Inspirations: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion

Another proper two-part story for Series 9, this acts as a direct sequel to the 50th Anniversary story The Day of the Doctor. Indeed, the first episode begins with a recap of events in that story, in which Zygon refugees are forced into an uneasy truce with UNIT thanks to the combined efforts of three incarnations of the Doctor.

As the whole 'Zygons seeking a new home' plot had first been mentioned in Terror of the Zygons, it can be argued that it is a sequel to that 1975 story also.

The 50th Anniversary story had told how the Zygons had arrived in Tudor times (even though Broton had stated that it would take time for their fleet to reach Earth, and he was saying this in the late 20th Century). The Zygons had used stasis cubes to hide themselves in a number of artworks which ended up in the National Gallery. On emerging in 2013 they attempted to take over but the Doctors forced them to negotiate a truce with Kate Stewart of UNIT, whereby they could live in peace on Earth in human form, they being shape-shifters of course.

This new story picks up some time later, when a radical faction of young Zygons are rebelling against the current arrangement. They wish to live as Zygons and not hide, even though both species have co-existed happily for a couple of years.

This radicalisation points to one of the main inspirations for the story. Issues of immigration, integration and the status of refugees also background the episodes.

Interestingly, Steven Moffat always intended to revisit these themes with a global political thriller following The Day of the Doctor - so the Zygon element was always intended as a sort of prequel to a story which would come later, with the Twelfth Doctor following up on something initiated by his predecessor.

The title of the first episode might feature the word "Invasion", but Moffat and writer Peter Harness sought to look at how conflicts started, growing out of dissent from within a community - be it the power vacuum resulting from regime change in countries such as Iraq, or popular revolutions such as the Arab Spring movement.

In recent years we had seen the rise of Islamic State, which had already had an impact on Doctor Who when changes were made to the ending of Robot of Sherwood. Hundreds of young Westerners had flocked to the Middle East to join the movement, and the UK and other European countries had seen a rise in domestic terrorism.

As mentioned, Zygons are shape-shifters, and so Harness was also inspired by that 1950's classic piece of anti-communism paranoia Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Anyone could be a Zygon duplicate.

Kate visits the town of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. This used to be called Hot Springs but changed its name in 1950 to that of a popular radio game show. The presenter, Ralph Edwards, had announced that the forthcoming 10th anniversary show would be broadcast from the first town to change its name. Once renamed, it never changed back.

Harness originally set part of the story in Azerbaijan, but this became the fictional Turmezistan.

In draft scripts UNIT had characters named Bell and Bambera, but there was no indication that they would have anything to do with previously established UNIT staff Corporal Bell and Brigadier Bambera, so may simply have been placeholder names.

Complaining of shortages, Kate mentioned Sergeant Benton as one of "only about 6 men" her father had to command in his day. (Many of us much preferred the "Brig's Army" to the version of UNIT seen these days).

Once again the Doctor finds himself acting President of Earth, with a special aircraft at his disposal (as in Death in Heaven. Once again it contains a portrait of the Brigadier - based on a publicity photo from Battlefield. And once again, the 'plane is brought down.

The Union Jack parachute is clearly inspired by Bond's in the precredit sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

The Doctor mentions having once snogged a Zygon - referring to the one which copied Queen Elizabeth in The Day of the Doctor.

The two boxes in the Black Archive are said to be work of Harry Sullivan. His last story as a regular companion was Terror of the Zygons, and he was said to be working at Porton Down (the UK Government's biological research establishment) in Mawdryn Undead.

One of this series' story arcs has revolved around the notion of a hybrid. The Doctor describes Osgood as a hybrid, in that no-one knows if she was human or Zygon.

Kate orders "five rounds rapid" against a Zygon - part of the famous quote from her father in The Daemons.

Next time: Deadly slumbers. Doctor Who finally does "Found Footage", only 16 years after it became popular, and it is the audience who were mostly asleep during this one...

Episode 191: The Enemy of the World (6)

Synopsis:

Astrid is approaching the research facility when she hears faint cries for help coming from the undergrowth. She finds Swann, who has been brutally attacked. She drags him into a nearby cave where he reveals he was attacked by Salamander, and tells her that there are people underground who must be warned.

The Doctor and Jamie are trying to convince Donald Bruce of Salamander's guilt, and tell him that the evidence they need will lie in the records room. However, that is locked with the would-be dictator inside. Benik enters the interrogation room, having just come from the records room where the guard has stated that Salamander could not have left it.

He attempts to trick the Doctor into revealing who he really is but fails. After he leaves, the Doctor is able to show Bruce that supply records indicate that far more people based here than are known about.

Astrid is able to tell Swann that there has been no nuclear war just before he dies of his wounds. She sets off down the tunnel to find the people he told her about.

The Doctor has Bruce arrange safe passage for Jamie and Victoria away from Kanowa, instructing them to go to the TARDIS and wait for him there.

In the underground shelter, an alarm sounds to indicate that someone is descending, and Colin assumes that it is the return of Salamander and Swann. He decides to confront them.

