Episode 71: The Final Phase

Synopsis:

Ian forces Lobos and his technician at gunpoint to take him into the processing room. He is shocked at what he sees...

The Doctor is there, apparently frozen. Ian coerces the Morok leader into reversing the embalming process, though Lobos claims it is too late. The Doctor soon revives, and reveals that he has been conscious the whole time.

Ian hopes that by rescuing the Doctor they have changed the future - but is told that he could very easily be put back into the machine a second time. He and the Doctor are overpowered.

Vicki insists on going to find her friends, but Tor argues she cannot carry one of the Morok weapons as it will alert them to what they have done at the armoury. Vicki goes anyway, so Tor asks Sita to accompany her.

At the museum entrance, Barbara and Dako have almost reached the doors despite the zaphra gas - unaware that Morok soldiers are waiting outside to ambush anyone who emerges.

Before they can open fire, they are shot and killed by Sita, and Barbara is reunited with Vicki.

Their happiness is short lived, however, as Morok troops attack and shoot the young Xerons, stunning Dako and killing Sita.

Their guns are presented to Lobos, who demands to know how they came by them. When he tries to contact the armoury, there is no response. He asks his Commander if any of their weapons have fallen into Xeron hands recently.

The TARDIS crew find themselves reunited in the processing room, in the very situation they had been striving to avoid. In frustration, Ian wrecks the freezing machine, only to be told that the Moroks may well have others at their disposal.

Vicki argues that they must have changed the future by now, and the Doctor agrees - pointing out all the interaction they have had with the locals and the actions they have initiated. 

They may not have changed the future themselves - but they may have helped to do so through others.

It quickly becomes apparent to Lobos that his forces are being overrun by the Xerons, who have raided the armoury and attacked and destroyed the main barracks. 

When Tor learns from Dako that Vicki was captured, along with the rest of her friends, he launches an attack on the Governor's office to rescue them.

Lobos orders an escape ship prepared for departure but first he will deal with the alien troublemakers. He and his Commander are about to shoot the time travellers when Tor and his friends rush in and gun the two Moroks down.

The Xerons waste no time in emptying the museum, arguing that they only want on their planet what belongs there. The Doctor cautions against rejecting all of the alien technology.

He has discovered the cause of their earlier problems, when the TARDIS initially jumped a time-track - a faulty piece of TARDIS equipment. There had been a slight delay in the circuit engaging properly.

Ian and Barbara emerge from the ship, eager to know about the strange object which they have seen being installed. The Doctor had found it in the museum and asked Tor if he could have it. He will tell them all about it when he gets it working again...

Vicki says her goodbyes to Tor and his friends and the TARDIS departs.

On the planet Skaro, a Dalek reports that the time machine of their greatest enemies has just left Xeros. It is informed that they are to be pursued and exterminated...

Next episode: The Executioners

Data:

Written by Glyn Jones

Recorded: Friday 23rd April 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 15th May 1965

Ratings: 8.5 million / AI 49

Designer: Spencer Chapman

Director: Mervyn Pinfield

Additional cast: Peter Hawkins (Dalek voices), Murphy Grumbar (Dalek)

Critique:

One of Glyn Jones' biggest criticisms of Dennis Spooner's script editing, after the removal of the humour, was the rather lame explanation for the TARDIS jumping the time-track at the start of the adventure.

It is a very disappointing explanation we see on screen - being simply a re-tread of what happened in The Edge of Destruction. Yes, it is just a bit of faulty equipment on the TARDIS. 

Jones had made the cause the Morok freezing machine interfering with the TARDIS. His version is at least relevant to his story, growing out of the plot, but it would have caused fandom headaches later as we would have argued how such a machine could interfere with a TARDIS whilst it is in the Vortex - the problems commencing long before they actually land on Xeros.

This is one of those stories where you have to consider what might happen after the Doctor has left. The Xerons have retaken their planet and are now armed - but they are still youngsters with little tactical experience. It is hoped that Lobos was correct in thinking that his empire was no longer interested in the planet, or in conquest in general - otherwise Tor's rebellion could be easily crushed by a new invading force from Morok. Indeed, some form of swift retribution might be more likely when you consider that other planets might be thinking of overthrowing their Morok overlords, and an example needs to be made.

Another question for the future of the planet: where are the female Xerons?

The Space Museum proves to be a transitional story for the Daleks.

