M is for... Moxx of Balhoon

A small blue-skinned being present on Platform One to witness the destruction of the Earth around the year 5 Billion. He represented the legal firm of Jolco and Jolco. All guests were expected to provide gifts to their fellow VIPs, and the Moxx offered samples of his bodily fluids in the form of saliva.

After the space station's shields had been sabotaged by the Lady Cassandra, the searing heat from the expanding sun broke in to certain sections of the vessel. The Moxx of Balhoon was one of those killed - his body incinerated.

Played by: Jimmy Vee. Voiced by: Silas Carson. Appearances: The End of the World (2005).

• The Moxx provides the very first mention of the phrase "Bad Wolf" in the 2005 series - describing a "Bad Wolf scenario" to other guests.
• Along with Jabe, images of the Moxx featured heavily in the advance publicity for the revived series. 
• Another Balhoonian - the Moxx's brother Jixx - was to have featured as part of the Shadow Proclamation in The Stolen Earth.
• This was Vee's first appearance in the series. It was quickly followed by the "Space Pig" in Aliens of London - filmed first. He would go on to feature in episodes starring David Tennant and Peter Capaldi - the Skovox Blitzer being his most recent appearance to date.
• He has been operating R2-D2 since The Force Awakens.
• Carson is best known on the series for providing the vocals for the Ood. He provided other voices for this story, including the Adherents of the Repeated Meme.

Episode 108: The Plague

Synopsis:

The time travellers have been locked up, accused of being spies and saboteurs - agents of Refusis II. Zentos, Deputy Commander of the Ark, wonders if all their efforts to save the human race might not have been in vain...

With the Commander incapacitated with the new fever, Zentos claims that he can summarily execute them by ejecting them into space, but it is decided that a trial must be held. he will preside as judge.

A Guardian named Baccu will prosecute whilst Manyak, a friend of Mellium, will act as their defence. Steven insists on speaking up for his friends, despite falling victim to the fever himself.

His impassioned pleas fall on deaf ears as the frightened Guardians are stirred up by the far from impartial Zentos. 

The case goes against the time-travellers and Zentos decrees that the Monoids will be allowed to dispose of them, having been the first victims of the illness.

The Commander has been observing proceedings and now intervenes - overruling his deputy.

The Doctor has claimed that, given the right facilities, he could find a cure for the fever. The Commander points out that by killing the one person who might be able to help them, they will be dooming themselves.

The Doctor is to be given access to a laboratory and allowed to gather whatever he needs. Any cure he devises must be tested on Steven first.

The Doctor is joined by medic Rhos, who has been caring for the Commander, and he instructs that tissue samples be taken from many of the animals in the biodome - recalling that a cure for the common cold had been derived from animal membranes.

He finds the Monoids to be of invaluable help, and notes that the Guardians really do not appreciate their fellow travellers.

The cure is developed and Steven recovers. Zentos has come to realise how unreasonable he had become and asks for the Doctor's forgiveness - but he is content to see that the Deputy Commander has learned a lesson about being more open-minded.

The great spaceship begins its departure from Earth's orbit as the planet starts to burn.

As the Ark embarks on its 700 year voyage, the TARDIS departs...

The ship materialises a few minutes later and the Doctor is shocked to find themselves in familiar surroundings. They are exactly where they left from, in the biodome of the Ark.

They set off to see Mellium and Manyak, but find the command deck deserted. The vessel's systems appear to be automated now. 

They realise that they have travelled forward seven centuries to the end of the Ark's journey, as the great statue has now been completed.

However, the humanoid sculpture now has the head of a Monoid...

Next episode: The Return

Data:

Written by: Paul Erickson & Lesley Scott

Recorded: Friday 25th February 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:15pm, Saturday 12th March 1966

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 56

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Michael Imison

Additional cast: Michael Sheard (Rhos), Ian Frost (Baccu)

Critique:

As mentioned last week, Michael Imison claimed to have developed the Monoids beyond their rather nondescript appearance in Erickson's original storyline, where they were simply described as "reptilian servants".

With their single eye, it was the director who named them "Monoids" in the first place, and he hoped that they might be marketable like the Daleks.

Eight costumes had been made, only four of which featured the moveable eye. This was simply half of a ping-pong ball, painted, with a peg attached at the back. The artiste playing the alien could manipulate the peg with their tongue to make the eye move around.

To get away from the human form, the lower half of the body saw the legs bound together so that only their feet could move - giving them a rather (unintended) humorous waddling motion.

The costumes were one-piece with a padded chest, which could be stepped into and then zipped up at the back. It was impossible to hide the join on the skull, which is why they were given wigs. These Beatle-like mop-tops were blond, ginger and brunette and made from yak-hair.