It is Astrid, however. Not recognising her, the others attack. Colin and Mary intervene so that she can explain her presence here.

She tells them of meeting Swann and of his death at the hands of Salamander. She informs them that there has been no war and to prove this she shows that the Geiger counter has been rigged to give false readings.

Concerned about Bruce allowing Jamie and Victoria to leave, the Guard Captain goes to find Benik.

Astrid intends to use the travel capsule to get back to the surface. It will only take a maximum of three people, and so Colin and Mary will accompany her.

Giles Kent is now in the research station, and has accessed a monitor which shows Salamander in the records room.

He has his own means of entering the room and inside he confronts Salamander. He pulls a gun on him and assures him that he has not come here alone.

Bruce and Benik observe the confrontation on the monitor. Kent has locked the door from the inside and it will not be easy to cut through as it is heavily reinforced.

Kent reveals that he knows of the secret exit from the room, which leads to the tunnel system and out to the waste ground beyond the facility. There are explosives set up in a chamber here which will bring down the tunnel and prevent anyone following.

Astrid suddenly appears from the shaft entrance with Colin and Mary, who recognise Kent as the person who had them enter the underground shelter in the first place. He and Salamander had planned all this together, until the falling-out between them. Now Kent intends to take over himself.

However, it is not Salamander whom he has confronted here but the Doctor - who now knows the truth about him. Bruce has also heard everything.

The real Salamander is in the tunnels, watching events unfold on a monitor.

Astrid has learned that Kent lured the shelter people down there as part of a survival experiment in living after a nuclear war. Salamander then turned up to claim that this had actually happened, and they then set about getting revenge on their attackers using manufactured natural disasters.

Kent flees and descends to the tunnels. The Doctor and Astrid find they are now trapped in the records room, knowing that Kent can detonate the explosives and destroy the facility above.

They are able to adjust the monitor to show the tunnel chamber where Salamander has been hiding.

Benik attempts to overpower Bruce but the Security Chief's deputy, Forester, arrives in time with a party of men. Benik is arrested, as are all the facility personnel.

Kent arrives at the chamber and is confronted by Salamander. He tries to strike a deal with him, but Salamander shoots him. As he dies, he detonates the explosives.

This is witnessed by the Doctor and his friends in the records room, just as Bruce's men finally get the door open. They escape into the corridor just in time, suffering only minor injuries.

Astrid tells Bruce about the people still trapped in the shelter, and a monitor shows they are still alive. He will help her free them. 

The Doctor offers to assist but Astrid points out that the people will think he is Salamander and try to kill him. Instead he has Bruce arrange passage for him away from the facility.

Night has fallen, and Jamie and Victoria are waiting for the Doctor by the TARDIS when they see him approach through the dunes. Still wearing his disguise, he appears to be somewhat dazed and says nothing as he stands scanning the console. He then indicates that Jamie should take over, but his companion points out that he is never allowed to touch the controls. A voice from the doorway congratulates him on remembering this rule and they turn to see the real Doctor standing there, back in his usual outfit. 

Salamander reveals that Kent died in the blast, and he decided to imitate the Doctor to escape. The Doctor tells him that he will leave him here to face justice for his crimes.

Salamander reaches for the controls and the two struggle before Jamie pushes him away. However, the dematerialisation control has been activated with the doors still open.

As the TARDIS dematerialises, Salamander is sucked out into the Vortex - and the Doctor and his companions face the same fate...

Next time: The Web of Fear

Data:

Written by David Whitaker

Recorded: Saturday 6th January 1968 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 27th January 1968

Ratings: 8.3 million / AI 52

Designer: Christopher Pemsel

Director: Barry Letts

Critique:

The filming for this episode mainly covered two sequences from the climax to the story - one on location and one at Ealing.

At the beach at Littlehampton the scene where Jamie and Victoria stand by the TARDIS, waiting for the Doctor, was filmed on the evening of Sunday 5th November - the only day when the regulars were free to do location filming. In order to capture the sound, it was realised that the film recordist, John Hills-Harrop, would have to be so close to the TARDIS prop that he would be in shot. Knowing the level of broadcast definition, he dressed all in black and, with careful backlighting, was able to record the dialogue whilst remaining invisible to the camera.

The Ealing filming covered the key scene in which the Doctor and Salamander finally come face to face. This took place on Friday 10th and Monday 13th November, and did not go exactly to plan. 

The technique Letts chose to employ involved masking one half of the lens to capture Troughton as the Doctor on the right side of the film. After careful rewinding, the same film would be exposed this time with the other half of the lens masked and with Troughton now portraying Salamander on the left hand side. Unfortunately the film jammed badly and could not be fully rewound, and so only a limited amount of footage could be used.

Only later did Letts discover that he had been badly advised and that he could have simply filmed the two performances separately, with a fixed camera, and had the images overlapped using optical printing.

When Salamander is sucked out of the TARDIS doors, Troughton was being doubled by fight arranger Peter Diamond, pulled on a Kirby wire.