In the first and second episodes we saw the original model, as seen in their city on Skaro, but in The Final Phase we get our first look at the final Dalek design - the one which will remain constant until the 1980's. The two broad metal bands around the middle section have been replaced with vertical slats. Ray Cusick reasoned that these would be a means of power generation, like solar panels, to get away from the power-collection discs of their previous story, and to get around the reliance on static electricity which had been established in their first outing.

The planet we see is never stated to be Skaro, but it is the same image which we saw in The Edge of Destruction, and in that the images on the TARDIS scanner were supposed to represent the TARDIS' recent journeys - so presumably this was the Dalek homeworld.

There is some confusion as to the fate of Sita. The Doctor Who wiki entry for the story has him only stunned and surviving, but The Complete History partwork states that he was killed when shot. Vicki's reaction certainly seems to indicate the latter, and he isn't evident in the final scenes.

There is a particularly pungent example of clumsy dialogue in this episode, when the Commander asks of an underling: "Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?".

The quality of the second, third and fourth instalments, following the promising opening episode, has led to The Space Museum frequently coming out bottom in fan polls. It held that position in 2009 and in 2014, but has just moved up to second from bottom in the 60th Anniversary poll from DWM.

Its problems are not just a modern perception. A BBC audience report at the time had described The Final Phase as "a very poor ending to what promised, at first, to be a much better story". That question about the female Xerons was also posed. Hartnell's grasp of his lines was questioned, sets were criticised, and some of the audience wanted to know what had happened to the Daleks now that they didn't seem to need static electricity.

Glyn Jones wrote the novelisation of his story for Target. By appearing as Galsec astronaut Krans in The Sontaran Experiment he became the only person to both write for, and appear in, the series during its classic period. He featured on the commentary for the DVD release of The Space Museum, in which he voiced his criticisms of Dennis Spooner's editing and claimed to have submitted another story in the 1970's which failed to be picked up by the production team. He died in 2014, aged 84.

Trivia:

• The ratings manage to pause their slide, remaining the same as last week's episode, but the appreciation figure drops by 7 points to a lacklustre 49.
• It's another short episode, at just over 22 minutes (22' 15").
• This episode had the working title of "Zone Seven".
• Salvin Stewart (playing a Morok soldier) once again provided voices for the radio messages heard by Lobos, such as the Commander of K Division.
• Peter Hawkins pre-recorded the Dalek voices on the Wednesday prior to recording.
• William Hartnell was interviewed at home by the weekly publication Reveille. He was photographed posing with some Louis Marx Dalek toys:

Famous (Doctor Who) Monsters of Filmland

The infamous Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine - latterly just Famous Monsters - had featured the odd photograph of a Doctor Who monster in the past, but in July 1979 it gave us a major feature, including the front cover. This was issue 155 of a publication which had been running since 1958. Published by James Warren, it was edited by one-time actor Forrest J Ackerman. He became famous for his dreadful puns and cringeworthy "funny" photo captions. The magazine featured the Universal Horror movies prominently to start with, but quickly expanded to cover all manner of horror and science fiction film and (occasionally) television. It tended towards image over text, with the accompanying pun-filled articles kept relatively brief. However, Doctor Who merited a full 13 pages in this particular issue.

Issue 155 had more than its fair share of sci-fi, as it also included pieces on the Italian Star Wars rip-off Starcrash, and the first Alien film.

"The Four Faces of Dr Who" was designed as an introductory feature for the wider American market which might not be familiar with the series. The previous year had seen the sale of Tom Baker's first four seasons to Time-Life for screening in the States.

A few early stories were covered by a very brief synopsis (the first five of Season One), and some of the better known monsters were profiled (plus some more obscure ones like the Chameleons).

The Ice Warriors were renamed "Ice Monsters", for some reason - and never even managed to get a picture in the magazine.

It should be noted that FMoF was printed on very poor quality paper, and you will have seen that all the images were B&W only.

Aware of their regular readership, the feature ensured that references were made to horror stars such as Boris Karloff and Peter Cushing. The latter significantly, as the feature had a separate section on the Dalek movies in which he had starred. When it came to the Yeti, it mentioned that he had also met The Abominable Snowmen in the Hammer film version of the lost Nigel Kneale TV play - The Creature - in which he had also featured. Similarities of plot to horror movies were often pointed out. The Autons were likened to the android workers in Futureworld for instance (though the Mechanics from The Android Invasion would have been a better fit).

