694 Ghost Light Part Three

"This place is like a madhouse "

EPISODE: Ghost Light Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 694
STORY NUMBER: 158
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 18 October 1989
WRITER: Marc Platt
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who : Ghost Light

Light explains to the Doctor how he came to Earth to catalogue all the species there but when he finished he discovered everything changed and he had to start again. During this survey Nimrod was taken as a specimen. Josiah was his "survey agent" sent out into the world and Control the control element for the investigation. Josiah rebeled against Light, imprisoning him and Control in their spaceship beneath the house. Josiah now plans to ascend the evoloutionary ladder by coming the top person in the land by assasinating Queen Victoria at a garden party that Redvers Fenn-Cooper has been invited to. Control now desires what Josiah has achieved and wishes to be transformed into a lady. Redvers elects to take her to the party instead of Josiah thwarting his plan. Light discovers that everything has changed again during his hibernation and decides to destroy all life on Earth. Control subdugates Josiah and retreats to the ship with him, Nimrod & Redvers to commence a new survey. Light overloads and dissipates into the house, the presence that Ace felt when she set fire to the house in her teens. When the Doctor asks her if she has any regrets she says she wished she'd blown it up instead.

I watched that and my mind just went WHAT ????? On screen it doesn't appear to make any sense at all and what's written above is a combination of what I can remember and what I read at The Tardis Wiki. The "Control wanting to be ladylike" stuff has just thrown me before until I realised this time that it's to do with her wanting to evolve like Josiah has. In case you wondering where the rest of the human cast got to Gwendolyne & her mother Mrs Pritchard got turned to stone by Light and Inspector Mackenzie, the cream of Scotland Yard, was turned into primordial soup by Josiah.

"Who was it who said Earthmen never invite their ancestors around for dinner?" asks the Doctor at the dinner table: Douglas Adams in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of course.

There's an element of Control that was inspired by Marc Platt's day job cataloguing radio programs for the BBC archive, a task that was never finished die to more being produced all the time.

The two new members of the cast are Sharon Duce as Control, in real life the partner of Dominic Guard (Olvir in Terminus) and John Hallam as Light who you can spot in the background of Flash Gordon as Luro, one of the Hawkman.

So Ghost Light: looks superb but makes no sense whatsoever! Forgive me but I like to feel like I have some clue what's going on when I watch Television. Script editor Andrew Cartmel feels that Ghost Light is the closest thing on screen to what was written in his entire time as Doctor Who script editor. I'd say that it's symbolic of his time as script editor: lots of big ideas, too many probably, I suspect he'd not got a real grasp of how to structure a piece of television drama that people can watch. At this stage he was telling people to write what they wanted and they were cutting it down, usually by about 20 minutes per story, in the edit. Compare this approach to Terrance Dicks or Bob Holmes....

Ghost Light marks an important moment in our journey: it was the last story filmed in the original run of Doctor Who. Two stories filmed before it, Curse of Fenric & Survival, were shown after it was.

Marc Platt went on to write for the Virgin New Adventures book range after adapting Ghost Light as a novel released in September 1990. It was released on video in May 1994 and on DVD on 20th September 2004.

693 Ghost Light Part Two

EPISODE: Ghost Light Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 693
STORY NUMBER: 158
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 11 October 1989
WRITER: Marc Platt
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who : Ghost Light

Gwendolyne shows the Doctor the body of a policeman, housed in one of the specimen drawers. Josiah's Neanderthal butler Nimrod saves Ace, but she smashes a window in the underground chamber filling it with light. The Doctor finds Josiah and takes him to the cellar, rescuing Ace & Nimrod but as dawn nears all the residents of the house retreat to their rooms. The Doctor wakes Inspector MacKenzie and gets Nimrod to tell his story. Ace & MacKenzie discover Gwendolyne & her mother, the housekeeper Mrs Pritchard, under sheets in the attic along with Josiah's discarded body and the stuffed form of Revd Matthews regressed to that of an ape. Nimrod goes to see the advice of Redvers Fenn-Cooper. At 6pm the inhabitants of the house comes to life but the Doctor uses the list to summon from the basement Control, a dishevelled figure dressed in rags, and it's companion light whose glowing presence fills the room.

