G is for... Gulliver

When the Doctor operated an emergency switch in the TARDIS to escape a volcanic eruption on the planet Dulkis, he warned his companions Jamie and Zoe that they would be taken out of Space / Time to a realm of which they knew nothing. After briefly visiting a mysterious white void, the ship appeared to break up and they were deposited in a world where characters from fiction were real. Hiding from Clockwork Soldiers in a forest of trees which spelled out proverbs and sayings, the Doctor encountered a man in 18th Century dress who spoke with a strong Nottingham accent. The stranger gave away their hiding places to the soldiers, but denied that he had seen anyone looking for them. After a couple of other encounters, the Doctor realised that the man was Lemuel Gulliver, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. He could only say lines which Swift had given to him.
It transpired that the TARDIS crew had been dumped into the Land of Fiction, controlled by a super-computer linked to the mind of an elderly English story writer. The computer wanted the Doctor to take the old man's place, whilst it had designs on taking over the Earth. Zoe overloaded the computer, causing it to be fired upon by its own robot guards, which destroyed the realm.
The Doctor pointed out that the characters they had met would come to no harm, as they were not real and would live on in fiction.

Played by: Bernard Horsfall. Appearances: The Mind Robber (1968).

• This was the first of Horsfall's appearances in Doctor Who - all in stories directed by David Maloney. He returned the following year as one of the Time Lord tribunal members in the final episode of The War Games, and was later seen as the Thal Taron in Planet of the Daleks. His last appearance was as Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin - who may well have been the same Time Lord who had presided over the Doctor's earlier trial.
• Strangely, the Doctor expresses a hope to have a long chat with Gulliver some time. Strange - as the character would only be able to speak lines written for him in the book.

G is for... Guido

A Venetian gondolier and boat builder who had saved for years to send his daughter to the city's exclusive Calvierri School for Girls. On enrolling her, he was shocked to discover that he would never be able to see his daughter ever again, and was also alarmed when he caught a glimpse of Rosanna Calvierri's son Francesco baring razor sharp fangs.
He then set about trying to catch sight of his daughter when the girls left the school on their frequent trips into the city. This drew him to the Doctor's attention. He had come to Venice to give his companions Amy and Rory a romantic holiday, after Amy had thrown herself at him on the eve of her wedding day. The Doctor decided to help Guido get his daughter back. Rory borrowed his clothes - lending him his stag-party T-shirt in return - whilst Amy would be enrolled at the school to give them access. The plan almost worked, but Guido's daughter - Isabella - had already started to be transformed into a vampire-like human-Saturnyne hybrid. She couldn't stand sunlight and was forced to retreat back into the school. Rosanna and Francesco were refugees from the nocturnal Saturnyne homeworld, who had come to Earth to start their race anew. The canals of Venice were full of male Saturnyne spawn, and the girls at the school were to become their mates.
Isabella was executed for helping the Doctor and her father. The schoolgirls then attacked Guido's house. He had stockpiled explosives taken from the city's arsenal, intent on using them to attack the school.
He sacrificed himself to blow up his house along with the vampire women.

Played by: Lucian Msamati. Appearances: The Vampires of Venice (2010).

G is for... Guardian of the Doomsday Weapon

This diminutive being was the sole survivor of a super race which evolved on the planet Uxarieus. This race had developed a weapon powerful enough to create a nebula in space. However, radiation from the weapon led to the race degenerating - the Guardian being worshiped as a god and the weapon having priest attendants who carried out human sacrifices to it. The surface of Uxarieus became barren, and the city dwellers regressed to a primitive state. The Time Lords had a file on the weapon, which was stolen by the Master. When this was discovered, they sent the Doctor to the planet to prevent the Master from obtaining control over the device. Jo Grant was in the TARDIS with the Doctor when it suddenly became active and dematerialised. She was later abducted by Uxariean primitives and taken to the city to be sacrificed. The Doctor followed her and pleaded with the Guardian to let them go free. It agreed, on the condition that they never returned. However, the Master captured the Doctor and Jo and forced him to take him to the city, whilst holding Jo hostage in his TARDIS. The Master demanded control of the weapon, but the Doctor was able to convince the Guardian that the device would always be at risk of use by unscrupulous people. The Guardian elected to destroy the weapon, sacrificing itself to do so.

