra Williams & Greg Sutton become more straight laced and strict versions of themselves: note Greg's suit in this second reality. It's interesting that Doctor Who doesn't try a parallel universe again till Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel in 2006 when we have an extended cast formed from Rose's family & friends that we can compare the alternate versions to. The newer tale has another decent hook, like the Nazis having won the war here, in the Cyberman universe her father is still alive but she was never born.

The use of the Parallel Universe actually serves a function within the story instead of just being a story by itself by showing us what will happen if the Doctor doesn't stop the drilling in our world which in turn gives the closing stages of the story added urgency as the Doctor tries to prevent the destruction of Earth for a second time.

(I've actually looked at this story and parallel universe before: see A Rune With A View Issue 28)

This is the third consecutive story this season to have a large control room set as the main setting: The reactor control in The Silurians, the Space Centre control in Ambassadors of Death and now the drill control here. The seven episode structure has given more money for larger more elaborate sets. However as we've seen it also has meant that the scripts for the stories have had to be stretched somewhat.

274 Inferno: Episode Three

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 274
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 23 May 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield (and Barry Letts - Uncredited)
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

Stahlman refuses to restore the Doctor's power. Sir Keith decides to go to London to protest to the minister about Stahlman's behaviour. The Doctor wakes up in the building he was using on the outskirts of the complex but finds it being used as a storeroom. On the wall is a poster with a man's face declaring Unity is Strength. Outside he finds a symbol inscribed on the door. He is fired on by troops and drives off in Bessie but they give chase. Sheltering on the gas stores he is menaced first by the mutated Bromley and then by Private Wyatt, who he saw killed. Wyatt is shot by a troop on the ground and plunges to his death. The Doctor is again chased and seeks shelter. He sees a dark haired Liz Shaw wearing a Uniform but she pulls a gun on him and summons the troops. He is taken to see the Brigade-Leader: a clean shaven Brigadier with a scar over one side of his face and an eye patch. The Doctor asks to see Keith Gold, but is taken to Director Stahlmann who explains that Gold was killed in a car crash. Convinced by his knowledge of the project that the Doctor is a spy he is sentenced to execution but an alert at the drill head postpones it. Temporarily stunning Platoon Under Leader Benton the Doctor escapes to the control room and tries to repair the computer. Benton recovers and finds him, threatening to shoot the Doctor there and then.

Superb, absolutely brilliant. We've mentioned the little details in the first two episodes as helping the story, here they become crucial. The different uniforms the soldiers wear, the guns they use, the hooter noise the Brigade-Leader's phone makes, all these things help differentiate the parallel universe Earth from the real one even when you can't see the obvious touches.... Yes we can go no further, we must repeat the Eyepatch story: On the first take of these scene where Nicholas Courtney's Brigade-Leader turns round revealing himself he found his fellow cast members all wearing eye patches. Possibly the most famous Doctor Who convention anecdote ever my wife had never heard it until I mentioned it to her when we saw Inferno earlier this year. We're told little of what the parallel Earth is like in this episode but the signs on the doors, posters and general manner of the army officers makes you think that it's a fascist state of some sort. The "Unity is Strength" posters seen on the walls use the face of Jack Kline, the head of the BBC Special Effects workshop.

Terrance Dicks is generally credited with having the idea of inserting a parallel Universe into the Don Houghton's drilling project story (Who And Me: The Memoir of Barry Lett, p97). Parallel Universes have been a science fiction stable for years and indeed what you see here is a textbook example of the concept, namely "What is the Nazis won World War II?" The 1964 film It Happened Here is a good example. People are usually quick to cite the Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror as an influence, indeed one book I own The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day & Keith Topping does it in print, but according to the list of Star Trek episode broadcast dates I have Mirror, Mirror wasn't shown in the UK till the autumn of 1970 so I can't see how it could have been.

There is, unlike earlier episodes, a small amount of music used in the chase sequences here but it's very minimalistic. Remember that Douglas Camfield, the director, and Dudley Simpson, the series regular composer, were no longer on speaking terms following a disagreement some years previously which almost certainly factors into Camfield's musical choice for the story. The lack however, gives it a different feel to many other Who stories and helps it stand out. The stunt fall, where Private Wyatt falls to his death from the gas container, was performed by Havok member and falls specialist Roy Scammell. At the time of shooting it was, and may still be, the highest stunt fall ever. Another member of the stunt team was injured when he was hit by Bessie while trying to evade the car in the sequence where the Doctor is chased by the soldiers.

It's at this point the production of Inferno ran into very serious trouble. The location filming and first studio block, the interior shots for episodes 1 & 2, had gone off without a hitch. But during rehearsals for episodes 3 & 4 Douglas Camfield collapsed, suffering from a heart murmur exacerbated by a number of disagreements on set. He was rushed to hospital and Barry Letts, the producer and a seasoned director, stepped in and directed the remainder of the production. Camfield's name still appears on the credits, a move by Letts to safe guard future offers of work for Camfield. It's noticeable that Camfield doesn't return to Doctor Who until after Letts & Pertwee depart. Barry Letts safe guarding Camfield's health perhaps? Maybe, but Letts would later use Camfield on the classic serial Beau Geste and indeed had Camfield booked for another directing job when he passed away in 1984. It looks as if the reason for Camfield's absence is that he & Pertwee hadn't particularly got on during the production so we will be deprived of the services of one of Doctor Who's better directors for the next few years worth of viewings.

