Story 314: Lux

In which the Doctor and Belinda visit 1950's Florida as part of his scheme to get her home.

The TARDIS materialises in Miami in 1952 and, after donning appropriate outfits, they venture outside  where the Doctor sets up a Vortex Indicator, or "Vindicator". Positioned at various locations in time and space, these should work together to guide the ship to London in May 2025.

It is 4am and they have arrived outside a boarded-up cinema - the Palazzo - which intrigues the Doctor, after reading a note left with some flowers. The last movie to play here was a Rock Hudson feature called The Harvest Bringer. Some of the marquee display letters have fallen away.

They go to a nearby late-night diner, which should enforce segregation, but the young man serving - Logan - is happy for them both to come in. He tells them of how fifteen patrons vanished from the cinema one morning some 3 months ago. There is only one other customer, a woman named Renée Lowenstein. She comes here every night as her son, Tommy Lee, was one of those who disappeared. Seeing the Police Box, she thinks that someone has finally taken note and come to help, and the Doctor assures her he will find her son.

The Doctor learns that the cinema is not empty. The projectionist Reg Pye, is always there.

They break in and meet Reg, who tries to warn them to leave. He starts talking to some unseen person - asking them not to hurt the newcomers. They hear tap-dancing coming from somewhere, and then see a spotlight hit the cinema curtain. A cartoon starts up, featuring a character named Mr Ring-a Ding who sings and dances.

They are shocked when the figure then begins to address them directly. The Doctor ascertains that this is not a hologram, and asks if it knows what happened to the missing audience members.

Mr Ring-a-Ding answers only in riddles and corny jokes. Outside, on the cinema marquee, further letters fall away to leave HAR - B - INGER. The Doctor tells Belinda that the Gods of Chaos employ Harbingers to pave the way for their appearance. The cartoon figure announces that he is Lux, Imperator - the God of Light. Having spotted that he has to complete his song whenever he launches into it, the Doctor realises that this delay will give them time to escape.

They go to the projection booth and speak to Reg, curious to know why he wasn't taken like the others. He reveals that Mr Ring-a-Ding needs him to play movies in order to feed him the light he craves. He tells them the story of how he lost his sweetheart many years ago, but Mr Ring-a-Ding has brought her back to him - captured forever on film. He reveals that this was the fate of the missing people. They have also been trapped on celluloid.

Mr Ring-a-Ding is able to leave the screen and walk up to the booth, threatening to burn all the celluloid in the room if Reg helps the Doctor and Belinda any further. He tells them that he was created by chance, when moonlight bounced off a spoon and passed through the projector as a Mr Ring-a-Ding cartoon played.

He then turns the two projectors on them - turning the Doctor and Belinda into animated figures on the big screen. They find themselves trapped in 2-D bodies. The Doctor realises that they are contained within frames of film, and if they can break these then they may be able to escape.

They are able to drag the film frame edges down and tear them apart, and find themselves back in the cinema. They are then confronted by an armed policeman who is accompanied by Mrs Lowenstein. She accuses them of being troublemakers who claim to know what happened to her son, so must be involved in the disappearances. The Doctor spots a discrepancy straight away. The officer is wearing a New York Police Department uniform, yet they are in Miami-Dade county. They are still within a film. This time they decide to push their way out of it. Climbing through an aperture they find themselves in a 21st Century living room - having just emerged from the TV set.

Present are a group of young people wearing familiar items of clothing. One has a long multi-coloured scarf, others Cyberman and Meep T-shirts, and another a fez. They are Doctor Who fans. The Doctor and Belinda sit down and talk with them, learning that their favourite episode - unanimously - is Blink. They aren't too keen on Fifteenth Doctor episodes. They know about Belinda's parents, as she had described them to the Doctor on first arriving in Miami, and they have been watching. They think the ending to this episode has been signposted by the mention of highly flammable celluloid. They are unable to help any further as they are part of this fiction.

The Doctor and Belinda must once again break out of the picture.

They realise that the only way to achieve this is to break the film. They must stop it rolling through the projector, though the danger is that the bulb in the machine will cause the celluloid to burn, with them still trapped within the image.

They know they are back in the real cinema as the Doctor burned his hand slightly in escaping. He uses regeneration energy to heal it. Lux appears and is fascinated by this. The Doctor is full of light, which he can feed on. He believes the other Gods failed as they were saving the Doctor for him. He is captured by rolls of celluloid which writhe like snakes. Lux has seen footage of atom bomb explosions and wants to experience the light of the real thing. He will tap the Doctor's regeneration energy to build himself a corporeal body in order to escape into the outside world.

Remembering what the fans had said, Belinda decides to ignite the celluloid stock. The resulting explosion blows a hole in the wall, through which they see the sun rise. Lux is growing and becoming more solid.

The Doctor realises that the sun's energy will attract Lux towards it and away from the Earth, as no light source can compete with it.

He and Belinda run outside and meet Logan, and they see Lux grow to gigantic size before floating up into the air to dissipate into photons and merge with the sun.

The fifteen missing patrons emerge from the cinema and Renee is reunited with Tommy Lee, whilst the Doctor and Belinda slip away.

As people crowd round, a familiar figure pushes her way through to see what is going on. It is Mrs Flood.

Meanwhile, in a British living room, the group of fans realise they are still here. They are real...

Lux was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on Saturday 19th April, 2025.

It sees the introduction of the latest member of the pantheon of deities which have included the Toymaker and Maestro, who are glimpsed in flashbacks to The Giggle and The Devil's Chord. It's Belinda's first trip in the TARDIS and the latest story to have a historical setting - this time the near past of the 1950's. 

The location is Miami, Florida, during the era of racial segregation and this is touched on in the script, obviously, as we have our first non white TARDIS team. It's mentioned first when the Doctor and Belinda go into the diner, but young Logan declines to enforce the law. The police officer later talks about the segregated nature of the cinema.

Of course, a black companion with a medical background had already questioned the practicalities of visiting historical eras when racism was more prominent - Martha Jones, in The Shakespeare Code. Then, the Doctor had pointed out that earlier societies have been far more tolerant and diverse than people think. Here, they are in a society where division is enshrined in law.

Once touched upon, this doesn't have any impact on the rest of the story, which is very much one about fiction and visual imagery - especially the language of film.

As with The Mind Robber, the TARDIS travellers become trapped in a world of fiction - this time cinematic rather than one of literature. The villain of the piece is a cartoon character, of the sort created by animator Max Fleischer in the 1930's and '40's (Betty Boop is his best known creation).

Mr Ring-a-Ding is simply the form which Lux, God of Light, has found himself in. 

The Doctor and Belinda are transported onto celluloid, initially as animated characters themselves. This isn't exactly original - there's an episode of Supernatural, for instance, in which the main characters - Sam and Dean - become animated and meet Scooby Doo and his gang. (Here, the Doctor actually refers to himself and Belinda as Velma and Fred respectively).

Star Trek went the other way and had characters from Lower Decks appear in non 2-D form in an episode of Strange New Worlds.

Cartoon / live action interactions go back a very long way in cinema history. Remember Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry Mouse from the Tom & Jerry cartoons, for instance?

And let's not forget the Torchwood episode Out of the Rain, which centres around a cinema and features figures who exist on celluloid. Fear Her also had people trapped within images.

Talking of Supernatural, that series also featured Sam and Dean discovering that they existed within fan fiction, and their entire lives were being written as a series of novels by a deity.

The fans whom the Doctor and Belinda encounter are fairly stereotypical of the audience which RTD2 thinks is following the programme - the target audience which the BBC and Disney sought to capture. They are all of a similar age - '20's - and there's a mix of gender and ethnicity.

They are certainly not typical of the active fans of the programme - the ones who don't just watch the series but spend time and money to attend events. Whilst the gender mix is true of them, there is a much wider age range and they are still predominantly white affairs, at least as far as the UK is concerned in my experience.

