Good Move / Bad Move?

So the BBC have finally announced the start date for Series 11 and, as rumoured way back in the Spring, the show is moving from its traditional Saturday night slot to a Sunday one - commencing October 7th. This is probably the only date not considered lately - with various bloggers and vloggers assuredly informing us that it was going to be Sunday 23rd, or Saturday 29th, or Saturday October 6th, or Saturday 13th October (as it is the debut of the 13th Doctor).
Regarding that last one, it would be daft of the BBC to launch a totally fresh start for the show with a reminder that this is actually the 13th incarnation of the character, so I never bought that date at all.
We still don't know what time slot of the evening it will fill, but the word "early" is noticeable in the press release. ITV don't field much competition in the early part of Sunday evening - often it is a movie which has been screened at least once before. You could almost call it their Harry Potter Slot.
For those of us watching it air in the UK, this announcement is no big deal - the show has moved away from a Saturday in the past, when it was recklessly pitched against the ratings giant Coronation Street during the Davison and McCoy eras.
There was concern regarding Sundays that a later evening slot would mean that younger children would not be able to view, as they have to get up for school the next day. This shouldn't be a problem if they go with something around the 6 - 7pm mark.
The Saturday evening slot was really damaging the series over the last three seasons - being moved backwards and forwards, being on far too late for youngsters, and being placed against that other ratings giant The X-Factor.
Personally, I don't have a problem with the move.
Where problems may lie are with US and Australasian viewers. BBC America have already stated that the show will air concurrently with the UK broadcast - so on the Sunday afternoon. Lots of fans may be out and about on a Sunday afternoon, so many might not watch live and so record it or use on-line catch-up. Doctor Who has given BBC America its biggest ratings on a Saturday, so they are likely to register a negative impact.
The problem of a Sunday broadcast hits the Antipodes the hardest. If you want to watch it at the same time as the UK in the Far East or Australasia, it means staying up very late on a Sunday night / early hours of Monday morning. When you have to go to school / work in a few hours time... Lots of people simply aren't going to be in a position to do this. The TV companies might decide to wait and broadcast on the Monday evening - but will die-hard fans really want to avoid the internet all day and wait that long? When Chibnall said he wanted everyone to see it at the same time - apropos the BBC's near hysterical clampdown on spoilers - he clearly wasn't thinking beyond the borders of the United Kingdom.

Inspirations - The Time Warrior

The Time Warrior was written by Robert Holmes, not long before he would take over the post of script editor on the series. The show was in a state of flux as it began its 11th season, with both Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks planning to leave at the end of it. They already had their escape vehicle all lined up - a new science-fiction series for the BBC called Moonbase 3. This would be a more serious adult drama, dealing with the realities of living in space. There would be no monsters or aliens. The threats would be political, criminal, and environmental. Letts intended to direct this opening four part serial, but work on the other project meant that he had to pass.
As it would happen, the viewers did not take to Moonbase 3. Sci-fi fans wanted the monsters and aliens, so felt let down when they failed to materialise, whilst the non Sci-fi fans kept away as they expected that it would be all monsters and aliens and therefore just another Doctor Who.
(Note the way that Space:1999 went down the Moonbase 3 route initially, with only one real monster in its first season, and attempted to relaunch itself in the second season with a multitude of monsters).

As well as letters asking when the Daleks would be back, and ones suggesting a story where all three Doctors met up, the production office received a lot of queries about the show doing a historical story, as it hadn't done one of these for a long time. The Pertwee Doctor had never been seen to visit any of Earth's historical periods, apart from a brief sojourn on the SS Bernice in Carnival of Monsters - and that's really in a time loop, in an alien machine, on another planet.
To launch the new season, Letts and Dicks decided to have the Doctor go back in time, properly, for the first time since the mid Troughton era. However, they knew that the viewers, especially the younger ones, still wanted their Saturday teatime fix of monsters and aliens. Robert Holmes agreed. He had a love of history. He just didn't want to have to write about it.
The oft quoted story goes that he and Dicks met to discuss the story, and Holmes was given the brief of setting it in medieval times. Claiming he did not know anything about this, Dicks gave him a book about castles and told him to get on with it. (Remember this, for when we get to Horror of Fang Rock...).
Holmes decided on what we now call the pseudo-historical approach -  a story set in the past, but with some alien and / or futuristic element thrown in. This had been tried quite successfully in the past, in two full stories (The Time Meddler and Evil of the Daleks), as well as segments of two of the Hartnell Dalek stories (The Chase - where we see the Daleks being responsible for the mystery of the Mary Celeste), and The Daleks' Master Plan (where the Daleks and the meddling Monk visit Egypt at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza).
The Time Warrior marks the beginning of a regular run of these pseudo-historicals, and it should be noted that the revamped series has never visited Earth's past without some alien threat being present. History simply provides a colourful backdrop to a Sci-fi adventure that could often just as easily have been set on an alien planet or on contemporary Earth.

