Episode 212: The Dominators (3)

Synopsis:

Zoe and Cully have just arrived back at the survey unit by travel capsule, seeking proof of the invaders to show to the ruling council. It has just been visited by the Quarks, who are now ordered by Toba to destroy the installation. 

The building begins to collapse around them...

The attack is halted by the arrival of Rago, who is angered that Toba is wasting resources on wanton destruction. The Quarks have limited energy supplies, and they are needed for their drilling operations. Rago orders that any survivors inside be taken alive.

Zoe and Cully manage to open the outer door of the unit - only to be confronted by one of the robots.

The Doctor and Jamie arrive at the Capitol and are granted an audience with Senex and the council.

Rago has been examining Teel more closely and is concerned that the Dulcians may be too physically weak to act as a slave labour force. He instructs Toba that the three prisoners, along with the two from the survey unit, be sent to work on one of the drill sites - their progress to be observed and collapse time noted. 

One of the Quarks is sent back to the unit to capture any others who might arrive there.

The Doctor and Jamie are concerned to learn that Zoe and Cully have returned to the island. They struggle to convince the council that the Dominators pose a threat. If they want something on Dulkis, Senex states, then they will simply give it to them. Senex and Bovem also point out that the Dominators let them go - so what can there be to fear from them? Jamie is alarmed to hear that the Dulcians have no armies to defend themselves, being pacifists.

Cully and Zoe are waiting by the museum, where one of the drill sites is located. Discussing a means of escape, Zoe recalls the laser weapon which she saw inside.

Teel, Kando and Balan are sent to join them, accompanied by Quarks.

In the council chamber, video contact is established with the survey unit, and everyone is shocked to see it damaged - and a Quark visible on the screen. Only now does the council begin to accept what Cully and the Doctor have been trying to warn them about. The Doctor and Jamie realise that Zoe and the others are in danger, and insist on returning to the island immediately.

As they set off in a travel capsule, Jamie points out to the Doctor that they know there will be a Quark waiting for them at the survey unit. The Doctor decides that they must make a landing elsewhere on the island - and this will mean overriding the automatic guidance system. He opens a hatch and begins rewiring the controls, much to Jamie's consternation as they are still in flight.

The prisoners are put to work clearing rubble away from the drill site outside the museum, guarded by a pair of Quarks. Whilst Zoe and Cully want to escape and fight back, they find Balan and Kando unwilling to take any action - though Teel begins to accept that it would be wrong to submit.

Rago is surprised to learn that of all the prisoners, it is a female who is proving the strongest - Zoe.

As Balan collapses and has to be moved to the side, Zoe attempts to slip into the museum to seize the weapon - only to find another Quark inside.

His rewiring completed, the Doctor warns Jamie to prepare for a landing.

The Dulcian council has called upon Tensa, Chairman of the Emergencies Committee, to attend them. He usually has to deal with natural disasters and accidents, and has never had to consider a threat of this nature. He informs Senex and the others that they have three options to respond: fight, flight, or capitulation. The Director is shocked. They cannot fight as they have no weapons or armies; they cannot flee as they have nowhere to go; and the idea of submission to some unknown aggressor is unthinkable. Tensa advises that for now they must simply wait, since they do not know for certain that the new arrivals on the island are hostile.

The travel capsule has landed on a hillside near the museum. The Doctor and Jamie set off to look for Zoe.

The prisoners are discussing what they should do next, if they do manage to get the weapon and destroy their guards. Teel recalls that the museum contains a bomb shelter, though he is not sure where the entrance is.

They are being observed from the hillside above by the Doctor and Jamie, who split up to try to make their way down to them.

It is Cully who manages to slip away from the work party into the building, and finds the weapon. He takes aim at one of the Quarks, but cannot get a clear shot. Just he gets one in his sights, he is interrupted by the arrival of Jamie.

The robots note that one of the party is missing.

The Doctor stumbles into Toba and is captured. The rest of the prisoners are being escorted along a path back to the spaceship and the Doctor is forced to join them. On hearing that Cully is missing, Toba returns to the museum with a trio of Quarks.

When Cully refuses to surrender, they begin to open fire on the building. Jamie takes aim and destroys one of the robots, which infuriates Toba.

The Quarks continue to bombard the museum building, with Jamie and Cully trapped inside...

 

Data:

Written by Norman Ashby

Recorded: Friday 31st May 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 24th August 1968

Ratings: 5.4 million / AI 55

VFX: Ron Oates

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Morris Barry

Additional cast: Brian Cant (Tensa)

Critique:

Technically, this is the final episode of Doctor Who to have been written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln - for reasons we will go into next week...

As previously mentioned, all the location work involving pyrotechnics was filmed on the same day at Gerrards Cross - Thursday 25th April. This included the partial destruction of the survey unit - a forced perspective model - and the Quark which is attacked by Jamie in this episode. A single dummy Quark was blown up, filmed from different angles so that the footage could be used to show different attacks in more than one episode.

Wendy Padbury was not free in the morning and so attended filming after lunch, including the sequence where Zoe and the Dulcian prisoners are escorted back to the spaceship, with the Doctor being forced to join them. It can clearly be seen that this is not Patrick Troughton, but his stand-in Chris Jeffries.

The next day had seen the travel capsule model footage filmed for this and the previous episode at the Puppet Theatre in Television Centre. A still photograph of the crash-landed capsule, its nose partially buried in the sand, was taken - to be inserted into this episode as a caption.

Joining the cast this week was the legendary Brian Cant, playing Chairman Tensa. For generations of children he was known as the presenter of series Play School and Play Away, as well as the voice of Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley. As with many of the cast, he had previously worked with Morris Barry on Compact.

The Dominators was once again recorded at Television Centre but moved into Studio TC3 this week, where it would remain for the rest of the story. 

Earlier on the day of recording, Troughton and Padbury recorded the brief exchange which would act as voice-over introduction for the repeat screening of The Evil of the Daleks.

This episode was allocated an extra 15 minutes recording, taking it up to 10pm. It was also recorded onto 35mm film, taken from a 625-line video monitor, for ease of editing.

The "Episode 3" caption was mistakenly omitted from the opening credits, which rolled over a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger to the previous week's episode.

Senex's chair was now seen to have a TV monitor built into it, so that he could view the scenes from the damaged survey unit - fed from a camera on that set.

The first recording break was to allow Troughton and Hines to move from the council chamber set into the travel capsule. Its erratic flight was indicated simply through camera movement.

Camera masks were used to show the telescope view of the working party, as seen by the Doctor and Jamie, and to show the cross-hairs on the gun sight as Jamie and Cully tried to aim the laser weapon at a Quark.

Wendy Padbury suffered some wardrobe malfunctions throughout recording as the zip on the back of her dress often came loose.

The final recording break of the evening was to set up flash charges on the museum set to show it being blasted by the Quarks. The end credits ran over this attack, as the charges were detonated.

One small cut to the episode was made during the editing. This had the Doctor and Jamie pause as they left the council chamber to discuss the fact that there would be a Quark waiting for them when the got back to the survey unit - dialogue already covered in a travel capsule scene.