The main guest artist this week is only heard, not seen. Voicing Mr Ring-a-Ding is Alan Cumming, who had previously played King James in The Witchfinders. In the US he is best known for hosting The Traitors these days, but first made his mark on Broadway and in movies such as Goldeneye and the first X-Men sequel. In the UK, an early TV role was in the Scottish crime drama Taggart, playing a teenager framed for murder. He is currently artistic director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and is touring with a live show based on his airline sitcom The High Life.

Reg Pye is played by Linus Roache, who is the son of Coronation Street icon William Roache. He first came to notice in the film Priest (1994), starring opposite Robert Carlyle and Tom Wilkinson. In this he played a Roman Catholic priest struggling with his sexuality. TV appearances have included regular roles in Vikings and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Diner worker Logan is played by Lewis Cornay. His work is primarily in musical theatre, including the title role in the The SpongeBob Musical. Currently in The Book of Mormon in the West End.

Renee Lowenstein is Lucy Thackeray. She's been in EastEnders and has appeared in Marvel's Moon Knight, and features in Jurassic Park Rebirth.

William Meredith, who plays the police officer, had previously appeared in Arachnids in the UK, where he played Jack Robertson's bodyguard Kevin.

Finally, Anita Dobson is back as Mrs Flood - appearing outside of a contemporary London setting for the first time. This forms part of this series' story arc.

Overall, it's a fun episode with an interesting new adversary - though one that would be difficult to ever bring back. Visually impressive, if not entirely original, it's still one of the better episodes of the Gatwa era. The appearance of the fans is one of those What?! moments.

Things you might like to know:

• Lux debuted with overnight viewing figures of only 1.58 million - the lowest in the programme's history and the first time ratings had dropped below 2 million.
• RTD2 claimed that he had wanted to do an episode that mixed animation and live action for some time, but never had the budget to carry it through successfully. He had considered an episode like this during his first tenure as showrunner, though it would have been a hologram rather than a properly animated figure due to cost.
• Alan Cumming recorded all of his dialogue before any filming had taken place, some of it in a sound studio in New York. Gatwa and Varada Sethu asked for these to be played in during filming of their scenes so that they could react to them in real time.
• They watched episodes of the original Scooby Doo series by way of preparing for their performances as animated versions of their characters.
• Some of the animators who worked on this story had previously contributed to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - another example of mixing live action and animation.
• Previously the Doctor could heal with regeneration energy, though it meant shortening his life to do so. Now it is said to be a by-product of bi-generation. (Even though The Timeless Children had established that he was actually a self-healing immortal anyway).
• Amongst the items owned by the fans are K-9 and Dalek mugs, a cushion with a Weeping Angel on it, a Third Doctor sonic screwdriver and a poster of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby. They also have Doctor Who figurines and a Tenth Doctor Build-a-Bear. The actors playing the characters are all said to be real fans of the series.
• The Doctor points out to Belinda that humans are 60% water but can still drown - something he previously told Rose Tyler when using light to destroy another creature, in Tooth and Claw.
• The Palazzo Movie Theatre location is the art deco Penarth Pier Pavilion Cinema, should you ever wish to visit.
• There's a poster for a film called "Rocket to Venus" on the projection booth wall. Alan in The Robot Revolution had the same poster in his bedroom.
• Sadly, the director - Amanda Brotchie - died in December 2025. She also directed The Well, filmed with Lux as part of the same production block.

Inspirations: The Husbands of River Song

Having penned a story called The Wedding of River Song, it was only natural that Steven Moffat would come up with a title such as this. It is Husbands, plural, as we get to see three other spouses as well as the Doctor. Two elements are introduced which will reappear later - the character of Nardole and the "Shoal" - humanoid in appearance, but who are able to open up their heads, and have a scar running diagonally across their face.

This was to have been Moffat's final episode as showrunner - though he had planned to leave much earlier. Originally he meant to hand over to someone else after three years, ending his run with the 50th Anniversary celebrations. The new showrunner would then have introduced their own Twelfth Doctor at the end of the 2013 Christmas Special. However, he had been unhappy some aspects of his own work on Series 7 and wished to bow out on a more satisfying note. Then, at the end of Series 8, Jenna Coleman decided that she wanted to stay on longer. Moffat wanted to round off her story himself, so this led to Series 9.

Rather than saddle a new showrunner with a companion created by himself, he decided on a one-off companion figure for what he thought would be his final episode.

Russell T Davies had been encouraging him to pair the Twelfth Doctor with River, so he decided that there was one more story of hers to tell.

The idea that she would encounter a Doctor she didn't recognise appealed to him. The Doctor would be able to see what she was like when he was not around (as far as she was aware).

Believing that The Name of the Doctor had been her final appearance, Alex Kingston was more than happy to be invited back.

It had always been known that the final meeting between River and the Doctor would be at the Singing Towers of Darillium, and so this was an obvious setting for this episode. This location had first been mentioned by River in Forest of the Dead back in 2008. This was their last date before her death in the Library. Knowing this, the Doctor had been avoiding taking her there in the special mini-episodes recorded for the Series 6 box-set (First Night / Last Night).

As the Series 4 two-parter had been his last scripts before becoming showrunner, setting a story at the Singing Towers would bring Moffat's own story with Doctor Who full circle.

The person deemed best fit to take over from Moffat was Chris Chibnall. A known fan of the series who had also written for it, as well as co-producing Torchwood, he had raised his profile significantly in the industry with crime drama Broadchurch. Moffat took him out to lunch to sound him out about taking over - only to learn that he was heavily involved with the third season of Broadchurch as well as the launch of a US version. Moffat decided not to even mention the idea of him taking over Doctor Who, and realised that he would probably have to stay on for another year, when Chibnall could potentially be in a better position to succeed him.

This late change of plans, plus his commitments on Sherlock, is the reason why we were about to get another gap year.

Before the Doctor and River got to the Singing Towers, Moffat wanted a yuletide romp inspired by the screwball comedies of Hollywood's golden age. In these, a man and woman were thrown together by a particular set of circumstances and, despite having opposing personalities, had to work together to overcome these - usually disliking each other at first but becoming romantically involved as they got to know each other better.

An early idea was for River to steal the TARDIS, with the Doctor an apparently unwilling companion for her. He would pretend not to know about the ship and act all surprised at what he saw inside. This, of course, made it through to the broadcast episode, and is one of its highlights.

The villain of the piece would be a big, overblown character who wasn't actually all that much of a threat, despite their bluster.

The idea that he had a robot body, with interchangeable heads, was an early one.

Hydroflax is known as the "Butcher of the Bone Meadows". This was another location mentioned by River as appearing in her diary.

For his spaceship, the director looked to old sci-fi movies, especially the saucer which appears in Forbidden Planet (1956). It was designed to also resemble a Christmas tree bauble.

Ramone and Nardole were deliberately cast as being very dissimilar in looks to emphasise River's wide-ranging tastes in men - which included different incarnations of the Doctor.

She said she knew all the Doctor's faces in The Time of Angels, and here we see a folding wallet with photos of the first eleven incarnations.

When the Doctor comments on River's numerous husbands, she counters by pointing out his marriage history - Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra and Marylin Monroe as well as herself.

For his date with River, the Doctor wears the suit he had worn on the space-going Orient Express - which was supposed to be his final trip with Clara.

The street in which we first see the TARDIS is very clearly a reused set - the Trap Street from Face The Raven.

When River states that "one should always have something sensational to read on a spaceship" she is paraphrasing Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, where it is on a train.

Next time: A boy wonder grows up to be a super man, whilst the villains need their heads examining...

Blog Update April 2026

Meant to post this sooner but I'm away on holiday for a week from Saturday 11th April, returning the evening of Sunday 19th. Visiting London again, but don't expect to see any Daleks on Westminster Bridge like these lucky people above (though I am getting to visit inside the Palace of Westminster on the 18th).