273 Inferno: Episode Two

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 273
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 16 May 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

A Unit soldier, Wyatt, is attacked by Slocum. Slocum is shot and collapses against the wall scorching it. The Doctor is able to bring the reactor under control. The Doctor believes he has heard the screaming noise Slocum was making at the Krakatoa volcanic eruption. Wyatt, and the injured technician Bromley escape. The Doctor encounters Wyatt high on top of the project's gas cylinders where Wyatt falls to his death, but Bromley stays hidden. More of the green slime has come up the drill pipe and Stahlman accidentally touches it. Annoyed by the warnings given by the computer he sabotages it, cuts off the Doctor's power and advances penetration time to 49 hours. The Doctor surreptitiously reconnects his power and the sends Liz on an errand to check his calculations. When she realises she's been duped she and the Brigadier return to find the Doctor, Tardis Console and Bessie vanishing.

Again it's the little touches in this episode that make it so good: the phone ringing throughout the confrontation with Slocum as Stahlman gets more and more irate that nobody will answer it not realising that the phone itself is agitating the situation. It's good stuff and a level beyond what we'd normally see on Doctor Who. The gas holders on the exterior of the drilling complex give an industrial feel to proceedings and they're not unlike the fuel complex seen in the previous story. The one locations used by the story is Berry Wiggins and Co Ltd, a bitumen manufacturer found by the crew while they were out scouting another potential location. Fire Hazard was a major risk at the site so smoking was strictly forbidden and footwear with steel caps was banned in case of sparks. You have to ask why the Brigadier & the Doctor go up onto the walkway between the gas holders to have their little chat, there seems to be no reason for it. There's nothing up there and it connects to nowhere that couldn't be more easily reached on the ground. As is well documented Jon Pertwee had a fear of heights and had to be taken up onto the gas holder by Havok stuntmen Terry Walsh & Alan Chuntz and walked about till he was comfortable. Another of the Havok team, it's chief Derek Ware, gets a credited part here playing Private Wyatt. Several of the location scenes in this episode were filmed on 1st April 1970, and a fourth member of the stunt team, Derek Martin, found himself a victim of a practical joke played by the cast & crew when he was made to believe that his beloved 1964 2.8 Jaguar had been damaged in an accident. Quite a high number of cast & crew tales exist from this story, indicating it was a memorable experience for those involved. One of them has gone down in convention circuit legend and we'll get to the tomorrow!

The location filming completed before the studio sessions, This episode is the first to be filmed as part of a change to established recording routine, previously one a week to two a fortnight. The idea was to record one episode on the first day and the second on the next but Douglas Camfield used the first day for camera rehearsals and filmed both episodes on the second day.

This is the first episode we get to see the Doctor use Venusian Karate as he immobilises Stahlman in the Brigadier's office.

The final seven episodes of the season hadn't yet had a story attached to them at the point that Barry Letts became producer of Doctor Who. Don Houghton had been a script editor on Crossroads at the point Terrance Dicks had worked on the show and had read in a scientific journal about a real life project to dig into the Earth's crust that had been abandoned under somewhat mysterious circumstances which prompted Houghton to develop a storyline which ran to four parts. However the production team needed a seven part story to close the season. Fortunately Terrance Dicks had an idea on how to extend the story.......

272 Inferno: Episode One

EPISODE: Inferno: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 272
STORY NUMBER: 054
TRANSMITTED: 09 May 1970
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Inferno
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

We've got proper titles for this story, no break in the middle for the reprise, but the title, writer credit and episode number captions are displayed over colour film of lava flow seen in monochrome in previous black & white Doctor Who stories.

The Doctor is driving to work singing as technician Harry Slocum is cycling to the the control room, called in by Sir Keith Gold to look at #2 output pipe. Professor Stahlman, the project's head, is unhappy that drilling had slowed, and is angry with Sir Keith Gold for ordering the maintenance, arguing the he is in charge of the drilling while Sir Keith "is in charge of the canteen". Slocum burns his hand on the green gunge seeping from pipe. Sir Keith tells Petra Williams, Stahlman's assistant, that he's sent for Greg Sutton a drilling consultant. A dazed Slocum savagely attacks another member of staff. Later Unit are searching for the missing Slocum. The wrench he used to murder his colleague is still warm. The Doctor is at the project because he's interested in the penetration of the Earth's crust and is advising the project. Greg Sutton has arrived and is briefed by Sir Keith. It is 60 hours to penetration. Sir Keith introduces Greg Sutton to Petra Williams & Professor Stahlman both of whom snub him. The Doctor is worried that the computer's warnings are being ignored. He is borrowing reactor power for his own project. He has brought the Tardis console to an outbuilding and is attempting to fix it. Liz tries to persuade him it's too dangerous to make a trial run with the console but he won't be deterred. Slocum, transformed into a hairy being with green skin attacks & sabotages the reactor switching room as the Doctor begins his test. The Doctor vanishes, materialising in a nightmare limbo like dimension which he only escapes from when Liz cuts the power. He wonders where he was and where it led to. An alert sounds at the drill head. Stahlman refuses to put safety procedures into action and continues drilling. Analysing the data and hearing a Unit troop has been murdered he deduces the problem lies in the reactor room. The Doctor & Brigadier find the wounded technician in the reactor room and are confronted by Slocum.