This week we start to see some action, though characters are still mainly going backwards and forwards, and men are debating in rooms. The lack of incident was the main issue of concern for Derrick Sherwin throughout the story, and would be the reason why it was eventually truncated.

The war museum, full of functional weapons, is a "Chekov's Gun" - i.e. if you show a revolver sitting on a table in Act One, then someone will have to have fired it by the end of Act Three. 

Unless you really want to include something as a 'red herring', the narrative shouldn't include anything you don't intend to use.

The war museum exists here to show that this island was once the site of a nuclear bomb test, and an initial source of radiation - but the fact that it has working laser guns has to mean something for the plot.

(It's odd that there should be a museum dedicated to the Dulcians' warlike past, as a reminder to cherish their current peace-loving society - but located in a place that only a few students ever visit. And why does it contain working weaponry? Would an energy weapon still have power after 172 years? It is claimed that it is self-charging - though you saw a power cable at one point in Episode 2).

Chairman Tensa is introduced, head of the Emergencies Committee. Despite only having the information given to the council by Cully and the Doctor, plus the video of the Quark in the survey unit, he does initially appear to accept the fact that they are under threat. His advice? Fight, Flight or Surrender. That he should even advocate fighting as an option might show that this society isn't entirely pacifistic. In cut dialogue, Cully had said that one of his father's roles was to maintain their peace-loving existence - which might imply that their pacificism does not run very deeply.

However, Tensa then spoils things by reverting back to the threat only being hearsay at present, and they ought to simply wait and see what happens.

Certainly Balan and Kando are unwilling to get involved in any escape attempt which might involve attacking the Quarks - though it looks like she is simply bowing to the older man's advice. Balan's advice is simply that violence begets violence. 

Teel, on the other hand, is beginning to stand up for himself and admits that it would be wrong to capitulate, though he isn't prepared to go quite as far as the rebellious Cully for now.

There's more visual comedy on show from the Doctor and Jamie. First of all there's the clowning around in the travel capsule as the Doctor dismantles the controls and does a spot of mid-air rewiring. At one point he falls head first into the workings and we see his legs waving in the air.

Later, there's the business with the telescope as Jamie snatches it away before the Doctor has a chance to use it. A little moment, but one indicative of the way Troughton and Hines worked together, and are one of the most popular Doctor / Companion combinations.

Apart from these scenes, the Doctor and Jamie have little to do in this episode - until the latter decides to go on the attack right at the end.

In the council chamber, Jamie gets increasingly frustrated by the attitude of the Dulcians, whilst the Doctor actually finds himself being distracted by some of their arguments:

The Doctor: "Because they are aggressive, callous and unfeeling. Don't expect them to act and think as you do. They're alien, from another planet"

Senex: "Well so are you, Doctor"

The Doctor: "Oh dear, you've got me there..."

As for Zoe, well it's nice to see her getting more to do. She gets captured and put on a work party - but immediately starts planning an escape, encouraging the others to contemplate helping. She also takes care of the weaker members of the party, and proves to be the strongest of the lot. This despite her academic background in the City and on the Wheel. The story is trying to say more that the Dulcians are physically rather weak through their indolent lifestyle, rather than that she is particularly strong.

Trivia:

• The ratings drop even further this week, to what will be the lowest figure for this story. The appreciation score remains constant however.
• Brian Cant had previously played Kert Gantry in the recently rediscovered The Nightmare Begins - the opening instalment of The Daleks' Master Plan. His son Richard will appear in the series in 2007, playing Kathy Nightingale's grandson in Blink.
• Now synonymous with the Fourth Doctor, the Second Doctor here enjoys a bag of jelly babies in the travel capsule. He favoured lemon sherbets in the last story.
• In the early spaceship scene where Kando wants the Dominators to leave Teel alone, a camera can just be glimpsed creeping into shot.
• Radio Times included a photograph of Jamie and Cully on the day's listings page in some regions. Note Dee Time at 6.15pm, presented by Simon Dee. Frazer Hines was desperate to appear on this chat show, but they were only interested in getting him along with Troughton - and the latter refused point blank to do TV interviews at this time.

Episode 211: The Dominators (2)

Synopsis:

The Doctor and Jamie have come across the Dominator spaceship. They look around, and the Doctor wants to venture inside - but they suddenly see Toba, flanked by a pair of Quarks, on a nearby ridge. 

The Quarks ask if they should destroy...

Toba resists the urge to kill them, as his commander Rago has instructed that captives be taken for examination.

The Doctor and Jamie are brought into the spaceship, where the Quarks are used to molecularly bond them to a wall. Jamie is then given a physical examination which, apart from signs of recent rapid learning, show him to be relatively weak in comparison to a Dominator, having only one heart. Rago declines to carry out a similar examination of the Doctor, arguing that it would be a waste of resources as he is likely to be the same.

At the survey unit, Zoe continues to impress Cully due to her questions. He has tried to contact his father, Senex, but video reception is poor. Unable to communicate properly, Senex arranges for the two young people to travel to the Capitol by travel capsule. Balan sets the destination control on the small, two-seat, rocket-like craft.

Cully and Zoe arrive at the Capitol in only a few minutes, and enter the council chamber. Councillor Bovem is disputing with his colleagues when they arrive. On hearing that Zoe and her friends come from another world, this sparks a debate about life on other planets, and Zoe can see that the Dulcians are a bureaucratic people who debate issues endlessly.

Bovem accuses Cully of being a troublemaker, who is allowed to get away with things only because his father is their Director. At that moment Senex arrives. He dismisses the council in order to speak with his son and his friend privately.

Zoe tries to back up Cully's claims of spaceships and robots on the island - but has to admit that she hasn't actually seen these for herself. She is sure that the Doctor and Jamie will be along shortly to confirm what Cully has said.

They, meanwhile, are being subjected to a number of relatively simple tests in the Dominator spaceship.

The Doctor quickly realises that to appear intelligent might actually work against them. Best to pretend stupidity. He asks his companion if he can manage this... 

In each test, therefore, the pair deliberately perform badly. 

The survey team continue their work, and Balan explains away the lack of radiation here as indicative that its effects only last 172 years. He is becoming irritated that Teel and Kando are preoccupied with what Cully claimed to have witnessed.

The Doctor and Jamie are next taken by Rago to the war museum, where they are asked to explain the weaponry on display. Again they feign stupidity and ignorance.

Rago is suspicious, and so the Doctor claims that there are others on this planet cleverer than he and Jamie. It is they who know about the weapons. Rago notes that there must be two different species on Dulkis, and they must find representatives of the superior race to examine.

In the meantime, the Doctor and Jamie are allowed to go free so long as they do not interfere with their mission - their lack of intelligence making them no threat.

Frustrated that no-one believes them, Cully decides that they must get back to the island and find proof. In order to secure a travel capsule, they will have to use subterfuge. Zoe must change into Dulcian clothes to get past the capsule operators.

The Doctor and Jamie arrive back at the survey unit to learn that Zoe and Cully have already gone to the Capitol. They will follow, as they can now confirm Cully's story. 