The images selected to illustrate the feature were mostly from earlier Tom Baker stories (Seasons 12 - 14), though there were a couple of Hartnell ones as well. The picture of Baker on the cover came from Image of the Fendahl, and the one on the first page of the main article came from The Sun Makers, both Season 15 stories and therefore the most recent images.

The only Troughton photo was the inclusion of some Cybermen from The Moonbase on the weirdly tinted cover, and for Pertwee it was the Axon Man on the first page of the feature and a pair of Daleks from Planet of the Daleks. A Dalek also featured on the cover. Some UK publications of the '70's we have looked at recently were Dalek-free (presumably due to additional image copyright costs).

The feature also gave readers a list of story titles with episode lengths. It employed the generally accepted titles apart from The Reign of Terror, which it called "The French Revolution". Nothing really wrong with that, though, as it was a popular alternative title used by fandom for many years.

The list stopped with Season Seven, however. If you didn't know the series, then it did provide a reasonably good introduction, giving an idea of the nature and scope of the programme - though you might have been forgiven for thinking that Tom Baker was Doctor throughout. If you wanted to delve deeper into the Doctor Who universe, there were some novelisations you could buy, which readers were pointed towards:

It should be said, about one third of every issue of FMoF comprised adverts - for horror related products such as the Aurora Universal Monsters model kits, posters, rubber masks and 8mm home movies, but also a great many joke-shop items.

As mentioned, there was a separate four page section devoted to the Peter Cushing Dalek movies, which had been shown in the USA but hadn't made much of an impact there. The images all derived from the first film: Dr Who and the Daleks.

Next time - a quick look at the short-lived poster magazine TV Sci-Fi Monthly.

M is for... Master (1)

The Master was the assumed title of a Time Lord who was a contemporary of the Doctor. As children they had played together, and they attended the Academy at the same time. The Master hailed from a wealthy land-owning family.

As children, prospective Time Lords were exposed to the Untempered Schism - a rent in Space / Time which was located on Gallifrey. It was claimed that some who looked into it were driven mad - and this seemed to be the case with the Master.

Whilst the Doctor longed to explore the Universe, the Master was determined to dominate it. Both stole TARDISes, but the Master made a better job of covering his tracks.

He would later return secretly to Gallifrey to steal information from the Time Lord files, and to erase data about himself from their records.

The Time Lords were able to monitor his movements for a time, however, and one of their number came to Earth soon after the Doctor had been exiled there to warn that the Master was also on the planet.

At some point in the past, the Doctor and Master had made enemies of each other, and the latter was now seeking revenge. If Earth was harmed in the process, so much the better as he had noticed the Doctor's liking for this world.

In appearance, the Master sported a neat pointed beard and had deep hypnotic eyes. Indeed, he had considerable hypnotic skills.

His TARDIS materialised at a circus, disguising itself as a motorised horsebox. He quickly brought the circus owner Rossini under his mental control, already knowing his true identity.

He had come to re-establish a link between Earth and the Nestene Consciousness. He stole a surviving Nestene control sphere from a museum and then infiltrated a plastics factory in which to create a new army of Autons. He adopted the name Colonel Masters. The managing director - a weak-willed man named Rex Farrell - was easily subjugated to his will. When one executive questioned his actions, the Master had him killed with a suffocating chair made of Nestene plastic. He also killed Rex's father when he found he was immune to his hypnotism - employing a hideous troll-doll to strangle him.

When UNIT searched local plastics factories, the Master hypnotised Jo Grant into returning to her HQ with a bomb. Luckily the Doctor recognised the signs of hypnotic fugue.

The Master had earlier used a radio-telescope to link the Nestene sphere to the Consciousness, in order to reactivate it. He abducted one of the scientists, but killed the other with a matter condensing weapon - shrinking his corpse to a few inches in height.

His plan was to use plastic flowers, distributed by disguised Autons, which would spit out a suffocating film when triggered by the radio telescope. Before then he attempted to kill the Doctor, disguising himself as a telephone technician to replace a 'phone cord with a Nestene one. Another attack ended when the Doctor indicated that he had stolen the dematerialisation circuit from his TARDIS, after finding it at the circus. Jo also let slip that UNIT were going to bomb his Autons, so he took them both hostage.