I may finally make it to Milton Keynes to visit the Sci-Fi Museum, however, and will inflict more of my holiday snaps on you should I get there...

I'll post the next Episode - The Wheel in Space (1) - on Monday 20th April, after which things will get back to normal, though a new rota at work might mean different days to what you're used to. 

Hopefully there will be two more posts this week before I go - Inspirations: The Husbands of River Song (Tues) and Story 314: Lux (Thurs).

Naturally, if any big news breaks while I'm away I'll give you my thoughts on it.

Finally, a quick thank you to everyone for visiting this little blog of mine. I know that there are Doctor Who vlogs and podcasts all over the place these days, so it is very much appreciated. You have wonderful taste.

Episode 203: Fury From The Deep (6)

Synopsis:

The Doctor and Jamie have been flown out to the control rig, and the sound of Victoria's cries has brought them to a foam-filled room in which Robson stands - telling the Doctor that they have been waiting for him...

He then informs the Doctor that the weed is their new master and he will help it. The human mind is obsolete and the weed offers life. As Jamie slips away to find Victoria, the Doctor counters that the mind will always triumph over matter.

Robson then attacks him with his toxic breath.

When Victoria appears with Jamie, she lets out a scream and Robson is crippled with pain. The Doctor urges her to scream again and they make their escape onto the foam-covered deck above.

Realising that their pilot won't be able to see them because of the foam, the Doctor decides their only escape route is to use Robson's helicopter.

The Doctor reassures his nervous companions that he ought to be able to master the controls after seeing Astrid Ferrier pilot one of these machines. However, he finds it extremely difficult to steer and almost crashes into the rig before the pilot of the other helicopter begins relaying instructions to him.

They eventually make it back safely to the ESGO airfield and head for the control room.

There, Megan Jones has decided to call for government help and has requested a fleet of vehicles carrying oxygen.

The Doctor enters and tells them that he has discovered another weapon to use against the weed - sound. He informs them of the reaction to Victoria's screams. They had visited the medical bay on their way back from the airfield, and found that Mr Quill is now free of infection.

The Doctor then requests half an hour to prepare their counterattack against the weed, before Jones evacuates the compound. He must generate sound of the right frequency, which will carry all the way to the control rig. This will be achieved by channelling it through the pipeline.

Price will record Victoria's screams, and the tape will be put on a permanent loop for broadcast.

The Chief Engineer then alerts them to what is happening in the impeller room. The weed is about to break out.

At first Victoria struggles to scream on cue - but then she sees the mass of foam begin to burst into the control room - with a large weed creature thrashing around within it.

Harris and Price begin to panic - the former wanting to flee, and the latter frozen in fear.

The Doctor drags Price away and is finally ready - feeding the sound of Victoria's screams through a special amplifier he has put together.

The weed and foam begins to retreat, and after a few minutes the compound is clear of it.

Harris instructs Price to contact the rigs, ordering that a helicopter be flown out to check on them.

On contacting the control rig by video, they are pleased to see Robson and Maggie Harris unharmed. Robson reports that Van Lutyens is also fine.

The Doctor and his companions are invited to a meal that evening with the Harrises, with Robson also in attendance.

After his experiences, Robson has mellowed somewhat - but not to the extent that his staff will have an easier time working for him.

Afterwards, the Doctor has a word with Victoria, letting her know that he is aware that she is unhappy and wishes to leave. He tells her that she could settle down here if she wants. The Harrises state that they would be more than happy to let her live with them. The Doctor tells her that he and Jamie will stay on for another day or so, to give her time to make up her mind.

On their last evening together, Jamie tries to talk Victoria into staying with them, but she gives her reasons for wishing to settle down.

The following morning they all go to the beach where Victoria bids farewell to the Doctor and Jamie. The TARDIS has floated away from the shoreline and they have to use the dinghy to get to it.

Jamie is especially unhappy to see her go, but the Doctor points out that he was very fond of her also.

They see her image diminish on the scanner as the TARDIS departs - spinning up into the air...

Next time: The Wheel In Space

Data:

Written by Victor Pemberton

Recorded: Friday 29th March 1968 - Television Centre Studio 1

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 20th April 1968

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 57

VFX: Peter Day

Designer: Peter Kindred

Director: Hugh David

Additional cast: Keith Sissons (Helicopter Pilot), Peter Day (Weed Creature)

Critique:

The biggest change made to this final episode was the nature of the weed creature's defeat. The sound which repelled it was originally to have been artificially generated by the Doctor, and to do this he needed equipment from the TARDIS. The Doctor sent Jamie to fetch this, telling him to play his bagpipes if he came under attack by the weed on the way.

Once it was confirmed that this was to be Debbie Watling's final story, it was decided that Victoria should play a more prominent role in proceedings. Watling was well known for her screaming  - earning her the nickname "Leatherlungs" - and so it would be her screams which would prove to be the successful weapon against the weed.

Pemberton's original script stated that there were numerous weed-infected beings on the control rig -  specifically its crew, Maggie and Van Lutyens - as well as Robson. They surrounded the Doctor's helicopter to try to stop it taking off.

Robson's dialogue with the Doctor mirrors the words of the mud-possessed Hugh Deverill in The Slide. In the radio drama, it was light which countered the threat rather than sound.

We are never told on screen how Maggie survived walking into the sea, but Pemberton dealt with this point when it came to novelising the story. He claimed that the foam acted as a protective cocoon around her.

Sunday 4th of February was the day when the regular cast were present at Botany Bay on the Kent coast, and this is when Hugh David filmed the shot to be seen on the TARDIS scanner of Victoria watching as the ship rapidly rose up into the air, all captured by a helicopter-mounted camera. 

The farewell scenes on the beach, with actors Roy Spencer and June Murphy as the Harrises also present, were filmed the following day.

Troughton refused to go up in a helicopter, but Frazer Hines and Watling were given a flight with Pilot Mike Smith - "Mad Mike" - doubling as the Doctor. They found the experience rather terrifying when they thought they were going to crash into the cliffs. Smith had worked out the helicopter sequences with the director and they extended them to make this a big action set-piece for the final episode. Smith was asked to fly the aircraft under the sea fort's external walkways at one point.

David would later cut the sequences to make it look like the helicopter was doing impossible things, like looping the loop.

As with last week's episode, all of the helicopter close-up material was filmed at the airfield at Denham, with the aircraft stationary on the ground, surrounded by a mass of fire-fighting foam for the scenes set on the rig. Most of this material was filmed on Monday 12th February.

Pilot Keith Sissons, who had been flying one of the 'copters during the location shoot, provided the dialogue talking the Doctor through the controls. He mostly ad-libbed.

David mounted a camera in a dolls pram (borrowed from one of his daughters), for fast tracking shots across the side of the helicopter.

The climactic scenes of the weed creature attack on the control room were filmed at Ealing between Wednesday 7th and Friday 9th February.

The creature itself was designed by Martin Baugh in consultation with Peter Day, who was going to be wearing it. It was basically X-shaped in form, made from a sacking material and covered in plastic seaweed fronds bought from a plastic flower manufacturer. Rope-like tendrils of material were attached to the ends of the "arms", which Day would wave above his head. Only one costume was produced, as it had been decided that it would be more practical to have the creatures concealed in foam for much of the time, with only the odd tentacle being seen. Day and the director realised that the tendrils on the arms would capture the foam and throw it about in whiplash fashion, which might make for a striking effect.

There was only very limited air available in the costume, so Day could only wear it for short periods.

In interviews he has spoken about the very last sequence in which the creature breaks into the control room from a corridor filled with foam. Unable to see, a piece of string was attached to his foot - to be pulled when it was time to burst through the doors. As his air ran out, he couldn't wait any longer and so made his entrance whether David was ready for him or not - but luckily this coincided with the cameras rolling.

Troughton found the costume hilarious and struggled to keep a straight face as it thrashed about.

The foam gave everyone a form of snow-blindness under the bright studio lights.