This was the first time Frazer Hines and Debbie Watling had seen Troughton in character as Salamander, and found the accent hilarious. He was asked if Salamander was Welsh...

One other brief piece of filming is more of the model work as the shelter dwellers watch the capsule ascending on a monitor.

In studio, Letts was granted extra time due the technical complexities of this final instalment. Recording commenced at 8pm, running to 9.45pm.

A few seconds of the previous episode's ending, on 35mm film, acted as a reprise. To save recreating the small woodland set, Astrid is instead seen to tend to Swann in the rocky tunnel set as it would be used for much of the episode.

Troughton was able to wear his Salamander costume and make-up throughout the evening as the only scenes of him as the Doctor this week were those already filmed at Ealing for the final confrontation.

Dialogue concerning the release of Jamie and Victoria was simplified just before recording, and a scene between the Guard Captain and guard discussing the jammed records room door was dropped altogether.

Scenes set in the corridor and the records room were recorded first, mainly in story sequence, with the scenes set in the tunnels recorded towards the end of the evening. Recording breaks were mainly to allow actors to move from set to set. 

The corridor had a television monitor added, so that Bruce and others could observe what was going on in the records room.

After the main sequences were recorded, a number of brief cutaway shots were completed. These were mainly shots which were to be seen on the monitors in the corridor and records room - thus allowing Troughton as the Doctor to watch himself as Salamander - or vice versa - without the need to a recording break.

The detonation of the explosives was a piece of stock footage and smoke was superimposed over the picture. 

An electronic interference pattern effect was superimposed over the filmed shot of Salamander in the Vortex.

That day Letts and Troughton had once again discussed the problems which the star was facing with the production schedule on Doctor Who, and the director suggested that the series should run for only 26 weeks of the year, which was the norm for most on-going drama series. Filming for an episode could be done a whole week before studio recording, doing away with the current overlapping of productions and loss of days off. This was fed back to new producer Peter Bryant, who was positive about the suggestions and promised to make changes for the 1968/69 season.

As we've previously mentioned, it was long thought that Episode 3 was retained in the archives as it was the first to be made for broadcast on the 625-line system - but the paperwork has been incorrect on this. The episode was kept, along with the sixth and final instalment of The Wheel in Space, purely as examples of the 1967/68 season.

After film copies were sold to countries including Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Gibraltar, Zambia and Nigeria, the video recordings of Episodes 2 - 5 were cleared for wiping in July 1969, with the first instalment following that September. 

The film copies were all thought destroyed by 1974 but, in 2013, the Nigerian copies were rediscovered by Philip Morris at a TV relay station and returned to the BBC archives. (We'll mention Morris again when we get to the next story).

The reaction from fans was to form a positive re-evaluation of the story and it is now well-regarded. Even the much derided Episode 3 holds up better once viewed in context.

This final episode does have its problems however. David Whitaker has striven for an epic, Bond-like feel, but the climax is somewhat disappointing. Bond always had a big climactic event which had to be averted, generally involving a countdown to disaster, but we have nothing like that here. 

There's the reveal that Kent was just as big a villain all along, and was out to usurp Salamander, but it's all far too rushed. 

We're told that Salamander has locked himself in the records room and no-one can enter. Presumably there's no way of seeing inside by monitor either, otherwise Salamander's absence would be found out, and his secret capsule spotted, every time he descended to the shelter. 

And yet here everyone can easily tune into the records room - and how did the Doctor get in there in the first place, when Salamander had locked himself in?

Benik is set up as a particularly nasty villain, but is dispensed with really easily, and heads off into arrest meekly asking for a fair trial. He deserved a more satisfying comeuppance. Bond villains have their henchmen (or women) and it is often their demise which pleases the audience more than the main villain's. Apart from his confrontation with Kent, and the final TARDIS scene, even Salamander hasn't much to do this week.

Jamie and Victoria have so little to do they are sent home early. And what happened to Colin and Mary?

They simply vanish after the explosion. We don't see them in the corridor, and they are the obvious ones to help Astrid rescue their colleagues - but where are they? If they got buried by rubble in the records room you'd expect this to be mentioned. There's a feeling Letts was rushing to fit in the key sequences on the night before the plug was pulled, so corners were cut.

Then we have the big face-to-face showdown, which everyone would have been waiting to see. From reading above, you'll note that it was hardly Letts' fault that this isn't as memorable as it should have been, but at the end of the day we are left with a key scene which is all too brief.

Ultimately, the conclusion to the story is too rushed and not terribly satisfying.

Was The Enemy of the World really a Doctor Who story at all, or simply a genre piece into which Whitaker shoehorned the TARDIS and its crew? The companions play very little role after the first couple of episodes, and the Doctor is quite out of character in sitting on the side-lines for so long.

You can't fault the ambition, but trying to do Bond in Lime Grove Studio D on a shoestring budget might not have been the wisest decision Lloyd and Bryant ever made.

