The Collection S20 box set

Despite having been told that I wouldn't be receiving it until next Monday, the Season 20 Blu-ray box-set arrived just after noon. I'll be watching it over the next few days, and a review will follow once I've worked my way through it. This might take a while, as it is absolutely jam-packed full of extra material. The Five Doctors alone is spread over three discs (7 - 9), with a huge amount of 20th Anniversary archive items. Little old The King's Demons lists 29 additional features.

Episode 84: Airlock

Synopsis:

Sensing movement, Vicki looks up to see a hideous creature staring at her from within the Rill spacecraft...

The Doctor is still at the entrance to the compound, examining the pyramidal machinery, which appears to be converting ammoniac gas. Vicki sees a Chumbley approach and runs to the entrance - only for a gate to close, trapping her inside. She is escorted by Chumblies back to where she saw the creature. Unable to breach the gate, the Doctor decides to sabotage the machinery and starts to dismantle it.

Steven remains in the Drahvin spaceship, where he pretends to be sleeping. Nearby, Maaga is bemoaning the fact that she has to put up with her inferior soldiers, making her task of space exploration more difficult. She had wanted only pure-bred Drahvins troops to accompany her, but her superiors had refused.

Vicki finds one of the Chumblies repeating what she says, assimilating her language. The creature behind the screen - a Rill - is then able to communicate with her. They have no vocal chords, but can project their thoughts through their service robots. The Rill explains that they were subject to an unprovoked attack by the Drahvin ship after a stand-off in space above this planet. 

Since the crash, which killed two thirds of their crew of twelve, they have attempted to help the Drahvins, but their efforts have been spurned. The Rill tells Vicki of how they witnessed Maaga shooting dead one of her injured soldiers - an incident which she had been blaming on the Rills to frighten her troops.

On discovering that the Rills need an ammonia atmosphere to survive, Vicki realises that the Doctor will kill them instead of just forcing them to free her, so she runs to the entrance to stop him.

The soldier guarding Steven starts to fall asleep, so he seizes her weapon and knocks her out. He rushes into the airlock, only to find a Chumbley waiting outside. Thinking them still a danger, he believes himself trapped.

At the compound, the Rill informs the Doctor that they are drilling for a power source for their ship. They rely on sunray-power but haven't enough, so were looking for an alternative. The Doctor tells him of his findings regarding the time left to this planet, and the Rill claims that they won't have time to obtain the power they need.

He offers a power transfer from the TARDIS.

When Steven refuses to come back inside the spaceship, Maaga begins to remove the oxygen from the airlock.

The Chumbley outside reports these events back to the Rill who warns the Doctor. He and Vicki hurry back to the Drahvin ship to free Steven, only to run into one of the soldiers. Vicki manages to grab her gun and they force her to escort them back to her ship.

In the airlock, the pressure is such that the door will no longer open. 

Steven collapses to the floor...

Next episode: The Exploding Planet

Data:

Written by: William Emms

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

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 25th September 1965

Ratings: 11.3 million / AI 54

Designer: Richard Hunt

Director: Derek Martinus

Additional cast: Robert Cartland (Rill Voice), Pepe Poupee (Chumbley)

Critique:

On Sunday 11th December, 2011, attendees of a "Missing Believed Wiped" event at the British Film Institute in London were delighted to hear that two of the series' lost episodes had been returned to the archives - one of which was Airlock. The print originated in Australia, where it had been in the possession of a television engineer named Terry Burnett. He hadn't realised that it was a missing instalment. 

The episode had been found back in July. It was missing some closing scenes, including the end titles.

When told that one of her old episodes had been rediscovered, the title meant nothing to Maureen O'Brien - until told that it featured the Chumblies. She had fond memories of them.

The episode was released on DVD in March 2013 as an extra on The Aztecs Special Edition. It accompanied the six minutes from Four Hundred Dawns which had been saved by the DWAS, with the remainder of the story represented by a reconstruction from fan group Loose Cannon.

