613 The Awakening Part One

EPISODE: The Awakening Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 613
STORY NUMBER: 133
TRANSMITTED: Thursday 19 January 1984
WRITER: Eric Pringle
DIRECTOR: Michael Owen Morris
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 7.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Earth Story (The Gunfighters/The Awakening)

The Tardis lands in the abandoned church in the village of Little Hodcombe in 1984 so Tegan can visit her Grandfather. They find a massive crack in the church wall, psychic phantoms throughout the village and war games in progress re-enacting a civil war clash of 1643. They are captured by men working for Sir George Hutchinson. Tegan & Turlough escape but are separated. The Doctor escapes through a secret passage to the church in the company of Jane Hampden who opposes the war games. They find a lump of metal in the passage which was dropped by Sir George which the Doctor identifies as Tinclavic mined on Raaga, which is used by the people of Harkol in their space probes. He meets Will Chandler, a boy from 1643 who finds himself transported to 1984 by the force at work in the village. The crack in the church wall has widened and the Doctor opens it further, revealing the face of the Malus before the Doctor is enveloped in smoke.

A church in an English village with a malevolent alien force at work? Yup, we're in pure Daemons territory here. It's all good stuff and when the Malus puts in it's appearance at the end of the episode it looks superb.

There's a little reference to a previous Doctor Who story in this episode: The Tinclavic the probe is made from was mined on the planet Raaga. Raaga is the planet where the Terileptiles in the Visitation were imprisoned where they were engaged in the Tinclavic mining.

Although one village appears in the story, two locations were used for the filming. The ford where Tegan is captured, The Church exterior (in real life St Bartolemew's), The War Memorial, farm and Manor House are found in Shapwick in Dorset. Meanwhile several of the side streets and the hillside plus a cottage & barn (seen in the next episode) are found in the village of Martin in Hampshire.

There's an cut scene from this episode featuring Kamelion, the robotic companion introduced in the King's Demons and not seen since. Set in the Tardis at the start this scene was thought lost for many years until it was discovered in the personal collection of former producer John Nathan-Turner and used on The Awakening DVD.