I watched this and hadn't a clue what was going on. Yes, I can condense it down to a simple summary like that but that just doesn't do it justice. The amount of odd detail being thrown at us here is just so confusing. References to Java seemingly being a euphamism for death like Redvers' reference to the interior alluding to madness, Gwendolyne being the daughter of Mrs Pritchard and the owner of the house who Josiah has murdered, the evolutionary argument between the Revd Matthews and Josiah.... and then there's the cellar with the odd monsters and what seems to be a stone space ship.

Guest Cast: Ian Hogg as Josiah Samuel Smith was famous for playing Detective Sergeant Alan Rockliffe in Rockliffe's Babies and its follow-up Rockliffe's Folly. Lady Pritchard is played by Sylvia Syms who's got a long TV and film career while her daughter Gwendolyne is played by Katharine Schlesinger who had her name spelt wrong in the title slides. She'd recently been in a BBC Sitcom No Frills at the time of this episode's broadcast. John Nettleton as Reverend Ernest Matthews, to will almost certainly recognise as playing Sir Arnold Robinson the Cabinet Secretary in Yes Minister

Three of the cast have been in Doctor Who before but Frank Windsor, as Inspector Mackenzie, was most famous for playing another policeman Detective Sergeant John Watt in Z-Cars from 1962 to 1965 (Second Z-Cars Guest Star this year after James Ellis as Peter Warmsley in Battlefield), and thereafter its spin-offs Softly, Softly and Softly, Softly: Taskforce. He previous appeared in Doctor Who in the 1983 story King's Demons as Ranulf. Appearing as Redvers Fenn-Cooper is Michael Cochrane. Previously in Black Orchid as Charles Cranleigh. Since then his brother Martin Cochrane has appeared in Caves of Androzani as General Chelak and his sister in law Kate O'Mara was in Mark of the Rani and Time & The Rani as The Rani. Carl Forgione playing Nimrod, was previously in Planet of the spiders as Land but also has a Star Cops appearance to his anme as the Tour Guide in This Case to Be Opened in a Million Years.

692 Ghost Light Part One

EPISODE: Ghost Light Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 692
STORY NUMBER: 158
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 04 October 1989
WRITER: Marc Platt
DIRECTOR: Alan Wareing
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4.2 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who : Ghost Light

The Doctor takes Ace to a Victorian house which she dislikes, reminding him she's previously told him that she dislikes haunted houses. The meet a British explorer, hunting for Redfers Fenn-Cooper. He sees his reflection in a window, realising that is Fenn-Cooper before being led away by the house's staff. They meet the Reverend Ernest Matthews, come to see the house's owner to protest about the theories he has been espousing. Ace realises they are in Perivale, at Gabriel Chase a house whose ruin she visited when she was younger and terrified by. She flees as the house's owner Josiah Samuel Smith approaches the Doctor about ridding him of his enemy and discovers three creatures dressed in dinner jackets in the house's basement.

A dark house, the Doctor & companion under remote observation, odd servants including a Neanderthal butler.... you really can't go wrong can you? And I've got no real complaint to register against this episode itself.

Ghost Light is this year's "all in studio 3 parter", with Survival it's "all on location" counterpart. However there is a brief shot of location filming in these episodes: Stanton Court, in Weymouth near Dorset, and not far from locations used in both Curse of Fenric and Survival, serves as the exterior for Gabriel Chase, the house in this story.

Ghost Light was the final story of this season to be filmed. Here's the production vs broadcast order again:

7M The Curse of Fenric
7N Battlefield
7P Survival
7Q Ghost Light

while the broadcast order is

7N Battlefield
7Q Ghost Light
7M The Curse of Fenric
7P Survival

So all seems ok here but it comes a bit unstuck in the following story when Ace starts talking to the Doctor about the haunted house in Perivale and you think "Oh dear, we've already seen this, Ghost Light should be after Curse of Fenric"

Ghost Light is written by Marc Platt a fan working at the BBC who had been submitting stories to the Doctor Who production office since Robert Holmes and had been commended by the great man for submitting the only story even worthy of consideration. Ghost Light comes from a story that Platt had come up with called Lungbarrow, dealing with the Doctor's ancestral home on Gallifrey. Producer John Nathan-Turner wasn't keen on the idea but elements were salvaged and used in this script. I've read the novel that Lungbarrow became and can see similarities between the two. Don't bother looking for a copy on eBay as it goes for a few pennys now. It used to be available as a PDF on the BBC website but has now been removed. However a google search for Lungbarrow PDF should find you a copy quite quickly.