Every missing episode is covered by an off-air soundtrack recording, and many have a visual record thanks to photographer John Cura and his telesnap service. BBC and Radio Times photographers also visited the studios and locations to take images, sometimes in colour. Added to this, designers Ray Cusick and Barry Newbery kept a photographic record of their work, often in colour.

Where the telesnaps don't exist - because the director declined to commission them - visual imagery from some episodes is entirely absent, as the official photographers often only attended on a single recording day. This means that only certain actors, costumes and sets are represented in the archives.

With only the audio to go by, fans are left to imagine what certain scenes looked like on screen.

The rediscovery of Airlock meant that we finally got to see scenes which had no visual record - and fans were particularly surprised to see the sequence describing the "execution" of the injured Drahvin soldier by Maaga. Those who had seen it on its original broadcast had neglected to report that the sequence came in the form of a flashback, filmed as a POV shot from the Rills' perspective.

Both techniques were rare in the series up to that point.

Four Rill costumes were built by freelance prop contractors John and Jack Lovell. Black in colour, they were based on walruses, with large tusks. Only one Rill was used for this episode, seen through a frosted glass panel. The costumes were shrouded in dry-ice, simulating the ammonia gas on which they thrived, and helping to hide any deficiencies in the costumes.

Anthony Paul had been hired to provide the creature's voice. At a late stage he was replaced by Robert Cartland, who had already been booked by Mervyn Pinfield to play delegate Malpha in the stand-alone Dalek episode which formed part of this production.

Another Chumbley operator joined the cast for this episode, operating the machine which Steven thinks is blocking him from leaving the spaceship. This was Kathleen Gearan, who went under the stage name Pepe Poupee. She was married to fellow Chumbley operator Angelo Muscat (of The Prisoner fame). Pepe, also known as Pepi, was the only female Oompa Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and featured alongside Tom Baker in the horror movie The Mutations.

One of Maureen O'Brien's clearest memories of this story was of Poupee and Muscat arguing all the time. Ironically, one of her film roles was in a 1983 movie directed by actor Robert Duvall, titled Angelo My Love.

A late script change saw the expository dialogue between Vicki and the Rill reduced considerably, and the sequence of the Doctor and she encountering the lone Drahvin soldier was added to cover the gap.

A bit of dialogue that really ought to have been rethought, but wasn't, is that relating to the Rills' lack of power. They claim to need "sun-ray" power but are having to drill for an alternative - presumably some fossil fuel. However, we have been told that this planet has three suns, with nights only a couple of hours long - so how can the Rills not have enough "sun-ray" power?

Trivia:

• The ratings take a big leap upwards, to over 11 million, with only a single point drop in the appreciation figure. The series won't see viewing figures like this again until the Tom Baker era.
• William Emms had suggested in his script the use of a speeded up / slowed down tape to represent the Rill assimilating human speech.
• Lyn Ashley, who was already playing Drahvin Three, portrayed the injured soldier who is killed by Maaga. She was filmed lying face-down to hide her identity.
• William Hartnell was issued with a revised contract on the day this episode was recorded, to take into account the forthcoming 12-part Dalek story. Purves and O'Brien were then issued contracts with options for a further 20 weeks each - though the latter's was not to be taken up...
• A few days after recording, Hartnell gave an interview to the Daily Mirror, in which he stated that he had gifted his wife Heather a half-inch high solid gold TARDIS, topped with a sapphire.
• William Shearer, one of the Chumbley operators, recorded a short interview for Junior Points of View about the experience. Whilst some young fans thought the robots looked like jellies that hadn't set properly, others thought that they could give the Daleks a run for their money and hoped they would make a return.
• As mentioned last week, it was believed for many years that no photographs existed of the Rills. When readers wrote into DWM asking to see what they looked like, the magazine claimed no photos had been taken. A couple of images then turned up in the late '80's. Despite a Rill featuring in an exhibition, both images appear to have been taken in the studio with the prop on the landscape set:

Countdown to 60: Here be monsters

I was channel hopping just last week when I suddenly spotted a familiar phrase on a t-shirt: "The Angels Have The Phone Box".