Shots of Victor Maddern in the foam filled rig cabin were filmed on the Thursday, for the sequence bridging Episodes 5 and 6.

Rehearsals began on Monday 25th March - Patrick Troughton's 48th birthday.

Studio recording on this episode saw a significant change to the weekly routine. Production returned to Friday evenings, and the venue would no longer be Lime Grove Studio D on a regular basis. That studio would continue to be used occasionally, but TV Centre would take over (with the odd return to Riverside) before finally settling at Wood Lane.

Derrick Sherwin was continuing to rewrite scenes up to the last minute - including adding the Doctor's dialogue about checking in on Quill in the medical bay when he spotted that the sinister technicians simply vanished from the story after Episode 5. Graham Leaman was also given a little more to do as Price.

After setting up the idea that Victoria's screams would save the day, there was a problem in that Watling was suffering from a cold and could not scream. A radiophonic effect previously used for the Goddess Amdo in The Underwater Menace was employed to treat AFM Margot Hayhoe's voice instead.

The episode opened with a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger, and David elected to insert new close-ups of Robson which did not match his appearance in the other footage - the foam positioning being impossible to replicate.

A significant amount of the episode had been pre-filmed.

Maddern and Murphy appeared on a TV monitor to show that they were alive and well on the rig, but John Abineri had moved on to other work so Robson and Maggie simply tell the others that he is fine.

One camera break allowed everyone to reposition themselves for the evening dinner scene on the Harris patio set. This opened on a close-up of the record player.

Closing titles began over the shot of Victoria's image rapidly diminishing on the TARDIS scanner.

A trailer for the following week's story, The Wheel In Space, was shown immediately after broadcast.

This was Hugh David's final work on Doctor Who - a series he might have starred in back in 1963 had Rex Tucker had his way.

Unusually for the time, we get to see several scenes showing the aftermath of one of the Doctor's adventures - about seven and a half minutes worth. Not only do we see him stay on for a while and socialise with some of the main guest characters, but we also see Robson return to work at the control centre, where he chats with Price and even has a little joke with the Chief.

The main concluding scenes, however, concentrate on Victoria's departure. Compared with some, hers has been reasonably well set up, with her unhappiness at their dangerous lifestyle being threaded in dialogue through the earlier episodes. She does not suddenly tell the Doctor she's not going with them as they are about to return to the TARDIS.

The Doctor has been a surrogate father-figure to her, whilst Jamie has played the role of the protective big brother, and they get to give their reactions to her departure. Jamie is so upset the tells the Doctor that he couldn't care less where they end up next, and the Doctor has to remind him of his own feelings.

All of the video recordings of Fury From The Deep were wiped by late 1974, after earlier instructions for their destruction hadn't been actioned. The film copies were withdrawn from sale and junked the same year.

These 16mm film prints had been sold to Australia, where the censors took exception to some scenes which were cut. New Zealand took it in December 1970, then elected to reject it and never broadcast it.

It was also sold to Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar.

David's set of John Cura telesnaps turned up in 1993.

The censored scenes were found in 1996 by Australian fan Damian Shanahan and sent back to the BBC. Prior to that, the only sequence known to survive from the story was the TARDIS landing, due to it being reused in the final episode of The War Games.

In 2003, some silent film trims from the final episode turned up in the BBC Film and Videotape Library. These included alternate takes to broadcast scenes.

To date, no full episodes have been recovered, making Fury From The Deep the last Doctor Who story to be missing entirely from the archives.

As mentioned last time, its status as missing has added to the mystique of this particular story, but this can also be put down to the atmospheric soundtrack and those brief glimpses which, due to their source, feature especially creepy and disturbing scenes.

The story overall has the reputation of being one of the scariest of the monochrome era.

It's not entirely clear what happens to the weed at the end. Has it been destroyed, or has it simply been forced to retreat back into the depths of the sea? It would be nice to think the latter, as it could make for an atmospheric sequel - a brisk base-under-siege tale set on an isolated location using the VFX of today to realise it. Then again, if it really is as good as people remember it, maybe best just leave alone...

As well as Debbie Watling's departure, this was to be Victor Pemberton's final contribution to the series. He did submit a further idea - "The Eye in Space" - which involved a huge octopus-like creature, but this was never taken up. He would reuse elements of Fury From The Deep in one further Doctor Who project, however - the Fourth Doctor / Sarah Jane Smith audio adventure Doctor Who and the Pescatons. This was released on LP by Argo in July 1976, with a CD version following in 2005. Demon Records re-released it on vinyl in 2011. Pemberton also novelised the story for Target in September 1991.

The writer expressed an interest in producing Doctor Who as an independent co-production after it was taken off the air in 1989.

Trivia:

• After the steady decline over the last month the ratings suddenly take an upswing of a million viewers, and even the appreciation figure goes up.
• There's a nice continuity point as the Doctor states he learned something of piloting a helicopter from Astrid Ferrier (in The Enemy of the World).
• This is the 30th consecutive episode to be set on Earth, though the run ends here.
• Design assistant Tony Cornell was present at Ealing when the climactic scenes were filmed, and he captured some of the action in colour on his 8mm cinecamera. This was included on the unofficial documentary VHS "The Doctors", and later on the Lost In Time DVD set. From this we know that the control room decor was light blue, and Price wore a pink tunic.
• Stage And Television Today was still talking about the serial in late June 1968, describing the story as poor, with its "crazy foam threat".
• John Wyndham's 1953 novel The Kraken Awakes, which deals with a marine threat, also has sound being used as a weapon.
• The story was adapted for the stage in March 2002, by the Bedlam Theatre Company. It made use of specially filmed location footage, including helicopter shots. Actor Michael Sheard had a cameo role playing rig chief Baxter on video, and Van Lutyens and Perkins became female characters.
• On leaving Doctor Who Debbie Watling went into the theatre for a time but soon landed a TV role in a soap called The Newcomers, in which she once more got to work with her father, Jack. The series, which began in 1965 under the producership of Verity Lambert, ended only four months after she joined the cast - Debbie appearing in a total of 26 episodes. Thereafter theatre work was her main employ, though she also landed a couple of films with a musical bent - starring opposite Cliff Richard in Take Me High, and appearing with David Essex and Ringo Starr in That'll Be The Day (both 1973). 
• She and her father appeared together in a celebrity edition of The Generation Game in 1972. Another TV success followed in 1979 with Danger UXB, a wartime drama about a bomb disposal squad. In this she played a character known as "Naughty" Norma.
• She dated Frazer Hines for a time after leaving the series.
• She was invited to take part in The Five Doctors, but had to turn it down due to the offer of a full series with comedian Dave Allen. Unfortunately this got cancelled, so she missed out on both jobs.
• She did come back as Victoria for the Children in Need Doctor Who / EastEnders charity crossover Dimensions in Time. For some reason she was dressed in Victorian fashion, the shawl helping to hide her injured arm. JNT should have known she left the TARDIS in the late 20th Century.
• She also reprised Victoria, in the correct contemporary setting this time, for the unofficial spin-off video production Downtime (see my post Episodes: Afterlife - the Yeti) - again getting to act alongside her father. She can also be seen in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
• Debbie Watling passed away, aged 69, on 21st July 2017. 
• Victor Pemberton, writer of her final Doctor Who appearance, died only a few weeks later, on 13th August.
• Ironically, Hugh David's first story as director - The Highlanders - was the very first to be wiped by the BBC, and his only other story was the last to suffer this fate. He passed away on 11th September 1987.
• Finally, a pensive Troughton on the control room set:

Devil's Planet - a Review

The interim episode of The Daleks Master Plan already exists in the archives, so we move on to the Doctor's escape from Kembel in Mavic Chen's purloined Spar 7-40 space yacht. Bret is at the controls, with Steven and Katarina also on board.

The Daleks use a device to randomise the ship's controls, causing it to crash land on the planet Desperus - the "Devil's Planet" of the title, as it is a hellish penal colony.