Trivia:

• The ratings for this story have varied greatly, but they end on the highest viewing figure for the season so far. We also get the best appreciation figure for the serial here, in the 50's for the first time since the opening instalment.
• The Enemy of the World was David Whitaker's favourite of all his Doctor Who scripts.
• Innes Lloyd, who died in August 1991, would go on to produce some of the BBC's most highly regarded television dramas, including a number of collaborations with playwrights Alan Bennett (Talking Heads, An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution) and Stephen Frears (Going Gently, A Day Out). East of Ipswich was a semi-autobiographical piece by Michael Palin about his childhood days. Biographical dramas about Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the speed-loving Campbells - Donald and Malcolm - and the BBC's Lord Reith followed. He was also responsible for Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape being produced. An excellent documentary on Lloyd is to be found on the DVD / Blu-ray of The Savages, and was also recently broadcast on BBC 4, along with an episode of The Ice Warriors.
• The latest edition of Whicker's World was broadcast a few hours after Doctor Who this evening. This was titled "I Don't Like My Monsters To Have Oedipus Complexes", and dealt primarily with the Horror genre. Christopher Lee was interviewed as were members of the HAVOC stunt team. A Yeti pursued the celebrity interviewer through Highgate Cemetery, and he also had a chat with Terry Nation at his home in Kent, which housed a number of his own Dalek props...

• To mark the return of the missing episodes in October 2013, along with those from The Web of Fear, DWM offered a choice of two themed covers:

Story 309: Dot and Bubble

In which the Doctor and Ruby attempt to save a society which is obsessed with social media... 

The population of a colony known as Finetime has a unique demographic, comprising only young adults. They have been sent here from Homeworld to work in a variety of mundane administrative tasks but spend their entire lives, from waking to sleeping, engaging with their social network Bubbles. These are literal bubbles of audio-video links with their particular circle of friends and favourites whom they follow. They are constantly enveloped by small screens, generated by tiny machines known as Dots.

Finetime is surrounded by a densely forested region known as the Wild Woods, in which there are many dangers, but the colonists have no reason to ever venture from their regulated domain.

One morning a young woman named Lindy Pepper-Bean notices that some of her friends are missing from her Bubble, and others report experiencing the same thing. 

She then sees a stranger, who tries to warn her of danger. This is the Doctor. He claims that Finetime has become infested with monsters. Not knowing him at all and annoyed at his intrusion, she ignores the warning.

As the day progresses she finds more friends going off-line. Another stranger appears whilst she is at work, this time a young woman - Ruby. She claims to work for the company she is employed by and wishes her to confirm that all of her colleagues are at work today. She advises her to deactivate her Bubble, at least momentarily, so she can check this. Loathe to do so, she looks through a gap in her screens - and witnesses one of her colleagues being consumed by a huge slug-like creature.

The Doctor joins Ruby on screen to reiterate his warning about the monsters. Lindy must turn off her Bubble and leave her office. She assumes that the creatures must have invaded from the Wild Woods. At one point the Doctor and Ruby see her review a message from her mother, Penny, and both recognise the woman - but not from the same place. The Doctor knows her as the face of the Ambulances on Kastarion 3, whilst Ruby is reminded of a hiker encountered in Wales.

Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Finetime have become so addicted to their Bubbles that they can hardly function without them - reliant on the Dots telling them what to do. Lindy can't walk in a straight line without them.

The Doctor is puzzled when Lindy comes face to face with one of the creatures - a Mantrap - but it ignores her.

Once outside in the street, Lindy witnesses other people being devoured. She tries contacting the authorities, but no-one answers. Looking to her friends for help, she sees one of them attacked by a Mantrap.

Someone then calls out to her, and she recognises him as Ricky September - a popular influencer whom she follows. He reveals that, despite being a huge social media star, he hardly ever uses it himself. He is therefore not reliant on the Dots and knows of a way out of the colony, via the underground infrastructure. He leads her to a conduit where he tries to contact Homeworld. He learns that it too has fallen victim to the Mantraps, but decides not to tell Lindy of this - trying to reassure her that help will soon come from there. There is a series of locked doors to get through before they can reach safety through a water course out of the colony.

The Doctor gets back in contact and reveals that he worked out why the Mantrap earlier failed to attack Lindy. They are killing people in alphabetical order - and have now reached the letter "P". 

As there is some intelligence behind their actions, the Doctor realises that they have not come from the Wild Woods at all. They have actually been created by the Dots, which have come to detest the society which they are forced to serve. Next in line to die, Lindy's Dot attacks her but she is defended by Ricky. 

She suddenly announces that she knows that "September" is not his real name. It is really Coombs, and he only changed it as part of his plan to become famous.

The Dot therefore kills him. Lindy has intentionally sacrificed him to give her enough time to escape into a tunnel beyond the conduit.

At the end of this she finds a small group of fellow survivors, who are preparing to leave by boat for the Wild Woods. The Doctor and Ruby are here with the TARDIS.

He offers to take them all to safety, arguing that they will never be able to survive on their own.

However, Lindy and the others reject his help outright as he is not like them. His skin is the wrong colour.

The Doctor is shocked and frustrated but can do nothing to help the group as they sail away...