Played by: Norman Atkyns. Appearances: Colony In Space (1971).

• Atkyns returned to the series the following year, to play the Royal Navy fleet commander in The Sea Devils. It was pointed out on the DVD commentary for that story that the spectacles he wore were an error, as naval commanders had to have perfect vision. 
• To play the Guardian he had to lie on his front behind the puppet's throne, with his masked head sticking out of the throne's headboard.

G is for... Grugger

General Grugger was the leader of the Gaztaks, a mercenary squad employed by an alien named Meglos to abduct a human male from Earth and bring him to the planet Zolfa-Thura. Meglos needed the man in order to use him as a body print to impersonate the Doctor. Like the rest of his men, Grugger could not be trusted, and Meglos sealed him and his deputy, Brotadac, in to his control centre when he attempted to steal his equipment rather than complete the mission he had been paid for. Once Meglos had transformed himself to look like the Doctor, he had Grugger transport him to the neighbouring planet of Tigella so that he could retrieve the Dodecahedron, which powered the Tigellan underground city. This energy source was Zolfa-Thuran in origin, and was needed by Meglos to power a weapon of mass destruction. When Brotadac captured Romana, Grugger spared her life so that she could lead the Gaztaks to the Tigellan city, but she led them into a trap - attacked by hostile Bell Plants.
Back on Zolfa-Thura, Grugger once again proved untrustworthy and had Meglos incarcerated on his ship - intending to take control of the weapon for himself. However, the Doctor had sabotaged it, aiming it at itself, and Grugger and his men were destroyed in the blast.

Played by: Bill Fraser. Appearances: Meglos (1980).

• Perthshire born Fraser was best known for playing Sergeant Major Snudge in The Army Game, which had starred First Doctor William Hartnell. He then moved to the spin-off series Bootsie and Snudge. Shortly after appearing in Meglos, he featured in the K9 and Company spin-off as Commander Pollock, who turned out to be the villain of the piece.
• He claimed in interviews that he only accepted the role of Grugger if he got to kick K9 (which he does) and become the most hated man on TV.
• When not acting, he ran a little sweet shop / tobacconists in Ilford, Essex.

G is for... Grover, Sir Charles

Sir Charles Grover was a member of the British government who championed ecological issues. When London had to be evacuated after a spate of dinosaur manifestations, the government relocated to Harrogate in Yorkshire, but Grover elected to stay behind in the capital to liaise with the army and UNIT. The Doctor was introduced to him when he visited UNIT's temporary HQ and expressed his admiration for his views, having read one of his books on environmental concerns.
However, Grover was really the mastermind behind the dinosaur appearances, which were designed to empty the city so that a more ambitious scheme could be carried out. Grover was working with a scientist named Whitaker, who had perfected a time machine. Both were in league with the corrupt military commander General Finch, and with Captain Mike Yates of UNIT. Their scheme - Operation Golden Age - was intended to roll back time, taking the Earth back to a pre-industrial era before pollution. A group of like-minded people had been duped into thinking that they were going to be travelling to an alien planet to start a new life. They were really being held in a mock spaceship built beneath the streets of London, and when they emerged it would onto pre-industrial Earth rather than another world.
The Doctor was able to put a stop to the scheme, but Grover and Whitaker were transported back in time along with their device. At what point in history they ended up was never stated, but it may have been the time of the dinosaurs, if the machine was still fixed on that era.

Played by: Noel Johnson. Appearances: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974).

• Johnson had previously played King Thous of Atlantis in The Underwater Menace. He was famous as the original voice of Dick Barton, Special Agent, on BBC radio between 1946 and 1949.