Right: Have you got a copy of Inferno on your shelves? No? Buy One Now at Amazon by Clicking Here. Seriously, do it. If you buy ONE Doctor Who story because of this Blog then it should be this one. It was £5.49 when I last looked which is a bargain. Take away any child hood association of watching certain stories and Inferno is my favourite Doctor Who story. Not a typical tale by any means and, as we'll see, it's the only "classic" Doctor Who story to use a certain well known Science Fiction plot device. And what's more it does it so well... But I'm getting ahead of myself here....

This episode sets up what's to come. But even the set up feels different, opening with the jolly scenes of the Doctor driving in Bessie while singing compared to Slocum, making his way across an industrial compound not dissimilar to the rocket fuel area in the last story. There's some lovely little touches here: Douglas Camfield's back directing and the notorious armyophile has immediately fixed one of the things that had been annoying Barry Letts: The Unit soldiers are in regular army uniform. Then we have the Doctor's automatic door opener, astounding the unit troop but familiar to many people who put their car in a garage over night. And there's something here you probably won't notice because it's missing: There's no music in this episode, just industrial noise in the background. Little things, but it sets this first episode and thus the rest of the story aside as being something a bit different.

Because Douglas Camfield is at the helm, the familiar faces are present and correct. Welcome back to Sheila Dunn (The Director's Mrs playing Petra Williams, a part he attempted to cast Kate O'Mara in), Walter Randall (Harry Slocum) and Ian Fairbairn (Bromley). Derek Newark (Greg Sutton) initially appears to have no previous with Camfield, his sole prior Doctor Who being as Za in An Unearthly Child, directed by Waris Hussein. However if you read down the order on the production credits you'll spot one of the Production Assistants was Douglas Camfield. Olaf Pooley (Professor Stahlman) is the series major guest star and is one of the few Doctor Who actors to also appear in Star Trek (Voyager in his case). At the time of writing he's still alive aged 95. Christopher Benjamin (Sir Keith Gold ) is on is his Doctor Who debut here and he's one of the few actors to be in both classic and new Doctor Who returning as Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and Colonel Hugh in The Unicorn and the Wasp. David Simeon I have met (but had no idea it was him) when we gatecrashed a Doctor Who convention in Aldbourne. He also plays television presenter 1970 and Alastair Fergus in The Dæmons.

This is the first episode we've come across to use Reverse Standards Conversion (RSC) for it's DVD release. Inferno survives as a 525 line NTSC video used to broadcast the story in America, a conversion from the original 625 line PAL video recording. These videos can be shown in the UK by applying the process by which NTSC programs are normally converted to PAL. However this results in a soft picture and a certain amount of motion judder. The RSC process - and I won't even pretend to understand the intricacies - attempts to unpick the original conversion and give a video look that's closer to the original.

271 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Seven

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Seven
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 271
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 02 May 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording partially recoloured using 525 off air video

The Doctor bargains for his life agreeing to build a better communications device for Carrington. Carrington takes one of the aliens to Space Headquarters and prepares to make a live television broadcast revealing their existence to the world and calling for an attack on their Spacecraft. He has the Unit troops replaced with his own and the Brigadier arrested, but the Brigadier escapes. The Doctor has used the communication device to signal for help and his transmissions have been picked up by Unit's radio operator. Unit raids the bunker freeing the Doctor & Liz. The now captive Reegan suggests they use the remaining two aliens to get back into space control where they arrest Carrington just before he is able to broadcast live to the world. The alien ship is signalled that their Ambassadors are safe and arrangements are made to return them, finally allowing the Astronauts to come home.

If anything this episode is Unit & the Brigadier's episode. He gets a nice little action sequence breaking out of the Space Centre, raids the bunker, gets back into the Space Centre and arrests the villain. Unfortunately it is spoilt in the middle by the Unit troops riding into battle, to attack the Bunker, in Bessie accompanied by the same music used as they raid the warehouse in the first episode!

Ambassadors of Death is a bit of an odd beast. It's individual parts might feel like they're padded somewhat but put them all together it feels bigger than the sum of it's parts. We've labelled Carrington as the Villain of the piece but in as way his just misguided having taken the accidental death of his co-pilot Jim Danials the wrong way and been greatly affected by the experience. He gets very little condemnation from the Doctor at the end of the story. In all respects Ralph Cornish's analysis that the General is "quite mad" would seem to be accurate. The Alien Ambassadors are reduced to pawns in his hands and he ends up provoking the very conflict he believed was coming. Only the Doctor & the Brigadier's action prevents it.

Joining the cast for this episode only playing Private Johnson, Unit's Radio Operator, is Geoffrey Beevers, the husband of companion Caroline John. He'll be back in The Keeper of Traken playing the Master.

This episode has the Doctor's first close brush with television, just failing to appear on it. We'd seen a news broadcast concerning activities the Doctor is involved in all the way back in The War Machines (also directed by Michael Ferguson). In the following years the Third Doctor will gatecrash a live broadcast of an archaeological dig and interrupt a news broadcast of a peace conference. I think the next time we see a television set after that is during a little end joke in Remembrance of the Daleks.

Fact Philip couldn't squeeze in anywhere else: Ambassadors of Death is Doctor Who & TV Historian Andrew Pixley's favourite Doctor Who story.

For one of the earlier broadcast Jon Pertwee serials it's ended up being one of the last released on two formats already. For many years it was one of three Pertwee stories not adapted by Target Books - the following story Inferno was another. It eventually ended up being the last Pertwee story released in the process turning Pertwee into the first Doctor to have all his stories adapted and creating a run of books from The War Games to The Ribos Operation. The Video meanwhile was released on 20th May 2002 and was one of the last Pertwee releases. I know Invasion Of The Dinosaurs was the last story released on 20/10/2003 and can't think of a Pertwee story released in between. The Soundtrack of The Ambassadors of Death has a CD Audiobook with narration by Caroline John. A DVD was due to be released earlier this month but due to some issues with the colour restoration it's dropped off the schedules.

270 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Six

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 270
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 25 April 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording partially recoloured using 525 off air video

The Doctor is summoned into the alien ship where he meets the three Earth astronauts who have had their minds conditioned to believe they have returned to Earth. Their captor, hidden behind a screen, wishes to know what has happened to the Ambassadors he sent to Earth. The Doctor promises to return them in exchange for the Astronauts and returns to Earth where he is gassed in the decontamination chamber and kidnapped by Reegan. Put in the bunker with Liz they are shocked when the door opens and General Carrington walks in: He has come to kill the Doctor.

With this episode Doctor Who finally cracks open the CSO big time to provide the odd backdrop inside the alien ship and the effect of the Doctor sinking from the capsule to the floor. Finally the villain of the piece stands unmasked: It is Carrington after all. OK, it's been obvious for sometime. I asked Liz at the top of the episode who she thought the villain was, She said who? I told her and she replied "That's obvious - I thought for a minute there was someone above him!"

The Alien Voices are provided by Peter Halliday who we saw onscreen as Packer in The Invasion and heard as the Silurian voices in the previous story. He'll be back as Plectrac in Carnival of Monsters, a soldier in City of Death and the Vicar in Remembrance of the Daleks.

During the Doctor's stay on Earth we see several deviations from history as we know it and one of the more obvious ones involves the UK space program. In this story the UK is mounting a manned mission to Mars not that long after the Americans got to the Moon in real life. At the time the intention was to set these episodes in the near future and indeed the Doctor's third companion from this era, Sarah Jane Smith, will later claim to be from 1980. But even at that time the Americans were struggling to get their Space Shuttle launched and showed no sign of getting anywhere near Mars. So how did the UK, who don't have a great real world track record with space flight, manage such a feat, and then beat it by sending an astronaut to Jupiter in The Android Invasion? The obvious answer can be found in a previous Doctor Who story: the technology has been salvaged from the failed Cyberman Invasion and from the wreckage of craft destroyed in that story. Perhaps some were even captured whole on the ground at International Electromatics plants?

Which brings us onto the thorny issue of when this story is set. The intention is that this story should be set in the near future (present day plus 5 to 10 years). The evidence on screen, technological advances (attributable to the Cyberman Invasion) and Sarah's dating claim, do point very much to it being set in the early seventies when the episodes were shown. This is the view I take and will stick my fingers in my ears when we get to Sarah's line in Pyramids of Mars.

269 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Five

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 269
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 18 April 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

The Brigadier shoots at the alien but the bullets have no effect and it escapes. Liz helps Lennox to escape and sends him to the Brigadier, where he's put into protective custody. With all the astronauts suddenly unavailable, The Doctor decides to pilot Cornish's planned flight back to Mars Probe 7. Reegan infiltrates the Space Centre, killing Lennox with a Radioactive isotope and sabotaging the fuel mix to the rocket. Carrington forcibly objects to the rocket's flight but Cornish reminds him he has no power to stop it. On launch the Doctor experiences difficulties but brings the capsule under control. He docks with the Mars Probe, but the ship is then approached by a much larger alien ship.

Some more Pertwee gurning during this episode as he's trapped in the out of control space capsule, but most of the episode concerns the rocket's launch. There's some nice location filming here, shot at Southall Gas Works which effectively substitutes for the Space Centre Fuel Plant.

Two of the technicians in this episode have other Doctor Who form. Roy Scammell is an RSF Sentry in the next story Inferno. He was a stunt man, specialising in falls, and a member of the HAVOK stunt agency, so I think we can be sure he's the one that Reegan pushes over the balcony. Much later he was also the Stunt Arranger for Delta and the Bannermen. Carl Conway, who I presume is the speaking male technician later appears as the US Correspondent in The War Machines, a previous Doctor Who story directed by Michael Fergusson. His female counterpart in the same scene is terrible looking thoroughly bored when perhaps concentration or concern might be better emotions to be expressing!

The big casting highlight here can be found near the start of the episode (we cheered when he turned up!) Rejoining the cast in this episode is John Levene as the promoted Benton, who previously appeared in the Invasion, now a Sergeant. In the planning stages for the following story Inferno the director of that story Douglas Camfield decided to employ John Levene as the same character he played in Camfield's previous story The Invasion. Once that decision was made the production team decided to replace the role of the scripted sergeant (whose surname was apparently West) with John Levene's character which provides a nice bit of continuity for the following story and helps to strengthen it's themes. Levene would appear in every Earth bound unit story from here till The Android Invasion.

This is the second time the Doctor has taken a rocket into space after the Second Doctor's efforts in Seeds of Death, also directed by Michael Ferguson. If you think that the spacecraft set in this story looks rather good then that's due to two separate BBC productions paying for & using it. After it appeared in Doctor Who is was used in Doomwatch, the science fiction series created by former Doctor Who script editor Gerry Davis & writing partner Kit Pedler, who had previously created the Cybermen. The Doomwatch episode it appears in is Re-Entry Forbidden, where it appears as Sunfire One, which aired 16th March 1970, just before Ambassadors Of Death began broadcasting.

This is the only episode of this story that has been completely recoloured.

268 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Four

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 268
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 11 April 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film

Liz is saved by those chasing her and brought to where Reegan is keeping the aliens where she's forced to help Lennox. Doctor Taltalian returns to the space centre revealing he was acting under General Carrington's orders. The Doctor, working to decode the alien transmissions, receives a phone call threatening Liz's life. Liz, with help from Lennox, escapes from where the aliens are being kept but is immediately recaptured by Doctor Taltalian who has come too see Reegan. Taltalian gives Reegan a device to allow him to communicate with the aliens, and in return is given a time bomb to kill the Doctor. When he returns to the space centre, the bomb goes off when set, killing Taltalian. The Doctor determines this wasn't a fault and finds the device for deciphering the alien communication. One of the aliens is brought to the Space Centre where it kills Sir James Quinlan. Finding the body the Doctor does not see the alien, which was hiding in the room, now leaning over him.

Not bad this episode, though Taltalian's loss of accent in his one location scene is obvious: at the time it was filmed they hadn't decided to give Taltalian an accent. When you see this episode there's enough information there for you to join the dots and work out who's behind the alien's second kidnapping... if you hadn't guessed already! The why is perhaps a little less obvious. Liz escaping and being recaptured filled five minutes giving us some shots of her running across a field but it's an obvious time waster especially when she's recaptured so quickly. There's no colour at all in this episode but we'll make up for that over the next two.

Making his credited Doctor Who debut here is Max Faulkner as a UNIT Soldier. He'll be back in The Monster of Peladon (as a miner), Planet of the Spiders (as a Guard Captain), Genesis of the Daleks (as a Thal Guard), The Android Invasion (as Corporal Adams) & The Invasion of Time (as Nesbin) plus served as Fight Arranger on The Hand of Fear. John Lord, Masters, was previously a Yeti in The Web of Fear while Tony Harwood, Flynn, had a long history of being a monster in Doctor Who starting with a Cyberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen, a Yeti in The Abominable Snowmen, Rintan, an Ice Warrior in The Ice Warriors and another Ice Warrior in The Seeds of Death.

267 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 267
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 04 April 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording partially recoloured using 525 off air video

Recovery 7 is opened up but is empty, the voices supplied by a tape recorder. A high amount of radiation is detected within. The Astronauts were seized during a fake security check. Sir James Quinlan, Minister for Technology, introduces the Doctor & the Brigadier to General Carrington (who we've seen at the warehouse and leading the raid). He tells them the Astronauts have been infected with a highly contagious form of radiation and isolated. The Doctor demands to see them, but when he arrives at the site where they were being kept he find them gone. They have been abducted by Reegan and two other men. Reegan drives the van used in the kidnap away with his two heavies riding in the back with astronauts, but he pauses at a quarry and, while wearing a radiation suit, dumps their bodies. The Doctor determines the astronauts could not have stood the amount of radiation they're now emitting so concludes that the astronauts are still in space and what returned to Earth is the astronauts. Reegan is being aided in caring for the astronauts by disgraced scientist Lennox. They are feeding them more radiation to keep them alive. Reegan receives orders to deal with the Doctor & Liz. Liz is summoned to where Unit has found the bodies but is pursued in a car. She flees on foot onto a weir where she slips over the side.....

A seven part Doctor Who story is inevitably going to have a little padding and there's some evidence of it here as the Astronauts are kidnapped twice in the episode, first by General Carrington's group and then by Reegan & his unseen masters. Reegan evidentially knows what he's doing using the astronauts to kill off his accomplices in the heist. The first kidnap serves to introduce General Carrington, ok we've seen him already but it introduces him to the Doctor & the Brigadier. Why not have the General, who we know is a Mars Probe veteran, at the Space Centre anyway, cut out the two expensive set pieces and then have Reegan heist the astronauts from the Space centre? But where the Silurians was slow and stretched Ambassadors is at least moving on at a fair click and if you have to pad a bit of action to take the viewers mind off things isn't the worst thing to do. We'll come back to padding a story out in Inferno where the trick used there to extend the story works superbly.