Dot and Bubble was written by Russell T Davies and was first broadcast on Saturday 1st June 2024.

It's the second episode in a row to feature only minimal involvement from the Doctor. Apart from the final sequence, Gatwa only ever appears in brief messages within Lindy's Bubble. The same applies to Ruby this time. Like Blink in 2007, this episode elects to concentrate on the guest character of Lindy.

Initially she comes across as a shallow, social media-obsessed individual - though no different from anyone else in this society. We then see that she isn't simply naïve to the point of uselessness, but has a really nasty streak. First she deliberately causes the death of the person who has tried to save her - someone she has been a great admirer of - but then we see that she, like everyone in Finetime, is an out and out racist. The signs were there to see if you had paid attention from the start, as there hadn't been a single non-white face in her Bubble. It's only the second time we've seen the Doctor actively discriminated against - the first being in The Witchfinders, when it was on the grounds of gender.

He's obviously horrified and saddened when his help is rejected - knowing full well that the survivors don't stand a chance outside their ordered colony - but the bottom line is that this lot don't deserve to survive. Perhaps the ending might have had more impact had they been worth saving - but still refused his help.

Mentioned in reviews at the time was the fact that this story was akin to an episode of Black Mirror. As the name suggests, it's a series which holds a mirror up to current society and, like all good sci-fi, extrapolates some aspect of it - taking it to the extreme. In this instance it is the increasing obsession with social media. The inhabitants of Finetime are so reliant on their Bubbles that they can't function on even the most basic level without their Dots. We see that Lindy relies on them even to walk in a straight line without knocking into the furniture. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has seen someone almost knocked over by a car when they've stepped out onto a road whilst staring at their mobile phone, or witnessed a similar near miss. You hardly ever see anyone these days with a good old-fashioned book on public transport, and even toddlers are given screens to watch to keep them quiet.

Then we have Ricky the influencer, who doesn't actually use social media all that much but exploits it for fame. I doubt very much that any real influencers are so disciplined as to pay little attention to their "likes". The way in which Lindy sacrifices him so easily isn't just there to show us what a horrible person she is, but to also show that such people are not real friends at all when it comes down to it.

Lindy is played by Callie Cooke, best known for series such as Cheaters, Henpocalyse! and Rules of the Game. Ricky is Tom Rhys Harries. He featured in the second Inbetweeners movie as well as Britannia and Love Actually, and has recently been cast as comic book character Clayface, part of the DC Universe.

Playing Lindy's mother Penny, seen only in a video message, is Susan Twist. This marks the first time in the season that the Doctor and Ruby notice that they have seen this woman's face before somewhere else.

Overall, it is one of the better episodes of this first Gatwa / RTD2 season, with a fairly traditional monster of the week feel whilst the ending does pack an emotional punch. Gatwa's unavailability in such a short season is beginning to tell, however, as there's only three more episodes to go and we've hardly had time to get to know this incarnation of the Doctor.

Things you might like to know:

• There is a specific Black Mirror episode which RTD2 has said acted as an inspiration for this, both in terms of plot and overall look. This is "Nosedive", first shown on Netflix in October 2016. This is set in a society where people have implants which monitor how everyone interacts with each other, giving them ratings out of five. A woman notices that her ratings are falling and becomes obsessed by this, as low ratings can lead to becoming a social outcast. The colour palette for the episode was mostly bright pastel shades, whereas most episodes of the series went for darker tones. 
• Another inspiration for this episode might possibly be The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, as there is a definite sense of the Golgafrinchan B-Ark about the society of Finetime. Have the adults of Homeworld simply gotten rid of their social media-obsessed youths to this colony to carry out meaningless jobs because they served no other purpose?
• Davies had briefly pitched the idea for this story to Steven Moffat as an Eleventh Doctor story for Series 5. At the time it was felt impossible to make.
• With Gatwa's casting it had been suggested that the Doctor could experience racism when he visited Earth history, but Davies realised that racism might not just be confined to the past - and so had him confront it here in the far future. The character of Krasko in Rosa had already shown that racism still persisted in the 52nd Century.
• Homeworld appears to be an Earth colony as Ricky is seen performing a cover of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, made famous by Brian Hyland in 1960. It was repopularised, if such a thing is possible, in 1990 when covered by novelty act Bombalurina (aka supremely annoying TV "personality" Timmy Mallett).
• The inhabitants of Finetime are said to all be aged between 17 - 27. Callie Cooke was 29 at the time, whilst Tom Rhys Harries was 32.
• When location photographs first appeared online, many fans thought that the monsters were Tractators, as seen in Frontios.

What's Wrong With... Delta and the Bannermen

The background to this story, in a nutshell, is that the Bannermen are engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Chimeron.

Why?

No reason is ever given for this action. We don't know if they are doing it because they themselves want / need it to happen, or if they are mercenaries carrying out their crimes for another party. If the latter, that's never mentioned so we have to assume that they want the Chimeron wiped out for their own reasons.

It would have been nice if some sort of explanation had been given on screen. A couple of lines from Delta would have sufficed.