Three of the costumes would be used by principal Monoid actors, who would go to play speaking aliens in the second half of the story, with the others going to extras.

Joining the cast for this episode only was Scottish actor Michael Sheard, playing the medic Rhos. This was the first of six appearances in the programme, seeing him work with five of the seven original Doctors.

His next story would be The Mind of Evil, playing another doctor, followed by two very different appearances during Tom Baker's tenure in the TARDIS - as the tragic Lawrence Scarman in Pyramids of Mars, and as the possessed Lowe in The Invisible Enemy. He was yet another medical man in Peter Davison's first story, Castrovalva, before a final role as the unnamed Headmaster of Coal Hill School in Remembrance of the Daleks. The school setting would have been familiar to Sheard, having been a series regular on Grange Hill, playing the hated Mr Bronson.

Sheard was seen by millions in The Empire Strikes Back, as Imperial Admiral Ozzel who falls foul of Lord Vader just before the Battle of Hoth; and another blockbuster role was as Adolf Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The Nazi Fuhrer was a part Sheard returned to again and again, playing him five times in total (including a Tomorrow People story). He also played Himmler on three occasions.

At the time of this episode being recorded, he had a regular role on the BBC sitcom The Likely Lads.

All of the jungle sequences for The Plague had been pre-filmed at Ealing - including the Monoid collapsing by the TARDIS, the Monoids collecting animal tissue samples, and the departure and subsequent return of the TARDIS at the conclusion.

This meant that the studio only had to feature Newbery's huge command deck set (above), along with two smaller rooms - the Commander's chamber and the prison cell. Both were fitted with small monitors so that the various cast members could be seen to observe the trial.

The Commander's room was designed in a Japanese style.

One aspect of the main set which irritated William Hartnell was the electric buggy. This was merely a piece of BBC studio equipment used by the scenic crew, redressed. Hartnell did not like travelling on it, and his unease is evident on screen.

There were five recording breaks planned for the evening. Two were for Peter Purves to move back and forth for his trial appearance, a third for Hartnell to move from cell to Commander's room, and a fourth to allow for the model shot of the burning Earth to be inserted.

This had been filmed on Friday 4th February, and comprised a globe full of dry-ice which could escape via a number of small holes. This was then filmed whilst a wind machine was directed at it, to make it appear as though smoke was streaking into space.

The final recording break allowed for the redressing of the command deck set, to show the passage of time.

There's a problem underlying this episode, and that's the suspicions concerning the planet Refusis II. Zentos is convinced that the TARDIS crew are agents for the "intelligences" which inhabit that world, and he has little trouble whipping up the other Guardians into accepting this accusation. 

If they think its inhabitants so hostile, why are they going there in the first place? Why pick an inhabited planet at all?

How can they know anything about the planet or its people if it is a 700 year voyage away? Describing the Refusians as "intelligences" even hints that they already seem to know that they are invisible, insubstantial beings - as we'll see to be the case in due course.

Other stories tell us that there are a lot of Earth-like planets a lot closer to Earth than Refusis. We've already seen Earth people visiting the Sense-Sphere, for instance. The previous two Dalek stories have also shown how easily people can travel across the galaxy to inhabitable worlds in relatively short spaces of time.

When considering this episode, it should be borne in mind that the audience had no idea how long any Doctor Who story was going to run. The production team might have decided on a standard four episode length for non-Dalek stories - they getting six weeks instead - but previously the story durations had ranged from two to seven weeks, with the last Dalek story being a double length twelve-parter.

With the deadly fever cured, viewers will have assumed that this was only a short two-parter as they saw the Doctor and companions get into the TARDIS and leave, with only a few minutes left of the programme.

Initially, because of this similarity of set dressing, it would have looked as if the TARDIS had simply gone wrong. The (slow) reveal of the statue's head hints at a mystery to be resolved in the next instalment - a classic cliff-hanger ending.

It would have been a huge surprise to see the ship then rematerialise exactly where it had been (a bit of a gaffe as the jungle could not possibly look identical, down to the individual plants, over the course of seven centuries). 

We've mentioned it before but, for a series about time travel, the concept was rarely ever exploited significantly for a story.

Mention had been made of the potential consequences of time travel in The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror, and The Time Meddler had revolved around an attempt to alter history, but this was the first time we would get to see the Doctor actually confront the consequences of one of his travels...

Trivia:

• The ratings bounce back this week, rising by 1.4 million viewers. The appreciation figure rises as well, though only by a single point.
• Once again, the incidental music mostly derived from The Daleks, though a library percussion piece - Drumdramatics No.11 - was used for the Monoid funeral sequence.
• John Wiles took Jackie Lane aside to complain that Dodo had not looked sad enough during this sequence. She responded that it was difficult to conjure up emotions when dealing with "a heap of wrinkled rubber".
• Ian Frost returned to the series some seven years later, playing a Draconian messenger in Frontier in Space.
• A few days after broadcast, on Wednesday 16th March, the BBC youth series Whole Scene Going featured an interview with director Gordon Flemyng on the set of Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.