This is the first of the "adventures within the adventure", helping the story span its 12 weeks. Terry Nation had previously given us the quest story The Keys of Marinus, in which the travellers encountered mini-adventures in different locations across the planet in search of the titular keys; and The Chase, which again saw self-contained incidents within the larger narrative of the Dalek pursuit. (Episodes 5 - 10 of this story will end up following the same pattern as The Chase, with a Dalek time machine pursuing the TARDIS).

In this episode, the Doctor is separated from the TARDIS and having to rely on Bret's piloting of the Spar, before the Daleks intervene.

This was more of a mystery, visually, than The Nightmare Begins. We do have a bit of a clue as to the ending of the episode, as the shocking resolution to the cliff-hanger survives thanks to Blue Peter (though it was nice to see more of the ship's interior. I liked that huge round porthole / screen, and there was our old friend, the Morok Freezing Machine prop, as well).

There was also a lengthy clip of the Daleks first attacking the Spar with their randomiser, as its occupants are told by Bret about the planet they are being diverted towards.

The bulk of the instalment takes place on Desperus, and we have always had very little idea about this world. 

One thing I wanted to know was just how different they had managed to make the sets look from those of Kembel (bearing in mind that Mira is also just around the corner). 

There's one photograph of a Screamer I know of, but it's just a black shape at the top of a blurry image, and there are only a handful of images of the hirsute convicts themselves.

I wanted to see how the Screamers were realised, and also if the episode featured any model shots.

Mavic Chen gets to appear in two scenes - the execution of Zephon, and a later one where he first starts letting slip his arrogant attitude towards the Daleks before returning to Earth.

When the Master of the Fifth Galaxy perishes, we see Chen casually leaning nearby, studying a Dalek monitor - not even bothering with what's just happened. 

The Dalek control room contains lots of equipment dating back to their first appearance.

For some reason I felt sure that at least some of the other Planetarians featured this week, witnessing Zephon's demise, but it's another episode in which they don't appear.

Sadly the Screamers turn out to be just wing shapes being flapped about above the actors' heads.

And as for all the spaceship action in this episode, we do get a shot of the Spar in space, but all the other stuff is simply 'noises off'.

Desperus is rendered different from Kembel, being more sparsely forested. 

One nice shot is a landscape view of the planet as seen by the Doctor and Katarina - a painting of mountainous terrain with three small lights superimposed, indicating the torches of the approaching convicts. I noticed they all have a big letter "D" on the back of their overalls, to indicate their destination.

Courtney has less to do this week but I do enjoy his sardonic humour, and it's very much a pity that he couldn't have been retained for more of the story. 

Hartnell is still great to watch, though he does have a little difficulty with his lines in this episode.

"The Daleks will stop at anything to prevent us..." for instance.

There's a little silent character moment for the doomed Katarina, as she is fascinated by the stars on one of the monitors.

The interplay between Steven and the Doctor, and between Steven and Bret, is also nice to observe.

Overall, whilst it's fantastic that these two episodes are safely back, and that we have been able to enjoy them so quickly, you do come away with a disappointment - because you really, really want to watch the rest of the story even more now. At least these episodes come from the start of the story, and can be linked by the already surviving second instalment. For me the first half of The Daleks' Master Plan is by far the superior half. 

Oh, for The Traitors...

The Nightmare Begins - a Review

The Nightmare Begins has the task of setting up a  a 12 part epic, though it has been helped on its way by the prequel episode Mission to the Unknown. That laid the groundwork as to the Dalek plan to invade the Solar System, aided and abetted by an alliance of beings from the Outer Galaxies. (They go by various names, but we'll go with Planetarians).

 

This episode follows on 6 months or so later, bringing the Doctor into events and introducing us to the agent who came looking for Marc Cory - killed in the stand-alone instalment. Bret Vyon is played by Nicholas Courtney, the future Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and so this marks his very first appearance in the series.

We also get to spend some time with short-lived companion Katarina, who only joined the series in the (now lost) previous episode. There's another direct link to that episode as Steven has contracted blood poisoning from a sword wound inflicted during the fall of Troy, and he's seriously injured.

We're back on the densely jungled planet of Kembel, where the Daleks have assembled their invasion force and where their alliance meets.

Having sat out Mission to the Unknown, the Doctor is unaware of what is going on here, and is simply looking for medical help for his companion. We know far more about this place than he does.

The Dalek Master Plan is shown to have expanded to include an enemy working within the Solar System itself - its Guardian, Mavic Chen. 

His appearance is certainly one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing when it was announced that this was one of the two episodes recently recovered from a private collection by Film is Fabulous. Kevin Stoney is superb, and he is responsible for two of the greatest villains in the history of Doctor Who - Chen and Tobias Vaughn.

Despite the absence of telesnaps, we did know a little about what this episode looked like. Three clips survived - the TARDIS materialisation, the landing of the Spar 7-40 at the space-port, and the longer sequence showing the ambush and death of Bret's colleague Kert Gantry. Also, the jungle and some sets for the Dalek city are seen throughout the surviving second episode.

What we have been missing are the TARDIS interior sequences, and the Communications Centre scenes on Earth.

We can now see Chen's introduction, via a couple of incidental characters - Lizan and Roald - watching a news broadcast featuring him. The bald-headed Technix, who featured prominently in publicity images back in 1966, have only been seen very briefly (crewing the Spar).

They're one of the more obscure characters in the series thanks to all those photos - but a lack of actual footage. And no-one talks about them in dialogue. Is it simply policy that these workers have to shave their heads, like part of a uniform, or are they - as I suspect - some sort of genetically engineered drone workers, or clones. (Spin-off literature goes with them being clones in one place, and cyborgs in another). Sadly we still don't know, but at least we now get to see them.

One thing which strikes you even more is how the Earth of the year 4000 resembles a fascist technocracy. We had already seen the literal uniformity of its people - everyone seems to wear tabards - and the jackbooted security forces which police it, but this episode certainly reinforces the image.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see any more of the Planetarians here - they aren't introduced until The Day of Armageddon.

The Daleks themselves don't show up until quite late on in the episode - the ambush on Gantry - and are merely shown waiting to welcome Chen later on. (One thing I didn't know was that the Dalek Supreme doesn't feature in this instalment). 

The episode concentrates instead on Bret and the TARDIS crew.

Despite playing another character of military bearing, Bret is a very different character to the Brigadier, which demonstrates just how good an actor Courtney was.

Things we wouldn't have known about without the visuals include Bret's communicator resembling the ones later used by the Cybermen.

Whilst he and Kert mention Varga Plants, they don't actually feature in the action - but we see a couple of them lurking in the jungle. 

I certainly had no idea that Steven spent the entire episode shirtless and in modern trousers. I had expected him to still be wearing his ancient Greek gear.

One rather shocking image is a lingering shot of the dead Kert's face, eyes wide open and mouth agape.

Something else I wasn't aware of from the soundtrack was the way Roald mouthed the words of Chen's speech, clearly having heard it all before. 

It's these little details which we lose out on by only having the audio.

As well as being a very good episode for Courtney, William Hartnell is at the top of his game here, even though he spends most of the episode talking to himself.

I think you can also see, very clearly, why new companion Katarina simply wasn't sustainable. 

P is for... Pting

Diminutive creatures noted for their insatiable appetite for anything inorganic - especially if it provided them with an energy source. They were reputedly indestructible and could survive in the vacuum of space. One of them once wiped out an entire space fleet. They could be rendered immobile for short periods by staser fire, however, but made for extremely difficult targets.

The Doctor and her companions encountered one when it infiltrated a hospital ship, the Tsuranga, carrying them and a number of patients and staff. The creature began eating its way through the ship's infrastructure, aiming for the anti-matter power core. 

An attempt to lure it into an escape pod failed, so the Doctor was forced to devise an alternative scheme. A detonation device was rigged to attract it and it consumed this instead, before being ejected from the vessel through an airlock.