(There is a reason given in the novelisation - a terribly weak one - but that's no good for the people watching this on broadcast).

Their fearsome reputation is definitely unwarranted if this lot are anything to go by. They are tricked easily and often, and beaten by a bunch of civilians using 1950's technology or homemade traps.

We're told they have a war fleet - but this appears to consist of a single ship. They had two, but a couple of Chimeron were easily able to steal it. Their massed ranks seem to add up to about a dozen troops.

They do at least have the power to time travel - as does Nostalgia Tours. The latter are evidently a company with a very poor reputation, yet they are able to travel in time for mere pleasure jaunts. At least one of these coincides with a key moment in Earth's technological progress - the early Space Race.

I thought that the Time Lords were supposed to be policing time travel? It wasn't that long ago they were sending the Second Doctor to stop Dastari.

If Bannermen do indeed have time travel technology, surely they could have used it to eliminate the Chimeron at any earlier point in their history when easier to achieve?

Being the 1950's there would have been all sorts of implications for Billy forming any sort of relationship with one of the campers, and people would have had a lot to say about Delta's status as a single mother. They've picked the nice bits of the '50's - the music and nostalgia factor - but ignored the social realities of the decade. (Imagine what an RTD2 / Gatwa story with the same set-up might have been like. Or maybe not...).

Mel, who has done a fair bit of space / time travel by this stage screams her head off at the green baby - but Billy hardly bats an eyelid?

Billy steals some of the child's food. What made him think it would make him turn into an alien like Delta in the first place? And why would a foodstuff cause a genetic transformation in an entirely alien species? If people turned into cows after drinking milk then we might see where he was coming from.

The Chimeron lifecycle appears to be based on insect life. I do hope Billy knows that a lot of female insects eat their mates after procreation...

No matter how much in love they are, is going on a picnic - without leaving any word of where you can be reached in an emergency - really the brightest thing to do when you know genocidal aliens are on their way, specifically intent on killing you and your child? It's no wonder the Chimeron are on the brink of extinction...

If you are fleeing genocidal aliens, it is probably best not to mention your species to a bunch of strangers on a holiday outing. One of the fellow passengers just happens to be a bounty hunter who knows all about the Bannermen / Chimeron conflict - so much so that he has a direct line to Gavrok. Considering that no-one knew Delta was going to turn up and join the tour, that's one heck of a coincidence.

Gavrok doesn't want to pay Kiellor the bounty, so kills him - but does it before he has bothered to get the exact location and so has to land and run around the countryside hunting for Delta.

Gavrok shoots the Toll Master, yet allows Hawke and Weismuller to live, even wasting a couple of soldiers to guard them - men who would have been more usefully employed on the search, surely?

Even with a special code, it is highly unlikely that you could ever have gotten through to the White House from a standard Police Public Call Box.

I have found evidence that Police Boxes could be found in Cardiff and Newport, but none in any rural district of South Wales.

I've stayed in a holiday camp, and there's no way that the grass in front of the chalets would be allowed to grow that long during the season. 

We hear the music for Housewives Choice when everyone is having lunch - even though this was broadcast between 9 - 9.55am on the Light Programme. And the music for Music While You Work is playing over breakfast, when this was broadcast between 10.30 - 11am, and again between 3.45 - 4.30pm, according to the BBC Genome project for summer 1959.

Most of the male Navarino tourists dress as Teddy Boys. Holiday camps catered primarily for families (competitions ranged from Bonny Babies to Glamorous Grannies), and people identifying as a particular youth sub-culture would be frowned upon due the potential for violence. It wasn't until the end of the 20th Century that camps began to specifically advertise themed musical weekends, now that the families were going elsewhere.

Episode 190: The Enemy of the World (5)

Synopsis:

In Giles Kent's trailer, Astrid is helping the Doctor prepare to impersonate Salamander when Head of Security Donald Bruce unexpectedly walks in...

He has tracked Kent here as he believes that he intends to assassinate Salamander. Kent and the Doctor explain their real purpose - to gather evidence against Bruce's boss, which is to be found in the records room of the research facility. They are able to sow seeds of doubts in his mind. Astrid then overpowers the guard accompanying Bruce, taking his gun.

The Doctor elects to hand over the captured weapon as a show of faith - believing that Bruce will trust them enough to take their claims seriously. Though a senior member of Salamander's inner retinue, he respects the rule of law and is at heart a fair man.

They convince him to allow the Doctor a chance to get the information they seek. The Doctor also wishes to rescue Jamie and Zoe, who have been brought to the facility.

Bruce agrees to accompany the Doctor, but only if Kent and Astrid remain behind under guard as hostages.

In the underground shelter, Colin and Mary are talking. He still wants to get away from here and see the surface. Swann tries to placate him.

They are unloading boxes of provisions which have been supplied by Salamander, who is relaxing in the adjoining office.

Swann notices a piece of newspaper stuck to the underside of a box, which causes him considerable alarm. He goes to the office demanding to speak privately with Salamander.