Story 286: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

In which the TARDIS materialises aboard a spacecraft on the surface of the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos. It has come here in response to nine separate distress signals. Psychotropic waves emanating from this world can cause the unprotected to be driven insane, so they must take precautions with neural blockers attached to the temple. They come across a single crewmember, a man named Paltraki. He was the commander of the vessel, but has lost most of his memories due to the psychotropic waves.

A video message is broadcast from a woman named Andinio, insisting that Paltraki return something which belongs to "The Creator". They then hear a familiar voice - that of the Stenza Tzim-Sha.

The commander has a crystal container within which is some unknown object. The Doctor's sonic will not penetrate the casing, but it appears to be of great density.

Tzim-Sha is holding Paltraki's crew hostage, so they are forced to go to him.

Outside the ship, they see a number of crashed spaceships - the source of the emergency transmissions. Paltraki's memories are beginning to return after the Doctor gave him a neural blocker to combat the waves. He recalls a great battle in which he and his crew fought. They are the only survivors.

They travel across the barren landscape and soon come to a lake, floating above which is a huge rock edifice.

Whilst wondering how to gain access, the object within the crystal appears to respond to the proximity of the structure. They find themselves transported inside as they come closer.

The structure is guarded by Stenza SniperBots. They split up, one group to look for the missing crewmembers, and the other to locate Tzim-Sha and find out what he is doing here.

The Doctor meets Andinio and a young man named Delph - members of the Ux.

They have powerful telekinetic abilities, and were responsible for the creation of this structure from the surrounding rocks. 

They arrived on the planet in 2018 on a mystical quest, and witnessed the materialisation of Tzim-Sha. He had just been transported from Earth, badly injured by his own DNA bombs thanks to the Doctor. Andinio and Delph took his to be their deity-figure they sought, and have been employing their powers for the last 5000 years to assist him in his great scheme.

Graham and Ryan find Paltraki's crew imprisoned in stasis chambers.

The Doctor and Yaz locate the Stenza and learn of his plan. The object taken by Paltraki is also a stasis unit - but one containing the harnessed energies of an entire planet. It has been removed from space, compressed and encased using the power of the Ux.

Tzim-Sha has done the same with a number of other worlds, and is going to use their combined energy to create a super-weapon - one capable of destroying more planets. This will be focussed through Delph.

As an act of revenge for what happened to him there, the next victim world will be Earth.

Graham and Ryan free the imprisoned crew as the SniperBots start to break in. One of Paltraki's bombs destroys them.

The Doctor is able to get through to the Ux that their powers are being abused, and the Stenza is not their deity. She and Yaz sacrifice their neural blockers to give to them. 

The attack on Earth is halted.

Graham has vowed to kill Tzim-Sha in revenge for the death of Grace, but the Doctor has succeeded in convincing him that this would make him no better than the alien.

Instead of killing him, Graham instead imprisons him in one of his own stasis chambers.

Delph returns the captured planets to their correct points in space.

He and Andinio will leave the planet with Paltraki and his crew, to continue their quest elsewhere.

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on Sunday 9th December 2018.

It was the final instalment of Series 11 - the first for Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker - and great things were expected of it. The title alone hinted at some much needed action, which could have been described as "sparse" throughout the season so far.

The kindest thing you could say about the episode is that it is "anti-climactic". Many would simply say that it was a huge disappointment, and the New Year Special a few weeks later made for a much more satisfying season finale.

Chibnall had elected to dispense with any sort of story arc for us to invest in. The Stenza had been mentioned in the second episode after appearing in the opener, but this potential thread had evaporated.

Tzim-Sha had been a lukewarm villain to begin with, and having him as the finale's 'Big Bad' provoked little interest. No-one really cared what had happened to him.

We have a story promising a battle - and discover that the conflict has finished before the episode even gets underway.

The main plot has been stolen wholesale from The Pirate Planet - compressing planets and harnessing the energy / setting the Earth up as the next victim world.

The Ux are interesting characters, but we're asked to believe that they can simply be talked out of a 5000 year belief system in a matter of minutes.

We'd all seen how pathetic the SniperBots were on their first outing.

If it has any positives at all, it's the visuals. It looks great - but it's a triumph of style over content...

There's also a very good guest cast, but they're rather wasted. 

Playing Paltraki is Mark Addy. He first came to fame in the male-stripper comedy The Full Monty, but for many his most prominent role was as King Robert Baratheon in the first season of Game of Thrones.