After they have gone, Balan realises that they will get no work done until his students have seen this spaceship and its robots for themselves, so they set off to find them.

Rago and Toba are working on their drilling calculations when they see the three Dulcians approach their ship. Toba wishes to send the Quarks out to destroy them, but Rago orders they be taken for examination.

The trio are permitted to wander inside before being captured.

Teel is given the same physical examination which Jamie underwent, and this time differences are noted. Dulcians have two hearts for instance. The Doctor appeared to have been telling the truth about the two races, and these other Dulcians may well prove a suitable slave labour force.

Rago and Toba split up to search the island for more people like Teel, taking some Quarks with them.

Toba soon comes across the survey unit. He orders the Quarks inside, to scan and record all technological data.

Cully and Zoe land back at the unit only moments after the Quarks have withdrawn to the hillside nearby, where Toba gives the order to destroy the building.

The pair find themselves trapped inside as the unit begins to collapse around them...

Data:

Written by Norman Ashby

Recorded: Friday 25th May 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 17th August 1968

Ratings: 5.9 million / AI 55

VFX: Ron Oates

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Morris Barry

Additional cast: Walter Fitzgerald (Senex), Alan Gerrard (Bovem), Ronald Mansell, John Cross (Council Members), Freddie Wilson (Quark).

Critique:

Small travel capsules featured in the scripts even when the survey team were originally to have arrived on the island in a much bigger craft, as this would have contained one of them. They were described as cigar-shaped, with two seats, one behind the other. The curved door opened upwards on hinges.

Three Quarks were constructed by the freelance father and son team of Jack and John Lovell to Martin Baugh's design. The sketch had them in gold, but they were made from fibreglass in a gunmetal grey colour. The head was made from frosted perspex. 

All three were operated by boys from a drama school, who were pleased to be featuring in the series. They were chaperoned throughout the production. 

They wore box-like boots on their feet, and could see through an aperture just above the gun arms. Manipulating these was the main task for the boys. It was intended that whenever the Quarks were called upon to carry out any tasks, such as recharging or employing their molecular force, the arms would wave in and out.

Despite the difficulties of walking around in the suits in the middle of a sand and gravel pit, they did so without complaint.

In studio the Quarks were often bodily lifted, to quickly move them from set to set.

It is never clear just how many Quarks are on the ship. It appears to be 12, but try counting them as you watch the episodes.

As with the Servo Robot in the last story, there is something rather endearing about them, with their short stature coupled with the child-like voice. But then that was the intention - cute, but deadly.

It had been decided to film all of the explosive effects on location for the entire serial on the first day - Thursday 25th April - at Gerrards Cross. This included the attack on the survey unit building, which in this instance was a forced perspective model. Whilst the script stated that Toba employed only two Quarks to attack the unit, all three were filmed doing so.

Also filmed on this day were Balan, Teel and Kando approaching the Dominator spaceship, with a high shot taken, to be seen on the scanner inside the ship as viewed by Rago and Toba.

The following day, the travel capsule model was filmed at the Puppet Theatre in Television Centre. The same footage would be used in the third episode. A close-up image of the underside of the spaceship model was taken, to be viewed by the survey team.

Filming at Ealing on Tuesday 30th and Wednesday 1st May included the close-up of the Doctor's foot as he is given an electric shock from the floor. This was actually Chris Jeffries' foot as Troughton was not present.

Frazer Hines was required, as both he and Giles Block had to be filmed being bonded to the wall by the Quarks. This was simply filmed in reverse with the actors pressing themselves up against the wall then moving forward. The wall going from vertical to horizontal was achieved later in studio through tilting camera angles alone.

Joining rehearsals on Monday 20th May were Walter Fitzgerald, playing Senex, and Alan Gerrard, playing Bovem. Fitzgerald had worked with Patrick Troughton on a number of productions, both on TV and in film, whilst Gerrard would play four different roles in Coronation Street as well as appearing in series such as The Avengers. He had previously been directed by Morris Barry in soap The Newcomers and in Z-Cars.

Originally cast as statues were four young actresses, who would appear in the background of the council chamber. This was dropped just before recording. It has been claimed that these were to have moved very slowly, but they were simply to have stood motionless.

Last minute alterations were made to the script to reduce the council chamber scenes, including Cully claiming to have found a pile of travel passes in his father's chambers, and he only had to forge his signature to use them.

There was a visit to the studio on Friday 24th May by some of Troughton's family, as his daughter Jo wanted to meet Ronald Allen.

Of concern to Troughton was the sequence where Rago has Jamie fire a ray gun in the Doctor's direction. He never liked being too close to explosives such as flash charges, and the first attempt had already gone wrong when the charge failed to ignite. On the second attempt, the charge detonated with a bigger blast than expected and damaged the museum wall.

Three new sets debuted this week. Most impressive is Newbery's spaceship interior. He made use of reflective materials which appeared to create moving patterns when light was shone on them in a certain way. One side had a black drape against which white ropes and canes were suspended on wires, to simulate a navigation star-chart. There were also small illuminated panels depicting Quarks, which would flash in later episodes to indicate when one of the robots was under attack, and the light would go out when it was no longer functioning.

The travel capsule was simply a tube with two seats, built onto the side of the survey unit set. It had a small opening at the front to allow camera access. The hatch now slid to the side instead of opening outwards. This jammed at one point and almost crushed Arthur Cox's hand.

To indicate the capsule taking off, an inlay effect of a white iris opening up from blackness was employed. This could be reversed to show it landing at its destination.

The other new set was the Dulcian council chamber, which employed a background cyclorama depicting futuristic buildings, one of which - the broken egg-like sphere - is oddly reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. The set was dressed simply with comfortable chairs and TV monitors built into pedestals.

Three recording breaks were planned for the evening. Two were to position the examination table for Jamie and then for Teel, and the third was to allow Wendy Padbury to change into her Dulcian costume.

One of the Quark performers tripped over and the head fell off.

Flash charges were detonated around the survey unit set and lightweight debris was dropped from above for the climax to the episode.

A number of scenes were cut for timing reasons - mostly those involving Zoe and Cully. These included a couple of scenes in the travel capsule, where Zoe worked out their speed - 90,000 miles per hour - from the planet's circumference and their travel time to the Capitol. Cully also stated that the travel capsules had a manual override control, but it was so long ago that anyone had used it that people had forgotten where it was.

In the council chamber, he also told Zoe that his father was employed simply to maintain the old order established by previous Directors - to prevent aggression and suppress the yearning for adventure.

On approaching the spaceship, Balan was to have suspected that it was some new form of travel capsule designed by their own people, and Kando thought that, if so, it must have made a forced landing here.

If the second episode of The Dominators has a problem, it is lack of incident. Naturally we get an exciting cliffhanger, as Zoe and Cully arrive back at the survey unit just as Toba is blowing it up, but prior to that we have people going back and forth, and people talking in rooms.

It is the scenes between the Doctor, Jamie and the Dominators which are the most enjoyable - but they hardly move the plot on.