691 Battlefield Part Four

EPISODE: Battlefield Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 691
STORY NUMBER: 157
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 27 September 1989
WRITER: Ben Aaronovitch
DIRECTOR: Michael Kerrigan
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Battlefield

The Doctor & Brigadier capture Mordred but Morgaine orders the commander to attack again. The Doctor & Brigadier bring their captive to the hotel where he escapes as The Destroyer brings the hotel down round them. They find Ace & Shou Yuing in the rubble but Morgaine has escaped with the Destroyer & Excalibur. The Doctor, Brigadier and Ace follow Morgaine through the vortex she has created back to her lair. The Brigadier is attacked by the Destroyer and flung through the wall. The Doctor seizes the sword but the Destroyer is freed. Mordred finds his mother and both disappear from the building as the Doctor, Brigadier & Ace flee. The Doctor loads the Brigadier's gun with silver bullets, but is knocked out by his old friend who returns to the building alone to confront the Destroyer who he kills bringing the building down on them. Mordred & Morgaine capture the nuclear missile and begin it's detonation sequence, extracting the fail safe release code from Bambera's mind. Excalibur is returned to the ship where the Doctor discovers a note from himself saying that Arthur is dead and that Morgaine has gained control of the missile. The Brigadier & Ace destroy the ship on The Doctor's instructions while the Doctor confronts and defeats Morgaine, convincing her top stop the missile sequence. She demands to face Arthur but he tells her that she is dead, breaking her spirit. Mordred & Morgaine are locked up. The Doctor and his friends go to Lethbridge Stewart's house where the ladies go off together in Bessie leaving the men behind to cook the supper.

Hmmm. Apparently the Destroyer is meant to be a euphemism for Nuclear War. Really? That's not how it comes across on screen. He's just a monster, any subtext is completely lost. The story itself on screen just doesn't work. Yes the Special Edition on the Doctor Who - Battlefield DVD works better with some footage reinstated but even so it's still lacking something and doesn't really work: the Brigadier almost feels like a bit of a parody of his earlier self, Bambera is hamstrung by a useless catchphrase and the only characters that feel remotely real all get driven off together in episode 3! It's a huge disappointment because writer Ben Aaronovitch's previous Doctor Who story, Remembrance of the Daleks is just so good.

As originally written Battlefield was meant to kill the Brigadier off in spectacular manner saving the Earth and indeed it was under these conditions that Nicholas Courtney agreed to return as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. However by the time of filming the production team had changed their minds as to the long running character's fate. Courtney first appeared in the Douglas Camfield directed Dalek Masterplan in 1965 as Bret Vyon, opposite William Hartnell as Doctor Who, before bring cast by the same director as Captain Knight in Web of Fear with Patrick Troughton. However the actor playing Colonol Lethbridge Stewart dropped out and Courtney got promoted to Colonol. Another promotion, this time to Brigadier, followed when Lethbridge Stewart & Courtney returned for The Invasion and he went on to play the character opposite Jon Pertweein (deep breath) Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, The Dæmons, Day of the Daleks, The Sea Devils, The Time Monster, The Three Doctors, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs & Planet of the Spiders. In fact the only Pertwee stories that he ISN'T in are The Curse of Peladon, The Mutants, Carnival of Monsters, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks & The Monster of Peladon! He appeared twice with Tom Baker in Robot & Terror of the Zygons and twice with Peter Davison Mawdryn Undead & The Five Doctors. Colin Baker is the only Doctor in the original series that he didn't appear on screen with. This is Courtney's last role in mainstream televised Doctor Who. He returns for two radio productions, the Dimensions in Time charity special, a couple of Big Finish stories and one final television appearance opposite his former co-star Elizabeth Sladen in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Nicholas Courtney died 22 February 2011, aged 81. His passing was noted in the Doctor who episode "A Good Man Goes to War" where it was revealed that the Brigadier had also died in similar circumstances.