Andinio is veteran Scots actor Phyllis Logan. She's best known for playing Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey, after first coming to prominence as antiques dealer Lovejoy's aristocratic friend Lady Jane Frensham.

Delph is Percelle Ascott, who had appeared in RTD's Wizards v. Aliens - the CBBC replacement series for The Sarah Jane Adventures.

And returning as Tzim-Sha is Samuel Oatley. To hide the alien's return, he was not credited in the advance publicity.

Overall, it's undoubtedly the weakest series finale to date - a borrowed plot done better elsewhere and a villain we really didn't need to see again. 

Over the course of the series, the audience had fallen steadily by 4 million viewers, with this episode dropping below the 7 million mark. It also shared the lowest audience appreciation figure, falling below 80.

Things you might like to know:

• Phyllis Logan is married to Kevin McNally, guest artist from The Twin Dilemma and Flux.
• This was the first finale of the modern era not to include a classic villain - not even a cameo.
• Most of the Series 11 stories are referenced in some way throughout the episode, as is Boom Town, when the Doctor mentions the TARDIS regressing a Slitheen back to an egg.

Inspirations: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People two-parter was the latest in a long line of doppelganger stories, which went right back to 1965.

In The Chase, the First Doctor had encountered a deadly look-alike - an android copy created by the Daleks. The following year Hartnell played two roles in The Massacre, though the Doctor never actually met the Abbot of Amboise. He was a natural doppelganger.

The Second Doctor encountered lots of doubles in The Faceless Ones. In this instance, aliens were copying humans as a means of giving themselves new physical identities. The Doctor wasn't copied, though he did impersonate a Chameleon copy of himself. Jamie and Polly were copied.

He then met the would-be dictator Salamander in The Enemy of the World, another natural doppelganger of the Doctor.

More duplicate companions followed in The Mind Robber, when we saw fictionalised versions of Jamie and Zoe.

On the alternate Earth of the Inferno Project, the Doctor was threatened by mirror images of the Brigadier, Liz Shaw and Sergeant Benton.

The Nestene Consciousness did a lot of copying, but missed a trick by never copying the Doctor or his friends - nor did Axos.

The Zygons copied Harry Sullivan, whilst the Kraals copied just about everyone. Whilst the fake Harry was an alien in disguise, like the Chameleons, the latter were all android versions.

Harry was copied again, as was Benton, whilst we also saw androids of Sarah and the Fourth Doctor.

Not quite a doppelganger, but super-computer Xoanon did take on the Doctor's physiognomy as a projection of itself.

The Rutan on Fang Rock only copied one of the lighthouse keepers. 

We briefly saw two Doctor in the Bridge on Zanak, but one was simply a holographic projection. The following story had Romana lured over a cliff by a fake Doctor - but we never actually saw it.

It was her turn to meet doppelgangers - both artificial and natural - in The Androids of Tara. Mary Tamm would play four different characters in this - Romana, android Roman, Strella, and android Strella. There were more holographic copies of her at the end of the season.

The last duplicate of the Fourth Doctor's era was another alien copycat - Meglos. As with Salamander, the Doctor imitated his imitator.

A copy of Adric was created by the Master using Block Transfer Computation, whilst Nyssa met her natural doppelganger - Ann Talbot - in Black Orchid.

Omega temporarily took on the Fifth Doctor's appearance, and later he and Peri had android duplicates made of themselves by Sharaz Jek.

The Sixth Doctor wasn't around long enough for anyone to copy him, and the tenure of the Seventh only saw the odd holographic duplicate.

Once the series returned in 2005, it didn't take long for doubles to feature.

With another Nestene story kicking things off, we got a very unrealistic Auton copy of Mickey Smith, whilst his future wife, Martha, was cloned by the Sontarans.

When David Tennant did meet his doppelganger, it was a friendly one - his Meta-Crisis incarnation.

The Steven Moffat era launched with a story involving a copycat alien - Prisoner Zero.

This latest two-parter by Matthew Graham brings us up to date.

Here we have the sentient "Flesh", which can form exact copies of people linked psychically to it. All of the guest cast encounter Flesh avatars of themselves, as does the Doctor after coming into physical contact with it.

We think that only Amy and Rory are never copied - only to then discover that we've been watching a fake Amy since at least The Day of the Moon.

This is all part of the series story arc, which has been split into two halves this year. The Flesh part ends at the midway point.

Graham was the writer of Fear Her in Series 2 - one of the weakest stories of the modern era, and certainly the least liked Tennant episode. He had hoped to write for Series 5, but this was deferred to the next year. Initially planning just a single-parter, when asked to do Episodes 5 and 6 he was told he would need to have a second cliff-hanger leading into Episode 7, which would form the mid-season finale.