What's Wrong With... The Edge of Destruction

Running at just two episodes in length, with only the principal cast, a single set, and very little in the way of visual effects, you'd think that there wasn't much that could have gone wrong with this particular story.
In reality, the entire series could have gone wrong - as this came perilously close to being the final Doctor Who story.
From its very beginnings, it was always intended that the programme would run for 52 weeks, and this was the basis on which the production team worked. One significant cost to be met was the interior of the Doctor's space / time-ship, which would feature in most stories.
There were many delays in getting the pilot episode recorded, and the broadcast date kept getting pushed back. This was partly to do with arguments about which studio space would be allocated to the production, and a desire to avoid a summer launch when audience numbers dipped.
As the launch date drew near, the Radio Times decided not to put the programme on the cover for the November 22nd issue. This was because confidence in the viability of the show had fallen.
Planned stories began to fall through. The opening story was to have been one in which the TARDIS crew were shrunk to an inch in height, followed by a story from Anthony Coburn about robots, who was also developing an adventure set in the stone age.
The studio issue put the mockers on the "miniscules" story, so the caveman one was brought forward, whilst the robot story was replaced by a story about mutants from Terry Nation.
Concerns then grew about the budgets. The TARDIS interior had cost a great deal of money, so word came down that the series would end after just 13 episodes. Terry Nation had been asked to extend his story from 6 to 7 episodes, and the opening story was a four-parter. This left two episodes to fill, instead of going straight from the Dalek story to one where the TARDIS crew met Marco Polo.
Producer Verity Lambert was able to show that the cost of the TARDIS had been planned to be spread over the entire 52 weeks originally planned, so it hadn't gone over budget.
The decision was then made to extend the series for a further 13 weeks, so the Marco Polo was back on the cards. However, it was still being prepared so the two episodes following the Dalek story still had to be filled. Problem was that there wasn't any money for them.
No writer could be commissioned in time, so the story editor David Whitaker was permitted to write the filler. No extra cast could be booked, so the story would feature only the regulars. And there was no money for sets, so the existing TARDIS console room would be the only location used.
Whitaker took all these limitations and put a positive spin on things. After an adventure in the past, and one on an alien planet in the future, it was time to spend some time developing the relationship between the regulars - putting them through a crisis from which they would emerge with better understanding of each other.
At the end of the previous episode we saw the TARDIS crew in the ship as it dematerialised from Skaro. We mentioned last time that this was a much smaller console room than previously seen - almost as if there was only enough space in the studio for the console and a couple of walls. This is because there was only enough space in the studio for the console and a couple of walls...
Suddenly, as this story opens, we have the massive TARDIS interior again. Everyone seems to have been knocked out. Whatever has happened has disintegrated the socks Susan was wearing at the end of the last episode. The Doctor has sustained a head injury, and is given a special bandage which has bands of some kind of healing ointment, which is a little wasteful unless he has cuts all round his head.
For the first few minutes after coming round, the companions act very strangely - behaving as if they don't know who they are or where they are. Barbara and Ian address each other as Miss Wright and Mr Chesterton, as though recent events have been forgotten, and Ian must think he is still at the school as he immediately assumes that the "Susan" Barbara mentions must be pupil Susan Foreman.
These days we know all about the sentient TARDIS, with its telepathic circuits, but here this behaviour is never satisfactorily explained.
All sorts of other strange things happen, such as people getting a severe pain at the back of the neck if they approach the console, other than the section with the scanner controls on it. The scanner shows a series of images - some good and some not so good. When a good picture is shown, the TARDIS doors open. When its a bad image, they close again. There is also a sequence of a planet, then a star system, then a whole galaxy - terminating in a brilliant flash.
When the doors open, we can see a white void outside - but a void with a floor.
Not long after Ian and Barbara have spoken about something getting inside the TARDIS, a couple of extraneous shadows can be glimpsed - belonging to members of the production team rather than an invading alien entity.
Then the clock melts, along with everyone's wrist watches.
It turns out in the end that this is the TARDIS' way of warning them that the ship has been set on a  course which would destroy it.
The question has to be asked: why couldn't it have done it in a less cryptic fashion? Why do it in such a way that the crew might never have worked out how to stop it being destroyed?
Had it simply flashed up the Fast Return switch on the Fault Locator, and only the Fast Return switch, surely that would have told the Doctor exactly where to look for the problem.
And we all know that the Fast Return switch is the only control on the entire console to have its function written next to it in felt tip pen.
Another obvious question has to be what mechanism does the TARDIS employ to cause all the various strange incidents? How does it melt the numerals on the clock and watches? How does it deliver the pain to the back of the neck? Is any of it real, or is it all just some form of hypnosis? Again, we are left none the wiser by the resolution.
William Hartnell has a lovely soliloquy about the formation of stars and planets, but he also delivers a few choice fluffs, and he skipped a part of the script which dealt with the melted clock and watches.
He repeats the line "It's not very likely", which momentarily throws the others, and has trouble with "You knocked both Susan and I unconscious".
Then we get:
"Don't underweight... underestimate me..."
"You rather suspected I was upset to some mischief..."
"We're on the brink of disgust... destruction!"
And my favourite: "You'd be blown to atoms by a split second!"