The actual time period Holmes opted for has never been definitively pinned down. No year is mentioned, and the absentee King is never named. Most people are happy to set it in the period of the Crusades, during the reign of Richard I. He died in 1199, and his successor - John - didn't spend time much time away from England. However, in The Sontaran Experiment - written by different authors, but with Holmes as their script editor - Sarah mistakes Field Major Styre for Commander Linx, and states that she saw him destroyed "in the 13th Century". If the Doctor never actually got round to telling her what year she had been taken to, then this might be a simple mistake on her part - not knowing the Lionheart's exact dates.
As most English monarchs spent a lot of their time fighting in France, the time period of this story could just as easily be much earlier, or a little later. Irongron's dismissal of Sir Edward and his like as "Norman ninnies" suggests that the Normans have not been in the country all that long - so that might imply a much earlier date (such as during the reign of Henry I at the beginning of the 12th Century).
Sir Edward is Earl of Wessex, and Wessex didn't really exist as such once the Normans invaded - downgraded as a regional entity in 1071. (The title of Earl of Wessex was reestablished not that long ago, for the Queen's youngest son - another Edward).
Both the BBC and ITV loved the Crusades, so it is most likely that this is the period Holmes intended for his story. It was the time of Robin Hood, after all.
An obvious inspiration for Holmes in having new companion Sarah Jane Smith plunged into the medieval world might be Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. (If there ever was an Arthur he would have been a Dark Ages warlord, but TV and movie companies liked to have medieval trappings in their Arthurian productions). Twain's story was published in December 1889.
It was filmed in 1931 with Will Rogers as the Yankee, remade in 1949 with Bing Crosby in the role, and then again in 1952 (with Boris Karloff as King Arthur). There have been numerous remakes since.
A number of Sci-fi writers had stories in which someone from the present, or future, travelled back to medieval times, when they weren't going back further to meet (and in one instance become, thanks to a bootstrap paradox) Jesus.

Carnival of Monsters had introduced us to one of what would become a staple of Robert Holmes' writings for Doctor Who - the comedic double act. That story had featured two pairs - Vorg and Shirna, and Kalik and Orum. Here we get the robber baron Irongron, and his dim-witted lieutenant, Bloodaxe. Clearly Irongron himself isn't all that smart, which makes Bloodaxe's declaration that his (Irongron's) is indeed a towering intelligence all the funnier. The other line everyone remembers is Irongron's description of the Pertwee Doctor as a "long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose".
Both of these character's names apparently come from real people. Eric Bloodaxe was a 10th Century Norse ruler.
In the days before this story got a DVD release, fan lore had it that there was an anachronistic potato in the kitchens where Sarah briefly poses as a scullion. This turned out not to be the case, though I am reliably informed that there is an apple that shouldn't be there, as it is a much later variety. The BBC props guys were good - but they weren't that good.

Of course, The Time Warrior is of great significance for introducing to the programme Sarah Jane Smith as played by Elisabeth Sladen - consistently voted the most popular of all the companions.
We now know that she wasn't the first choice for the role. The actress selected and offered a contract - April Walker - was tall and blonde, and Pertwee took exception to her. Nothing personal - they had acted together on stage happily enough. The problem as he saw it was that the Doctor should be the more physically imposing figure. He always stated in interviews that he would shield his companion with his cloak, like a mother hen protecting its chick. This had clearly been the case with the more diminutive, child-like Jo Grant. The Doctor even refers to the chick flying the nest on learning that Jo is leaving him to get married in the previous story.
Barry Letts wanted the new companion to be a much more strong-willed and independent character, with their own career. The programme was also finally facing up to feminism. As such, Sarah was an investigative journalist, who would encounter the Doctor and his world through her attempts to get a good story.
It has been said that the Doctor almost got two new companions in this story, as young Hal the Archer, played by Jeremy Bulloch, was briefly considered to be kept on. He had previously appeared as the young Xeron rebel Tor, in The Space Museum, and is best known now as the original Boba Fett. The Doctor would soon get a young male companion, as it was intended to replace Pertwee with a much older Doctor and they needed someone better able to handle the fisticuffs.

The other significant introduction in this story is Linx, first of the Sontaran race we will encounter. On mishearing what his race is called, Bloodaxe thinks he is a Saracen, which takes us back to that dating issue, and a likely setting for the Crusades. As the story is set in days of olde when knights were bolde, Linx initially looks like he is wearing conventional armour. It was a stroke of genius on the part of the designers to have his head the same shape as his big domed helmet. The Sontarans were never better than the lone example we see here, played by Kevin Lindsay. A no-nonsense, speaks-his-mind Australian, when the director (Alan Bromly) questioned his pronunciation of the race name, thinking the emphasis should be on the first syllable, Lindsay insisted on stressing the second syllable - claiming that as he came from there, he should know.
Sadly, with the introduction of Strax, the reputation of the Sontarans has been quite diminished of late - a great concept reduced to a joke.
Linx has an obvious parallel with the Doctor - an alien stranded on a primitive world and forced by necessity to assist a military commander. And like that very first pseudo-historical Doctor Who story, with a similar title, the alien is happy to meddle with history.
Next time: the Doctor takes Sarah back to the present day, though London is empty of people but full of monsters. Look out, it's the crap dinosaurs!

F is for... Fishworkers

Surgically altered people, many of them shipwrecked mariners, who gathered food from the surrounding ocean to feed the city of Atlantis. This was the remnant of the once great civilisation, which existed in a subterranean city built deep beneath a volcanic island. The Atlanteans came to depend on the Fishworkers to feed them, as the food they gathered could not be stored for long and quickly rotted. When the Doctor and his companions were captured on the island, Polly was sent to be turned into a Fishworker, but electrical power shortages delayed the operation, and an Atlantean girl named Ara helped her to escape. In order to hamper the plans of Professor Zaroff to raise the city from the sea floor - in a process that would destroy the entire planet - the Doctor realised that he could use this dependency on the Fishworkers to his advantage. He sent a pair of shipwrecked sailors - Sean and Jacko - to convince them that they were being treated as slaves, and they should rebel by going on strike. With the food supply cut off, the society rapidly began to break down, and under cover of the ensuing panic, the Doctor was able to stop the crazed professor from carrying out his scheme. The surgeon responsible for the operations - Damon - vowed that no more Fishworkers would be created, and the existing ones would be asked to help the Atlanteans willingly.
The Doctor once invited Clara Oswald to come and meet some Fish People, but she had a date with Danny Pink. These may have been the same beings.

Appearances: The Underwater Menace (1967).

F is for... Fisher King

The Fisher King was a belligerent alien who had conquered the planet Tivoli. After 10 years of rule, the Tivolians were liberated by the Arcateenians. The Fisher King apparently died, and a Tivolian undertaker named Prentis was commissioned to take his body for burial on 1980's Earth. However, he was really in a state of suspended animation. Once on Earth, at an abandoned military training base in the Highlands of Scotland, the alien awoke and killed Prentis. He then killed Alice O'Donnell - a member of a research team from 2119, who had been brought back in time by the Doctor to investigate the Fisher King's origins. The alien had a scheme to alert his people that he was still alive and that they should mount a rescue mission, making Earth their new home. Those it killed became ghosts, who would act as psychic transmitters. The Doctor tricked the Fisher King into becoming trapped in the open as he detonated a power pack from Prentis' ship, blowing up a nearby dam and flooding the valley. The Fisher King was killed in the deluge.

Played by: Neil Fingleton. Voiced by Peter Serafinowicz and Corey Taylor. Appearances: Before the Flood (2015).