The Doctor and Jamie spend almost the entire episode as captives, undergoing a variety of intelligence tests. These start off in the spaceship - a wonderful Barry Newbery design - and then move to the museum.

These tests do allow for some humour to be displayed. The Doctor quickly realises that an intelligent enemy is going to be seen as more of a threat to the Dominators, so decides that he and Jamie should play dumb:

The Doctor: "Just act stupid. Do you think you can manage that?"

Jamie: "Och aye, it's easy" - then realises he's just been insulted.

The scene where the pair have to get off the central dais, only to find the floor electrified, provides a bit of clowning as they shock each other when they hold hands.

We also have a bit of sexual innuendo when Rago states that he is going to "probe your physiological make-up", to which the Doctor responds, alarmed, "Do what?".

But Rago isn't so easily fooled. 

Rago (to the Doctor): "Are you such a fool? You have intelligent eyes...".

The Doctor, of course, is following his usual special technique - of keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut, as he once told Eric Klieg on Telos.

He takes careful note of Rago's message to their fleet commander about "Materials being readily accessible" on the planet...

We are introduced to the leading council of Dulkis, and can see what Cully was talking about last time - his people really are bureaucratic and unadventurous.

When Teel reports that communications have been switched off at the council's end, he retorts: 

"Typical Dulcian behaviour. Something strange, something you don't understand and you switch off - " taps his head - "up here".

Balan simply accepts as fact that, as the radiation has disappeared, its effects must last only 172 years. The phrase "facts are facts" crops up over and over again from the survey team members.

We join the council as they debate the use of a piece of land for recreational purposes, and Bovem makes it clear that this has been discussed over and over for a considerable time, and so declares that they need to come to a decision. Then, when Zoe arrives claiming to be from another planet, this sparks off another debate.

Last week there was mention of a "new type of robot". This suggests that the Dulcians have robots of their own, and the debate about recreational land suggests that they have little need to work on this planet. It may be peaceful, but it is a somewhat indolent society, resting on its scientific achievements.

Trivia:

• The ratings fail to improve, slipping below the 6 million mark. Launching a new series in August was clearly proving a bad idea.
• Walter Fitzgerald was an accomplished character actor of the 1940's and '50's, appearing in movies such as The Winslow Boy, Around the World in 80 Days, The Cruel Sea, In Which We Serve and The Pickwick Papers, which also featured William Hartnell. The two also appeared together in Strawberry Roan and The Ringer. He had previously appeared on TV opposite Patrick Troughton in Paul of Tarsus, and the 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island.
• Senex was to have been named Somex - from the Latin for sleep.
• Bovem's name derives from his bullish temperament.
• It's a great pity that Rago didn't begin with the Doctor when he conducted his physiological probing, or studied him as well as Jamie, as it would have helped resolve the continuity issue of the Doctor's second heart. We only hear of it for the first time in Spearhead From Space, and the Doctor just underwent a thorough physical exam from Dr Gemma Corwyn in the previous story which failed to note it. In The Sensorites he mentions a heart, singular, and Ian listens to his heartbeat in The Edge of Destruction without comment - all of which would suggest that he does not have a second heart in either of these incarnations.
• Two-hearted species can't be all that common, yet here we have a planet of twin-hearted aliens, who just happen to be visited by two different twin-hearted species on the same day - the Doctor and the Dominators. It's implied the latter have two hearts, as they see Jamie's single one as a weakness. 
• Radio Times featured artwork of the Quarks on the programme listings page this week, and Walter Fitzgerald was named first in the guest cast:

Episode 210: The Dominators (1)

SEASON 6

PRODUCER: Peter Bryant (The Dominators - The Space Pirates), Derrick Sherwin (The War Games)

SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin (The Dominators - The Mind Robber, The Space Pirates), Terrance Dicks (The Invasion - The Seeds of Death, The War Games)

REGULAR CAST: Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Wendy Padbury (Zoe)

Synopsis:

A fleet of saucer-like spacecraft is travelling close to the planet Dulkis, and one of the ships breaks formation to land there.

It touches down on a rocky uninhabited island and two humanoid figures emerge. In command is Navigator Rago, who is accompanied by his Probationer, Toba. Toba reports that the radiation they came in search of has been successfully absorbed.

They are members of the warlike Dominator race, who claim to be the Masters of the Ten Galaxies.

Rago points out that the planet's crust is thin here, and the natives may be suitable as slave labour. When Toba relishes the idea of destroying them, Rago cautions this should only happen if necessary. He then orders robots named Quarks, of which there are several on board, to begin surveying and marking out drill sites...

Just off the island, a small domed craft is approaching. On board is a young man named Cully, who is accompanied by three friends - Wahed, Etnin and Tolata. He has organised this unofficial trip to the vicinity of the island, which is strictly out of bounds apart from regular visits by students. The place is known as the "Island of Death" as some 172 years ago it was used as an atomic testing site and is heavily irradiated. Cully is the rebellious son of the Dulcian leader, and is frequently in trouble over his many unauthorised activities such as this tour.

His three passengers question if they really are where he claims - they could be visiting any stretch of coastline. Suggestions they get out to explore are dismissed by him due to the radiation. The craft has a warning system to alert them if they get too close, triggered by the radiation count. However, they suddenly notice that this has failed and they are speeding towards the island. 

The craft runs aground.

The trio use this lack of radiation as proof that Cully has tricked them, and leave the craft to look around. Cully chases after them, as he remembers they haven't paid him yet.

He is about to catch up with them when he hears them announce that they have seen a strange craft and unfamiliar robots, which they want to look at. 

Toba observes them approach and orders the Quarks to destroy. Cully is horrified to see his three friends gunned down without warning.

He had managed to duck down under cover, and decides to slip back to his craft - narrowly missing the arrival of a battered blue Police Box.

When Rago is informed of the deaths of the natives he is angry. They should have been captured for assessment.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS with Jamie and Zoe. He is exhausted from producing mental images of his last encounter with the Daleks for Zoe's benefit, and on recognising that they are on Dulkis - which he has visited before - he realises that this is the perfect spot for a holiday. The Dulcians are a friendly, peaceful people.

Cully is approaching the beach but discovers that Toba and the Quarks have gotten there first. Once again Toba orders destruction, and the craft explodes.

The blast is heard by the Doctor and his companions, and Jamie questions his earlier comment about the people here being peaceful. They go to see what has happened, and soon come upon a ruined building.

Inside is a collection of weaponry - and mannequins made up to look like the victims of radiation sickness. Zoe suspects that this war museum has suffered atomic blast damage, but the Doctor is adamant that the Dulcians he met before rejected violence of any kind.

Worried that they are walking about unprotected in a radiation zone, they are about to return to the TARDIS when they are confronted by three figures dressed in hazmat suits...

A short time later the trio of figures - Educator Balan and students Teel and Kando - are discussing the strangers in their survey unit. They have come to carry out the weekly survey of the island.

The Doctor and his companions are in a decontamination chamber, but Teel is surprised that they show no trace of radiation. Balan therefore agrees to let them out.