Moffat's two main inspirations were the James Cameron blockbuster Avatar (2009), and the 1982 film version of The Thing - John Carpenter's reimagining of the 1951 classic, which was based on John W Campbell's short story of 1938 Who Goes There?. The Thing From Another World had already inspired the opening section of The Seeds of Doom.

Graham wanted a monastery setting, inspired by The Name of the Rose (the 1986 film version of Umberto Eco's novel). Oddly, we get the setting - yet it's just the physical space, as the story is set in an industrial complex of the future.

Other inspirations included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus for the creation of the Flesh avatars, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for the paranoia of not knowing which version is which - benign or malevolent, and the whole copying notion. The former was first published in 1818, whilst the latter was released in cinemas in 1956, with a remake following in 1978.

The image of the Flesh Jennifer with an elongated neck came from an 1865 illustration by John Tenniel for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The rotating head came from The Exorcist (1973).

Having a duplicate Doctor who also shared his memories allowed for snatches of dialogue from previous incarnations. 

This included Hartnell from An Unearthly Child, Pertwee from The Sea Devils ("reverse the polarity of the neutron flow") and Tom Baker offering a jelly baby from Robot.

The eye-patch lady makes a further appearance, having first been seen in The Day of the Moon.

Next time: the first half of the series comes to an end - but we don't get half the answers as to what is going on. Big revelations at last regarding River Song, a popular crime-fighting trio are introduced, and there's a lot of cameos as the Doctor gathers an army of friends who we've never actually heard of, whilst ignoring all the ones we would have seen had RTD still been in charge...

What's Wrong With... Nightmare of Eden

This is one of those stories which, on paper, works very well. It's just the realisation that let's it down.

With Nightmare of Eden, however, the worst of its problems were the ones which we didn't see on screen.

This is the story which, notoriously, saw the director dismissed before completing the job.

Alan Bromly was the worst kind of hack director, at least by this stage of his career. Barry Letts had previously experienced his lack of imagination when he had declined advice from him, and help from the VFX Department in favour of using stock footage of a quarry blast at the conclusion of The Time Warrior.

He was basically coasting towards retirement in 1979 and was only given another Doctor Who to do as a favour to senior management, in the belief that he was a safe pair of hands.

This was just the sort of attitude which a technically complex programme simply didn't need at this time of high inflation, with an increasingly domineering star.

Bromly had an overly rigid way of working - unwilling to deviate from his planned shots and timetable. This led to an inevitable clash with the improvisational, experimental style favoured by Tom Baker.

Baker took to openly disagreeing with the director - likening him to a parrot when he kept repeating the same instructions over and over again.

By the last recording session, it was open warfare and Bromly was replaced in the gallery by producer Graham Williams.

Other unhappy personnel included the VFX team. Due to the tight budgets, Williams had decided to have the model shots recorded in studio using CSO instead of using the far superior model stage filming method.

Colin Mapson's detailed models of the Hecate and Empress simply weren't done justice.

According to the DVD documentary, special T-shirts were printed with the slogan "I Survived the Nightmare of Eden" when the serial wrapped.

The BBC tried to build up the Mandrels by claiming that they were so frightening that no photographs were allowed of them - patently untrue. Two of the guest artists also claimed in interviews that they were scary.

The costumes are fine in the darkened environment of the Eden jungle projection, but their limitations are all too apparent in the overly-lit studio. They have been given long arms, but these are too rigid.

Being the 1970's, they've also got flares.

Keep an eye on David Daker when the Mandrel bursts out of the hole, bridging the first and second episodes. He finds it hard to keep a straight face.

It's a bit too obvious that the actors are running up the same small section of stairwell - which moves out of position at one point when it's bumped.

The same problem arises with the passenger pallets. They've moved people about to make it look like lots of identical sections, but you recognise certain extras.

Plot-wise, why are the passengers wearing dark glasses and overalls when the crew aren't?

Are the passengers being kept in some sort of unshielded part of the ship?

The reason for the collision in the first place is due to Tryst deliberately spiking Secker's food or drink to cause the accident, so that the transference can take place. 

However, none of this has made it from the script to the screen, so we have no clue as to why the accident takes place.

Now that we do know, it actually makes little sense. How could Tryst and Dimond possibly know what would happen when the vessels collided? They could just as easily have been destroyed.

Why deliberately draw the attention of the customs officials by staging an accident, when all they needed to do was slip an innocuous looking crystal from one person to another, or use their enchuka laser option anyway.

You have to wonder how they first discovered that Mandrel ash was Vraxoin in the first place.

Captain Rigg discovers that the Doctor and Romana are imposters quite early on - but does nothing about this information. He continues to allow the Doctor to take charge over his own vessel.