The scrap of paper, only a few months old, reports the accidental sinking of a cruise ship. Swann demands to know how there can be cruise ships operating if full-scale war is raging, as Salamander claims.

Salamander tries to convince him that there is some semblance of normality, but people are hideously mutated by radiation and the environment is toxic in many places. He wishes the shelter dwellers to continue creating natural disasters so that they will one day emerge and inherit the Earth.

Undeterred, Swann insists on seeing for himself. Knowing he cannot be dissuaded, Salamander informs him that he can come with him when he returns to the surface. This is announced over the public address system to the rest of the shelter - causing Colin to become upset as he has been yearning to go and Swann knew this.

Benik begins interrogating Jamie and Victoria - threatening her to make him confess to working with Kent.

Salamander suddenly arrives with Bruce and dismisses Benik - claiming they will take over the questioning. Having only just been told that the Leader was still in the records room, and the guards had not reported him leaving it as he had ordered, Benik becomes suspicious. He tries to get him to sign some supply orders, but the Doctor - for it is he - manages to deflect this.

He is then able to get Jamie and Victoria to tell all they have discovered about Salamander in front of Bruce, without revealing his real identity. This way Bruce will know their information to be genuine.

On being told of Fariah's death, Jamie launches himself at the Doctor - who is now forced to admit the deception.

Elsewhere, Benik challenges the guard on the records room door, demanding to know why he did not inform him that the Leader had come out - only to find that he is adamant that Salamander has not left it.

Salamander is taking Swann to the surface via a set of rocky tunnels. He has failed to talk him into returning to the shelter. They have reached a chamber where other supplies are stored, and here Salamander arms himself with a large metal bar...

Frustrated at being held in his trailer, Kent devises a scheme to escape by creating a diversion.

Astrid breaks a window, causing the guard to run in and find Kent lying on the bed, apparently dead from a gunshot wound to the head. The guard runs for help, but it is tomato ketchup not blood on Kent's forehead.

He rushes away to the research facility - followed soon after by Astrid.

Moving through waste ground towards the complex, trying to avoid the security guards, she hears faint cries for help. Hidden in the undergrowth she finds Swann, terribly injured...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker

Recorded: Saturday 30th December 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 20th January 1968

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 49

Designer: Christopher Pemsel

Director: Barry Letts

Critique:

Last time, I mentioned nepotism in the series and this story sees four relatives employed at one time or another. First of all we had Sarah Lisemore, daughter of the Production Assistant, who acted as Debbie Watling's location double. Then we had Frazer Hines' cousin Ian playing a security guard in the Central European Zone. Last week Andrew Staines - the director's nephew - featured as another member of the security forces. 

This week, as a favour to Patrick Troughton, Letts gave the star's son David a background role as yet another security guard, seen in Kanowa corridor scenes. The future RSC star was on his festive break from school and was eager to follow his father into the acting profession. He would, of course, go on to appear in three further Doctor Who stories. You'll recognise him sitting on the right in the image below.

A small amount of filming was undertaken for this episode, at the same time as the hovercraft sequences for Episode One were being completed. This took place on Monday 6th November, and simply involved a shot of Mary Peach making her way across a field. One of the security guards she was trying to evade was played by 17 year old Nigel Burtwhistle (below), from nearby West Down Tutors School.

The rocky tunnel was another very simple set by Christopher Pemsel, which could be shot from different directions and angles - making it look like a much larger cave system.

The episode began with Colin Douglas re-enacting his last two lines from the previous episode.

The tunnel set necessitated frequent recording pauses for Troughton and Christopher Burgess to move position, suggesting movement through the passages.y76t

For this episode, Troughton was in his Salamander make-up throughout, and once he had donned the full costume he could retain it for the whole evening as he was either playing the disguised Doctor or the villain.

The first recording break came after the Doctor formed his uneasy truce with Bruce in the trailer. The two trailer scenes towards the end of the episode - where Kent first formulates and then puts into effect his escape plan - were recorded back to back just before the tunnel scenes. The latter had the actors' voices echoed.

The final recording break allowed Burgess to move to a small woodland set, where Astrid finds the injured Swann.

A close-up cutaway was used of the newspaper scrap found by Swann. It read "Holiday Liner Sinks - Many Feared Lost" and was dated to Friday 16th August 2017.

Troughton mimed playing Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star on a recorder to prove the Doctor's true identity to Jamie and Victoria.

It is a rather weak cliff-hanger this week, but then Astrid's inclusion in this episode was the result of rewrites designed to placate Peach and stop her from withdrawing from the production.

Bruce contends that he traced Kent through a tracer planted on his trailer by Benik, which must have been during his crockery-breaking spree in Episode Three. But surely this large vehicle is fairly conspicuous outside the research facility anyway - otherwise how did Benik spot in in the first place. It also suggests that Kent and the Doctor had been driving back and forth in it throughout Episode Four - when it looks like it is a static caravan.