Inspirations - The Creature from the Pit

The Creature from the Pit was the third story to be broadcast in Season 17, even though it was the first to be produced. As such it was the first time that David Brierley voiced K9, whilst Lalla Ward loathed her costume as it had been designed with Mary Tamm's version of Romana in mind.
David Fisher had written two well regarded stories for the previous season, and was commissioned to provide a further two stories for this one. Whilst this one made it to the screen, the second script ended up being rewritten by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams - as we saw last time.
As far as this commission was concerned, all Fisher had to go on with Creature, as I'll call it from now on, was that he should include a monster unlike any that had been seen before.
We've previously said that Fisher disliked his aunts, and often included villainous women in his scripts, and Creature is no exception. As well as Lady Adrasta, the ruler of the planet Chloris, we have her sidekick Madam Karela - who proves to be more sadistic and bloodthirsty than her mistress.
Fisher decided that the story's monster would not be evil - just misunderstood. It would kill people by accident. He then came up with the notion of the creature being a huge blob, trapped in a mine.

Fisher looked at some of the Greek myths and legends for inspiration, and these provided some of the names. Adrasta comes from Adrastos - meaning "inescapable", referring to her imprisonment of the creature in the Pit. It is called Erato. She was one of the Muses, whose name meant beautiful or lovely, which contrasts nicely with the creature's apparently hideous appearance but hints that it isn't the monster everyone thinks it is.
Erato is a Tithonian. This apparently derives from Typhonian. The Typhonian Beast comes from Egyptian rather than Greek mythology. It was a chimera (composite animal) associated with the god Set.
I wrote a whole post a while ago about how all the stories where the TARDIS was fitted with the Randomiser featured the ship going exactly where the Doctor wanted it to go. Its jackdaw meanderings were far more random when the device wasn't fitted. Here, the ship picks up a faint distress signal which takes it the densely-jungled planet of Chloris. (This is the Terry Nation school of planetary nomenclature - where a planet is named after a distinctive feature. Lots of plants means lots of chlorophyll). Chloris also comes from Greek myth, being a flower-loving nymph.
The distress signal is traced to a large structure which looks like a giant egg-shell. Romana gets abducted by a bunch of metal thieves, whilst the Doctor falls into the hands of the aforementioned Lady Adrasta. Chloris has very few metal deposits, so anyone owning any significant amount of metal gains political power. Adrasta disposes of her enemies by casting them into an abandoned mine-shaft - which is known as the Pit. There, they are killed by a monster which lurks there - which the call The Creature.