Battlefield was novelised in July 1991 by Marc Platt, the writer of the following story, Ghost Light. Bar the two Patrick Troughton Dalek stories, which were released several years later, this is the last Doctor Who story to be adapted by Target Books. Battlefield was repeated from 23 April to 14 May 1993 as the final story in a Doctor Who repeat season: it is the only Seventh Doctor serial to be repeated. It was released on Video on 24th January 2000 with some additional footage inserted. It was released on DVD on 26th December 2008 including a special edition movie edit which reinstated even more footage removed for the broadcast edition (details here.)

690 Battlefield Part Three

"....and gold tipped bullets for you know who!"

EPISODE: Battlefield Part Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 690
STORY NUMBER: 157
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 20 September 1989
WRITER: Ben Aaronovitch
DIRECTOR: Michael Kerrigan
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 3.6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Battlefield

The Doctor frees Ace by having her catapulted out the tube into the lake where she rises to the surface, still clutching Excalibur. The device controlling the spirit is destroyed by the arrival of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart who is pleased to see his old friend. Mordred, sent away in disgrace by his mother, has been trying to drink the hotel bar dry when the Brigadier's pilot arrives looking for a phone. Morgaine interrogates her as to the enemy's strength, killing her in the process. She pays her son's bar bill by restoring the sight of Elizabeth Rowlinson before leaving with her son. The Doctor assists UNIT evacuating the area by persuading the reluctant Walmsley and Rowlinson onto the bus. As the Doctor & Brigadier continue their investigations in Bessie, Morgaine summons the Destroyer from another dimension. Ace & Shou Yuing shelter with Excalibur in the hotel, a chalk circle protecting them but uncharacteristically start arguing between them. The Doctor halts a fight between Mordred & his forces and Ancelyn & the UNIT troops but Mordred tells him it was all a diversion as Morgaine & the Destroyer appear in the hotel to claim Excalibur.

Ugh. Just all a bit flat really, and doesn't really work. Why bring Bessie back? Just because they can? Honestly the bit I liked the most was the Doctor convincing Walmsley & Pat Rowlinson to leave, once again using the hypnotic powers he suddenly seems to be developing just like what the Master has always had.

The scene with Sophie Aldred's Ace in the water tank has gone down in BBC history: As it was being filmed Sylvester McCoy noticed the glass front to the water tank was cracking - you can see the crack in footage early in the new material for episode 3, ordered his co-star be pulled out which she was just before the crack expanded flooding the studio causing it to be evacuated. McCoy's actions almost certainly saved Aldred's life and probably many of those in the studio given the amount of electrical cabling on the floor. The cameras were running so the entire incident is preserved for posterity and was for many years used as part of a BBC internal safety film. The footage is on the Doctor Who - Battlefield DVD along with the recollections of the stars of this incident.

Battlefield is the first story of this season broadcast but it was the second recorded. The original production order was:

7M The Curse of Fenric
7N Battlefield
7P Survival
7Q Ghost Light

while the broadcast order is

7N Battlefield
7Q Ghost Light
7M The Curse of Fenric
7P Survival

There's no real continuity clangers like in the previous season due to the change of order but you get the feeling from the dialogue that Curse of Fenric is meant to occur before Ghost Light. The main effect of the change of order is that we get to see Marek Anton as The Destroyer before his first recorded role in Doctor Who as Vershinin in The Curse of Fenric.

One final bit of location work for the story: Wothorpe Towers in Cambridgeshire is used for the exterior shots of the abandoned house that Morgaine uses as her base.

689 Battlefield Part Two

EPISODE: Battlefield Part Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 689
STORY NUMBER: 157
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 13 September 1989
WRITER: Ben Aaronovitch
DIRECTOR: Michael Kerrigan
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 3.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Battlefield

The injuired knight draws the attention of his opposite number, Mordred, to the Doctor who he claims to be Merlin and, using this guise, the Doctor drives the other knights away while returning to the hotel wih the wounded knight, Ancelyn, and Bamberra. Mordered retreats to a local deserted house where he uses his sword and advanced technology to summon his mother Morgaine from an alternate dimension. This activity creates a storm and earthquake, causing the scabbard to fly off the wall of the hotel and embed itself in the wall nearest the lake. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart is briefed on London and sets out by helicopter again for Carbury. Walmsley takes the Doctor & Ace to the local dig site showing them a mysterious transcription which the Doctor translates from his own handwriting to read Dig Hole Here which Ace obligingly does with explosives revealing an underground tunnel which the Doctor & Ace go down. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart 's helicopter is brought doen by Morgaine and his pilot injured. He goes for help but finds Morgaine and her warriors holding a ceremony to comemorate Earth's war dead. Morgaine promises the next time they meet she will kill him. The Doctor and Ace open a door at the end of the tunnel, keyed to the Doctor's voice print, and find themselves in a chamber within a spaceship containing the body of King Arthur and his sword, Excalibur, which has been sending the distress call they picked up. Ace frees the sword from the stone it's buried in but this activates the ship's defences unleashing glowing green spirits which trap Ace in a chamber and knock the Doctor over. As the Doctor watches helplessly the chamber begins to fill with water.....

Just lacking something this episode. I mean we're two episodes in and the Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart haven't shared a scene yet. The rememberance ceremony seems out of place (I haven't seen the special edition on the DVD recently to know if it explains this. Yes the model of the ship under the water looks good, but it does look very Zygon spaceship in Terror of the Zygons.

I mentioned the Knights yesterday and how they could have been so much better. This episode we see one that stands out from the croud by wearing red trousers. Why? It just looks so cheap like they couldn't find anoter set of whatever is substituting for chain mail for this one character.

The main guest star for this show is of course Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. Courtney first appeared in the Douglas Camfield directed Dalek Masterplan in 1965 as Bret Vyon where he was shot by Sara Kingdom (his own sister), a character played by Jean Marsh an actress who also reappears in this story as Morgaine. Prior to Dalek Masterplan Camfield has used he as Joanna in the Crusade. Famed for appearing in and co-creating Upstairs, Downstairs, Marsh was also the first wife of Courtney's frequent Doctor who co-star Jon Pertwee. (an aside: he brother in the Crusade, Richard the Lionheart, was played by Julian Glover who was at the time married to one of the other creators of Upstairs Downstairs Eileen Atkins!)

Angela Bruce appears as Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Science fiction fans would have seen her the previous year as the female Dave Lister in concluding episode of the first season of Red Dwarf. Apparentlly Ling Tai, playing Shou Yuing, has been in Doctor Who before as an extra: IMDB thinks she was in The Leisure Hive: Part 1 as a Tourist (uncredited) and Warriors of the Deep: Part 1-3 Seabase Crewmember (also uncredited). June Bland, here as Elizabeth Rowlinson, definitely has been: she was Berger in Earthshock. Her character's husband Pat Rowlinson is played by one of two actors in the cast closely associated with BBC Police series: Noel Collins was Sergeant George Parrish in Juliet Bravo while James Ellis, playing Peter Warmsly in this story, was in Z-Cars right the way through it's run Bert Lynch rising in rank from PC to Inspector through the 17 years the show was in the air. Robert Jezek as UNIT Sergeant Zbrigniev has appeared in many Big Finish productions as Frobisher, the sixth Doctor's shape changing penguin companion while Stefan Schwartz, Morgaine's Knight Commander, went on to direct the film Shooting Fish.

Location time: all the material of the Brigadier inside the helicopter was filmed at Black Park, close to the location used for his home in episode 1 and previously used by Doctor Who in Full Circle & the Visitation. We saw lots of locations around Hambleton last episode but the village itself provides the street the Brigadier walks up and the church where he meets Morgaine while Hambleton Woods provide more of the lake & the dig site.

688 Battlefield Part One

"Shame!"