At the crucial moment, as the Nestene began to materialise, the Doctor was able to convince the Master that it would kill him along with the rest of the humanoids on Earth, and so he agreed to help the Doctor expel the creature back into deep space. Captain Mike Yates of UNIT shot and killed the Master, but this proved to be a hypnotised Rex Farrell wearing a mask. He had fled, but was stranded on Earth as the Doctor still held his vital circuit.

The Master next attempted to trigger a nuclear war, by hijacking a banned nerve gas missile known as Thunderbolt and launching it at a peace conference being held in London. For a base, he took over Stangmoor Prison, having earlier installed a device there which could remove criminal behaviour from the minds of convicts. For this, he had posed as Swiss scientist Prof. Emil Keller. The device actually contained an alien mind parasite, which grew stronger after every feeding - until even he could no longer control it. It killed by presenting its victims with their deepest fear, and for the Master this was being mocked and dominated by the Doctor. He had to hold back his desire to kill the Doctor as he needed him to help keep the parasite under control. The Doctor eventually used the missile self-destruct to destroy the parasite, but in a struggle the Master had been able to get his dematerialisation circuit back and was free to roam the universe once again.

However, he was soon captured by the parasitical organism Axos. Seeking the ability to travel through time, he was able to talk it into attacking Earth, where it would find the knowledge and power it sought.

Realising the planet was doomed, the Master was able to convince Axos to let him go free in order to help it spread Axonite - its method of feeding - across the globe. He used UNIT to do this, and also took the opportunity to take possession of the Doctor's TARDIS in order to flee the planet - Axos continuing to hold his own ship hostage.

Captured by UNIT, he negotiated his freedom by agreeing to help them fight Axos after it had abducted the Doctor. The Master was then tricked into thinking the Doctor had joined forces with him to abandon Earth to the parasite. When he learned that his fellow Time Lord was luring Axos into a time-loop trap, he fled to his own TARDIS and escaped.

During a secret return to Gallifrey, the Master had raided the Time Lords' most restricted files. One of these concerned an ancient super-weapon, which was to be found on the obscure planet of Uxarieus. This world was caught up in a conflict between a group of colonists from Earth and a powerful mining conglomerate - IMC - as to who had rights to the planet. The Master took advantage of the situation to pose as an Adjudicator from Earth, asked to come and arbitrate between the two factions.

He pretended to favour the colonists only if they could prove that Uxarieus had some historical significance - a means of learning about the ancient civilisation which had built the weapon. It was located in their underground city. The Master was shocked to find the Doctor and Jo already on the planet - despatched by the Time Lords when they discovered that he had stolen their files.

On learning that the Doctor had already visited the city and met the weapon's Guardian, he forced him to take him there - holding Jo hostage.

The Master offered the Doctor a share of the universe if he joined forces with him. The Doctor declined, and the Guardian was talked into destroying itself and the weapon. The Master fled - only to turn up on Earth once more.

This time he was posing as Mr Magister, the vicar of the English village of Devil's End. He had learned that an alien Daemon was in hibernation in the neighbourhood. This alien - Azal - was to be resurrected as the Master wished it to hand over its great powers to him. The Daemons experimented on many worlds. One of their number would be left behind to judge the success or otherwise - either passing on their powers or destroying the world as a failure. The Master led a local coven which he used to make contact with Azal. His adopted name - Magister - was the name for the leader of a black magic coven and was an alternative version of "master", which the Doctor spotted straight away, before he had even learned that he was present. He also blackmailed and manipulated the villagers into helping him - offering them power and influence once he achieved the Daemon's powers. When the creature was awakened, it decided to give its powers to the Doctor rather than him, however.

Once it had been destroyed, the Master attempted to flee in the Doctor's car "Bessie", but he used its remote control to bring him back. He was arrested by UNIT troops.

Despite all the death and destruction he had caused, the Doctor spoke up for him at his trial. He was eventually sentenced to life-long imprisonment, held in a one-man jail in a converted fortress on an island off England's south coast. The Doctor and Jo visited him there - but the Master deduced that he had an ulterior motive, wanting to know the whereabouts of his TARDIS in order to escape his own imprisonment on Earth. The Master had no intention of giving up his ship, as he was already working on a scheme to free himself. He had easily duped the prison governor - Colonel Trenchard - into believing he was a government agent, sent here under cover to identify foreign saboteurs at work in the English Channel. A recent spate of ship sinkings was actually the work of the Sea Devils - Earth's original inhabitants who had a hibernation shelter beneath the seabed just off the island.