They are told about this island being a nuclear test site, and is a prohibited area due to the radioactive fallout from the weapon detonated here 172 years ago. Such tests were then banned and the Dulcians pursued their current pacifist ideology.

The Doctor and Zoe are puzzled by the lack of radiation.

Rago is once again reprimanding Toba for his rash actions in destroying the craft on the beach before examining its technology. They too are curious about the lack of radiation on the planet - other than what was here when they landed.

Drilling sites have now been identified and marked out.

Cully finds one of these sites - identified by a star-shaped indentation on the ground - beside the TARDIS. He hides as Rago and Toba arrive to inspect it. Toba enquires if the box should be destroyed.

After they have gone, he is discovered by Teel and taken to the survey unit.

The Dominators come across the museum building and realise that the lack of radiation must have been due to a single atomic test here in the past. They note that all the weapons seem ancient, and Rago orders that locals must be taken alive to be questioned about their current weaponry.

Cully is brought into the survey unit and starts to tell everyone about the spaceship, and of the robots which attacked his three friends. Infamous for his tricks, Balan assumes that the Doctor and his companions are they, and he is telling tall tales again.

On hearing that the men from the spaceship were talking about destroying the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jamie rush off to check on it.

Zoe stays behind, and makes a friend of Cully when she shows an enquiring mind - something he accuses his own people of lacking. He tells her that his father is Senex, leader of the Dulcians. Teel reports some strange interference preventing them contacting their capitol, and Cully claims this to be the work of the robots he saw.

The Doctor and Jamie find the TARDIS untouched, and examine the star-shaped mark. They see tracks leading away and decide to follow them.

They lead them to the spaceship and they begin to look around. The Doctor wants to go inside, but they suddenly spot Toba standing on a rocky outcrop nearby, flanked by two squat box-like robots - Quarks. Their arms, with built-in guns, extend from their bodies and take aim at them.

The robots ask the Probationer if they should destroy...

Data:

Written by Norman Ashby (Henry Lincoln & Mervyn Haisman)

Recorded: Friday 17th May 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 10th August 1968

Ratings: 6.1 million / AI 52

VFX: Ron Oates

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Morris Barry

Guest cast: Ronald Allen (Rago), Kenneth Ives (Toba), Arthur Cox (Cully), Johnson Bayly (Balan), Giles Block (Teel), Felicity Gibson (Kando), Nicolette Pendrell (Tolata), Malcolm Terris (Etnin), Philip Voss (Wahed), John Hicks, Gary Wilson (Quarks), Sheila Grant (Quark Voices)

Critique:

The production of The Dominators was a very troubled affair - so much so that its writers, Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, would come to take their names off it...

They had enjoyed great success with the programme by devising the robot Yeti and their Great Intelligence master, providing two scripts for Season 5 featuring these - The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. These had been commissioned under the Innes Lloyd / Peter Bryant partnership, with Derrick Sherwin only becoming involved with them in the latter stages of their second story.

A third Yeti story was being considered, but for their next project they were asked to come up with a new monster that might replace the Daleks. Terry Nation had now relented in his refusal to allow their use in the series, but there were cost implications in their use and Bryant wanted other alternatives to join the Cybermen as recurring monsters.

Lincoln and Haisman were happy to oblige, as they hoped to exploit their new creations financially, just as Nation had with the Daleks.

The pair began with their monster before developing the story in which they were to feature. These were to be robots called Quarks, after the subatomic particles. They made a sketch of how they envisaged it - a box-like affair which travelled on a pair of caterpillar tracks, and with thin jointed arms to which different implements and weapons could be attached. For a head there was a revolving dome with eyes on either side, and atop this were antennae. The Quark was deliberately planned not to resemble the human form too much - the writers having carefully noted Ray Cusick's Dalek design.

In the same way that they had wanted the Yeti to look cuddly, yet be capable of extreme violence, the writers wanted child-like voices for the Quarks, which would contrast with their destructive capabilities.

This sketch of theirs would later form part of the breakdown between writers and production office...

As for the story itself, Lincoln and Haisman looked to current world events. 1968 had seen political disturbances across Europe and the USA, including student-led protests, which followed on from the rise of the Hippy peace movement the year before. The writers regarded this counter-culture as indicative of a slackening of morals. Taken to extremes, people would simply refuse to fight, preferring to give in. They would be unable, or unwilling, to defend even the peaceful principles they stood by if threatened by someone who did not share their views. Thinking this might make for the basis of a Doctor Who story - one where a peace-loving race were threatened by an alien aggressor - they ran it past Bryant on 1st January 1968, and he agreed that this could be developed further. Another story - "The Dreamspinners", by Paul Wheeler - had been dropped after its first episode had been submitted, and so the timescale for production would be tight. The writers first had to complete work on the Tigon horror film The Curse of the Crimson Altar, which was to star Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. The deadline for their scripts was for the end of February so that production could get underway in April.

Problems began to arise when, in late January, Bryant and Sherwin requested changes - notifying the writers when they attended studio recording on the third episode of The Web of Fear. 

These included a reduction in the amount of model work, and the news that Patrick Troughton would be unavailable for location filming - so any exterior scenes where the Doctor needed to be seen clearly on camera would have to be recorded in studio. The actor had negotiated an exemption from location work on two of the stories for Season 6 as part of his latest contract renewal.

Concerned by the extent of the changes, a meeting was asked for - but this was delayed. By the time they all met and agreed to make the changes, the writers assumed that their deadline would have been extended to accommodate them - only to learn that the original deadline still stood.

Sherwin relented on this but, unbeknownst to the writers, he wasn't terribly keen on proceeding with the story at all.

The main thing to take note of here is that this was supposed to be a six part story...

In the original script for this episode, the Dulcians were Dulkians. Balan and his students were to have arrived on the island in a much larger craft, and they would be based inside this, instead of a separate survey unit building. This was changed so that only the smaller travel capsules could be used, giving an excuse why only two people could ever travel at a time.

One scene discarded early on featured Rago reporting progress to his headquarters. (If by video-link, or a cut to an actor on another set, it would have necessitated a third Dominator costume - which may be why it was dropped).

Location filming got underway on Thursday 25th April at Gerrards Cross Sand & Gravel Pit, Buckinghamshire - the same location Morris Barry had used for the surface of Telos in The Tomb of the Cybermen. Another sandpit in Kent would also be used for exteriors of the planet, and the production team would return to Gerrards Cross the following week to film other sequences for later in the story. This was because not all the footage required was completed, so a day's filming at Ealing was sacrificed to return to the location.

Ronald Allen was unavailable on the first day of filming, and Troughton would be doubled by Chris Jeffries where necessary throughout. On this day was filmed the destruction of Cully's travel craft. This was a scale model, filmed in forced perspective.

Another forced perspective shot was for Jeffries and Frazer Hines standing in the foreground looking towards the spaceship - filmed at the Kent location on Sunday 28th.

With Allen absent on the 25th, scenes were filmed of Voss, Terris and Pendrell - playing Cully's hapless friends - briefly exploring the island before meeting their nasty fate. A special hexagonal mask was placed over the camera lens to give the Quark POV. This would also be employed in studio.