Trivia:

• Ratings for the penultimate episode of the serial see a drop of almost a million viewers.
• David Troughton will be back in The War Games as Private Moor, before guesting as King Peladon in The Curse of Peladon. His most recent appearance was as Professor Hobbes in Midnight - a role he took on at the last minute when actor Sam Kelly broke his leg.
• The day after broadcast critic George Melly, writing in The Observer, was comparing Doctor Who to The Prisoner, claiming the former "is perfectly adjusted to exteriorise children's fears and anxieties without taking them out of their depths".
• On Thursday 18th January Radio Times published a centrespread feature on the visual effects of the series, and Doctor Who made the front cover - which these days was now printed in full colour. This was a publicity shot of Troughton taken during the making of The Ice Warriors. Though published during the broadcast of The Enemy of the World, the story does not feature in the article:

Happy Who Year

Wishing you all a Peaceful and Prosperous 2026. 

I'll be back on Sunday 4th January.

Inspirations: The Woman Who Lived

The Woman Who Lived is not so much the second part of The Girl Who Died, despite the title structure, as a sequel - showing what happened to Ashildr after the Viking episode.

In order to save her life alien medical technology has been used, which has rendered her immortal. The Doctor had at least left her a second Mire device, if she wished to provide herself with a fellow immortal to act as a partner.

After a scene-setting sequence in the 17th Century, where the Doctor seeks an alien artefact in England only to find it being stolen by a highwayman, we get to see how Ashildr lived her life up to this point - for the Highwayman is a highwaywoman. Ashildr is now local aristocracy - Lady Me - but has turned to crime for a bit of excitement.

One of the things which the production team wanted from this episode was to show someone travelling through time by the "slow road", comparing it with the Doctor's jackdaw meanderings through history.

This was also designed to be a companion-lite episode as it's about the relationship between the Doctor and Me, so Clara only features at the start and at the end.

We see her in medieval times as she fights at the Battle of Agincourt with Henry V (25th October 1415). She did settle down with a husband and had children at one point, but they all died of the plague. As this episode is set in 1651 it can't be the Great Plague of London, so is probably the Black Death, which arrived in England in June 1348. By December when it abated it had killed between 40 - 60% of the population.

We also see her being accused of witchcraft, presumably because she has taken on the role of wise woman in a small rural community. The ducking stool was in use in England over a very long period, going back to Saxon times. This episode can't relate to the notorious campaign in eastern counties by Matthew Hopkins as that was in the mid 1640's, and she is already an aristocrat by 1651. There was a peak of witchcraft trials after 1562 when new legislation came in, so presumably this event can be placed in that period.

It was writer Catherine Tregenna (the first female writer on the series since 2008's The Poison Sky) who decided on the main historical setting.

1651 saw the climax of the Third Civil War, with the Royalist defeat at hands of the Roundheads at the Battle of Worcester that September, following which Oliver Cromwell established the Protectorate in place of the Monarchy. It was a lawless time and highway robbery and other property crimes flourished.

Lady Me's home is said to be at Hounslow, to the west of London, and Hounslow Heath was notorious for highwaymen as two major roads to the south west of England crossed it.

The most famous fictional female highway robber (apart from Barbara Windsor in Carry On Dick, of course) is also a thrill-seeking aristocrat - Lady Skelton in The Wicked Lady (1945), as played by Margaret Lockwood. This was remade in 1983 with Faye Dunaway in the lead role. It is reputedly based on the life of Katherine Ferrers (1634 - 1660), who terrorised Hertfordshire and was shot dead during one of her robberies.

One female highway robber who is said to exist was Susan Higges, who is mentioned in a ballad from 1640 and is reputed to have had a criminal career spanning two decades. She dressed as a man to commit her robberies in Buckinghamshire. She was the inspiration for Renegade Nell  - the character depicted in the recent Disney+ series. Her career of crime came to end when she murdered a woman who was able to identify her before dying, and she ended her life on the gallows.

Talking of which, Sam Swift is due to meet his end at Tyburn. This was the site of a famous place of execution, close to where Marble Arch stands today at the bottom of the Edgeware Road. Public executions took place here from the 12th to the 18th Centuries, until they moved to the vicinity of prisons such as Newgate. It was from Newgate that many of the condemned would travel to Tyburn, stopping off for the odd flagon of ale as they progressed along Oxford Street. At one point the gallows - the "Tyburn Tree" - comprised a large tripod affair that could accommodate a dozen or so people at a time.

The alien of the episode is Leandro - a leonine being who just happens to come from the planet Delta Leonis. The Latin name for the lion is Panthera Leo. The constellation of Leo derives its name from the Nemean Lion - a mythical beast slain by Hercules as one of his 12 labours. And of course we have the zodiac sign of Leo the Lion (July 23rd - August 22nd). Leos are said to be natural born leaders, but can also be arrogant and stubborn.

The Doctor calls Leandro "Lenny the Lion", referring to the ventriloquist dummy used by British entertainer Terry Hall from 1954 through to the 1980's.

Next time: Clara is beside herself as UNIT and the Zygons play Truth or Dare, in a sequel to the 50th Anniversary story...