309 The Curse of Peladon: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Curse of Peladon: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 309
STORY NUMBER: 061
TRANSMITTED: 05 February 1972
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Lennie Mayne
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Peladon Tales: Curse of Peladon & Monster of Peladon
Episode Format: 525 video RSC

The Doctor spots the falling statue and saves the delegates with Hepesh blaming the incident on the spirit of Aggedor, the royal beast. Jo sneaks away during a throne room conference and discovers evidence that the Ice Warriors may have been responsible for the incident. Arcturus is attacked in his quarters and is found by the Doctor with a vital component of his life support system missing. After the Doctor saves his life the component is recovered by Jo from the Ice Warriors' quarters. Grun, the King's champion, leads the Doctor into the tunnels where he wanders into the shrine to Aggedor and is sentenced to death for trespassing on holy ground.

This episode really points the finger of suspicion at The Ice Warriors as being behind events playing very much on our, and the Doctor's, previous experience of them. Despite this they plead their innocence. But do we believe them?

Curse of Peladon has two notable technical achievements. It's the first studio bound Pertwee story with no location filming: In fact the only previous studio bound Pertwee episode is the Silurians episode 4. There's only one other studio bound Pertwee, this story's sequel Monster of Peladon. Beyond the two Peladon episode and the aforementioned Silurians 3 the following Pertwee episodes are the only other ones confined to the studio:

Mutants 6
Time Monster 5
Frontier in Space 1, 2 & 4
Planet of the Daleks 1-4 & 6
Death to the Daleks 4
Planet of the Daleks 3-6

Conversely the first Pertwee story features 100% location filming due to a strike at the BBC.

Curse of Peladon is also notable for being the first Doctor Who story shown out of it's filming order. After the first story of the season, Day of the Daleks, was completed the Sea Devils was made followed by this story, then the Mutants, the Time Monster & Carnival of Monsters which would be held over as the second story of the show's tenth anniversary season.