The Master was able to get Trenchard to smuggle him into a nearby Royal Navy base to steal electronic equipment with which to communicate with the submarine reptiles. Once he no longer needed the governor, he had the Sea Devils attack the prison to free him. Trenchard and his guards were massacred.

Once again the two Time Lords were obliged to join forces as the Master recognised that his old enemy had greater electronic skills, and he needed him to help complete a device which would pinpoint and activate all the Sea Devil shelters across the globe. The Doctor sabotaged it, however.

Escaping to the surface, the Master hypnotised one of the sailors who rescued them and put a mask of his own face on the man. The trick allowed him time to steal a hovercraft and flee once again.

The Master next set himself up as the Greek scientist Prof. Thascalos, based at the Newton Institute near Cambridge. Here he had built the TOMTIT device - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time. To his assistants Dr. Ruth Ingram and Stuart Hyde, this was a form of matter transmitter, but he was secretly planning to establish control over Kronos, a Chronovore. These awesomely powerful beings existed outside Time. Kronos had been captured by the people of bronze age Atlantis, and the Master wished to bring it forward to the 20th Century to harness its powers.

The Doctor was alerted to the Master's proximity when he suffered a nightmare featuring him - indicating a Time Lord psychic link. UNIT had orders to track him down as their number one priority, and the Doctor created a device which could trace his TARDIS operating. Instead, it picked up the activity of TOMTIT, and the Doctor realised that the Master was once again using an alias based on his own title, "thascalos" being Greek for teacher - or master. He attempted to stop the Master travelling back to ancient Atlantis by materialising his TARDIS around his old enemy's - but one ship landed within the other, and the Master was able to dematerialise with the Doctor's TARDIS still on board. He lured the Doctor out and ejected him into the vortex, but Jo employed the telepathic circuits to bring him back. Once in Atlantis, the Master seduced Queen Galleia and was able to overthrow her husband King Dalios. When she rebelled against him, he summoned Kronos but was unable to control it. It destroyed the city. Taking Jo hostage in his ship, she created a time ram by colliding his TARDIS with that of the Doctor. Both ships were saved, and Kronos vowed to torment the Master forever. Once again, the Doctor pleaded leniency for him - and Kronos allowed him to escape.

In the mid-26th Century, a mysterious third party was attempting to engineer a war between the rival Earth and Draconian Empires, which dominated the Milky Way galaxy. The Doctor and Jo saw that pirate raids being blamed by each side on the other were really being carried out by Ogrons, who stole the TARDIS. They ended up captives on Earth, and the Doctor was sent to a lunar penal colony. He was about to be killed trying to escape when an official from the dominion world Sirius IV arrived in time to save him. This proved to be the Master in disguise, using a stolen police security spacecraft.

It transpired that he was using the Ogrons to provoke the war, but was in turn employed by the Daleks to do so. They intended to weaken the two Empires then move in and take over the whole galaxy. The Master had been promised control over the Earth, but secretly intended to take fuller advantage of the situation once the Daleks had taken over. To aid the deception, the Master had created an electronic hypnotic device which preyed on the fear centres of the brain - making people see what they feared most.

On first meeting Jo Grant, the Master had easily hypnotised her. Now, she had developed techniques to prevent this and he failed to use the device on her.

The Doctor stole it and used it to cause panic amongst the Ogrons, under cover of which he and Jo escaped into the TARDIS. Humans and Draconians had already learned the truth of the plot and so the war would never happen. The Master had shot and wounded the Doctor in the confusion. His schemes wrecked once again, the Master left the Ogron planet where he had established his base.

Played by: Roger Delgado. Appearances: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony In Space, The Daemons (1971), The Sea Devils, The Time Monster (1972), Frontier In Space (1973).

• Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo de Roberto was born in Whitechapel, in London's East End, on 1st March 1918 - son of a Spanish father and Belgian mother.
• Whilst best known for villainous roles in series such as The Avengers and a few of the Hammer movies, he also played the odd hero - e.g. in the radio serial The Slide, which formed the basis for Fury From The Deep, and he was one of The Three Musketeers in the 1954 TV adaptation. 
• He was also a friendly journalist in Quatermass II (a role taken by Sid James in the movie version).
• Reasoning that the Doctor was like Sherlock Holmes, with the Brigadier his Watson, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks decided that they needed a Moriarty figure to act as a regular humanoid villain, now that the Doctor was exiled to Earth. Dicks came up with the name "The Master" - an academic title like "Doctor", whilst Letts knew who to play him. He had acted opposite Delgado and knew his work well.
• Delgado established aspects of the character which are still in evidence today - such as the matter condensing weapon (also known as the Tissue Compression Eliminator or TCE), hypnosis, and the use of disguises. His Master also liked aliases based on his own title.
• Letts and Dicks admitted that having the Master in every story of Season 8 was a mistake, so he would feature less often in subsequent seasons.
• Aware that he was not being offered work as directors and producers thought he was working on Doctor Who full time, Delgado asked to be written out of the series. A final confrontation was planned for Season 11, which would have seen the Master apparently sacrifice himself to save the Doctor. Letts and Dicks had a theory that the Master was really a manifestation of the dark side of the Doctor, which is why he could never bring himself to kill him.
• On 18th June 1973, on his way to a filming location in Turkey, Delgado was involved in a car crash which took his life. His ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at Mortlake Cemetery in SE London.

M is for... Marshmen

Creatures from the planet Alzarius, located in the pocket universe of E-Space, which have a unique evolutionary history.

Like the mutation which affected the people of Solos, changes in some interconnected Alzarian fauna were closely associated with changes in the decades-long seasons.

For the humanoids who inhabited the Starliner - a spaceship from the planet Terradon which had crashed here many years ago - this atmospheric change was known as "Mistfall". 

A dense mist would rise from the marshes, and the Terradonians would retreat into the Starliner as they believed this to be toxic.

One of the Starliner community's leaders - a triumvirate known as the Deciders - had discovered a secret about Mistfall, and about his own people - a secret which the Doctor later uncovered.

He was present when a number of savage reptilian bipeds emerged from the swamps after the humanoids had fled into their spacecraft.

These creatures adapted very quickly to the atmosphere, and began to master tools. They instinctively made for a cave overlooking the Starliner which had been filled with river-fruits by a group of young Terradonian outsiders. These fruits burst open and spiders emerged. Romana was bitten by one and was transformed into a mental Marsh creature.

The Marshmen brought the TARDIS to the cave, intending to use it as a battering ram to break into the Starliner, but Romana helped them enter through its airlocks instead.

With access to a laboratory and the work of a scientist named Dexeter who was studying the spiders, the Doctor found the same DNA was shared by Marshmen, spiders and the Starliner people.

It transpired that the original humanoids had been killed by Marshmen soon after arriving on Alzarius.

The creatures rapidly evolved into humanoids through exposure to the spider venom. 

The Starliner people were really evolved Marsh people. This cycle had been going on for thousands of years. To break the cycle, the Doctor had the Marshmen leave the Starliner by flooding it with oxygen-rich air, which they couldn't cope with - then had the Deciders finally launch the ship and leave the planet. The Marshmen would then be left to evolve naturally.

Played by: Barney Lawrence, Norman Bacon. Appearances: Full Circle (1981).

• Writer Andrew Smith had originally envisaged the Marshmen as humanoids, like Neanderthals.
• The design is clearly inspired by The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• Norman Bacon played the "Marshchild". He had previously appeared in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave as the traumatised altar boy, rendered mute after finding a corpse stuffed in the church bell. This impressed Hammer Horror fan Matthew Waterhouse no end.
• Bacon also operated a Dalek in Remembrance of the Daleks, and played one of the rebels in The Sun Makers.
• Lawrence was a regular background artist in the 1980's. He was one of the Kinda hostages in the story of the same name, played Concorde flight attendant Dave Culshaw in Time-Flight, and was one of the Cyberman sentinel androids in Earthshock amongst other roles.

M is for... Marshal of Solos

Governor of the Earth dependency Solos in the 30th Century. His rule coincided with the final collapse of Earth's empire, and he was horrified to learn that Solos was to gain its independence.

The planet had an unusual atmosphere, in that it was poisonous to humans during sunlight hours. The colonial forces ruled from a spacecraft called Skybase One.

Despite this, the Marshal was determined to turn the planet into a thriving settlement, and had employed the corrupt scientist Jaeger to experiment on ways to alter the atmosphere - making it safe for humans but no longer suitable for the indigenous peoples. These experiments triggered prematurely a natural stage in the evolution of the Solonian people, which normally occurred every 500 years as the planet moved into its summer. People began to mutate into savage insectoid bipeds, which the Marshal assumed to be a form of plague. He ruthlessly hunted victims down and killed them.