Unfortunately, the metal thieves are portrayed as stereotypical Jews, with the actor playing their leader, Torvin, attempting to play the part as Fagin - at least the Ron Moody Oliver! version. You half expect him to burst into a rendition of "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" at any moment.
Romana is able to call upon K9 to come and rescue her, and she quickly gets the better of the thieves, who are all a bit dim anyway.
Adrasta has two supposed experts on the Pit and its creature. One of these is played by Morris Barry, who once directed The Moonbase, Tomb of the Cybermen and The Dominators. He had returned to acting late in life. The other is played by Pertwee / Baker stuntman Terry Walsh. You can guess which one of them gets thrown into the Pit. The Doctor decides to throw himself into the Pit to escape Adrasta - leading to a sequence which fans either love or loathe. The Doctor has managed to grab onto the rock face and he produces from his pocket a book on Teach Yourself Mountaineering. This proves to be written in Tibetan, so he next produces from his pocket another book - Teach Yourself Tibetan. All very Douglas Adams.

Once in the Pit, the Doctor comes upon an old astrologer named Organon, who had been cast into the pit years ago but has managed to survive being crushed by Erato. Organon is Greek for instrument or tool, and is where we get the word "organ" from - as in part of the anatomy which fulfills a particular function. He is played by Geoffrey Bayldon, who had been approached back in 1963 to play the Doctor. He turned the role down as he was fed up playing "old man" parts. He would later portray an alternative version of the First Doctor on audio.
(Other links to the earliest days of the programme include Eileen Way playing Madam Karela, who had played the Old Woman in the very first story, and this story's director - Christopher Barry, who had helmed most of the first Dalek story - Parts 1,2,4 & 5).
The Doctor quickly works out that Erato isn't intrinsically hostile. It tends to smother and crush people by accident, due to its great bulk. Attempts to communicate with it fail, however, as it requires a shield-like communications device which Adrasta has retained.

The monster was a source of great amusement when it was first brought into the studio, resembling a huge balloon with a rather rude appendage. Things were not helped by Tom Baker blowing into the appendage when the Doctor tries to communicate with it. Not only did it look like a balloon, it was a balloon, as the body was made from meteorological balloons. Designer Mat Irvine had hoped that it might resemble the Rovers from The Prisoner. Some changes were made between the two studio blocks to lessen the phallic appearance - but it was too little too late.
A postmortem was conducted after the production wrapped, in which Graham Williams backed the director against the VFX team, who had argued that the producer, writer, script editor and director should shoulder most of the blame between them for agreeing to something which would be impossible to realise effectively in a studio.
The Doctor discovers that Erato is a Tithonian ambassador, from a metal-rich planet, who had come to set up a trade deal with Chloris - swapping their metals for its chlorophyll, which Tithonians eat.
Not wanting to lose her monopoly over the scant metal supplies, Adrasta had tricked Erato into entering the mine where she had sealed it up.
The story seems to run out of steam when Adrasta gets killed in the first 5 minutes of the final episode.

A new plot is introduced, however, as it is revealed that Erato had sent out a distress signal to its own people decades ago, and they had sent a neutron star on a collision course with Chloris in revenge. The Doctor has to force Erato to help in deflecting this star using its newly rebuilt spaceship - the egg thing from the jungle - and the TARDIS. These model shots led to further friction between Mat Irvine and Christopher Barry, as the director ordered shots of the TARDIS to be remounted (supposedly because the string holding the model up could be seen). Irvine has since insisted that he would never have passed inferior model shots anyway. Erato's ship spins an aluminium shell round the star which reduces its gravity, or something. Apparently the science is a bit rubbish, despite Fisher claiming to have approached real scientists when preparing the story.
Creature would be Christopher Barry's final Doctor Who assignment, after many years of involvement on the show - save for the 1995 video spin-off Downtime production. He had worked on The Daleks, The Rescue, The Romans, The Savages, Power of the Daleks, The Daemons, The Mutants, Robot and The Brain of Morbius. He later said that he had not enjoyed working with Tom Baker on this story, noting how much the actor had changed for the worse since they had last worked together.
Next time: There's more drama going on behind the scenes than there is in front of the cameras. It's a nightmare for everyone...