Being on film, a special inlay effect was used for the deaths of the trio, though it was only applied to a shot of Pendrell. Peter Netley of the BBC Graphics Department masked off the actress' face on a single frame of film and used an optical printer to add footage of oil floating on water over her features.

The interior of Cully's travel craft was recorded at Ealing on Tuesday 30th. Arthur Cox had injured his ankle the day before on location at Gerrards Cross and so was wearing a cast on his leg. Camera angles had to be planned to work round this, with Cully mainly seated.

Photographs of the landscape taken on location were placed behind the windows, for when it reached the island.

This filming completed the work required from Voss, Terris and Pendrell, and they would not be needed for the studio recording.

Giles Block would later state that the actors playing Dulcians had a gold sheen sprayed on their faces.

Model work took place on Friday 26th April in the Puppet Theatre at Television Centre. This included the landing of the Dominator spaceship, which was attached to a rod at the rear away from the camera. Talcum powder was used to suggest jets, and it had working retractable legs. The fleet of ships seen in the opening shot were based on jelly moulds. Cully's travel craft, which had the appearance of a lemon squeezer so probably was, was also filmed - being pulled along through a bed of dry ice.

Following two weeks at Riverside, the series returned to Television Centre, which would be its home for the duration of this story - though not always in the same studio.

Joining the cast as the two Dominators were Ronald Allen, who had been a regular on the soap Compact which had been produced by Morris Barry, and Kenneth Ives, who had been a stuntman with Derek Ware's outfit HAVOC. Johnson Bayly had also appeared in Compact, and had also featured in its short-lived replacement soap 199 Park Lane, which Barry had also been involved with.

Rehearsals were not a happy time for Wendy Padbury, as she felt that Barry bullied her as the newest member of the cast - disciplining her as a means of keeping everyone else under control. Despite having been an actor himself, Barry was much more of a technical director than an actor's director, and Hines has also been highly critical of him in interviews.

During camera rehearsals, publicity photographs were taken of Allen and Ives outside the spaceship entrance and inside the museum, as well as images of the regulars with the survey team. Portrait shots were also taken of Felicity Gibson as Kando.

The main sets were the landing sites of both the spaceship and the TARDIS, the war museum and the survey unit. The landing sites both made use of large photographic blow-ups of the landscape as a backdrop. These photographs were taken at the story's other location, near Maidstone in Kent.

Barry Newbery constructed the museum as two linked sets - exterior and interior. He employed hexagonal bricks to suggest an alien building technique. As the exterior had to be shown in a more damaged state later, this construction method also helped.

The interior was dressed with a number of props from other stories as well as generic "ray guns" from stock. Of the previously seen items, note a Cyberman saucer from The Moonbase, also directed by Barry, hanging above the door, and suspended from the ceiling nearby is the base of the Gravitron probe from the same story.

The survey unit had various plants dotted around as set dressing, and there were three TV monitors on which scientific displays could be projected. Geometric logos were added to the walls and doors, again to suggest its alien nature. Strip lighting was used on the control panels.

Dry ice was employed as decontamination fumes.

Only one recording run-on was planned for the evening's recording - to move the cast from the museum set to the survey unit and to allow the Dulcian actors to remove their protective suits.

A flash charge was built into the museum wall for when one of the weapons is tested by Toba. Oddly, the budget-conscious Morris Barry decided not to use mannequins made up with radiation burns, and employed two extras instead. Like the death of Tolata, the make-up is rather gruesome for the time slot and family audience - more so because they are clearly people and not dummies.

One sequence was cut for timing reasons, the end of a scene in the survey unit after the Doctor and Jamie have left to check on the TARDIS. Zoe learned that Cully was unpopular as he didn't conform to the Dulcian "mindset", and an attempt was made to contact Senex by video, with Cully telling her that they were about to hear "Words of wisdom and a gentle reproof from on high...".

The director preferred the use of stock music in his productions to save on budgets, but for this story he relied on Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop to provide special sounds. He created 81 pieces in total, including making a new master copy of the TARDIS materialisation. 

This was one of four stories where Hodgson provided the entire soundtrack - the others being The Wheel in Space, The Mind Robber and The Krotons. Some of the special sounds heard here had previously been used in The Moonbase.

Sheila Grant spoke her lines as the Quarks very slowly, to be speeded up for the finished episodes. Her laugh was also sampled and this was modulated to provide all of the different sound effects for the robots, such as when they recharge or employ their molecular force.

The Dominators is a story which has a poor reputation, and for several reasons. The main one cited has always been its mean-spirited politics. The writers come across as conservative reactionaries, opposed to - or at the very least alarmed by - the global peace movement popular with young people of the time.

There's nothing original about this in the series. We saw similar arguments from Terry Nation back in his first ever Dalek story, in which the TARDIS crew challenge the pacifist ideals of the Thals - encouraging them to fight or risk death. I was never terribly keen on the message then, and am not here either. 

There are a number of parallels with The Daleks, so that's certainly what Lincoln and Haisman were using as their model. We have the blond, good-looking pacifists versus aggressors, an irradiated landscape, and squat metallic monsters with potential for marketing.

We'll come back to the plot and its politics as the story develops.

In this particular episode we only have a couple of fairly minor issues. 

No offence to him, but Arthur Cox was one of those actors who looked middle-aged even when he was young. If you wanted to get someone to play a rebellious youth then I'm sure there were plenty of other actors who might have suited the part better, visually.

Then there are the costumes. Martin Baugh is trying for a classical Grecian style, with a touch of toga in the robes for Balan and Etnin, and skirts for the younger Dulcians, including the "boys". The idea was that the robes got longer the older you were. The female costume was a diaphanous skirt worn over a leotard. The outfits just about work on Teel and Kando as younger people, and on Balan as the older figure. The costume does not do Arthur Cox any favours at all...

The Dominator costumes, on the other hand, are really rather good. They could have been kitted out in plain uniforms, but Baugh has given them these big hunched shoulders, like the carapace of a turtle. We don't know if their actual shoulders go that far up, or if it's just a fashion design, like the big shoulder pads of the '80's. As they are a warrior race, I personally think it unlikely they'd opt for such a restrictive suit unless they had to, so like to think this is their actual body shape. 

If you're going to have humanoid aliens, then altering their physique somewhat is a good idea, rather than just sticking ridges on their face / heads a la Star Trek.

The bickering between the pair is interesting. Is Toba simply surly and insubordinate by nature, or is this what all Dominator crew relationships are like? If so, you wonder how they managed to master ten galaxies. Then again, this might just be braggadocio, as we've never come across them before or since.

The Quarks are held back to the cliffhanger and on film only - their appearance somewhat spoiled by Radio Times and Reveille publishing photos of them in advance (see below) - so we'll talk about them next time.

The effect used for the deaths of Cully's friends is quite horrific. As mentioned, we see Tolata freeze then the oil on water effect is overlaid on her face - as though the skin is melting. This could be achieved as this sequence was on film, so couldn't be replicated for the studio work.