At one point Romana is bitten by what the script terms a "somno-moth", which flies out of the projection. But you'd never know that to look at the scene. A small electronic effect flies at her and she collapses, but the audience don't have a clue what they've just seen.

Stott and the Doctor discover that things can move in and out of the projection early on, and is also the source of the Vraxoin (even if they don't yet know the precise source) - but don't put two and two together to work out that the person responsible for the projection might just possibly be the smuggler.

Why was Lewis Fiander allowed to use such a ridiculous cod-Germanic accent? Surely this should have been addressed at the rehearsal stage.

Perhaps Williams had simply given up the ghost by this stage, as he also allowed the whole "My arms, my legs, my everything!" nonsense from Baker.

Della gets shot in the throat, but clutches her stomach before falling.

Fisk calls Tryst "Fisk" at one point.

There is some quality model work on show - just a pity it's from Space:1999...

Episode 107: The Steel Sky

Synopsis:

The TARDIS materialises in a dense jungle environment. The ship's newest traveller - Dodo Chaplet - rushes out and begins to explore. Steven follows and berates her for having failed to take precautions before leaving the ship. They must follow basic safety checks. Dodo dismisses his concerns, claiming to know exactly where they are. It is Whipsnade Zoo, which she has previously visited on a school trip. She points out some familiar animals.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and explains to Steven that Dodo may well be right, as the flora and fauna do match that of Earth. He is annoyed that she has helped herself to an outfit from the TARDIS wardrobe - a mediaeval pageboy costume. 

Steven spots a strange creature in the forest - a one-eyed reptilian being - and reports this to the Doctor, who has discovered other odd things. There is a mechanical vibration being generated beneath the ground - and the sky appears to be made of metal...

They suddenly find themselves surrounded by more of the cyclopean creatures.

Nearby, a group of humans have just completed a court trial. An engineer has been found guilty of negligence, and sentenced to be miniaturised and placed in suspended animation.

On learning of the strangers in the forest, the prosecutor has sent the one-eyed beings to bring them to him. He is Zentos, deputy commander of a vast spacecraft.

When the Doctor, Dodo and Steven are brought to its command deck they meet the elderly commander, who welcomes them, and Zentos, who is suspicious of them.

They learn that the Earth has reached the natural end of its existence, and the entire population of the planet, along with examples of flora and fauna stored in huge biodomes, is about to commence a 700 year voyage to a new home - the Earth-like world of Refusis II. The majority of people are miniaturised, frozen and stored securely - with only a small number left to pilot the vessel on its long journey. They are known as Guardians.

Joining them are a number of the cyclopean beings - the mute Monoids. They came to Earth many years ago in search of a new home after their own was destroyed, and have become servants to the human race.

Dodo nicknames the vessel "the Ark" - a reference lost on the Guardians.

This is the 57th Segment of Time - millions of years in the future. The commander's daughter Mellium shows them a plinth on which a gigantic statue is being constructed. It will take the entire length of their voyage to complete, and will represent a human figure.

Reports start to come in of a rapidly developing illness which affects both human and Monoid.

Dodo has been suffering from a cold, and the Doctor is horrified to realise that in the far future people will have lost their immunity to illnesses such as the common cold as they would have been eradicated generations before. 

The commander falls ill, and first Monoids then a Guardian die from the disease.

Zentos accuses the newcomers of being spies from Refusis II, come to sabotage their efforts to make a new home there. They are taken into custody and will be made to pay for what they have done.

As they see the Earth orbit past on the huge monitor screen, the deputy commander worries that all their plans to preserve humanity may now be in jeopardy...

Next episode: The Plague

Data:

Written by: Paul Erickson & Lesley Scott

Recorded: Friday 18th February 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:15pm, Saturday 5th March 1966

Ratings: 5.5 million / AI 55

Designer: Barry Newbery

Director: Michael Imison

Guest cast: Eric Elliot (Commander), Inigo Jackson (Zentos), Roy Spencer (Manyak), Kate Newman (Mellium), Edmund Coulter (1st Monoid), Frank George (2nd Monoid), David Greneau (Miniaturised Guardian).

Critique:

The Ark is the first Doctor Who story to have a woman credited as writer. However, it is known that Lesley Scott contributed little or nothing to the scripting. Her partner, Paul Erickson, simply asked for her to receive a co-writer credit, and Gerry Davis agreed.

Copyright on the story remains solely with Erickson, and in later life he refused to discuss Scott's involvement. He had remarried around 1980.

Erickson had written a small number of works for cinema and the stage, but was primarily a TV writer, contributing single scripts to on-going series such as The Saint and Compact. He had also contributed to a sci-fi series - the anthology Out of the Unknown.

This was Davis' first full story as Story Editor, having gained his first on-screen credit for the role on Bell of Doom. 