• The Fisher King is named after the character in Arthurian mythology, the last holder of the Holy Grail. He was an old man who bore a wound that would not heal, but who could be cured when the right person came along who would ask a certain question. The Fisher King in the Doctor Who story is waiting for his people to come and rescue him.
• Fingleton was the UK's tallest man, until his early death in February 2017, at the age of only 36. Previously a basketball player, he turned to acting, and roles included a giant in Game of Thrones, as well as providing the motion capture work for Ultron in second of Marvel's The Avengers movies.
• Corey Taylor is the lead singer of the band Slipknot. He is a big Doctor Who fan, and his voice was sampled to provide the Fisher King's roar.

The Fisher King at the Doctor Who Experience in 2015.

F is for... Finch, General

General Finch was the regular army officer placed in command of military forces in London when prehistoric dinosaurs began to appear across the city. UNIT forces remained in the city during the crisis, but the Brigadier was answerable to Finch. The General was secretly part of the organisation responsible for the dinosaur appearances. This was known as Operation Golden Age, led by Sir Charles Grover, the government minister who had elected to stay in London after evacuation. A scientist named Whitaker was bringing the creatures into the 20th Century in order to clear the city so that they could work unimpeded. The group planned to roll back time to a supposed golden age, before industrialisation, and had tricked a number of people into thinking that they were travelling through space to a new planet. Sarah Jane Smith discovered their base, built in a cold war bunker beneath the city, but made the mistake of telling Finch. He agreed to go with her to see the bunker, but he then took her prisoner. He next arranged for the Doctor to be blamed for the dinosaur appearances. Once the Doctor had been captured, the Brigadier insisted that he be held by UNIT. The Doctor was able to convince him that Finch was a traitor. Sergeant Benton knocked the General out, and he was placed under arrest.

Played by: John Bennett. Appearances: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974).

• Bennett returned to the series in 1977, when he played Li H'sen Chang in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. In 1970, Bennett played the police officer investigating the disappearance of a horror actor portrayed by Jon Pertwee, in portmanteau horror film The House That Dripped Blood.

F is for... Finch, Clive

A conspiracy theorist who ran a blog about the Doctor. Wanting to know more about the mysterious man who had saved her from animated shop display mannequins, but who had also blown up her workplace, Rose Tyler went on-line and came upon Clive's blog. She arranged to visit him at his home, where he had a study set up in his shed. He was able to show her how the Doctor had been seen at different points in history, such as the eve of the Titanic's launch, and at the assassination of President Kennedy. Some thought that the title of Doctor was being passed down from father to son, but Clive's own theory was that it was the same man, and he was an alien. He warned her that danger and death followed the Doctor wherever he went.
That evening, as Clive was walking through a shopping centre with his wife and son, they found themselves caught up in the middle of the latest Nestene invasion attempt. Clive was shot dead by an Auton, realising too late that his fears about the Doctor had been true.

Played by: Mark Benton. Appearances: Rose (2005).

F is for... Filer, Bill

Bill Filer was an American agent sent to UNIT HQ in England to gather intelligence about the Master. His visit coincided with the arrival of a UFO close to the Nuton Power Complex on the south coast. A Ministry of Defence civil servant named Chinn banned Filer from the investigation, so he made his way to the landing site, managing to arrive just before the UNIT convoy. Exploring the strange craft he was seized by a tentacle and dragged inside. Inside the vessel - a living entity called Axos - he found himself prisoner alongside the very person he had come to England to investigate. When the Doctor began experiments on the substance called Axonite, which the alien visitors offered as a gift, it threatened to trigger Axos' feeding cycle prematurely. A duplicate of Filer was created and sent to stop him, but it was destroyed by the Doctor. Filer later escaped and helped the Brigadier capture the Master. However, he was forced to permit his prisoner his freedom when the evil Time Lord offered his help to UNIT.

Played by: Paul Grist. Appearances: The Claws of Axos (1971).

• There is much debate in fandom about who Filer worked for. At no point is he ever said to be working for the Washington branch of UNIT, and he does not appear to be a soldier. It is assumed that he must work for one of the US security agencies - the FBI or the CIA.