Synopsis:
Polly has fallen into a concealed pit. As she scrabbles to climb out, a hand reaches down towards her - clutching a dagger...
The hand belongs to Kirsty, who thought that a Redcoat might have fallen into the animal trap. In trying to pull Polly out, she falls in herself. They hear the approach of some soldiers, commanded by Lt Ffinch. He berates his men for allowing two women to escape and sends them off to search further. Noting that he is alone, Polly and Kirsty lure him towards the trap, and he also tumbles in.
They tie him up and rob him.
The Doctor and Ben, meanwhile, have been transported to Inverness, where they have been locked in a dank dungeon with many Jacobite captives, including Jamie and his Laird.
As the Doctor dresses McLaren's wounds, he notices an embroidered cloth hidden under his coat. This proves to be Prince Charles Edward Stuart's personal standard - given to the old man by the Prince himself during the recent battle.
The Doctor realises he can use this as a means to escape. He claims to have information about an assassination attempt on the Duke of Cumberland. He is removed from the dungeon to speak with someone in authority.
Polly and Kirsty will use Ffinch's money to get themselves to Inverness, and they also take some personal belongings of the lieutenant - including a lock of hair - with which to blackmail him should he try to interfere with them. His commanding officer - Colonel Atwood - would be interested to know how he had been overpowered and robbed by a couple of girls.
Solicitor Grey and his clerk Perkins meet with a sea captain named Trask, with whom they are arranging the illegal transportation of Jacobite prisoners to slavery in the West Indies.
Grey is told of the Doctor's claim, remembering him as the Hanoverian medical man he had met earlier.
Having sensed his greed, the Doctor produces the Stuart standard to show how close he was to the Prince, and therefore party to his plans. He then suggests that he and Grey collaborate to capture the fugitive and split the £30,000 reward money between them.
He then tricks the solicitor into thinking that he might have something medically wrong with him - and takes the opportunity to tie him up and shove him in a closet.
When Perkins is called in, he does something similar to overpower him - allowing him to make his escape.
Ffinch is eventually helped out of the trap by his sergeant - who also blackmails him to keep quiet about how he had found him. Ffinch must provide drinks for the company, but having lost his money he defers this until they get back to Inverness.
Perkins warns Trask of the Doctor's escape and Grey is freed. The Doctor hides in the scullery of the Sea Eagle Inn. A woman named Mollie works here, cooking and washing laundry.
Still believing that the Doctor is closely linked to Bonnie Prince Charlie, Trask decides to question Ben, Jamie and McLaren. They are to be transferred with some other prisoners to his ship - the Annabelle. This is moored near the dock where the Inn is located.
The Doctor has borrowed clothing from the scullery, and is now disguised as an old woman to avoid capture.
As they are rowed out to the Annabelle, the captives see a canvas-wrapped corpse being dropped over the side into the sea. Trask warns that this is the only way any of them will ever get off his ship...
Written by: Gerry Davis & Elwyn Jones
Recorded: Saturday 10th December 1966 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 24th December 1966
Ratings: 6.8 million / AI 46
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Director: Hugh David
Additional cast: Dallas Cavell (Trask), Barbara Bruce (Mollie)
The draft script originally specified that the plantations where the captives would be sent to were in Barbados and Jamaica. Gerry Davis named Trask's ship the Annabelle after reading how slave ships often had pleasant sounding names despite their horrific function.
The Doctor's bamboozling of Grey and, especially Perkins, in this episode is regarded as one of the highlights of the early Troughton era, and very much shows what the production team intended to do with the new Doctor's character.
He has already impersonated someone to get into Grey's presence, but once there he rapidly overpowers him - first verbally and then physically. When Perkins arrives, he makes him think that Grey's frantic knocking is all in his own head and, when the poor clerk claims not to have a headache, the Doctor gives him one by banging his head on the table. It's all rather violent stuff - but played very much for laughs.
The Doctor does threaten someone with a pistol - but it is made clear that he would never actually use it.
Once he has escaped, the Doctor then takes to stealing clothes to create disguises. In this case an old washer-woman. He'll continue to adopt this disguise next week, before swapping it for another.
The Doctor also acts impulsively - something which will be totally dropped once this incarnation becomes the first of the quiet manipulators. He says things just for fun, which might annoy or even threaten their lives - like when he shouts "Down with King George!" in the dungeon, just to hear the echo.
The tone of the episode fluctuates wildly, but then you remember that this went out in the early evening of Christmas Eve.
Cast as Captain Jebb Trask was Dallas Cavell, who had featured in the series on two previous occasions - first as the roadworks overseer in The Reign of Terror, then as the convict Bors in The Daleks' Master Plan. He had just come out of hospital, following a hernia operation when he began filming at Ealing. He elects to play Trask like Long John Silver. (The last word of the episode is his "Arr!..").
Barbara Bruce, playing Mollie, had been an extra on The Chase.
The day before recording, a brand new opening titles sequence had been recorded at Television Centre TC2, which featured the Doctor's face for the first time. This would not be used straight away, however.
As scripted, Kirsty was to have threatened Ffinch in the animal trap with her knife, but as she now had his captured pistol it was decided to change the dialogue to reflect this. Some gruesome dialogue from Grey was also dropped, when he threatened to flay "Dr Von Wer" should he be wasting his time.
Of the two recording breaks, one was used to allow Troughton to change into his old woman disguise, and the other allowed Craze, Hines and Donald Bissett (McLaren) to move from the dungeon set.
It is a great pity that Geoffrey Kirkland did not do more Doctor Who, as we can see from the telesnaps that he managed to design some highly effective sets for this episode, including the use of water.
Filming of the dockside scenes had taken place at Ealing on Friday 11th and Wednesday 16th November.
The Riverside sets are either indoors - a dungeon, Grey's office or the wash-house / scullery - or they are external but at night and in the fog, so atmospherically lit and filmed.
This is a story which would definitely be even more highly regarded if it could be seen as well as heard.
Two scenes were cut from the episode before broadcast. The first was in the dungeon, where the Doctor suggested that Jamie play a tune to cheer up the prisoners. Wishing he had his full pipes, the boy played a tune on his chanter, which the Doctor then tried to copy on his recorder.
The second sequence came at the end of the episode in the wash-house, where Mollie was unhappy with the Redcoats searching her scullery as the Doctor hid. After the soldiers had gone, she turned to see the Doctor's clothes hanging on her washing line.
- The ratings remain stable compared with the opening instalment, though the episode dropped from 67th to 89th most watched programme for the week, despite only having 0.1 million fewer viewers. No doubt this was due to all the additional / unique festive programming.
- At one point Ffinch threatens his men with 500 lashes apiece should they fail to capture the fugitive women. Anyone flogged thus would be dead long before they reached the first 100, and Gerry Davis took the opportunity to amend this dialogue when it came to the novelisation.
- A few synopses of this episode claim that a bound prisoner is dropped into the sea to drown, and another even claims that Ben and Jamie witness a keel-hauling. However, the telesnaps clearly show that it is a shrouded corpse which is dropped overboard at the cliff-hanger:
- Reveille published a full page piece on the stars of Doctor Who for the week 22 - 28th December. This included new boy Frazer Hines.
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