EPISODE: Battlefield Part One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 688
STORY NUMBER: 157
TRANSMITTED: Wednesday 06 September 1989
WRITER: Ben Aaronovitch
DIRECTOR: Michael Kerrigan
SCRIPT EDITOR: Andrew Cartmel
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 3.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Battlefield

Retired Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart is enjoying life with his wife Doris while his successor Brigadier Winifred Bambera is having problems with a Nuclear Missile Convoy she is escorting which has had an electrical explosion and overturned near Lake Vortigen at Carbury. The Doctor picks up a distress call and lands near by. The are taken to the lake by local archaeologist Peter Warmsley hearing impact noises round them that Warmsley suggests are a local army firing range. The Doctor and Ace gain access to the Unit convoy using passes belonging to the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw but are escorted away from the site by Brigadier Bambera who takes them to the local hotel where Ace meets Ling Tai, a young woman of about her ages, and the Doctor takes an interest in a scabbard hanging above the fireplace which Warmsley gave to hotel owner Peter Warmsley and his blind wife Pat. Lethbridge Stewart is summoned to Lake Vortigen by helicopter. Bambera becomes involved in a battle between two groups of knights at the Doctor's Tardis involving swords and advance weaponry. When the single knight that makes up one side is thrown towards the hotel she follows. The Doctor, Ace and Ling Tai find the knight in the hotel's brewery and despite Ace thinking it might be an Android the Doctor unmasks it to reveal a human underneath who recognises the Doctor as Merlin. Bamberra arrives but so do the other party of Knights who hold everyone at gunpoint.

I can remember having high hopes for this story when it first aired: the return of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart in a story written by the writer of Remembrance of the Daleks incorporating elements of the Arthurian story (I'd seen John Boorman's Excalibur by this point - if you haven't then buy it now on DVD! And how about a UK BD release please?) Well the Brigadier's incidental to this episode though we do (finally) get to see Doris (of Planet of the Spiders watch fame), now Mrs Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Angela Douglas of Carry On Films fame.

If Bamberra doesn't trust the Doctor & Ace, and doesn't accept their story, why does she go to the trouble of driving them to the hotel? Similarly who's accepted that the Doctor is the Doctor and made enough fuss to get the Brigadier summoned to Carbury?

The Tardis scenes at the start are too dark and there's a reason for this: the wall sets had been destroyed since it's last appearance in Greatest Show in the Galaxy and the reduced lighting hides that the backgrounds are just drapes. I didn't say it hides them terribly well!

Bambera's exclamations of "Shame" seem to be an attempt to get another character to swear on screen without actually swearing - see Ace stories passim. We suggest you insert another short word beginning with SH every time she says it and her disgust for hitch hikers will become more evident!

Why does Ace think that the Knight might be an Android? That's because it's meant to be a futuristic Knight, rather than what we got. Unfortunately the costume people read the word Knight and immediately gave us something in the traditional vein rather than, as was intended, something that looked more like Top Gear's The Stig. Think of that, with lightsabres and better guns, not those horribly sparky things (again) and you'll be getting there.

This episode of Doctor Who has the dubious honour of having the lowest viewing figures of any episode of the original run, just 3.1 million. OK it was up against Coronation Street but even so..... This is how the record of lowest viewing figures for an episode of Doctor Who progressed:

Episode #	Date	Story & Episode	Rating Million Viewers
1	23/11/1963	An Unearthly Child: An Unearthly Child	4.4
127	10/09/1966	The Smugglers: Episode One	4.3
129	24/09/1966	The Smugglers: Episode Three	4.2
251	07/06/1969	The War Games: Episode Eight	3.5
689	06/09/1989	Battlefield: Part One	3.1

This is the first episode of Doctor Who that aired after I made the transition to sixth form college from secondary school. This is also the first episode of Doctor Who that I recorded off the television! We bought our first video recorder that summer and already by this point I owned Spearhead from Space, Day of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen and Terror of the Zygons on video. I still have the recorded copy of Battlefield, and all four stories this season, to this day and was almost tempted to dig it out to watch for the blog!.

A large amount of Battlefield is recorded on location with very little of the action in this episode occurring in the studio. Fulmer Plant Park in Buckinghamshire is then location for the garden centre that the Brigadier & Doris visit quite close to Little Paston which is where the scenes at their home were recorded. The majority of the action in this story occurs at locations in Lincolnshire with Twyford Wood providing the location for the Tardis landing site while Hambleton Old Hall serves as the Gore Crow Hotel. Nearby Hambleton Ridge is where Bambera radios the convoy for assistance and is also probably the location where the shots of the UNIT convoy is in difficulty were recorded from using Barnsdale on the other side of the lake. Finally the shot of the Knight crashing into the hill was filmed at Castle Cement Quarry about 5 miles away from the other Lincolnshire locations.