What was striking about this was the fact I had come not upon the BBC, or a sci-fi or vintage themed channel, but a crafting one. The product on sale was a machine that cut out pieces of vinyl (letters, numbers or shapes) which you could then stick onto a plain garment, thus personalising it. The presenter was clearly a Doctor Who fan, as they had created their own Blink inspired shirt, and here they were using it to help sell the machine.

In its first couple of seasons, the revived series had struggled to introduce any monsters that could hold a candle to those of the classic era. Indeed, Series 1 had relied on the Daleks, and Series 2 the Cybermen, whilst Series 3 was building up towards the return of the Master.

Russell T Davies had decided that there would be no purely historical stories, and each new story was to have a monster, as that was what the kids were tuning in to see. This led to a number of one-off monsters, often tied to their particular episode and unusable for a rematch elsewhere.

The Slitheen had failed to take off, due to their weakness of threat. The farting aliens were more of a joke, and in their second appearance RTD opted to focus more on the outwardly human aspect of Margaret Slitheen. They would quickly find their natural home on the Children's BBC series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The Ood arrived in Series 2, but they were a slave race who were benign when left to their own devices. Unless you were going to have them possessed once a year (which is pretty much what would happen) their threat potential was pretty limited.

Of the one-off monsters, two had stood out as being particularly scary - even if neither of them could really be used again. The Gas-masked zombies, led by the "Empty Child", and the Louis Quinze Clockwork 'Droids were both the brainchild of Steven Moffat.

For Series 3 RTD had wanted him to write the Dalek two-parter but he had declined - offering to cover the difficult Doctor-lite episode in recompense. How lucky we were that this happened (though it would have been interesting to see what Moffat might have done with Daleks in 1930's New York), because we might never have got Blink and the Weeping Angels.

The look of the Angels came from a statue Moffat had seen in a graveyard whilst on holiday, their modus operandi came from a children's game, and the basic story structure derived from an old short story he had written.

He would go on to create other distinctive monsters based on childhood fears, especially once he got control of the series.

The Weeping Angels were the first big successful new monsters of the revived series. Indeed, some polls since 2007 have placed them as favourite monsters of all time, beating even the Daleks and Cybermen.

Had there been a new version of Target's Doctor Who Monster Book, they would have featured near the front.

Written by Terrance Dicks and first published in 1975, this publication gave a run down on the principal monsters up until that time, followed by a miscellany of others based on when they had first appeared. Coming from Target, monsters which had featured in their novelisations were prioritised over others, and some pages were illustrated with their artwork rather than BBC photographs.

The Daleks naturally got the opening, though some of their associated creatures were also mentioned - Exxilons and Ogrons. 

Their pole position was down to the fact that they were the most popular monsters, universally accepted, and had also appeared in the most stories. They'd even starred in a couple of movies.

After the Daleks came a section titled "Monsters Who Came Back For More!".

This led with the Cybermen as the second most popular monsters, and the ones who had featured in the most stories after the Daleks. Third came the Ice Warriors, as they had appeared in four stories.

The book then covered the creatures which had made two appearances apiece - Yeti, Autons and Sontarans. Silurians and Sea Devils were included here, despite at this point only appearing once each, as they were a connected species. Then came the mixed bag of one-off monsters, from Sensorites to Zygons.

The reason for the Ice Warriors coming after the Cybermen was down to their number of appearances - and for many years - thanks to this publication - it became the norm to think of Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors as the top three greatest monsters.

However, the Martians vanished almost immediately from the series, and the Sontarans were brought back for a third, and then a fourth appearance. They came to match the Ice Warriors.

For Series 4 of the revived Doctor Who, RTD announced the return of the Sontarans as that year's big classic return monster. We got several more stories featuring them - with no sign of the Ice Warriors until 2013, playing a very belated catch-up.