On exploding, the Pting merely absorbed the resulting energy and survived to float away through space.

The Doctor later encountered another member of the species, which she nicknamed "Tiny", on a penal asteroid run by the Judoon.

Appearances: The Tsuranga Conundrum (2018), The Timeless Children (2020), Revolution of the Daleks (2021)

• Though the episode was written by Chris Chibnall, the Pting was actually the creation of writer Tim Price. He had been a member of the writers room for Series 11 but had been unsuccessful in getting a story commissioned. Chibnall liked the alien he had devised, however, and Price agreed he could use it.

P is for... Psi

Psi was one of the people recruited by the Doctor to help rob the Bank of Karabraxos - notorious for its high levels of security. None of the thieves knew that the Doctor was behind this heist - even him, as they had all willingly handled a Memory Worm which wiped their recent memories. This was so that they couldn't reveal anything if captured. The bank employed a creature known as the Teller which could psychically sense guilt.

Each of the gang was promised a reward - something which the bank held in its vaults. Psi had undergone a technological upgrade which allowed him to interface directly with any computerised systems. In doing so, his longer term memories had been removed and stored on a chip, and getting this would be his reward. 

They were also given a suicide device - a ripper - to use in the event that the Teller caught them and destroyed their brains seeking their guilt. After helping to breach the security systems, Psi sacrificed himself by downloading data about various notorious criminals into his mind, which drew the Teller away from the Doctor and Clara. This then allowed them to reach their goal - actually the rescue of the Teller's mate.

It later transpired that the ripper was really a teleport, which took them to the safety of the TARDIS. Psi gained his memory chip, which allowed him to recall his family.

Played by: Jonathan Bailey. Appearances: Time Heist (2014).

• Pretty much everywhere these days, he started off as a child actor with the RSC and also played Gavroche in Les Miserables in the West End. His first significant TV role was as the corruptible local journalist in Chris Chibnall's Broadchurch.
• Period drama Bridgerton really put him on the map, before he moved to the big screen with Wicked and its sequel, and the male lead role in Jurassic World Rebirth.
• He hasn't given up the theatre. I saw him in the title role of Richard II at the Bridge Theatre in London in 2025.
• In 2024 he set up an LGBTQ+ charity - The Shameless Fund.
• Voted sexiest man alive in 2025.

P is for... Programmers

Two of the staff who helped to operate the Game Station - the space station in orbit above Earth formerly known as Satellite Five. They were employees of the Bad Wolf Corporation, responsible for ensuring that the station continually broadcast hundreds of game shows to the inhabitants of the planet below.

Programmer Davitch Pavale noticed irregular activity in one of the Big Brother games, and alerted his female colleague who had noted similar activity in a Weakest Link she was monitoring. This involved a pair of new contestants who were not taking the deadly games seriously. The Doctor and Rose had been abducted and transported into the games - the Doctor into the Big Brother house and Rose into a Weakest Link contest. The situation worsened when the Doctor broke out of his game, taking another contestant, Lynda, with him. When they alerted the Controller, through whom all output from the Game Station was broadcast, she instructed them to take no hostile action.

The Doctor, Lynda and Captain Jack Harkness - who had ended up on What Not To Wear - were captured by security guards but soon escaped and began making their way towards the control room.

Despite the fact that they appeared to be armed, the Controller once again refused to take action against them. 

This was because she was under the control of the Daleks, who had been responsible for bringing the Doctor and his companions here.

The Doctor warned them of an imminent Dalek attack, and the Programmers joined Jack in helping to defend the Station. Both were killed when their weapons proved ineffective against the invaders.

Davitch had carried a torch for his colleague, only letting her know of this before they perished.

Played by: Jo Stone-Fewings (Davitch Pavale), Nisha Nyar. Appearances: Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways (2005).

• It would probably be cause for controversy these days but the Female Programmer doesn't merit a name.
• Nisha Nyar has featured on many Big Finish audios.
• She previously played (uncredited) a Kang in Paradise Towers. 
• Jo Stone-Fewings is primarily a theatre actor, having appeared in over a dozen Shakespeare productions, many with the RSC.
• He had previously worked on a Russell T Davies drama - Mine All Mine - in 2003.

P is for... Pritchard

Richard Pritchard was a representative of Vector Petroleum, who controlled a mining complex known as The Drum in the Highlands of Scotland. He was Vice President of Subaquatic Resources, for The Drum was located deep beneath a man-made lake in a flooded valley.

As senior company staff member on the team, he took charge when commander Moran was killed in a freak accident. A capsule of unknown origins had been found on the floor of the lake and brought on board. Its engines fired unexpectedly and Moran was killed. Pritchard was interested mainly in how this apparently alien technology could be exploited by the company. He was especially interested in a missing power cell, which the Doctor had drawn the crew's attention to. 

Despite the appearance of ghostly figures which had begun to haunt the complex - including spectres of Moran and a figure dressed like a funeral director - Pritchard decided to don diving gear and go outside alone to find the power cell. Moran's ghost turned up and killed him, trapping and drowning him in the airlock before he could suit up.

Pritchard then joined the ranks of the ghosts. All were lured into a Faraday Cage where they were trapped by the Doctor, and this was then fired into space where the ghosts - really psychic transmitters - would dissipate over time.

Played by: Steven Robertson. Appearances: Under The Lake / Before The Flood (2015)

• Robertson is best known for his regular role in crime drama Shetland. He was born and raised on the Shetland Islands. 
• He also appeared in supernatural drama Being Human. This was in its fifth series, when he played civil servant Dominic Rook whose government department dealt with supernatural phenomena.

The Nightmare Begins Early...

Originally said to be arriving on the BBC iPlayer on Saturday 4th April, it has been announced that the two recently recovered episodes will be available from 6am on Friday 3rd. I'll be posting my thoughts on the Saturday, as I won't get a chance to watch them until Friday evening.

What's Wrong With... The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

A question you could be asking yourself now, or any time since Peter Capaldi left the series, though some might argue a lot further back into Tom Baker's later reign.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is actually well regarded for its season, though many fans took offence against one particular character. That is, of course, Whizzkid, who was seen as a thinly veiled criticism of certain sections of fandom.

Even though he is supposed to be an alien, or at least a human from the Earth of the far future, his outfit is deliberately contemporary, though old-fashioned for the 1980's. He is far from trendy, and presents as a typical teenage nerd, with glasses, bowtie and tank-top. He's obsessively fond of a particular show and talks of little else. And he collects all the merchandise.

Only the anorak is missing to have him appear as the stereotype of the young, male, boyfriend / girlfriend-lacking, Doctor Who fan.

JNT had been suffering ongoing and increasingly hostile complaints from the more vocal sections of fandom, especially since Season 22. 

People were unhappy with: 

• the quality of scripts, 
• casting of light entertainment figures, 
• his rampant self-promotion,
• his petty vindictiveness,
• kowtowing to America,
• casting Colin Baker,
• casting Bonnie Langford,
• "ruining" returning monsters,
• over-reliance on the series past,
• not relying on the series past,
• listening to Eric Saward,
• not listening to Eric Saward,
• Saward's infamous Starburst interview,
• not using tried and trusted directors from before his time,
• not using tried and trusted writers from before his time,
• the hiatus,
• the lost Season 23,
• prioritising pantos over producing the show,
• prioritising conventions over producing the show,
• and basically staying in the role for far too long...

And that was just what you saw in the letters pages of Doctor Who Bulletin. You'll notice that Whizzkid says of the Psychic Circus that everyone knows it's not as good as it used to be - a common complaint among Doctor Who fans of every generation, but especially during the second half of the JNT era.

Onto the story itself.

The Doctor claims that he has fought the Gods of Ragnarok through all of time. Funny he's never mentioned them until now.

The Gods crave entertainment, but this seems to boil down to fairly rubbishy amateur circus acts - which don't seem to take place very often. If it's simply the death and destruction part they are after, why not just have mass executions and skip the juggling and strongman acts?