There's only minimal VFX work on view here - just the spaceship fleet, Rago's saucer and Cully's lemon squeezer - with one establishing image of the ziggurat-style survey unit building, which looks like a glass shot. The saucer model is okay, if a little clichéd, but shots of it superimposed over a landscape coming in to land are unsatisfactory as it becomes transparent.

As an opening episode, there isn't really all that wrong with this. The villains are introduced, their purpose in coming here made clear: they've come to get something this planet has, which might require slave labour to get it. Drilling is mentioned. We also hear that their ship has absorbed the radiation on the island. They aren't simply invading.

The Dulcians are sketched in thanks to Cully. In his travel craft, and at the survey unit, he says quite a lot about this society, and we can see the survey team's lack of imagination backing some of his accusations up. There's little excitement - hence Cully coming up with his schemes, which are never authorised. They are also slaves to facts, as Kando points out when informed that the TARDIS travellers are not native to Dulkis: "We are taught to accept facts, being foolish to contemplate fantasy in the face of reality. You are here. This is fact. That you come from another planet I accept because I have no other means of proving it". 

Balan merely finds the idea they are alien to be "interesting", and matter-of-factly says he'll note this in a report.

Cully's description of his own people? "Vegetables, the lot of you. You don't live, you exist".

We are on an uninhabited island, with only four groups of visitors present - so there's a reason for the limited number of characters we see. It isn't a planet where the cities only appear to have a dozen or so people living in them.

There's even a bit of humour in the script, courtesy of Troughton and Hines as the Doctor looks around the spaceship exterior:

Jamie: "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"

The Doctor: "That, I think, Jamie, depends on what you think I am thinking".

Trivia:

• Season 6 gets off to a slow start, ratings-wise, and with a disappointing appreciation figure - perhaps due to the launch being in the middle of the summer.
• The serial still did well against ITV, however, which was plunged into industrial action following a major shake-up of the regional franchises. An emergency schedule of repeats was being broadcast against the first few episodes of this story.
• This story was originally earmarked for Douglas Camfield to direct.
• Lincoln and Haisman seem to have adopted the Terry Nation naming convention, where planets are named for some aspect of their nature - political, geographical or climatic. Dulkis, derives its name from the Latin dulcis, meaning sweet.
• For many years fandom claimed that the original title for the story was "The Beautiful People". (That title was also claimed as a working one for Destiny of the Daleks).
• Cully's friends Wahed, Etnin and Tolata get their names from the Arabic for One, Two and Three.
• 'Cully', meanwhile, is either an archaic word for a gullible, easily fooled person, or slang for a pal or friend. In the story, Cully is more likely to be the trickster rather than the person tricked - so he's simply friend to the TARDIS crew.
• Senex is Latin for "old man".
• Kando means "beautiful" in Bengali.
• Ronald Allen will return to the series in 1970, to play Ralph Cornish in The Ambassadors of Death.
• Malcolm Terris will be back to play the treacherous Co-Pilot in The Horns of Nimon, who famously rips his trousers during his death scene. As this formed part of the cliffhanger, viewers got to see it happen again the following week.
• Sheila Grant will go on to play Jane Leeson in the opening episode of Colony in Space.
• And Arthur Cox is one of that select group of actors who appeared in both the classic era of the programme and 'NuWho'. He played Amy Pond's neighbour Mr Henderson in The Eleventh Hour.
• The weekly Reveille magazine published a set report in late June, illustrated with a photograph of a Quark in the Dominator spaceship. As well as the report, there were comments about the programme in general from Terry Nation, Kit Pedler, Peter Bryant and Bill Roberts (of Shawcraft Models). Larry Leake, who then ran the Doctor Who Fan Club, also contributed.

• Radio Times featured the start of the new season as one of its highlights for the week, illustrated with a photo of Rago with the Doctor, as well as providing a short plot outline with a photograph of the Quarks on the day's programme listings page:

The War Games (In Colour) - A Review

The War Games becomes the second of the Sixties B&W stories to be colourised and re-edited into a more condensed running time. 

Depending upon which side of the fence you lie, this is either:

(a) a process of dumbing-down - making the stories more attractive to younger people who cannot cope with monochrome imagery and having to concentrate attention on something for more than 30 seconds at a time, or...

(b) it is simply a way to make the stories more accessible to modern tastes and so gain new fans to these classic episodes.

Personally, I am inclined towards the former but accept that some parents did claim that their kids enjoyed the last of these things - "The Daleks in Colour".

This story is the final adventure for Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor, as well as for companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) barring later guest turns. It is also notable for introducing the Time Lords and so giving us some background as to the Doctor's origins. Added to that, it brings the B&W era of the programme to a close, ending the Doctor's seemingly random wanderings in the TARDIS - preparing the ground for a new Earth-bound format and the Third Doctor. 

The other thing to say about The War Games is that it was the second longest ever story for many years, running to ten episodes and, despite what its fans say, there is quite a bit of capture / escape padding, especially in the 1917 Zone. Even its co-writer (Terrance Dicks) and director (David Maloney) agreed that it was padded, so ignore anyone who says otherwise.

It's not quite as bad as "waiting for nine episodes until the Time Lords turn up" though - it is much better than that.

This reimagining of the story has a run-time of 90 minutes, so it was always going to be interesting to see how the edit was made. The trailer also showed that there would be a few CGI sequences thrown in, and then we heard that there would be a regeneration. It was also announced that a tiny alternative take was to be included - so a clip that no-one has ever seen before.

Going into it, the CGI was my first concern as to how well it integrated with the archive material. That added to The Daleks was a little pointless, and stuck out.

Concern no.2 was always going to be the music for me. I really hated the way they stuck anachronistic radiophonic music onto The Daleks, and the least said about what was played over the whole lift escape sequence the better.

Third is obviously the edit. Will it flow? Will it make sense in light of the large amount cut out? And will they resort to overlaying dialogue designed to remind viewers of things they saw or heard less than 20 minutes before?

As for the actual colourisation, I don't really have any problem with that at all, so long as they steer clear of the shocking pink they used for Barbara's blouse last time out...

The above was written before I watched the programme, so how was it for me?

No issues with the colourisation. The episodes are in better condition than those of the earlier serial - much sharper - which certainly helped when it came to adding the colour.

Concern no.1 was the CGI. The Alien base kept popping up too frequently, as if they didn't believe we'd know from the pop-art sets that that's where we were. The little planes and tanks rolling out the doors were poorly done. 

(The Capitol on Gallifrey was shown too many times as well. Once is enough).

The TARDIS fleeing the Time Lords did look very much like a police box bubble bath container dangling on a bit of string.

Luckily not much CGI, so not enough to go terribly wrong.

Concern no.2 was the music. Nowhere near as bad as in The Daleks though I did think there was far too much of it. It was slapped over every scene, where some could have played well without it. Again we had a mix of 1969 music, courtesy of Dudley Simpson, alongside much more recent stuff. The thing everyone is sure to comment on is the use of music inextricably linked with the Master every time the War Chief did anything sinister. Terrance Dicks excluded him from being an earlier incarnation of the Master, though some spin-off material has run with the idea. I was half expecting them to cut to a regeneration from Edward Brayshaw to Roger Delgado.