In the interim, as well as the Sontarans featuring more frequently, the Weeping Angels made a return appearance, followed by a few cameos (such as The God Complex, Time of the Doctor).

Since then they've had another full 50 minutes to themselves, albeit part of the overall Flux storyline - which brought back the Sontarans as the main villains.

A new Monster Book would certainly continue to have the Daleks front and centre, with the Cybermen following in second place. But it would then go on to cover the Sontarans and the Weeping Angels next, as a new Big Four. The Ice Warriors, who have only managed two appearances in the revived series, so six stories overall, would be relegated further down the mix.

We don't know very much about the 60th Anniversary Specials, or Series 14 (and they've already started work on Series 15), so we have little information about the monsters the 14th and 15th Doctors will face (save for the Toymaker - allegedly - and Beep the Meep - confirmed). What might return and, of the new monsters, will any come to match the Angels?

We used to think that you weren't really the Doctor until you had met the Daleks, but they have been overused of late, so nowadays it might be more likely to be the Weeping Angels who are used as the benchmark.

The Art of... Galaxy 4

The strikingly colourful cover for the novelisation of this story - using the alternate "Four" instead of the numeral - was the work of artist Andrew Skilleter. It was written by the story's original author, and published in 1985 in hardback, with the paperback following in 1986.

Skilleter elects to depict just a pair of Drahvin soldiers in a rather cartoonish fashion, with presumably the doomed planet behind them. No Rills or - considering how prominent they were in the publicity - Chumblies. And they would have been so easy to paint as well. 

The script book was published by Titan Books in July 1994. John McElroy edited, as he did with all of this short-lived range. (This was the penultimate release). The cover, by Alister Pearson, features nice portraits of the Doctor and of Maaga, and a Rill also gets a look-in - and still no Chumbley.

As a missing story, Galaxy 4 never got a VHS release, though it did feature on The Aztecs Special Edition DVD in 2013. It was on the second disc - the rediscovered Airlock episode coupled with the six minutes from the first instalment, with the remainder covered by a telesnap / CGI reconstruction courtesy of Loose Canon. This was a slightly condensed version of the story.

In November 2021, the story was released on DVD and Blu-ray in fully animated form - the only fully missing Hartnell story to be animated to date. The Doctor is flanked by a Chumbley (at last) and Maaga, with the planet once again forming the backdrop. 

Despite the reasonable portrait of the Doctor on the cover, the likeness on the actual episodes themselves is appallingly bad. The Drahvins are given blue uniforms for no apparent reason. We know they were green, so why change them?

The steelbook release had a wrap-around cover which featured the Doctor from the back (mercifully), spying on the Drahvins and a Chumbley surrounding the TARDIS. The colour scheme for the planet seems to have been inspired by the original Target book cover. The whole thing is so colourful that you might want to stick to the B&W version of the episodes when you watch this.

The story formed part of the missing adventures audio range, with the soundtrack released on CD in 2000. With the usual photomontage cover, it was narrated by Peter Purves. The cover designer has elected to depict the Drahvins as identical clones, apparently copies of Maaga as she is there to the left of the group with the same features. The face of each has been edited to make them look more "evil". The uniforms are the right colour but, when it comes to these audio release covers, this might just be coincidence.

The Purves narrated soundtrack was reissued on vinyl from Demon Records in April 2019, for Record Store Day. A striking purple cover, it features two of the gun-toting Drahvins and a Chumbley.

Finally, the movie database site (moviedb) has used an original photomontage to illustrate this story, in the absence of a commercial DVD release. The monochrome images have been coloured and - hooray - Maaga's uniform is green. Pity the Drahvin soldiers were given blue ones...

M is for... Mechonoids

Large, roughly spherical robots which had been despatched to the remote jungle planet of Mechanus to prepare it for an imminent colonisation by human settlers. Galactic wars intervened and the colonists never arrived. With no new orders, the self-repairing robots continued to prepare, automatically following their programming. They built a huge city above the hostile jungle landscape, and collected samples of the local flora and fauna. When astronaut Steven Taylor crashed onto Mechanus, the Mechonoids took him captive - treating him as just another animal lifeform for study. Unable to communicate with them, as they spoke only in machine code, he couldn't explain who he was to them.