They also appear to have gotten rid of the Circus members who were actually quite good at this type of thing - people who may have been able to entertain them more successfully.

If the Gods really are deities, or aliens with god-like powers, why leave the means of your own destruction lying around nearby, guarded only by a robot?

They have the power to raise the dead, so surely they could have protected the medallion piece a lot better.

They begin firing energy bolts at the Doctor, who deflects them with the medallion - but the Gods keep on firing even when they can see it is having no effect. And they keep on firing even when this begins to destroy themselves and their arena.

Where does the Doctor get all that magic paraphernalia for his act at the end? The arena doesn't look like it has a ceiling, so what's he hanging from?

What exactly is "psychic" about this circus, which has fairly mundane acts. It can't refer to whatever it is the Gods get from the so-called entertainments, as it was known by this name long before they took it over.

The initials of Psychic Circus would be "PC" - so why do we see "PS" all over the place?

Allowing for the fact that we know the circus was much bigger in the past, was this the only bus they used to get around? It could hardly have carried all of their equipment, including the actual tent, fittings and fixtures, let alone the members. Bellboy has an entire robotics laboratory.

The Bus Conductor must be the work of Bellboy - so why doesn't he warn Flowerchild about it?

The Stallslady hates the circus-goers, yet they seem to be her only customers - and, as mentioned, there don't ever seem to be all that many of them. She seems to be standing in the middle of a desert, with no signs of habitation for miles around.

How can something as simple as an advertising robot manage to breach TARDIS defences?

Or has this all been set up by the Doctor in the first place? As well as claiming to have battled the Gods, he seems to know about a specific gladiator who fought and died for them, and mentions things getting out of control sooner than he anticipated - suggesting it's yet another old score from the past he's decided to deal with now, just like the Hand of Omega and Nemesis. If it is, it's the third story to have featured this set-up - out of a season that's only got four stories. A pity that the script couldn't have been clearer on this. (Maybe it was originally. Cartmel era stories are nearly always over-written and then need to be pruned right back to fit the running time).

How can Ace have been wearing one of Flowerchild's earrings on her jacket before she has even found it?

And why can't she recall that the rucksack which she's hunting for got blown up along with a Cyberman shuttlecraft only recently?

Episode 202: Fury From The Deep (5)

Synopsis:

Called by Jamie to the pipeline room, everyone sees weed and foam filling the transparent pipe section. The Doctor warns that the battle of the giants has begun...

Price then reports that they have now lost contact with all of the rigs. The Doctor suggests that they will have been taken over by now, and Harris once again urges that they be destroyed.

The Doctor cautions that this would simply spread the weed over a wider area, whereas at present they know where it is concentrated. He surmises that the weed must first have been drawn up by one of the rigs. When Harris points out that anything blocking a pipe would have been dealt with by engineers, they realise who the first people infected must have been. Engineers know the entire technical layout of the operation, and so would have made ideal agents for the weed in establishing itself. 

Now Robson appears to have been infected - and he has even greater knowledge of the complex. A search must be made for him.

Harris questions why Victoria should have been attacked in the oxygen store by someone wearing a gas mask. She is merely a visitor here. The Doctor deduces that oxygen may be toxic to the weed, and so can be used as a weapon.

Unfortunately they are unaware that their discussion has been overheard by Oak and Quill, who slip out and make straight for the oxygen store.

Price reports that Robson has been seen going into his cabin, so Megan Jones decides to go with Harris to speak with him. Perkins accompanies them, and he suggests that the military be called in to do as Harris had suggested - but Jones is now trusting the Doctor as he has been right up to now about everything.

Robson appears confused - first claiming no-one can help him then asking for help. Jones believes him to be acting as though hypnotised, and isn't rational.

They leave him to rest.

As the Doctor ponders what to do next, Victoria speaks with Jamie - wishing they could get back to the TARDIS and away from here.

Harris returns with Jones and Perkins, and the Doctor tells them he hasn't devised a scheme yet, but he suspects that the weed's next move will be to attack this control centre. It will want to take over the gas distribution network. They must locate its nerve centre and destroy it.

Oxygen may still be a weapon, so Jones orders a guard placed on the store.

Robson wakes as he hears the heartbeat sound emanating from the ventilation duct on his wall. The weed communicates with him mentally, telling him what he must do next...

A guard has been placed at his door, but he knocks him out with toxic gas from his mouth. The weed is beginning to cover his arms.

It is discovered that they have been too late in protecting the oxygen store as it has already been sabotaged. Jamie spots Oak and Quill, recalling how they had abandoned their post when he and the Doctor had been trapped in the impeller shaft.

He gives chase as they hurry away and manages to catch up with Quill. The two struggle and Quill attempts to use his toxic breath as Victoria screams. Quill drops to the floor clutching his head. Jamie thinks this to be the result of one of his punches but the Doctor is not so sure.

The Chief Engineer suddenly calls them back to the control room where a monitor shows the weed and foam once again filling the pipeline, this time threatening to break out as it expands - just like it did in the TARDIS laboratory.

As Price reports that Robson has fled his room, they see the transparent pipe section crack open. Foam pours into the pipeline room, and a tentacle of weed seizes a technician and drags him away.

In the confusion the Doctor and Jamie suddenly realise that Victoria is missing. With toxic gas filling the air, the control room doors begin to close automatically. They manage to get out into the corridor before the doors lock shut behind them.

They split up to search for their companion - unaware that she has been abducted by Robson. Unconscious, she is being carried to an ESGO vehicle. Robson drives her away to the nearby airfield where one of the company helicopters sits.

With the pipeline and impeller rooms secured to stop the spread of the weed and its gas, Harris is able to unlock the control room doors. He tells the Doctor about Robson being spotted taking Victoria away, and that the helicopter has now taken off.

The Doctor contacts Robson by radio, only to be told that he has taken the girl as a hostage. If the Doctor wants her back, then has to give himself up to the weed.

The Doctor and Jamie will go after her, and Jones agrees when the Doctor points out that Robson is about to lead them straight to the weed's nerve centre.

They hurry to the airfield and take off in a second helicopter manned by a company pilot. They are told that Robson has now landed on the control rig.

When they get closer they see that this rig is covered in foam. Unable to land due to Robson's craft, the pilot hovers and they descend to the deck using a rope ladder. The helicopter then moves off to a safe distance.

They begin searching the rig and soon hear the familiar heartbeat sound - followed by shouts from Victoria. They are led to the control cabin, which is full of foam.

Standing in its midst, his body covered in weed, is Robson.

"Come in Doctor", he states. "We've been waiting for you"...

Data:

Written by Victor Pemberton

Recorded: Saturday 23rd March 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 13th April 1968

Ratings: 5.9 million / AI 56

VFX: Peter Day

Designer: Peter Kindred

Director: Hugh David

Critique:

As mentioned last time, story editor Derrick Sherwin upset Pemberton by deleting a major sequence which would have bridged episodes four and five of the serial. Realising that the weed creatures now had control over the pumping equipment, they could use it to pump their toxic gas into a nearby venue in which a conference of ESGO and government figures was taking place - convened to find a means of halting the threat. The Doctor and his companions racing to stop the attack constituted the cliff-hanger.

This episode would have begun with them discovering that they were unfortunately too late, and all but one person was dead. This proved to be Swan,  as Quill was then named. He was almost completely transformed into a seaweed creature. The fight between Jamie and he then took place here - with Victoria's screams killing the infected man.

The weed elected to attack the refinery because the crew had turned off the gas supply.

Originally, Robson was to have taken Victoria to the rig by boat, with only the Doctor and Jamie following by helicopter. Once out at sea, all of the rigs were covered in foam - apart from the central control rig. On landing, they discovered that all of the crew were now weed creatures.