Talking 'bout regeneration... I was all set to cringe at the end, but I thought they actually worked it quite well. I'm still a Season 6b fan, but if you must link directly into Spearhead From Space then this was perfectly acceptable.

Lastly, the edit. Here we definitely had problems. The first couple of episodes worked OK in condensed form, and we had a sizeable chunk of the ending, but in the middle... Significant characters just popped up out of nowhere. Von Weich hardly featured at all. Some sections were composed entirely of jump cuts. How many times were people still talking when the picture had moved onto the next scene? 

I was watching this with the background of having watched all 10 episodes multiple times, so know the intricacies of the plotting very well. I'll be interested to hear what new viewers thought of the middle section of the story, coming at it without that knowledge.

Overall, better than expected. As an alternative version, to watch when you might not have the time or inclination to work through the complete story, it's welcome. These efforts are never intended to take the place of the originals - just another way of watching them, and I sincerely hope this wins new fans for Troughton's Doctor. One thing the edit managed was to retain some of his best lines / scenes. He's always a joy to watch.

What's Wrong With... The War Games

 

As I've previously mentioned, critics of this story often describe it as nine episodes of running around waiting for the Time Lords to turn up. 

To some extent this is true. Even the writers and the director had criticisms of its pacing and structure. Terrance Dicks thought there was too much capture / escape - especially in the first half of the story, which is mostly set in the World War One zone. Director David Maloney admitted that they would just throw in another war zone to make things interesting when the story flagged. His son gave him some ideas of what periods of history to include.

The biggest problem with this story is the overall plan of the Aliens. How would Roman soldiers, or 18th Century Redcoats, fare against Daleks or Cybermen? The Aliens have set up these war zones and taken people from Earth's history to fight in them - the plan being that the survivors will make an invincible army. It might be an invincible army if it has to fight other humans, but how would this army cope against enemies armed with energy weapons, killer robots and space fighters?

The army would need to be given high tech weaponry, which would stretch and probably break the mental processing they have undergone. Remember that the Aliens only take people from 1917 or earlier as people from later, more technological ages, can't be processed as effectively.

At a pinch, the Alien plan might produce a few good tacticians who might make for competent leaders, but never a whole army.

There are twelve conflicts, but only eleven mentioned on the map.

Why does Smythe have a map? Surely he knows how to get between his war zone and the Alien HQ by now.

Private Moor comes from 1871, when the British army wasn't involved in any major conflict.

Several times throughout the story Jamie is said to come from 1745, when everyone - including the Doctor and himself, who both get it wrong - knows it was 1746.

The War Chief knows that his SIDRATs are going to pack in shortly, so why is he sticking around? If it's because he plans to take over the army then how does he hope to achieve this? He's an outsider,  with only time travel technology going for him - technology that's about to break down.

Actually, taking over the army must be the War Chief's only plan, otherwise he would soon be killed when he failed to deliver on-going time travel to the War Lord. It is a high risk plan, considering the best he can hope for is an army which is limited only to the current time period.

SIDRATS look like TARDISes from the outside but why are they so different inside?

Why does Von Weich have to cover two different time zones? Is there a shortage of Alien commanders?

Does Smythe also cover other zones - as he and Von Weich are the only two Alien commanders we ever see at HQ?

And why does Von Weich sound German even when he's at Alien HQ?

Why is Smythe so dismissive of the Doctor's claims to be a time traveller - when their whole plan came about because of a time traveller?

Why does the War Chief not regenerate when he's shot? Are the Alien weapons such that they wipe out the ability to regenerate? Why create a human army when you have weapons that can do that?

Why does it take the Doctor to flag this plan up to the Time Lords? The numbers of people lifted out of time in just the WWI zone alone would have a huge impact on Earth's history and surely alert the Time Lords that something big is going on.

The TARDIS lands underwater, but starts leaking when the Time Lords over-ride the defences. The Doctor responds by taking it into space instead...

At the end of Episode Nine, Carstairs asks to be sent back to the 1917 zone to look for Lady Jennifer, when the last time he saw her she was helping wounded rebels in the American Civil War zone?

And how did the Doctor's shoes turn into wellies and back again?

Finally, the monster menagerie seen on the Time Lord scanner represents a pretty ragged bunch. The Dalek has a bulb missing on its dome; the Cyberman has its helmet on over the collar rather than tucked inside it; the Yeti has no claws; and the Ice Warrior helmet is askew. It's unlikely that the Time Lords would be prompted to action for fear of the Quarks, but it might have been worse - they were going to include a Kroton as well but the costume was too badly damaged.

What's Wrong With... The Space Pirates

For such a poorly regarded story, there isn't actually all that much wrong with The Space Pirates.

This is the last story which is missing from the archives. We have a single episode (2), which doesn't actually feature the titular pirates. There aren't any telesnaps, and only a handful of publicity photographs were taken, to let us see what the rest of it looked like.

 

Throughout the Troughton era we have been presented with a number of people in senior positions, where you have to wonder how they managed to gain - let alone keep - this position.

General Hermack might fit into this category, as he doesn't seem to be very bright. 

He decides early on that Milo Clancey must be the leader of the pirates, seemingly on the sole evidence that he is in the vicinity of a beacon theft. 

The pirates are using extremely expensive Beta Dart spacecraft, yet Clancey is flying around in the old battered LIZ 79.

Instead of going to Clancey's base on Lobos to look for evidence such as the beacon parts or Beta Darts, Hermack takes his ship to Ta in search of Clancey - the planet belonging to the old man's biggest enemy. He's hardly going to be given a hiding place there.

Ta has lots of Beta Darts, but Hermack fails to put two and two together. Madeleine Issigri's ships have a distinctive nose cone fitted, but it doesn't dawn on Hermack that these could be easily changed. Wouldn't checking out who owns Beta Darts in this region of space have been a good starting point for Hermack's investigations?

Ta doesn't have a breathable atmosphere. All we see are tunnels apart from the mining complex but Hermack thinks it's a good place for his men to have a break.

Dom Issigri has been held captive in his old office for the last ten years, yet Madeleine hasn't noticed the food and power that must be getting diverted to keep the old man alive. He's burning lots of candles, so the ventilation must be going full blast. 

Why does Caven keep Dom alive after so long? It may have been a good idea initially, in case Madeleine didn't play ball, but that point must have been passed a long time ago.

Why do the prates split up the beacons into their component sections if they're all going to the same place anyway? If it's because a full beacon is big enough to be detected by the Space Corps scanners, whilst smaller bits aren't, then this is never stated.

You would expect a beacon called Alpha-One to be sited close to a planet - the first one you'd come to on an outbound journey - yet this one is out in the middle of nowhere.

Lastly, Zoe hasn't got a clue about candles. She has to ask what they are and how they work - despite having seen lots in the labyrinth in The Mind Robber. (This has been used as evidence that the events of that earlier story never took place, but were all in the Doctor's mind).