On This Day... 22nd May

Daleks, the Beatles, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth I all featured in the same episode of Doctor Who today in 1965. It was The Executioners, the first instalment of The Chase, and they were all appearing on the Time Space Visualiser which the Doctor had obtained from the Morok space museum the week before. 

In 1971 the eighth season approached its conclusion as The Daemons got underway. The Master was back yet again, this time posing as a rationalist existentialist priest, indeed!

The revived series decided to bring back the Silurians today in 2011, in The Hungry Earth. Rather than stay true to their original design, they were turned into sub-Star Trek lizard people. The third eye was omitted altogether. Apart from ripping off the plot of previous stories, it was pretty pointless bringing them back if they weren't going to do them justice. They should have just created a new protagonist.

Today we remember actor Jack Watling. He played Professor Edward Travers in the two Yeti / Great Intelligence stories during the Troughton era, coinciding with his daughter Debbie's portrayal of the Doctor's companion Victoria.

In The Abominable Snowmen he was playing the character around his own age - an initially unlikeable adventurer who almost got the Doctor killed when he thought him a member of a rival expedition. Just a few weeks later he was back in The Web of Fear, set decades later. Travers was now a grumpy old scientist, who was assisted by his daughter Anne. 

It was originally intended that Travers and Anne would be back for The Invasion, but Watling was too busy, and the production team did not want to pay too much money to Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln who had created the characters (and with whom they had fallen out anyway over The Dominators). Only the Colonel played by Nicholas Courtney was brought back from the earlier story, and Travers and Anne were replaced by Prof. Watkins and his niece Isobel.

Watling did eventually reprise Travers in 1995 for the unofficial production Downtime, which was directed by Christopher Barry, and also starred Debbie Watling, Lis Sladen and Nicholas Courtney as their Doctor Who characters, up against the Great Intelligence and the Yeti once more.

Watling passed away in 2001, aged 78.

On This Day... 21st May

 

For the final time in the classic era of the programme, a story opened with an individual episode title, rather than an overall story title and episode number. The Gunfighters got underway today in 1966 with The O.K. Corral.

In 2005 we had the beginning of a two part story which had reverted to the old Gunfighters set-up of individual episode titles. In this case it was Steven Moffat's first contribution to the series - The Empty Child. This introduced the recurring / spin-off character of Captain Jack.

Another two part story started in 2011 with The Rebel Flesh.

A couple of birthdays of note today. The first is Trevor Cooper, who turns 69. He is one of those actors who have appeared in both incarnations of the show - as Takis in Revelation of the Daleks, and as Friar Tuck in Robot of Sherwood. He is also a frequent Big Finish performer.

Series 1 of The Sarah Jane Adventures regular Juliet Cowan is 48 today. She played Maria Jackson's mother Chrissie. Cowan left after Series 2's opening story, The Last Sontaran, as Maria actress Yasmin Paige had decided to concentrate on her studies.

Story 251: Flatline

In which the Doctor finds that something strange is happening to the TARDIS...

Clara is still travelling with the Doctor, despite having told Danny that she has stopped seeing him. They are on their way back to London when the ship materialises off course at a different location. It has landed in Bristol, and Clara is due to meet with Danny for lunch in London. They notice that the doors have shrunk, and when they emerge they discover that the whole TARDIS has been reduced in size. The Doctor can't take her home until they have got to the bottom of this dimensional issue. He goes back inside, whilst Clara has a look around the area. In a railway underpass she finds a strange mural, of people standing with their faces to the wall. Next to it is a shrine which has been set up to various missing people. 

A small group of men are working nearby, carrying out community service. One of these is a young man named Rigsy, who was arrested for his graffiti art. The overseer is a man named Fenton, who takes sadistic delight in having Rigsy paint over his own artworks.

Rigsy tells Clara about the disappearances, and of this strange mural which has appeared. She calls the Doctor to update him but when she goes back to where the TARDIS landed she finds it is now only a few inches tall, with the Doctor trapped inside. He gives her the psychic paper and sonic screwdriver and lets her know that she will have to be "the Doctor" and investigate what is happening here on his behalf. Clara puts the ship in her handbag. She asks Rigsy to take her to the scene of the last disappearance - a nearby flat. There is a weird mural on the wall, which looks like a dried up lake bed.

When Rigsy wants to leave, the Doctor recognises the need to secure his local knowledge, so they let him know about the TARDIS. They use the psychic paper to gain access to another flat, given entry by WPC Forrest. The police officer is attacked, sucked down into the carpet after seeing something slide across the walls. Another strange mural appears, composed of red lines in a branch pattern. The Doctor realises that this is the WPC's nervous system. The earlier mural was a close-up view of the victim's skin. Something is reducing people and other objects to two dimensions, presumably taking them apart to investigate them.

The TARDIS is attacked again , reducing further in size. The Doctor guesses that they are facing creatures who come from a 2-D universe, who are trying to work out the 3-D world. Odd sounds have been heard, and the Doctor thinks that the creatures may be trying to communicate.

Clara and Rigsy are attacked at the flat, spotting the floor and walls come alive and slide towards them. They take refuge in a hanging chair - just as Danny calls Clara. She and Rigsy swing the chair so that it breaks free and flies out of the window - leaving Danny baffled as to what is going on.

Close by is an railway engineering depot. The community service workers have gathered here after the figures in the mural in the underpass came to life. As the Doctor tries to work out how to communicate with the creatures, he uses mathematics which should be universal. The response is a number, just as one of the workers is attacked and reduced to a flattened image. His uniform number was the one which the creatures gave. They were stating who they were going to kill next.

More of the workers are attacked and transformed into 2-D versions of themselves. Everyone is forced into the nearby rail tunnels. The creatures can also make objects turn two dimensional. The TARDIS is dropped and is almost run over by a train. It continues to shrink and enters "siege mode", assuming the form of a small silver cube covered in Gallifreyan symbols. Rigsy attempts to sacrifice himself by crashing a train into the creatures. Clara has the controls rigged to work remotely, but it only gets reduced to 2-D as well. 

If the creatures can turn objects into 2-D, Clara guesses that they may also be able to reverse the process. Rigsy paints a fake doorway which the creatures try to adapt. Behind is the TARDIS. The process causes it to grow to normal size again. The Doctor emerges. Furious that the creatures have ignored their efforts to communicate and act in a friendly manner, he denounces them as monsters - and he is the man who stops the monsters. Naming them the Boneless, he has them thrown back to their own dimension, with a warning never to come back to this realm.

The Doctor congratulates Clara on her performance as "the Doctor" today, as she rejects a call from Danny.

Elsewhere, the unknown woman who has been welcoming people to the promised land has been observing them. She agrees that Clara has been a good choice...

Flatline was written by Jamie Mathieson, and was first broadcast on Saturday 18th October, 2014.

Although broadcast second, this was his first written submission for the series - the other being the previous week's Mummy on the Orient Express.

Mathieson had wanted to write for the series since its revival. He wrote the sci-fi movie Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, and joined the writing team on Being Human after meeting Toby Whithouse. An earlier attempt to impress Steven Moffat had failed when he came up with a great concept, but failed to include a monster for the Doctor to fight. he managed to get a second meeting, where he had a few ideas. The one Moffat went with was the notion of a 2-D monster which wrapped itself around people in order to become 3-D - the starting premise for Flatline.

A couple of children's books provided inspiration, such as Flat Stanley (1964). Sapphire & Steele was another inspiration.

The images on the walls of flats where people had disappeared derived from the elongated skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors painting in the National Gallery - the skull only evident when seen from an oblique angle.

It was relatively late in the day that this episode became the Doctor-lite story, as Capaldi was needed to play a more prominent role in Mathieson's other story, and that did not have a lot of Clara in it. As such, the Doctor is confined to the TARDIS so that Capaldi only needs to appear on location at the beginning and the end. To cover this, Clara gets to become the Doctor for the duration of the story, investigating on his behalf. She therefore needs a companion of her own - which is where Rigsy comes in.

He is played by Joivan Wade. he had appeared with Catherine Tate and David Walliams in the comedy series Big School. More recently he has featured as Victor Stone / Cyborg in DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Doom Patrol.

Fenton is played by Christopher Fairbank, who generally portrays villainous characters, but was probably best known for his regualr role on Auf Wiedersehen Pet. 

PC Forrest is Jessica Hayles, and another of the community service workers is Matt Bardock, playing Al. He was just coming to the end of a seven year stretch on medical soap Casualty.

Samuel Anderson once again cameos as Danny, seen only at the other end of Clara's phone. Another cameo is Michelle Gomez as Missy. There is a hint that she may have been responsible for bringing the Doctor and Clara together in the first place.

One of the highlights of the story is the miniature TARDIS, and the way that the Doctor still manages to remain part of the action despite its reduced state. We see his face looking out of the tiny doors, or his hand emerging like Thing from The Addams Family.

Overall, another of the stronger stories for this series, with some lovely VFX and an unusual new monster. Peter Capaldi gets his defining moment when he challenges the Boneless in the tunnel - the man who stops the monsters.

Things you might like to know:

• One of the inspirations for this story was a Road Runner cartoon - especially the image of a flat painting of a tunnel entrance which the Road Runner could run into, whilst Wile E Coyote would slam into rock. Other times, trucks or trains would emerge from the supposedly painted tunnel to squash the hapless coyote.
• There is a very noticeable continuity error in the length of the Doctor's hair - unless it is also being affected by the dimensional instability...
• The train has the service number of A113. This is an animators in-joke, used on a lot of CGI or 2-D cartoon films and shows. A113 is the number of a classroom at the California Institute of the Arts. Tim Burton was one of those who studied there. It has featured in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy amongst many, many others.
• The location used for the railway sidings is Barry Island in South Wales. This area was previously seen in The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, and had once been right next to the site of the holiday camp used in Delta and the Bannermen.
• The TARDIS has been reduced in size on a number of occasions - including Planet of Giants, Carnival of Monsters and Logopolis.
• 2006's Fear Her had previously shown people being reduced to 2-D, and 2-D objects becoming 3-D.

On This Day... 20th May

The Doctor and Jamie were running around contemporary London today in 1967, which looked as odd as if they had been on some alien planet. This was in the opening instalment of The Evil of the Daleks. The Second Doctor spent so little time on present day Earth.

Another story which was getting under way today was 1972's The Time Monster - the last story of the 9th Season, and the final time that the full "UNIT Family" were together in studio at the same time - Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney, Roger Delgado, John Levene and Richard Franklin.

2006 witnessed the coming of The Age of Steel, the second half of the story which brought the Cybermen into the revived series, following a cameo by a Cyberman head in Dalek the year before.

Finally, in 2017 a blind Doctor encountered the Monks for the first time in Extremis - a story which turned out to have quite a twist in its tail.

Today we remember the star of one of those episodes - Jon Pertwee. He died in his sleep from heart failure whilst on holiday in the USA, following a convention appearance. This was on 20th May, 1996.

The Paul McGann-starring movie had yet to be shown on UK television, and when it was it was dedicated to Jon's memory.

Born into a theatrical family in July 1919, it was inevitable that young John Devon Roland Pertwee would find himself involved in show business. He was a great conversationalist, who loved to talk about himself in chat show or convention appearances. He liked to embellish his stories, and always managed to make them about himself. He claimed to have been expelled from a number of schools for outrageous behaviour, and not just as a child. He was also kicked out of RADA for refusing to mime a wind.

During WWII he served on HMS Hood and was taken off the ship not long before it was sunk by the Bismark, with very few survivors. The reason he wasn't on board was because he was recruited to work in security matters, and the Official Secrets Act meant little to him as he often talked about it. (Compare with Christopher Lee who always refused point blank to discuss his role in similar work).

He eventually found his way into radio, making great use of his ability to do funny voices. One series -The Navy Lark - lasted for nearly two decades.

On reading about the departure of Patrick Trougton from Doctor Who, his Navy Lark co-star Tenniel Evans suggested he put his name forward as a replacement. It transpired that Producer Peter Bryant already had him in mind. He was second choice after Ron Moody. Bryant had hoped that Pertwee would bring a lot of comedy to the role, and was disappointed to discover that the star - wanting to prove himself a serious actor - intended to play the part straight. Pertwee's arrival coincided with the Doctor's exile to Earth and the establishment of UNIT as a regular backdrop to the series. As mentioned above, a cosy "UNIT Family" developed. Pertwee was given a regular villain as his arch-enemy - the Master - and although he was great friends with Roger Delgado he was often jealous of his popularity.

This insecurity also manifested itself when he was called upon to star opposite his predecessor in the 10th Anniversary year story The Three Doctors.

Pertwee remained in the role for five years, his tenure characterised by UNIT and by his Doctor's love of gadgetry and unusual modes of transport, including the sprightly yellow roadster "Bessie" and the "Whomobile". 

Pertwee claimed that he left when a pay rise was refused, but really it was due to the break up of that "UNIT Family". Katy manning had decided to leave at the end of Season 10, realising that Pertwee was likely to go at the end of the following year and she did not want her departure overshadowed by his. Delgado was killed in a car accident in Turkey whilst on location for a movie. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks - Producer and Script Editor - had both signalled their imminent departures. The lifting of the Doctor's exile also meant far fewer stories with Courtney, Levene and Franklin.

In 1974, Pertwee regenerated into Tom Baker. Pertwee returned to the role a few times - on TV in The Five Doctors; on stage in The Ultimate Adventure; and on radio in two stories written by Letts.

We should also note that today is the anniversary of the death, at age 49, of one of Pertwee's favourite directors - Lennie Mayne. He fell overboard during a yachting accident in the English Channel in 1977. His body was never found. Mayne directed The Three Doctors and both of the Peladon stories with Pertwee. He later directed Lis Sladen's swansong The Hand of Fear.

Updated: Season 22 Collection on 20th June - Finally!

 

Update: Since posting this earlier this morning, the official BBC FB page is now saying 20th June. I do wish they'd make up their minds...

I suspect that there are some people who have died of old age waiting for this box-set to be released. It was first advertised back in January (I pre-ordered it on 22nd Jan). Finally got an Amazon update message this morning to say that the release date is now 27th June (in the UK at least) - so nearly half a year we've been left waiting.

People really will have died of old age by the time they work their way through all of these releases at the snail's pace they are going. Still 15 to come. Here's hoping that they will pull the finger out for the 60th Anniversary year - and we get some Hartnell and Troughton seasons.

Still no word about when we might see the animated The Abominable Snowmen either. Not even a cover image yet. I suspect an Autumn release - end September or more likely October.

The next DVD / Blu-ray release will be the two most recent Specials packaged together - Eve of the Daleks and Legend of the Sea Devils. This set is out on Monday 23rd May. This means that the Centenary Special will be a release all on its own, unless they re-release Monday's stories as a new box-set at the end of the year. Annoyingly, Revolution of the Daleks is stuck on a disc on its own. I do not understand why it was not included on the Flux box-set.

On This Day... 19th May

 

Katy Manning's final story got underway today in 1973, with the opening instalment of The Green Death. She was featuring opposite her real life boyfriend at the time - the late Stewart Bevan.

In 2007, the Doctor and Martha Jones found themselves trapped on a crashing spaceship in 42.

It's a happy 75th birthday today to Michael Cochrane. He featured twice in the series - as Charles Cranleigh in Black Orchid, and later as big game hunter Redvers Fenn-Cooper in Ghost Light.

His older brother Martin appeared in The Caves of Androzani as General Chellak.

He shares his birthday with Lily Cole, who was the Siren in Curse of the Black Spot. She is 34.

Today we also remember Peter Bryant, who passed away on this date in 2006, aged 82. 

He took over as Producer of Doctor Who from Innes Lloyd, after being offered a trial run on Tomb of the Cybermen. Prior to this he had been the Story Editor, a role which he took over from Gerry Davis.

Bryant was then married to actress Shirley Cooklin, who played Kaftan in Tomb.

One of his last acts on the programme was to hire Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor. He left the series to salvage the ailing Paul Temple series, taking his ex-script editor Derrick Sherwin with him. Sherwin had temporarily replaced him as Producer.

Before getting into production Bryant had been an actor, including a regular role in the very first TV soap, The Grove Family. He then moved into radio, where he was a Script Editor.

He later became a literary agent. One of his clients was Eric Pringle and he was able to get him commissioned for Doctor Who with The Awakening.

Inspirations - Tooth and Claw

Unlike last year, we aren't expected to try and second guess what this season's story arc might mean - "Torchwood" is pretty much explained in this, only its second episode.

It is a house in Scotland where the action for this episode takes place. Following these events, an organisation will be set up to combat the Doctor, should he or any other alien ever threaten the British Empire, and this house gives it its name.

Tooth and Claw is this year's Celebrity-Historical story. Queen Victoria is both the celebrity and the person who gives her name to the historical period. Russell T Davies had decided that there would be one Celebrity-Historical in each season.

As the 2005 series had featured ghosts and zombie-like beings, and the classic series had featured many different sorts of vampire (from a robot Dracula to the Hsemovores), he elected to include a werewolf. This is mainly because VFX house The Mill said they they would love to attempt one. The prosthetics outfit, Millennium Effects, really wanted to have a go, but RTD went for a CGI version.

Werewolves had only featured once before in the series - the character of Mags in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Oddly, she hailed from the planet Vulpana - from the word 'vulpine' meaning fox-like, rather than something lupine. (The Primords in Inferno looked like wolfmen, but this was the director's decision, ignoring that they should have been ape-like if they were a genetic throwback).

The story had to be very much written around the availability of CGI shots of the wolf - they could only afford so many - which is why we often see scenes from its point of view, or simply hear it off screen.

The pre-credits sequence featured some martial arts monks, clad in scarlet costumes. This was inspired by the 2000 film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

The inclusion of the Koh-i-Noor diamond as a plot device came from producer Phil Collinson.

The diamond, after which so many Indian restaurants have been named, was discovered hundreds of years ago - the date lost in the mists of time. The name comes from the Persian for "Mountain of Light". There is a mention of it in 1526, when it was already quite old. In its time it has been part of a bracelet as well as a throne, before ending up in a crown as part of the Crown Jewels. When shown at the Great Exhibition the public were very disappointed with it, which is why Albert embarked on a recutting programme.

Prince Albert had it cut in London, and the Aberdonian jewellers mentioned in this story are fictitious.

Before RTD decided to write the story himself story, it started life as a commission to someone else (identity not recorded). They came up with a story involving Jack the Ripper-style murders in the environs of Buckingham Palace. The killer would prove to be Queen Victoria herself, who was a kind of vampire - the result of infection by an alien insect. This version had no diamond or werewolf.

The change of writer meant that this story was pushed back to the second recording block of the series, and for some time it was going to be the opening story, with Girl in the Fireplace second. These two stories plus School Reunion got swapped around a few times before setting down as the second, third and fourth stories.

The title of this story derives from "Nature red in tooth and claw", a line from the 1850 poem In Memoriam, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was a favourite piece of Queen Victoria, which she claimed gave her great comfort after Albert had died.

RTD toyed with calling it "Empire of the Wolf". 

At one stage the Queen was going to be killed by the werewolf, thus creating the parallel universe in which "Pete's World" was to be found, tying in with the forthcoming Cyberman stories.

Rose is made a Dame. This is an anachronism, as Dames weren't created until 1917. Also, the monarch would not have used the words she uses when knighting them - they're just what the viewers would have expected to hear. This is the first time that the Doctor has been knighted by a real monarch - the last time it was the robot Kamelion masquerading as King John in The King's Demons.

In The Curse of Peladon, the Doctor couldn't recall if he had been to Victoria's coronation, or if it had been Queen Elizabeth's. He fails to confirm this here when confronted by her.

The Doctor uses the name of one of his former companions here, rather than his usual John Smith. He claims to be Dr. James McCrimmon. Jamie McCrimmon, played by Frazer Hines, was companion to the Second Doctor. He also claims to hail from the town of Balamory. This is the name of a BBC TV programme for younger children which ran between 2002 and 2005. It was filmed in Tobermory, on the island of Mull.

The Doctor mentions studying medicine under Dr Bell at Edinburgh. Surgeon Joseph Bell (1837 - 1911) taught Arthur Conan-Doyle, and from him he got the notion of an analytical detective... The Doctor had earlier recalled studying under Lister at Glasgow in The Moonbase, though we know that Lister wasn't there in 1888 when the Doctor thought this happened.

Throughout the Hartnell period, and in some later stories such as The Ark in Space, he always insisted that he was not a doctor of medicine.

Next time: Friends Reunited...