Their armoured bodies covered in geodesic designs, they were armed with flame-throwing weaponry. They also had scythe-like attachments built into their circumference.

When the TARDIS crew arrived two years after Taylor's capture, they found themselves held prisoner as exhibits as well - faced with the same communication problem.

They were being pursued by a Dalek execution squad, which arrived soon after. The Daleks knew of the robots, which they dubbed 'Mechons'. When they demanded  that the Mechonoids hand over their captives, the robots were programmed to defend their city and their possessions. A battle broke out, which resulted in the destruction of the Mechonoids and their city, along with the Daleks.

Operated by: Murphy Grumbar, John Scott Martin and Jack Pitt. Voiced by: David Graham. Appearances: The Chase (1965).

• For the full story of the Mechonoids see my recent posts:

TARDIS Musings: Episode 77: The Planet of Decision and TARDIS Musings: Episodes - Afterlife: Mechonoids

M is for... Mechanics

When the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrived in the woods near the village of Devesham, location for the UK's Space Defence Centre, they encountered a group of men dressed in white overalls - their features hidden under helmets with darkened visors. The men opened fire on the Doctor and Sarah, but closer inspection would have revealed that their guns were actually built into their hands. The group hunted them through the woods and they found their way to the village itself. This appeared to be deserted, until a lorry turned up with a number of villagers sitting on the back. It was driven by the white-suited men.

Sarah got a closer look at one of them, when he had his visor raised, and was shocked to find that he was not a human being at all. Beneath the helmet were electronic components. The men were really androids - basic drone servants to the alien Kraals. The entire village and its surroundings were an elaborate mock-up on the Kraal home planet of Oseidon, a training ground for an imminent invasion of Earth. The Doctor was later arrested by the Mechanics and locked up by them.

Played by: Keith Ashley, Roy Pearce, Clinton Morris and Derek Hunt. Appearances: The Android Invasion (1975).

• The extras playing the Mechanics were not credited on screen. 
• Ashley had a more prominent role later in the story, as the android man in the landing pod who tries to seize Sarah. He was a regular monster performer (including a Dalek in Genesis, a Zygon and both versions of the Krynoid) and background artist throughout the 1970's. His first appearance was as one of the Elder citizens in The Savages, and his final role was as one of the Brotherhood of Demnos in The Masque of Mandragora. One of the programme's unsung heroes, he died in 2007.
• In dialogue, these androids are called "robot mechanics" at one point, and "service mechanics" at another.

M is for... McMillan, DI

Detective Inspector McMillan had for several months been hunting a notorious cat burglar. When she stole the Cup of Athelstan from London's International Gallery he thought that he had finally caught her. Her accomplice had been arrested and she had been forced to flee on a No.200 bus. McMillan set up roadblocks to stop the vehicle in a road tunnel under the Thames. Unfortunately, when the tunnel was searched the bus was found to have disappeared. It had passed through a wormhole, and McMillan found his crime scene taken over by UNIT.

The Doctor eventually helped bring the bus back from the alien planet to which it had been transported. He declined to take the thief - Lady Christina de Souza - with him in the TARDIS, but wasn't prepared to see her arrested either. He allowed her to escape in the bus, which had been converted to fly with anti-gravity attachments. McMillan was furious and attempted to arrest the Doctor as another accomplice, but he left the scene in the TARDIS.

Played by: Adam James. Appearances: Planet of the Dead (2009).

• James was an old friend of David Tennant, the pair having been at drama school together. They subsequently performed in Shakespeare plays together, on stage and on radio.
• He is the son of Polly James, of The Liver Birds fame, who played school teacher Jane Hampden in The Awakening.
• His godfather was Jon Pertwee.