When an Adjudicator arrived from Earth, to commence the handover of power to the Solonians, the Marshal employed the son of Varan - a warlord collaborator - to assassinate him, before killing the assassin to cover his tracks. This made an enemy of his pet warlord.

When the Doctor arrived on Skybase One with a message for another Solonian leader - Ky - the Marshal coerced him into assisting Jaeger with his work.

The Marshal became so obsessed with Solos that he determined to break completely with Earth, capturing an Earth Examiner and his men and informing them they would be forcibly relocated to his new colony. Ky passed though the mutation and emerged as a powerful super-being. He vapourised the Marshal in revenge for his cruel actions against his people.

Played by: Paul Whitsun-Jones. Appearances: The Mutants (1972).

• Whitsun-Jones had previously appeared in The Smugglers as Squire Edwards.
• The Marshal is clearly based on Hermann Goering, the Nazi Reichsmarschall. Whitsun-Jones even bears a certain physical similarity. The Marshal carries a short rod which doubles as a communicator, and Goering used to carry a similar symbol of his authority.
• Whitsun-Jones had been Porthos to Roger Delgado's  Athos in the 1954 adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
• He was the original journalist James Fullalove in The Quatermass Experiment.
• Sadly, he died not that long after The Mutants - in January 1974, aged only 50.

M is for... Marshal of Atrios

 

The commander of the military forces of the planet Atrios, which had been at war with its neighbour in space, Zeos, for many years.

Obsessive and single-minded, he had at some point fallen under the mental control of a being known as the Shadow - servant of the Black Guardian. This was achieved through a small device attached to his neck, hidden under the collar of his ostentatious uniform. He would communicate with his master via an object shaped like a crystal skull, hidden in a secret chamber behind his war room.

He initially attempted to have the Doctor killed, and K-9 destroyed - until he learned that the mobile computer might be able to help him win the war. He was influenced by the Shadow not to harm the Doctor immediately. The Doctor's suggestion of ending the war through peace fell on deaf ears.

When his battle fleet had been reduced to only a couple of vessels, the Marshal decided to launch one final attack on Zeos in person - not realising that this was part of the Shadow's plans to wipe out the whole galaxy. 

Zeos was a dead world, its war machine run by the computer Mentalis which had been developed by a rogue Time Lord named Drax. The Marshal's attack would have triggered its self-destruction. The Doctor was able to use the Key to Time to temporarily place the Marshal's ship in a time loop.

Once Mentalis had been disabled, the Doctor used the Key deflect his missiles to blow up the Shadow's hidden lair. Drax then set about arranging a salvage deal with the Marshal, now that the war was over - though he didn't know it yet.

Played by: John Woodvine. Appearances: The Armageddon Factor (1978).

• Woodvine is probably best known for his role as Dr Hirsch in 1981's An American Werewolf in London.
• He was the player king opposite David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in the 2009 RSC production of Hamlet.
• He has some 70 theatre credits to his name, and just as many television roles. His first TV was in 1958, and his work has ranged from detective drama such as Midsomer Murders and Vera (set around his native Tyneside), to soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street.

M is for... Marriner

Marriner was a member of the race known as Eternals. As immortal beings who had existed since the beginning of the universe, they had long ago exhausted their imaginations. All they craved was some entertainment that would divert their attention for a fleeting moment. 

Unable to think of activities themselves, they came to rely on "ephemerals" - mortal beings - for their entertainment. One such activity was a race through the Solar System in spacecraft shaped like sailing ships from different periods of Earth history - the look plucked from the minds of abducted humans. They were retained, brainwashed, to crew the vessels, whilst the Eternals took on the role of captains and other officers. Marriner was lieutenant on a clipper called The Shadow, captained by Captain Striker.

He became obsessed with the Doctor's companion Tegan Jovanka, never having encountered so complex a human before. He could not comprehend how his meddling with her memories upset her so much.

He accompanied her and the Doctor to the pirate vessel of Captain Wrack when she hosted a party- warning them of her cruel nature. After the Doctor had raced to throw an explosive device overboard, Marriner explained that he could simply have thought it away from the ship. The fact that he hadn't thought to do this allowed the Doctor to demonstrate to him his lack of imagination and initiative.

When the race was completed, Marriner wanted to remain and get to know Tegan better, but the White Guardian banished he and his fellow Eternals back to the wasteland they called home.

Played by: Christopher Brown. Appearances: Enlightenment (1983).