He had been working solidly on a football-themed soap called United!, which was being made in the Midlands. Wishing to relocate to London after the birth of his latest child, he accepted the role on Doctor Who.

As the new Story Editor arrives, so the old Producer departs. The Ark was John Wiles' final story for the series, and represents the sort of story he had wanted to tell from the outset - high concept adventures with a strong scientific background. He had toyed with the idea for a multi-generational spaceship for some time. He saw a ship so large that people would need cycles or cars to travel around in it. Donald Tosh was not so keen - thinking it beyond their budget and technical resources, but commissioned Erickson - whom he knew from Compact - to submit a script.

The reasons for Wiles departure were three-fold - his poor working relationship with William Hartnell; his frustration at the producer role (when he really wanted to write and direct his own work); plus the imposition of the lengthy and complex Dalek story.

The director chosen to helm the story, which was seen as being one of the most technically complex of the season, was Michael Imison - his only work on the series. Playwright Gerald Savory had recently taken over as Head of Drama at the BBC. His wife had worked on an adaptation of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, which Imison had directed. Savory disliked his work - no doubt spurred on by his wife - which led to some personal animosity. Imison realised that his days with the BBC were numbered with Savory now head of the department.

It was Imison who developed the role of the Monoids, which were generic aliens in the original scripts. The director saw merchandising potential for the one-eyed reptile people.

The designer was Barry Newbery, whose work on the series had mainly been on the historical stories - though he had recently contributed to half of the latest Dalek episodes.

Production on The Ark got underway with the miniaturisation sequence for this episode, when the Guardian played by David Greneau was photographed on 24th January 1966 - to be inlayed into the finished episode.

Filming began with the Refusis scenes for the second half of the story, with the jungle biodome scenes finally being filmed from Thursday 3rd February.

This was Jackie Lane's second piece of work for the series, after filming her debut on Wimbledon Common.

She later reported that whilst Hartnell could come across as irascible, he was very welcoming to her but clearly unhappy at the changes in personnel going on around him. Imison noted the poor relationship between Hartnell and Wiles.

Amongst the animals present in studio was a young Sri Lankan elephant named Monica, which usually resided with Sir Robert Fossett's Circus and Zoo in the North of England. 

BBC insurance regulations forbade the animal being kept in the grounds of Ealing Studios overnight, so Imison found himself baby-sitting the animal when it was left in a horse-box outside his home on the eve of filming.

Model filming of the Earth to be shown on the scanner took place the next day, as did shots of the biodome landscape - using miniature bonsai trees flanking a painted backdrop.

The decision to open the episode with a close-up of a Monoid was a late one. It was originally intended that their reveal would be held back until later. The miniaturised Guardian also had a name - Opallo.

As a cost-cutting measure, the music for the story mostly came from stock - much of it from the very first Dalek story, composed by Tristram Cary.

Since her scenes at the end of Bell of Doom, much thought had been given to Lane's accent, and it was decided that it should be changed to "BBC English" - creating a discontinuity. The Doctor admonishes her for her slang, yet by the end of the serial there's no trace of it.

The accent is stronger in this opening instalment, though things are complicated by Lane's nasal "cold" acting.

There were only two sets needed for the first studio - a small section of jungle with a cave, and the hangar-like space of the command deck. The massive control panel had working TV monitors and other screens were simply backlit photographs.

The backdrop to the set was designed to give the impression that the Ark was a gigantic sphere. This is also suggested by a plan which the Commander shows to the Doctor.

(At no point will we ever get to see the whole vessel, but the few exterior shots later on do appear to show a section of a spherical craft).

During the afternoon camera rehearsals, the press were out in force to get images of the new monsters and the contingent of young female Guardians, including Kate Newman who was playing Mellium. 

The many shots of Dodo posing with a Monoid had been taken separately at Ealing on the main jungle set, as had images of the regulars with Monica (see below).

Four recording breaks were planned. One of these involved a Monoid walking up to the camera on the jungle set, with another walking away from the camera on the command deck set.

A sign-language interpreter was employed for one scene, and a number of children were employed to illustrate the multi-generational aspect of the voyage.

There is an underlying race-relations story struggling to get out from under the sci-fi trappings. The alien Monoids have been invited in to Earth society, as West Indian workers were invited into Britain from the 1950's - only to end up being treated like second-class citizens, unable to rise above menial roles.

This aspect of the story will develop, so we'll return to it later.

