On This Day... 5th June

The TARDIS was engaged in a Flight Through Eternity today in 1965, pursued by the Daleks. This was the third instalment of The Chase, which introduced Peter Purves to the series for the first time. He had previously auditioned to be a Menoptra but director Richard Martin had promised him a better part. In this episode he featured as country bumpkin Morton Dill, and on the back of this he was offered the regular role of Steven Taylor, the new male companion. 

The Daemons was also on its third instalment in 1971.

Writer / director Richard Curtis remains one of the biggest names to have written for the series. He delivered Vincent and the Doctor today in 2010. One of the actors who appeared in his movie Love Actually was Caroline John, who passed away on this date in 2012, aged 71.

John played Dr Liz Shaw throughout Season 7, first companion of the Third Doctor.

Liz was a different kind of companion - a scientist who was nearly as knowledgeable as the Doctor. Unfortunately, therein lay her downfall. Companions needed to be asking questions which the audience might be asking, and it would have been odd for someone with loads of degrees to be acting so dumb.

In many ways she was similar to Zoe, who was almost the companion for this season, but Zoe was written to have gaps in her knowledge through lack of experience and too specific a training. Jamie was also around to ask questions. 

Having inherited the character Producer Barry Letts decided to let John go at the end of the year and introduce a weaker, less smart companion, who needed protection and would ask the questions. As it happened, John was pregnant and planning to quit anyway.

The reasons for her not having her contract renewed were not properly relayed to her, and for many years she thought that she had failed in the role. This led to her resisting invites to conventions, but when she finally relented and went to one she was bowled over by the response.

She last played Liz in The Five Doctors - a cameo role as a phantom projection of the companion - but also played the role in a number of unofficial spin-off videos (The P.R.O.B.E. series, written by Mark Gatiss).

Her husband Geoffrey Beevers featured in one of her stories - The Ambassadors of Death - as a UNIT soldier, and he would later play the Master in The Keeper of Traken. The pair acted opposite each other on several occasions - such as in the Poirot episode Problem At Sea.

On This Day... 4th June

 

In 1966 The Savages moved on to its second episode.

Boom Town saw the TARDIS return to Cardiff today in 2005, to refuel from the space / time rift that we first learned about in The Unquiet Dead. The whole Torchwood set-up was based on this premise, and the TARDIS would stop off for a quick refuel once again in Utopia, which linked directly with the conclusion of Torchwood's first series.

Were you ro come up with a top ten of pre-title sequences, the one for A Good Man Goes To War (2011) must surely feature. It provides one of Rory's signature moments.

Today we wish Bradley Walsh a happy 62nd birthday. He played companion Graham, who was the best thing about Series 11, but underused in Series 12. He wasn't even given a decent departure scene - though it is reported that he will probably appear in the Centenary Special.

He shares his birthday with Julie Gardner, who turns 53. She was the executive producer for Russell T Davies' first tenure as show-runner. The series would never have returned without her. As a co-founder of Bad Wolf Productions, she is about to produce the series once again.

David Yip - The Chinese Detective - is 71 today. He played the slave-worker Veldan in Destiny of the Daleks.

What's Wrong With... The Daemons

 

Listen to any interview or convention appearance by the 'UNIT Family' members and you'll hear how this was one of their favourite stories to make. Which is odd, as a few things went wrong behind the scenes.

Director Chris Barry had to miss his sisters' wedding, because Jon Pertwee wanted a day off following a cabaret appearance, and the star got into a bad mood when they were filming the scene where the Doctor has to explain the heat exchanger machine at the barrier. He rode off on the motorbike, and had to be calmed down by Nicholas Courtney.

Terrance Dicks tried to axe the Brigadier's most famous line. 

The location shoot was also plagued with unpredictable weather, which is noticeable on screen (slushy snow in the background to some shots).

The Doctor is presented here at his most bad-tempered and irritable. He is rude and snappy with everyone, especially Jo. This is a little odd, when you consider that the story was co-written by the producer Barry Letts. Was this really how he saw the Doctor's personality?

Onto the story itself.

The one everyone notices is that the dimensions of the heat barrier don't add up. The Doctor claims that it is a dome ten miles in diameter, centred on the village - yet we see a road sign at the barrier stating that Devil's End is one mile away. Is the village 8 miles across?

One that is not so noticeable on screen, but obvious when you read the novelisation, is that the Master's incantations include the children's rhyme Mary Had A Little Lamb, recited backwards.

How does the Master bring Bok to life and control him? Is it through Azal's psionic powers? If so, why does he have to wake him up if he already has access to those powers? 

How can he be using powers he hasn't got yet?

Related to this - who killed the man at the start of the story, and why?

After the Nestenes, Mind Parasites and Axos, the Master's latest ally is... the bloke who's fiddling the Post Office accounts.

One minute the Master is keen to have Miss Hawthorne killed (by the hypnotised policeman) but the next she's only tied up - in a place where people can hear her cries for help. The Master is fine with Jo getting sacrificed, but Yates is also only tied up and easily able to escape from the cavern.

