Three story arcs in play, two of which (spoilers) will merge at the end of this series. The third will take another year to materialise.
TARDIS Musings
Thursday 17 October 2024
Inspirations: The Bells of Saint John
Three story arcs in play, two of which (spoilers) will merge at the end of this series. The third will take another year to materialise.
Tuesday 15 October 2024
What's Wrong With... Arc of Infinity
Sunday 13 October 2024
Episode 137: The Power of the Daleks (3)
- The ratings continue to slide whilst the appreciation figure remains stable. The series drops out of the Top 50 programmes for the week.
- This is the shortest of the story's six episodes, with a duration of 23' 31".
- Richard Kane, who passed away in February 2023, is probably best known for his role as Inspector Bottomley in the "Masonic Mysteries" instalment of Inspector Morse.
- There has always been some debate about how the Daleks managed to survive their first encounter with the Doctor, causing some to place The Daleks (aka "The Mutants" 1963/4) later in their timeline (a devolved group left behind) or - more likely - there were other Dalek communities elsewhere on Skaro. This story, however, reveals that Daleks simply become dormant when their power source is removed, and can survive for centuries. It may well be that the Daleks in their city merely went into a prolonged hibernation after the attack by Alydon's people - which just happens to be the scenario for Whitaker's Curse of the Daleks stage play.
- The Listener of 24th November gave the new Doctor a tentative welcome, with their TV critic "not yet fully adapted" to Troughton. JC Trewin did think that the new Doctor was just as capable of tackling the Daleks as his predecessor.
- The Dalek's chant of "I am your servant..." was the inspiration for the "I am your soldier..." of the Ironsides in Victory of the Daleks. This whole story was an influence on Mark Gatiss for the seemingly subservient Daleks in his 2010 story.
Thursday 10 October 2024
O is for... Ogrons
When a guerilla group travelled back to the 20th Century to prevent their timeline from taking place, Ogrons were sent back to stop them. Though armed with superior weaponry, they preferred brute force to kill or capture their enemies.
The Doctor discovered that they had one physical weakness – being susceptible to a blow on the top of the head.
The Doctor was able to put history back on course, and the timeline was deleted.
He used the Ogrons to attack spaceships belonging to both groups, ensuring that there were survivors from every raid. His device made each race see the other instead of the Ogrons. Tensions were always high between the two empires due a bloody space war which had been fought only 20 years before. Initially unaware of who was behind the scheme, the Doctor and Jo witnessed an Ogron raid when the TARDIS arrived on a space freighter – but the Earth authorities refused to believe them. The TARDIS was brought to the Ogron planet along with other spoils of the raid – alerting the Master to the Doctor’s presence. Ogrons were sent to Earth to free him from prison – the Earth people seeing them as Draconians.
Later, on a mission to free the Master from capture by the Draconians, one of their number was left behind and the Draconian Emperor realised the truth of the Doctor’s claims. The Earth authorities were also finally convinced and a mission was launched to the bleak, rocky Ogron planet.
Jo stole the Master’s hypnotic device, and the Doctor used it to appear as a Dalek to trick an Ogron guard into releasing his party from a cell, and later to appear as one of the monsters to cause a whole party of Ogrons to flee in terror.
Played by: Stephen Thorne, Michael Kilgarriff, Rick Lester. Appearances: Day of the Daleks (1972), Frontier in Space (1973).
- Both appearances by the Ogrons were directed by Paul Bernard. The script for Day of the Daleks simply described "monsters" and it was he who decided that they should be ape-like. The description of them as "guard dogs" for the Daleks had led Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks to think of them as dog-like.
- Rick Lester played an Ogron in both stories.
- John Friedlander designed the half-masks, which were made by make-up trainees.
- Some of the non-speaking Ogron extras had heads too large for the masks, and they had to be split at the back.
- The company which made the Ogron-eating monster prop mistakenly called it an "Oberon-eating" monster in their literature.
- The prop was deemed so poor that its appearance was kept to an absolute minimum. It was originally to have been used in studio for the final scenes.
O is for... Ogri
The criminal Cessair of Diplos removed a number of them from Ogros to utilise as weapons, and they were being transported with her on a prison ship which became stranded in hyperspace. She escaped to prehistoric Earth – arriving in the remote western region of England. The stones were hidden in a neolithic stone circle which came to be known as the Nine Maidens. This circle attained the reputation of being impossible to count - the number changing each time. This was due to the occasional movement of the Ogri.
Cessair set herself up as an authority figure in the district over several centuries, changing her identity to prevent detection.
When the Doctor and Romana arrived in search of the third segment of the Key to Time, she was posing as a woman named Vivien Fay, who had befriended archaeologist Professor Emelia Rumford, who was conducting a survey of the Nine Maidens.
Fay posed as a Celtic deity known as the Cailleach, whose worshippers offered blood sacrifices to the Ogri, unaware of their alien nature.
She used the creatures to dispose of the coven when the Doctor and Romana began to investigate. K-9 was badly damaged when it attempted to defend the Doctor and Rumford from an attack by an Ogri. Once repaired, K-9 could at best hold them at bay with its nose blaster.
One Ogri was destroyed when the Doctor lured it over a cliff and into the sea, whilst another was reduced to rubble by the Megara – justice machines which had been escorting Cessair on the prison ship.
The remainder were captured to be transported back to Ogros, whilst Cessair was transformed into a new standing stone by the Megara.
Appearances: The Stones of Blood (1978)
- It was originally intended that the Ogri would be realised as a man-in-a-suit costume, but VFX designer Mat Irvine insisted that they be props.
- The scene in which an Ogri attacks a pair of campers was added due the episode under-running.
O is for... Odysseus
- Second of three appearances in the series by Salter. The first was the Morok Commander in The Space Museum, and the last was the police sergeant in Black Orchid.
- Odysseus (Ulysses or Ulixes to the Romans) did get home the long way round as Cassandra had prophesied, or so Homer tells us in, spoilers, The Odyssey. He and his crew had adventures with the Cyclops Polyphemus and the Lotus Eaters amongst many others, and didn't get back to Ithaca for 10 years. His Queen, Penelope, was being courted by several suitors as he was thought to be dead, but she procrastinated for years. A series of challenges were set up, the winner to wed her, and an incognito Odysseus joined this competition - ultimately winning the hand of his own wife.
O is for... Odin
- Schofield stepped in late in the day to play Odin when the original actor fell ill - Brian Blessed.
- Usually cast as policemen or criminals, one of his best known roles involves neither side of the law. He is the patron of "The Slaughtered Lamb" - the country pub in An American Werewolf in London - who is prepared to tell the psychiatrist (John Woodvine) what really happened to the two US hikers.