This serial is credited to David Whitaker, but evidence points to the final version being written by other people. The serial was apparently commissioned as early as 1968 by Derrick Sherwin originally as a six parter, possibly making it clear why there's so much obvious padding in the final version: it's been stretched by one episode. Sherwin, unhappy with what Whitaker turned in, had Assistant Script Editor Trevor Ray revise episode one but the final scripts for the remaining episodes were written by Malcolm Hulke, who received no onscreen credit. There is some confusion as to exactly what David Whitaker did write for this serial but consensus is that he wrote nothing in script form beyond episode 3.

He's been in both previous episodes but John Abineri is named here as General Carrington. He'd previously been Dutch government advisor Van Lutyens in Fury from the Deep and will return in Death to the Daleks as Railton & The Power of Kroll as Ranquin). In fact all of the new cast members in this episode have prior Doctor Who form: William Dysart, playing Reegan, appeared briefly as Alexander McLaren in The Highlanders. Both Liz and I were struck quite how much he looks like John Cleese! Dallas Cavell , playing Sir James Quinlan, was the Road Works Overseer who Hartnell tricks in The Reign of Terror, Bors, one of the convicts on Desperus, in The Daleks' Master Plan, was another member of the cast to appear in The Highlanders as Trask and finally is the the Head of Security Castrovalva. Steve Peters Astronaut Joe Lefee & his Alien counterpart was an Ice Warrior in The Seeds of Death & a Pirate Guard in The Space Pirates as well as being an uncredited extra in The Romans. Cyril Shaps, as Doctor Lennox Lennox, was the nervous Viner in The Tomb of the Cybermen and will return as Professor Herbert Clegg Planet of the Spiders and as the Archimandrite in The Androids of Tara.

This is the 24th consecutive episode of Doctor Who that we've watched passing the previous longest run of 23 episodes from Reign of Terror 1 to The Crusade 1. Obvious this run continues for a little while yet.... In fact it's only real interruption between now and the end of the series is for six episodes made in 1979 that were never completed.

266 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 266
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 28 March 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Malcolm Hulke - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording partially recoloured using 525 off air video

Doctor Taltalian escapes from the room leaving Liz & The Doctor behind. When Recovery 7 undocks from Mars Probe 7 it's tracked to Earth. Unit recovers it and transports it to the space centre but they are ambushed by men led by the suited gentleman from the warehouse and the spaceship is seized. The Doctor recovers it and returns it to the space centre but the men escape. The Astronauts are trying to communicate but the Doctor realises the same things are being repeated and orders the capsule opened....

An episode dominated by the fight scene as the Unit convoy is ambushed. Liz said "How do the guns just knock them over?" I think the clue is the cylinder on the troops back: They're compressed air guns. Apparently the fight scene caused the production to hideously overspend: Terrance Dicks had got Malcolm Hulke to right something simple involving the lorry being directed the wrong way to save money but Michael Fegusson embellished it to include motor cyclists, helicopters and the entire Havok stunt team!

Unlike the first episode of this story, and all twelve previous Pertwee episodes, we're watching this episode mostly in Black & White. The remaining six episodes of this story exist as both black & white film recordings, found at BBC Enterprises, and off air colour video tapes recorded in the USA just like Doctor Who & the Silurians. Attempts have been made to recolour the story previously by applying the colour signal from the video tapes to the higher definition film recording. Episode 5 was successfully recoloured in early 1990s at the same time of the initial recolourings of other stories such as The Daemons, Terror of the Autons & The Silurians. However the remaining episodes were unable to be properly restored due to an odd rainbow patterning effect seen on the videotape. For this video release additional sections of stable colour were reinstated in episodes 2, 3, 6 & 7.

It was hoped that complete recolourisation could be achieved for a DVD release, and indeed Ambassadors of Death was originally scheduled to be part of a 2-pack with The Sun Makers (I do worry about the themes of some of this year's 2 packs. Has someone pinned the remaining titles to the wall and thrown darts at it to pair them up?). However rising costs from the firm that helped recolour Planet of the Daleks 3 plus a bad UK Pound to US Dollar exchange rate has appeared to put a hopefully temporary halt to it. Perhaps the Chroma Dot Colour Recovery Process (as nutty a piece of technical necromancy as you'll ever come across) may come to our aid.

265 The Ambassadors of Death: Episode One

EPISODE: The Ambassadors of Death: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 265
STORY NUMBER: 053
TRANSMITTED: 21 March 1970
WRITER: David Whitaker (and Trevor Ray - Uncredited)
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: VHS: Doctor Who-Ambassadors of Death
Episode Format: 625 video

After months of no communication Mars Probe 7 is returning to Earth. Recovery 7 has launched to meet it carrying astronaut Charles Van Lyden. The docking is being broadcast live on television but as Van Lyden opens the hatch an eerie noise is heard and communications are cut off. The Doctor races to the space centre and with the help of the already present Brigadier convinces flight controller Professor Ralph Cornish to allow him to help. The Doctor believes the noise is a message. A second transmission is heard, which is replied to. The Doctor & Brigadier set up monitoring and triangulate the repeated reply to a warehouse in London which is stormed by Unit troops, who meet stiff opposition, allowing the besuited man communicating with the capsule to escape. They find some radio equipment which is destroyed by a self destruct device. The Doctor is given computer time to decode the messages but when he & Liz enter the computer room they are held at gunpoint by Doctor Taltalian.

Ambassadors of Death 1 is very much a time machine back to the seventies. On the one hand you've got a live space broadcast, very popular still at the time, with the Doctor watching at homd and on the other you've got the Unit troops enacting an episode of The Sweeney. Fresh from seven episodes of Silurian boredom - they get name checked at the top of the episode - it makes a nice change. Once again Liz is with me and despite having been warned "What so I want to pay attention to the titles for?" she wet herself when they returned after the opening moments of the show presenting us with the word "The Ambassadors" and then the word "OF DEATH" flies onto the screen with a comedy sound effect. They don't try that one again after this story! As the spacecraft docks she was entertained by Dudley Simpson's impersonation of Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" which then transforms into a Hamlet Cigar advert. Add it all together with the spaceships docking and you get something resembling a seventies film where, as the hero & heroine share their passion for each other we instead get to see alternate suggestive imagery replacing what's actually going on! There's a rather nice sequence in the opening moments where we get to see the Doctor playing with the Tardis console and he projects first Liz then himself several seconds into the future. It's a nice touch heralding what will come in the next story.

Two firsts for this episode: One's in the episode itself, and the other has been bequeathed to it by history. It's the first episode of Doctor Who to feature an "ACTION BY HAVOK" credit on the end titles (My friend Matthew will be cheering - it's his favourite Doctor Who credit). HAVOK were a stunt agency formed by regular Doctor Who stuntman Derek Ware and are used for many of the early earth bound Pertwee serials. Ware himself will pop up in various minor roles throughout Pertwee's time as Doctor Who. This episode has become the first episode of Doctor Who to survive on it's original 625 line video tape and since no 405 line episodes exist on their transmission tapes it's the earliest surviving episode of Doctor Who on video. As we'll see it's a bit of a shame that they didn't hang on to the remaining six episodes of this story.

We've seen several of the actors in this episode before: Professor Ralph Cornish is played by Ronald Allen who was Rago in The Dominators. Liz recognised him from Crossroads where he played David Hunter. Ric Felgate (Astronaut Charles Van Lyden) appears in two of director Michael Feguson's previous serials as Roy Stone in The War Machines and Brent in The Seeds of Death. The Internet claims Ric Felgate helped create Play School but I can't find any evidence to substantiate this. Meanwhile a book I have, which isn't known for being 100% reliable, claims he's Michael Ferguson's Brother in Law. Doubting the validity of this information I put it to m'learned friends on the Internet. Toby Hadoke (Moths Ate My Scarf & Running Through Corridors) replied thus:

He was married to Cynthia Felgate who produced Play School, and he was Michael Ferguson's brother in law, but I think it may have been more complicated than Cynthia simply being Michael's sister (did maybe Michael's sister marry his brother or something?). I can't remember exactly, but it's on the Ambassadors commentary.

I was moderating as it happens A long, but very rewarding day.

Actually, I don't know if I talked to Michael about it off mic or on. If I'm not 100% sure of a fact I'll try to address it between eps so I'm clear and on the right track when we start recording again. I hope I remembered to bring it up after getting it clarified - it was a while ago now.

On his Doctor Who onscreen debut here is one of the true greats of Doctor Who: Michael Wisher, playing bearded TV reported John Wakefield. He's famed for bringing Davros, the creator of the Daleks, to life in Genesis of the Daleks but you can also see/hear him in Terror of the Autons (as Rex Farrel), Carnival of Monsters (as Kalik), Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks & Genesis of the Daleks (as Dalek voices), Revenge of the Cybermen (as Magrik) and Planet of Evil (as Morelli and voice of Ranjit). I've read one website the says he did uncredited voice work on Michael Fergusson's previous story, The Seeds of Death, but since it's just one site and doesn't say what he voiced I'm reluctant to include it. Either way this is his first on screen appearance.

264 Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Seven

EPISODE: Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Seven
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 264
STORY NUMBER: 052
TRANSMITTED: 14 March 1970
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface (The Silurians / The Sea Devils / Warriors of the Deep)
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

I'm afraid Liz and I were despairing a little after watching the first few episodes .....