Jo and Mike's ideal hiding place - behind some metal railings with nice big gaps through which to be spotted by your enemies.

Jo shouts out that the Master should be stopped as he is evil. She's telling this to a satanic coven...

Bert the Landlord tries to get the Doctor burnt as a witch, despite the fact that he is in league with someone who is trying to raise the Devil, and most of the villagers are aware of this.

Jo appears to stop and collect her clothes, despite the fact that the church is about to explode.

Then again, Yates and Benton are so concerned about Jo and the Doctor that they stop to change out of their uniforms into civvies before coming to save them. 

Why change out of uniform? Landing a UNIT helicopter in the middle of the village green is hardly arriving unobtrusively.

Daemons can shrink their spaceships to a fraction of their original size. Why not just make them small, saving loads of power and resources, in the first place?

Both ship and barrow are seen to be round, yet the Doctor gives the spaceship's dimensions as an elongated craft (200 x 30 ft).

The hoof prints as seen from the air are about 20 feet long, but when seen up close are only about 3 feet long, and are much closer together.

The Daemon plan makes little sense. If you are intending that someone will pop up on the Earth who is suitable enough to gain your powers, then surely the planet deserves to continue even if there isn't such a person? What sort of a race is it that seems to exist for the sole purpose of giving its powers away to someone else? It is no wonder that Azal is the last of his people.

Azal's self-destruction just because of Jo's act of self-sacrifice also suggests a highly unstable race. If he's that touchy, why didn't he blow a fuse when the Doctor turned him down - which must have been just as illogical to him as Jo's actions.

Actually, everything about this final scene in the cavern suggests that Azal isn't an organic being at all, but some kind of projection / machine. 

When Benton and Garvin the verger fight in the cavern, the shotgun breaks and actor John Joyce has to hold it together.

Later, Benton is attacked by a Morris dancer who rushes into the pub as though he was expecting to fight someone in there.

Another Benton fight scene sees him floored by a cloak thrown over his head. It actually causes him to fall to the ground, the big girl's blouse...

'Bessie' drives so slowly that the Master could easily jump out and run away when the Doctor uses his remote control.

"What a tale I'll have for them now..." says Miss Hawthorne. Who is she talking about?-

On This Day... 3rd June

 

Third episodes today for both The Evil of the Daleks, in 1967, and The Time Monster in 1972.

In 2006 the Ood made their debut appearance in The Impossible Planet. Originally it was going to be Slitheen who fulfilled their role in this episode. The Ood have gone on to become one of the revived series' most featured aliens, still going strong in the recent Flux.

Far less successful were the Monks who made their final appearance today in 2017, in the hugely disappointing Lie of the Land.

Penelope Wilton leads the birthdays today - you know who she is. She is 76. 

Sharing her birthday are Ian Gelder (Can You Hear Me? and Torchwood: Children of Earth), who turns 73, and Bill Patterson (Victory of the Daleks and The Pandorica Opens) who is 77.

Today we also remember Damaris Hayman, who played Miss Hawthorne in The Daemons, and Paul Darrow (The Silurians and Timelash). Hayman passed away last year at the age of 91, and Darrow in 2019, aged 78.

Two Troughton guest artists also passed away on this date - Pamela Ann Davy (Janley in Power of the Daleks) in 2018, and Gordon Gostelow (Milo Clancey in The Space Pirates) in 2007.

On This Day... 2nd June

 

The Green Death arrived at its mid-point today in 1973 with its third episode.

In 2007, The Family of Blood got their well-deserved comeuppance. A great shame that the writer felt the need to tamper with the ending many years later. Just because she looked like a little girl, didn't mean she was one.

One of the people she cold-bloodedly murdered was the school's headmaster, who was played by Pip Torrens. How's that for a segue? He turns 62 today.

He is a year to the day older than Liam Cunningham (Cold War) who is now 61.

June Bland, who appeared in both Earthshock and Battlefield, turns 91.

Cybermat victim Kevork Malikyan (The Wheel in Space) is 79.

Inspirations - School Reunion

 

School Reunion's main objective was to show what happened after a companion had left the TARDIS. How difficult was it for them to adjust to life back on Earth, if they managed to readjust at all? How does a companion from today compare with one from the past?

Russell T Davies had always wanted to ensure that people knew that the revived series was a continuation of the series which had run from 1963 to 1989. (The semi-autobiographical character of Vince in his Queer As Folk did not regard the 1996 movie as canon - suggesting that he didn't himself).

Dalek had shown the head of a Cyberman from Revenge of the Cybermen, and the same story had seen the Doctor refer to Davros, though not by name. RTD did not want the nods to the past to be too full on, at least for the first series, as it might alienate new viewers.

Doctor Who was now well established in its second series, so these nods could be more up front.

It was decided that a companion from the classic era would be brought back, to act as a comparison with Rose - showing how much they were the same, and how much they were different.