Regarding the fight between Jamie and Swan, the original script stated that Jamie had knocked his opponent out with a "McCrimond (sic) punch", giving vent to his creag an tuirc battle cry as he did so. On collapsing, the seaweed fronds retracted from Swan's arms. Jamie had also called Swan a Sassenach as he chased him - a Scots word for a southerner, usually reserved as a mild insult for the English, though technically a Lowland Scot is also a Sassenach.

This was another episode which featured a great deal of location filming, involving helicopters and the Red Sands Fort location which was standing in for the offshore rig complex.

The Natural Gas Development Board had offered limited access to a real gas rig, though not any refinery sites. Unhappy at the restrictions, Hugh David considered alternatives and first thought of a Napoleonic sea fort, of which there are several along the south coast of England. (One of these would appear later in The Sea Devils, directed by the PA on this story). David settled on the Red Sands complex, which had been base of operations for a pirate radio station (see Trivia below) and temporary home to one of his cast.

Rather than use a model shot, David wanted to see the actual fort covered in foam as seen from a helicopter.

Peter Day elected to go out to the fort to set up the BBC foam machine, though a major problem had been identified. The machine needed a water supply, and it couldn't simply be taken directly from the sea as the platform was too high and the hose wasn't long enough. A supply of water had to be transported over by fishing boat before the machine could be used. (I'm assuming salt water wouldn't have been very good for it anyway).

Due to stormy weather conditions, Day ended up having to sleep overnight on the fort. Very little of the footage involving the fort was used in the end, with all the close-ups filmed on dry land.

Other location filming took place at Denham Airfield on Monday 5th February. This included Victor Maddern carrying Debbie Watling out of an ESGO compound entrance and into one of their vehicles - a Mini Moke (a small open-topped jeep-like car). He was then seen to carry her to the smaller of the helicopters which had been hired, which had ESGO decals stencilled to its sides.

All cockpit shots of actors in flight were taken on terra firma.

Also filmed that day was the action of the Doctor and Jamie descending into a bank of foam by rope ladder. Wooden boards were employed to hold a large mass of foam in place around the stationary helicopter. As you can see from one of the images below, a dummy was used in the cockpit for some long shots.

The final days of filming for this episode were at Ealing, from Wednesday 7th to Friday 9th February. This was for scenes of the weed breaking out of the pipe and flooding the pipeline room, which would be cut into a montage sequence.

Thursday 8th is when Maddern filmed his climactic sequence, standing chest deep in foam, in the control rig cabin.

Frazer Hines was taken out of rehearsals to carry out some filming at Ealing for The Wheel in Space with Wendy Padbury, who had been cast as new companion Zoe - their first work together on the series.

On 19th March Derrick Sherwin carried out more rewrites, including the Doctor working out how the weed possessed people.

Recording on 23rd March saw additional studio time awarded so that Hugh David could remount some scenes from Episode 4 which he had been dissatisfied with. These involved the use of sets which appeared in both episodes, such as the main control room and adjoining corridor. Recording ran from 8.30 - 9.45pm.

Opening titles ran over a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger to the previous instalment.

For the scenes of Robson in his cabin, the director opted to shoot Maddern through a ventilation grille - providing a POV shot from the weed's perspective.

Some extra scenes were included to bring the episode up to time, including a discussion between Harris and Jones about checking staff fingerprints after it was discovered that the oxygen supplies had been sabotaged.

Camera breaks were mainly to allow cast movements from set to set, such as when Oak and Quill go from the control room to the corridor. Another break allowed for the fight between Jamie and Quill to be set up.

We have a couple of very brief clips from this episode, thanks to those Australian censors. Both involve the infected Robson - the shot of him attacking the guard on his door, and a glimpse of him in the helicopter cockpit with Victoria.

Apparently these were simply due to the sight of the latex fronds on his wrists, or emerging from his collar. It's very odd that these were found offensive, but not a woman walking into the sea (as though killing herself), people being dragged away by the tentacles of an unseen monster, or the final images of this instalment. 

And for some reason the censor seemed not to mind close-ups of the weed on the arms of Oak and Quill in Episode 2, or on Maggie in Episode 3.

Yet another iconic image from this story is that sight of Robson standing in a sea of foam at the cliff-hanger. It's a really creepy sequence. No doubt quite a few kids (and the more sensitive adult viewers) had a few nightmares about it.

This is one of the reasons why this story remains so highly regarded - the frightening imagery and the gradual mood building. Bear in mind we haven't really encountered the monster properly yet, and it's already Episode 5. So far the foam has been the disquieting visual image, with the odd tentacle being waved. This instalment finally sees the weed begin to make itself felt.

(Of course, another reason it's so highly regarded is due to its status of being absent from the archives - one of those "lost classics").

One thing which will prove to be a disappointment is the handling of Mr Oak and Mr Quill, for we aren't going to see the sinister pair again. Quill has been overpowered, and Oak has simply run off.

In the draft script, Swan was seen to die after his fight with Jamie, after Victoria screamed.

This rather poor handling of the characters is no doubt down to the changes made by Sherwin, which Pemberton was so unhappy with.

A plotting point also irks somewhat - the business with the oxygen store. Everyone has just spoken about how oxygen might prove to be a weapon against the weed, and yet it takes ages before they decide it might be a good idea to place a guard on the store...

The Doctor also seems very slow in connecting the dots between the weed retreating and loud noise.

And it's taken an age to work out that the weed might be based out on the rigs. They began losing contact with them back in the first episode.

Trivia:

• The ratings drop to below 6 million, but there is a reason. This was Easter weekend, when a lot of people might be out visiting or attending events. This will prove to be the lowest rated episode of the serial. The appreciation figure remains the same as the previous two weeks, however. 
• Debbie Watling was interviewed during rehearsals this week for teen magazine Disc and Music Echo, and this was published on the day of recording.
• In an interview for Steve Cambden's book The Doctor's Effects, Peter Day told a more dramatic story about the filming on the fort. He claimed that the foam machine had to be abandoned due to three weeks solid of stormy weather, and was in a rusted state when finally retrieved by a trawler. He also claimed that the director never got the shot he wanted in the end, but we can see from a telesnap (above) that this was not the case.
• Visitors to the Museum of London: Docklands can view a rather nice model of a Maunsell Sea Fort - the collective name for these maritime WWII defence structures. They take that name from their designer, Guy Maunsell, and were constructed in both the Thames and Mersey estuaries. There were two main types - "Army" and "Navy". The Red Sands Fort is of the Army design, as is the model below. It also has seven platforms, with connecting walkways. Five of the structures had 40mm Bofors guns mounted on them, and their primary purpose was defence against German aircraft. (And yes, I took these photographs purely because of the Doctor Who connection).

• Red Sands Fort featured in another classic 1960's TV series - Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan. The episode was "Not So Jolly Roger", and it was broadcast in April 1966. The series filmed on the fort at the same time Brian Cullingford was helping to run pirate radio station Radio 390. The basic plot was that enemy agents were using a pirate radio station as a front for their espionage activities. Incidentally, another station manager for Radio 390 was a real ex-spy.
• Mike Raven also spent time running the station, during the period Cullingford was there. He's best known for a couple of horror movie roles, including a very low budget one featuring Louise Jameson. He's the surrogate Christopher Lee in Hammer's Lust for a Vampire, in which he suffered the indignity of being dubbed by Valentine Dyall, and a close-up of Lee's eyes (as Dracula) was used instead of his own. Nothing to do with Doctor Who, I just like Hammer Horror as well.
• Another appearance for the fort is in the 1975 music film Slade in Flame. The band are on the fort to promote their music when it is fired upon by rivals - something which happened in real life. Rivalry between pirate stations would lead to murder, which is when the government finally stepped in to shut them down.
• More up to date, the fort is seen as an MI6 base in Artemis Fowl (2020), and even features - in the background only - in one of the Hunger Games films (Hunger Games: Catching Fire).
• There is a feature on it on the DVD / Blu-ray release of Fury from the Deep.