As the Silurians kidnap the Doctor Liz (Ayres - this is going to get confusing, roll on Terror of the Autons) wonders why do the Silurians head bang when using their mind powers? Liz (Shaw) figures out the Doctor's formula and has it distributed. The Young Silurian ("Our leader is dead, I killed him, I am Leader now!") has a back up plan. Liz (Ayres) then jokes that the Silurians are playing a game of "Simon says" except using "Leader Says" - "I didn't say Leader says!". The Silurians bring their weapon to disperse the Van Allan belts and The Doctor to the reactor control room. The Doctor overloads the reactor, which will then explode so the Silurians retreat to the shelter to go back into hibernation and sleep out the period of radioactivity. The Young Silurian stays awake to operate the now damaged hibernation mechanism. With the reactor about to melt down I turned to Liz and said "I predict some polarity reversal coming soon". So close and yet so far because the Doctor stops the reactor by "Fusing the control of the Neutron Flow!". The Doctor ventures into the caves to negotiate with the Silurians and tell them that the explosion has been averted. The young Silurian attacks him but the Brigadier kills it. The Doctor plans to revive the Silurians one by one and goes to London with Liz to fetch equipment. As they leave they witness explosions as the Brigadier seals the caves, the Doctor believing he has killed the Silurians within.

The dialogue between the Brigadier and the trooper makes it seem like the caves have just been sealed whereas the Doctor thinks they've been killed: Later events would support the initial conclusion. This episode sees the debut of part of the Third Doctor's catchphrase: "Reverse the polarity of the Neutron Flow", which became famed once Pertwee and Terrance Dicks start telling stories at conventions about how Pertwee found he could remember the line by setting it to a tune and thus it got slipped into every story. Now we get a lot of reversed polarities, and a lot of things done to the Neutron Flow but it only gets reversed ONCE during Pertwee's tenure, during this story's sequel The Sea Devils before making an encore performance during the Five Doctors.

The Silurians themselves have proved popular over the years: as we mention there's an on screen sequel during the Pertwee years in The Sea Devils, they appear in at least one of the wonderful but woefully uncollected back up stories during the early issues of Doctor Who weekly, return for a team up with the Sea Devils in Warriors of the Deep and have been back in the new series. I can see the appeal of the concept of a creature that lived on Earth before us coming back to life and wanting it's plant back, but I don't think this story works well on screen. It's possible that people's fondness for it stems from the Malcolm Hulke novelization of the story as "Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters", one of the first Target books released that has recently been reissued.

Back to the Pertwee archive: So we've got two copies of the Silurians: a high quality black & white film and a low quality colour video tape. What if it was possible to lift the colour signal off the video tape and apply it to the black & white film? Bonkers ides, but that's exactly what the Doctor Who Restoration Team did, first producing a version of the Daemons for it's 1992 repeat that was released shortly after on video, then applying the same technique to the Silurians (released on video in 1993) and Terror of the Autons before running into technical difficulty with Ambassadors of Death (see episode 2 of that story for details in a few days time). The process was repeated for the Silurians and Terror of the Autons for the 1999 repeat season, this version of Terror never seeing the light of day in the end, and again for their DVD release in 2008 & 2011 respectively. The 2008 Silurians version, part of Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface along with The Sea Devils & Warriors of the Deep is jaw droppingly good when compared to the previous versions.

I said that was mad. Wait till you see what they've thought up now for recolouring black & white stories when we get to Mind of Evil & Planet of the Daleks episode 3!

263 Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Six

EPISODE: Doctor Who and the Silurians: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 263
STORY NUMBER: 052
TRANSMITTED: 07 March 1970
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Beneath the Surface (The Silurians / The Sea Devils / Warriors of the Deep)
Episode Format: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

The Doctor returns to the centre to begin work on finding a vaccine for the virus. Centre staff are given a wide ranging antibiotic in an attempt to hold it at bay, but Doctor Lawrence refuses his believing the virus doesn't exist and it's another attempt to interrupt his work. Masters returns to London by train, feeling unwell, and collapses after getting out of a taxi. All over the capital people start to die. The Brigadier starts to receive reports of virus cases from abroad. Lawrence, the virus having taken hold, attacks the Brigadier and dies. The Doctor announces he has found a cure but as he is transcribing the formula Silurians enter the centre and kidnap him.

This episode is essentially "The Doctor races to find a a cure while people start dying in London" Rightly famed for it's location sequence, nicely faded back to the research centre it's something different and there's something happening but it's a bit too little too late. Liz is still with me watching this story, though it's severely testing her patience and she's resorted to Mumsnet to get her through it. She laughs as Lawrence dies ascribing his performance to "Crazy Person Acting 101". We both spot that this is the third episode this story to end with bug eyed gurning Pertwee!

Private Wright in this episode is Derek Pollitt, previously the very Welsh Driver Evans in The Web of Fear, and latterly A. St. John D. Caldera in Shada.

Location filming for this episode took place at Marylebone Station, Melcombe Place, Dorset Square and Swancombe House on 12 November 1969. Unfortunately they were back at Marylebone Station twelve days later to reshoot the scenes there when it was discovered that film recorded at this location had been scratched. To reduce costs members of the production staff and their friends fill in for credited actors during the reshot sequences. I'm told Timothy Combe and Terrance Dicks can be seen in this sequence: I think I've spotted Terrance striding across the concourse holding a briefcase in a long shot. The only person I am sure about is the Ticket Collector who is played by assistant script editor Trevor Ray.