The obvious candidate was the person whom most agreed was the best ever companion - Sarah Jane Smith, as played by Lis Sladen. As well as her own nostalgic presence, she had the added benefit of owning a version of K9.

This had come about in A Girl's Best Friend - pilot for the K9 & Company spin-off series which never happened. Sarah Jane Smith found a box waiting for her when she moved into her aunt's home - a box containing K9 Mark III, which had been left for her as a present from the Doctor.

This spin-off was made canon when The Five Doctors depicted Sarah as owning K9, interacting with it just before being abducted and transported to Gallifrey.

RTD had actually considered having K9 appear in the first series, long before he thought of bringing Sarah back.

Ironically, a problem with School Reunion is that it seems to have forgotten that The Five Doctors ever happened.

The way it is written - and played - more than suggest that this is the very first time that Sarah has met the Doctor since the ending of The Hand of Fear. Sarah talks about the place where the Doctor had left her - how it was Aberdeen rather than South Croydon. (The TARDIS has been to Aberdeen before, according to Underworld). One explanation for this is that all the companions had their memories wiped by Rassilon after he sent them home - except that the Doctor also acts as if this is his first sight of Sarah since leaving Kastria.

Originally the story was not going to have a school setting. Instead, Whithouse went for an army base as the background for what was initially titled "Old Friends" and later "Black Ops".

Aliens were taking over the minds of the local villagers in order that they might build them a weapon.

RTD wanted the Doctor to start off as an investigator - which would bring him into contact with investigative journalist Sarah.

RTD suggested that the location be moved to a school as this was something children could connect with. He loved the idea that they might think their teachers were really disguised aliens. His own 1990's series Dark Season had a school setting.

Mickey Smith was introduced to the narrative as RTD was about to have him temporarily join the TARDIS crew, prior to staying on an alternative Earth.

Before it settled on its final title, Whithouse had renamed it "Friends Reunited" - after the then popular social media platform that allowed people who studied together to reconnect.

There are topical comments about the quality of school meals, which were a big issue championed by chef Jamie Oliver at the time.

One scene sees Rose and Sarah in jealous, combative mood, trying to out impress each other. 

Sarah mentions Daleks (Death to the Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks), mummies (Pyramids of Mars), robots (Robot, The Sontaran Experiment), anti-matter monsters (Planet of Evil) and dinosaurs (Invasion of the Dinosaurs). 

Rose counters with ghosts (The Unquiet Dead), Slitheen in Downing Street (Aliens of London), gas mask zombies (The Empty Child), the Emperor of the Daleks (Parting of the Ways) and werewolves (Tooth and Claw). 

Sarah trumps Rose with the Loch Ness Monster (Terror of the Zygons).

This is the second story in a row in which the Doctor impersonates someone - but then the running order of the first four stories of this series were in constant flux until late in the day. 

Here he is pretending to be teacher John Smith - a name first given to him by the person he impersonated last week, Jamie McCrimmon. Needing a name for his unconscious friend, Jamie took it from a piece of medical equipment in the second episode of The Wheel in Space. The Doctor adopted it for himself from Spearhead From Space onwards. Sarah would have heard him use it in her first story - The Time Warrior.

This week's Torchwood reference comes in the scene of Mickey in a cyber-cafe, when access to certain sites is denied by the organisation. This had featured in the story's "Tardisode".

The Doctor's "Physics, physics, physics... so where were we?" comes from John Cleese's teacher in The Meaning of Life, trying to interest bored schoolboys in learning about sex.

Next time: The Time-Traveller's Mistress...

On This Day... 1st June

The Wheel in Space reached its conclusion today in 1968 with its sixth instalment. This also brought Season 5 to a close - a season which had begun with another Cyberman story.

The episode ended with the Doctor finding Zoe trying to stow away, and he used a thought channel in the TARDIS to show her the sort of thing she might face if she came with them - leading into a summer repeat screening of The Evil of the Daleks. This was the only time a complete story was repeated throughout the whole of the 1960's, but they did manage to make it part of the on-going story.

Jon Pertwee's penultimate episode was also broadcast today, in 1974 - Part Five of Planet of the Spiders.

The other day we had a brace of female guest star birthdays, and today it's the boys' turn.

Brian Cox, who played Sydney Newman in An Adventure in Space and Time, as well as voicing the Ood Elder in The End of Time, turns 76.

Also in AAISAT was Andrew Woodall, playing Rex Tucker. He is 59.

The Comic Relief Master, Jonathan Pryce, is 75 today.

Adam Garcia - Alex in The Christmas Invasion - turns 49, as does Rene Zagger, who played Padra in Utopia.

Glenn Beck, who was the TV announcer in The Tenth Planet is 87.

Today we also remember two people associated with the Peter Cushing Dalek movies, which are big news at the moment.

Producer Milton Subotsky passed away on this date in 1991, aged 69. 

And Geoffrey Toone who played Temmosus in the first film (as well as the High Priest Hepesh in The Curse of Peladon) died in 2005, aged 94.