Trivia:

• The ratings take a further dip, but the appreciation figure remains healthy in the middle 50's.
• Paul Erickson was actually the writer's nom-de-plume. He was born Frederick Redwood Watts in Cardiff in 1920.
• Fed up with submitting scripts and never hearing anything back, Erickson had it included in his contract that he would only submit the next script when its predecessor had already been accepted.
• Lesley Scott is also supposed to be an alias - for Erickson's wife Gemma Vitale. 
• The Ark was originally intended to appear earlier in Season 3, and had Katarina in its draft version. It was the 12-part Dalek epic which caused it to be pushed back to later in the run, by which time the Trojan character had been dropped.
• The Doctor describes Dodo's outfit as her "playing at Crusades". The implication is that this might be Vicki's old pageboy costume from The Crusade, but it is clearly different.
• The Doctor tells the Commander about a number of previous adventures - The Romans, The Myth Makers and a Dalek story - presumably The Dalek Invasion of Earth. They are said to have taken place in the first segment of time, whilst this is the 57th. The Doctor thinks they are  millions of years in the future, but we know that the end of the Earth will be measured in billions rather than millions of years. His dating has been unreliable in the past.
• Amongst his many screen roles, Inigo Jackson, who died in 2001, featured in the Hammer film Twins of Evil as one of Peter Cushing's vampire-hunting brethren.
• On learning that Davis had daughters named Chelsea and Victoria, Hartnell joked with him that he was naming his children after London Underground Stations. Davis found he could get on with the actor by deflecting his anger towards reminiscing about his previous acting roles.
• On the Thursday prior to broadcast of this episode, Blue Peter included the Dalek tea party segment, in which Valerie Singleton made Dalek-shaped cakes and sandwiches. This can be seen as an extra on The Dalek Invasion of Earth DVD / Blu-ray.
• This episode will have given Peter Purves excellent experience for dealing with young elephants when he came to join the Blue Peter team.
• We have a good example of the regional variations for Radio Times this week - the same text and photograph, but a different layout. The top version gives a suggested story title, one which fandom ran with for a while, though paperwork has always simply called it The Ark:

M is for... Movellans

When the TARDIS brought the Doctor and Romana to the Dalek homeworld of Skaro they encountered another group of visitors. These were the beautiful Movellans. Their spacecraft, shaped like an inverted top, was able to bury itself in the ground as a means of defence.

In charge was Commander Sharrel, and the Doctor became intrigued by how secretive he was. When one of their number was killed by a dalek, they forbade him looking on the body, claiming it was taboo.

On becoming trapped under a concrete pillar, he was surprised at how easily a trio of the beings were able to lift it off him. 

The Doctor then discovered that the Movellans had specifically come to Skaro to discover why the Daleks were burying into the rubble of their long-abandoned city, many years after they had left it. 

It transpired that they were after the same goal as the Daleks - their creator Davros. They and the Daleks had been waging a war against each other for many years, and both thought that the Kaled scientist might gain them an advantage. When the dead Movellan reappeared unscathed, the Doctor and Romana realised that they were fully autonomous androids.

Both races had programmed their tactical computers to a point of stalemate, and an illogical, creative humanoid mind was needed to break this. Unable to capture Davros, Sharrell decided to use the Doctor instead.

They had a weapon called the Nova Device, which could ignite a planet's entire atmosphere, and primed this to detonate once they left. 

Movellans had a weakness however - an external power pack / brain attached to their belts. Two of their number - Lan and Agella - were reprogrammed to help a group of freed Dalek slaves breach their ship and deactivate them all. Sharrel was destroyed.

The ship was then used to take the slaves home - taking a captive Davros with them.

The Movellans later gained their sought-after advantage when they developed a virus which attacked Dalek systems. The Daleks once again looked to Davros to help them overcome this.

In attempting to evade a sentient water creature which was pursuing Bill Potts, the Doctor took her in the TARDIS into the heart of the Dalek-Movellan conflict, hoping that it wouldn't dare follow. The attempt failed.

Played by: Peter Straker (Sharrel), Suzanne Danielle (Agella), Tony Osoba (Lan), Cassandra (Movellan Guard). Appearances: Destiny of the Daleks (1979), The Pilot (2017).

• For the - ironically - highly illogical aspects of the Movellans, do check out my recent "What's Wrong With..." post on Destiny of the Daleks.
• The Daleks we see in The Pilot are of the Time War variety, which implies that this may not necessarily be the original Dalek-Movellan war.
• Lalla Ward was rather annoyed that Danielle was getting so much press attention when this was her first story as the new companion. She starred in the final Carry On... film of the classic run (Carry On Emmanuelle) and also featured opposite Christopher Lee in Arabian Adventure. After a lengthy relationship with actor Patrick Mower, she married golfer Sam Torrance.
• Jamaican performer Straker is better known as a singer. Most of his acting has been in stage musicals in the West End.
• Osoba - best known as a regular in BBC sitcom Porridge - went on to make two further appearances in Doctor Who - Dragonfire and Kill The Moon.
• The new version of June Hudson's Movellan costume at the Doctor Who Experience in 2017: