Story 319: Wish World / The Reality War (& Postscript)

In which the Rani visits a peasant family in the forests of Bavaria in 1865. A new baby has been born - the seventh son of a seventh son, who was himself the seventh son of a seventh son. She abducts the child after transforming his family into flowers and animals. The baby is actually a reincarnation of Desiderium - a god who can make wishes reality.

On 23rd May 2025, John Smith and wife Belinda, along with their child Poppy, wake to another bright and sunny new day...

Broadcasting to the nation, as he does every day, is Conrad Clark who is reading the adventures of Doctor Who and the Time Lords. He is ensconced in the Bone Palace - a massive skeletal structure which looms over London - held in a room with Desiderium. The child projects his idealised version of reality - a world which conforms only to his own personal ideals and attitudes.

At breakfast, Smith sees a mug drop through the solid wooden table and smash on the floor - but thinks nothing of this. Indeed, mugs fall and smash all the time, and the cupboard is full of identical new ones.

There is a knock at the door and a young woman is there - Ruby Sunday. She insists he is the Doctor, and does not have a wife or child. Belinda telephones the authorities to inform them that there is someone at their house who is expressing doubt, and Ruby hurries away.

Smith sets off for work, stopping to say good morning to neighbour Melanie Bush, who is throwing away smashed mugs in the bin. They pause to marvel at the massive Bone Beasts which wander across the city's skyline.

He is employed at UNIT Tower - the Unified National Insurance Team, managed by the dowdy Kate Stewart.

Conrad continues to read his story, which states that the Doctor wasn't the only Time Lord to survive. There was another - a lady - who knows a secret from the earliest history of their people.

Belinda's mother arrives at the house, and they talk about Poppy's birth - but Belinda cannot recall this. As she begins to harbour doubts, another mug smashes.

At UNIT, everyone stops to watch as a figure flies through the sky on an air-bike, heading for the Bone Palace. This is the Rani. When she arrives, Mrs Flood informs her that the level of doubt in the world is increasing, which pleases them both. Mrs Flood is then sent to take food to Conrad. She is subservient to her later incarnation.

Ruby meets a homeless woman in a wheelchair - Shirley Bingham - and they note how the Bone Beasts do not physically interact with their environment, as though they are not actually there at all.

Shirley recognises that Ruby, like her, has doubts about the reality of this world and so invites her to meet some like-minded people. All are from marginalised groups, including the disabled and neuro-divergent. They all know that something is wrong, as Shirley is homeless yet owns an expensive wheelchair. They have a theory that this is due to Conrad failing to even notice people like them. They aren't part of his idealised world, so aren't affected by him in the same way as everyone else.

Shirley and Ruby decide to check out the Bone Palace that night.

That evening, Smith sees a man appear on his TV screen, warning him that this world isn't real and pointing out the issue with the mugs. Though he doesn't recognise the man, it is Rogue.

Belinda wakes to the sound of breaking crockery and sees the Doctor demonstrate that mugs drop through solid tables. She calls the authorities to report her husband having doubts. The police arrive - led by Mrs Flood - and take Smith away. Belinda then finds herself arrested as well.

Smith is taken to the Bone Palace to be confronted by the Rani, who begins to jog his memory as to who he really is. Belinda is brought in and is told that her family life is false. Smith is taken to see Conrad and the baby, and told about how together they have created this world. Desiderium is the greatest of all the Gods of the Pantheon. His powers, harnessed through the Vindicator, sustain Conrad's wished-for world.

Whenever someone has doubts about this reality, it fractures the world. The doubts of a Time Lord should be enough to shatter it completely - unleashing the Underverse. There is someone there whom the Rani wishes to find - Omega.

She takes Smith to the balcony and he watches in horror as the city collapses in on itself, revealing a hellish alternative version. This is witnessed by Ruby and Shirley. His memories returning, the Rani traps the Doctor on the balcony which she then jettisons from the Palace.

As he plunges towards the ground, he remembers that Poppy really is his daughter...

Before the balcony can hit the ground, a door opens behind the Doctor and Anita Benn appears. This is a door into the Time Hotel.

In London, the clock strikes midnight and Time resets itself. Ruby and Belinda wake up to May 23rd 2025 once more. In the Bone Palace, the Rani and Mrs Flood now have the information they seek to locate Omega.

Anita has been tracking the Doctor's life through the hotel doors. They go to Smith's house and bring Belinda and Poppy into the hotel, where her memories return. They then go to UNIT Tower and use the hotel to free the minds of Kate and the others from Conrad's influence. The Vlinx and Rose Noble appear, who were never part of his vision of this world. A signal is sent out to chips embedded in the brains of all UNIT staff, designed to prevent mental takeover. Soon Ruby, Shirley and Mel all arrive.

The Rani has Conrad search his world for the Doctor, and he is traced to the tower.

She teleports there.

Confronting the Doctor, she explains that she never saw herself as his enemy. She wishes to locate Omega in order to revive the Time Lords using his biological material. The Doctor points out that Omega was banished to the Underverse for a reason, as he had become a mad god.

When Mel asks why the Doctor and Rani cannot repopulate their species, they respond that the Time Lords became sterile. This is why Poppy is so special. The Rani dismisses Poppy as a half-breed, and only pure Time Lord DNA will do. The child will vanish once Conrad's world collapses anyway. She teleports back to the Bone Palace to begin freeing Omega - sending the Bone Beasts to attack UNIT as a diversion.

The Doctor has Susan Triad build a Zero Room in which Poppy can be placed to preserve her from the collapse of this reality. Belinda will remain inside with her. The Doctor then has Kate give Ruby the Project Indigo device - a personal transmat - so that she can go to the Palace and confront Conrad, whilst he will travel there by air-bike to shut down its defences and give her access.

The Rani and Mrs Flood actually convince the Doctor that there may be a chance for the Time Lords if Omega is freed. A huge metal hatch bearing his seal is set up in the Palace control centre.

When this is opened, however, the Doctor's previous warnings about him prove to be true. He appears now as a gigantic skeletal creature, insane and impossible to reason with.

He snatches up the Rani and devours her, whilst Mrs Flood flees - activating the Time Ring she had been using the track the Doctor and Belinda. The Doctor uses the Vindicator to force Omega back into the Underverse.

Ruby confronts Conrad, but finds that he remains unmoved and unrepentant. She picks up Desiderium and then wishes him a happy life, and he vanishes. She and the Doctor take the baby into the TARDIS and travel to UNIT Tower. They make one final wish - that there should be no more wishes.

Opening the Zero Room, they find Poppy still present with Belinda.

Conrad's world has been replaced with the real one. He is now working in a fast food take-away.

Desiderium is taken to Carla Sunday's to be fostered. The Doctor, Belinda and Ruby convene in the TARDIS, planning to travel together. A cot has been set up for Poppy. As they talk, Ruby notices Poppy vanish - but the Doctor and Belinda don't acknowledge this. She argues that they saved the child so must find a way to bring her back, making them remember her.

Everyone at UNIT agrees. The Doctor heads off alone in the TARDIS to try to alter the universe very slightly, so that Poppy will have a place in it. The Thirteenth Doctor appears to try to talk him out of doing this, as it will mean him sacrificing regeneration energy to accomplish.

However, she relents as she comes to realise that this is something he must do - so begins to help him plan how he will achieve this. He channels regeneration energy into the Temporal Vortex, and the TARDIS materialises at Belinda's home. Instead of being a working nurse, sharing a flat, she is now a single mother bringing up Poppy. This is why she had been so desperate to get back to May 24th 2025 - to get back to her child. They make their farewells and he departs, materialising the TARDIS by the star which had once been Joy Almondo. He begins to regenerate, taking on a familiar form - that of his previous traveling companion Rose Tyler...

Wish World and The Reality War were written by Russell T Davies, and were first broadcast on Saturdays 24th and 31st May 2025.

They bring the 15th season of the revived series to a close - but do so in a deeply dissatisfying manner.

In fact, they pretty much kill the entire series off...

There are only two real problems with the story: everything we see on screen, and everything that was going on behind the scenes.

We'll start with the latter, as this informs much of what happens in the story itself. The deal with Disney was for three 60th Anniversary Specials, 16 standard episodes, plus a couple of Christmas Specials and a five-part spin-off series centring on UNIT. Any decision on extending this deal to a third series was reliant on how well the standard episodes did, as the Specials always attracted bigger than usual audiences anyway. 

Production on Series 14 had been delayed and its schedule amended due to the availability of Ncuti Gatwa, who was making a name for himself in films. Many fans thought that he would not stay in the role long because of this - naturally wishing to take on more lucrative roles and capitalise on this recent success.

Disney are notorious for keeping viewing figures secret, but we know from the BBC ones that viewing numbers were not good, with some of the lowest ever audiences for the series (falling well below 2 million for some episodes).

Concerns grew when Disney and Bad Wolf claimed that any decision on a third series would only come after the first two had aired and, as time passed, this began to look increasingly unlikely. If Disney were happy with what they were seeing, wouldn't they have simply pushed ahead so that another series would be ready for the same time next year? Disney themselves were in some difficulties, with a number of projects failing to take off - including Star Wars vehicles - and they were under pressure from more successful streaming providers. 

Gatwa then made the decision to quit, though this wasn't publicly announced. His departure meant that RTD2 had to significantly restructure what he intended for the Series 15 finale. To do this, the ending had to be dropped entirely and a new one written to tie up the series arc, and bring the Fifteenth Doctor's story to a close.

In terms of the actual episodes themselves, we have issues. 

Wish World is built purely on the idea that all the regulars are playing alternative versions of themselves. That's the joke. The Doctor is insurance broker John Smith, who dresses in pinstripe suit and bowler. Mel's the housewife who lives next door. The UNIT gang are mostly rather dull office workers. We get the set-up, and it's interesting and a little bit funny. But then it turns out that this is pretty much all we are going to get for the whole of the episode. It marks time, waiting for the rapid build-up to the climax - but we're pretty bored by this point.

The idea that this is all leading to the return of Omega fails to excite anyone - as we'd seen RTD2 do exactly the same thing last time with Sutekh, who turned out to be a huge disappointment as he bore no relation to the story which had made him such a great villain in the first place. Unlike last time, we don't actually get to Omega yet, and instead see London being turned inside out as the Underverse is revealed. This looks great - but we know that there's going to be a big reset the very next week.

And it turns out to be a literal reset, as Time automatically goes back a day at midnight and this has been going on every 24 hours for a while. The Rani's plan is to generate doubt - enough of which will fracture a deliberately manufactured reality, and the increasing use of disinformation in politics and society is one of the things which RTD2 is trying to highlight. It's all rather reminiscent of The Lie of the Land, however, with people being arrested for "thought crimes", challenging the new norm. He is also trying to highlight society's blind spot towards marginalised groups like the disabled.

Mrs Flood's role in the episode is quite redundant, Anita Dobson being kept on purely because RTD2 liked working with her it seems. She's reduced to a servile role - which was never the relationship between any of the Doctor's incarnations with each other. I assume Davies was looking to Urak in Time and the Rani - an obsequious servant of the Rani modelled on Uriah Heep.

Other problems include the fantastical way the Rani deals with the baby's family - just a bit too fairy tale.

The episode ends with the Doctor acknowledging that Poppy really is his child, but this doesn't go anywhere...

Even if we didn't know that this was to be the end of the Gatwa era, it has a finale walk-down feel. Lots of elements from his two series and specials are re-introduced. The Doctor is saved at the beginning of The Reality War by the sudden reappearance of Anita from Joy to the World. She has been using the Time Hotel to dip in and out of his history, allowing for a Dalek cameo as she witnesses his interrogation by them in Day of the Daleks. From the same story, the Doctor's regeneration takes place as the TARDIS orbits the star which Joy turned into. 

Conrad returns as the guiding force behind "Wish World" and Desiderium is the latest of the deities of the Pantheon of Discord, who have been the main enemy since The Giggle, but owe their appearance to an incident in Wild Blue Yonder.

Poppy, from Space Babies, plays a significant role in proceedings, and Susan Triad is back from Series 14, now working with UNIT (and their tea lady in the Wish World version). 

Last - and definitely least - is a cameo by Rogue.

The final episode sees the Doctor back to his usual self - even paying attention to how he looks by adapting his suit into a pinstripe kilt affair. The companion is supposed to be Belinda Chandra, but you wouldn't think so looking at this story. In the first half she is the alternate version of herself, and it is Ruby who is the independent one investigating what is wrong with the world. In the second half, Belinda is shoved into a Zero Room - preposterously cobbled together by Triad in about half an hour - and left there for most of the episode, having no role to play in the actual adventure.

She then goes from being an independent career-minded woman to being a single mother, which some have argued is a backward step. It was Conrad who, in his idealised world, thought that the only role for women was to be good wives and then good mothers.

It is Ruby who fulfils the companion role in The Reality War, being the one to confront Conrad and finally defeat him. She had also been given that substantial role in his introductory episode - Lucky Day - and you have to wonder why RTD2 even bothered dropping her and introducing a new companion in the first place, especially if there was always a question mark over any third series.

Belinda has to be one of the least developed companions ever, never really making an impact on the series.

If Belinda has little role to play, we also get reappearances by two of the most pointless characters in the series - Rose Noble and the Vlinx. Rose has been wheeled out before to no apparent purpose, and the Vlinx simply looks like a waste of VFX budget as it never seems to do anything Shirley can't do just as well.

The big disappointments, before we get to that ending, are Omega and the Rani. The latter, because Archie Panjabi has been quite wasted in the role. She is killed off rather too quickly, whereas it really ought to have been Mrs Flood who was the one to perish - allowing for the new Rani to make return appearances had the series continued. When we do see her, at least they have managed to make the character out to be different to Missy, which was always going to be a danger. She does flirt a bit with the Doctor and claims to have loved him, but not to the extent of the warped relationship between Missy and the Twelfth Doctor.

As for Omega... Well, we all saw how RTD2 screwed up the return of Sutekh as a big CGI monstrosity, and he does it again. The new Omega is a huge CGI zombie who bears no relationship to the character created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, and who was played by Stephen Thorne and then by Ian Collier. The only nod to the past is the name, and the fact that the seal on his vault is based on a design element of the Arc of Infinity Omega, a chest plaque which bore the initials of prop and costume maker Richard Gregory. 

The Doctor here states that Omega was expelled by the Time Lords for being insane - which goes against his established history, where he was accidentally thrown into the universe of anti-matter, and the Time Lords didn't even know he'd survived until he started attacking them in The Three Doctors.

Sutekh was only a god in the minds of superstitious ancient Egyptians, and Omega simply thought he ought to have been treated as a god by the Time Lords. Neither were ever actual deities.

RTD2 might just as well have created his own new unique monster as spoil the memory of an existing one. If you're going to change an old monster beyond all recognition, then what is the point of bringing them back?

And so we come to the ending. Ordinarily this would have simply been yet another poor anticlimax, but its reputation is going to be sunk even lower by what will happen next...

As mentioned, Gatwa had decided to quit, and I'm going to make the assumption that RTD2 was already aware that Disney weren't happy and a third series was becoming increasingly unlikely - even if this wasn't actually confirmed to be the case. Therefore we can say that events weren't entirely within his control. Presented with the need to make a drastic change, we should have expected better than what we got.

I've already talked about how disappointing the conclusion to Belinda's story arc was. The Rani and Omega are both despatched all too quickly and easily with almost half the episode still to run, so we get an extended conclusion based around Poppy, who seems to have no connection whatsoever to the character we saw in Space Babies.

The Doctor has regenerated saving his companions, or saving the entire universe, but here he gives up his life for a child who wasn't even supposed to exist. He is helped in his decision-making more by Ruby than Belinda, and by a previous incarnation. Whilst it was nice to see Jodie Whittaker get a chance to come back, it really ought to have been the Fourteenth Doctor who fulfilled this role, as he was the bi-generation one who was there when this incarnation was born. That would really have brought the Fifteenth Doctor's story full circle.

Then there's the role of Susan. What role, you may ask? Exactly. After re-introducing her in The Interstellar Song Contest, and leading everyone to believe she is going to have some significance for the finale, Carole Ann Ford gets one tiny glimpse - seen on Smith's TV. We know that she was supposed to feature properly in at least one full new scene, as she has told us so. A sequence of the Doctor and Belinda dancing in a club was recorded, which we know about as the BBC released a publicity photograph of it in advance of the broadcast. This scene was supposed to have been observed by Susan and Poppy, with the former calling the child "mother" as they slipped away after watching the pair dance. This would have been the ending had RTD2 not had to shoehorn in a regeneration.

Everyone agrees that getting Billie Piper in for final shot was purely as a form of click-bait, to get people speculating. Little more than a stunt by a desperate showrunner, really.

Overall, boring first half, dreadful second half. Even without the cobbled together ending, this was hugely disappointing. It may not have been the cause of what was announced in June 2026, but it will now be seen as the coup de grace for an entire era of the show, embodying many of the things which went wrong with the revived series in its final two years...

Things you might like to know:

• Nods to the more distant past of the series include the use of a Time Ring - first introduced in Genesis of the Daleks and seen again in Revenge of the Cybermen.
• The Zero Room was an area of the TARDIS seen in Castrovalva, though the Doctor says they are not unique to TARDISes as he recalls one under the Junior Senate Block on Gallifrey.
• Mel had previously encountered the Rani in Time and the Rani, where the Time Lady had impersonated her.
• Jonathan Groff filmed his cameo as Rogue back when making his original episode in Series 14.
• As well as a scene from Day of the Daleks, we also see Anita observe the Doctor playing Live Chess in The Wedding of River Song, and dancing with Rogue.
• There are clips of all the previous Doctors as John Smith starts to remember his true identity. The Hartnell one is actually the Abbot of Amboise (The Massacre) rather than the Doctor - presumably a recoloured clip from The Time Meddler, turning his monk's habit white.
• Project Indigo was first seen in The Stolen Earth, when used by Martha Jones to escape the destruction of UNIT's New York base, and to travel to Germany and to the Dalek Crucible.
• Conrad's "Doctor Who" books are written by I.M. Foreman. If I have to tell you that name's significance then you really must be new to the series. The book titles refer to actual Doctor Who episodes, such as "Doctor Who and the Pandorica", "Doctor Who and the Big Bad Wolf" or "Doctor Who and the Timeless Children".
• All of Shirley's group were played by people with disabilities. Amongst them was YouTuber Thomas Harries, who vlogs as "Tharries".
• On the collapse of Conrad's world, the real world has some slight discrepancies from the one we know - such as the border between Sweden and Norway differing by a few miles, and actor Ernest Borgnine still being alive.
• Whittaker wore a blonde wig for her return as she had long dark hair at the time. The code used by the production team for her surprise appearance, which Gatwa didn't know about until the last minute, was "Petrol" - a name RTD2 had considered for a companion.
• The Doctor sets up his initial meeting with Belinda by throwing her star certificate into space for it to be found by the Robots who will later come to abduct her.
• Anita tells the Doctor that "the Boss" sends his regards. This character was first mentioned by the Meep in The Star Beast, then again by members of the Pantheon. It was clearly meant to have some later significance, but obviously won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Postscript:

"It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."

Shortly after the broadcast of The Reality War, RTD2 announced that the Doctor would return in a Christmas Special where the questions about the regeneration would be answered - though fans would have to wait until December 2026 to find out.

The final Disney co-produced episodes were broadcast in December 2025 on the BBC - the five part The War Between the Land and the Sea, which pitted UNIT against the Sea Devils. Six months later, at time of writing, Disney appear to have no appetite to show this spin-off series. This might suggest that the Disney+ viewing figures really weren't very good at all. 

(By now, most non-UK people who might have watched it will either have used a VPN to access it, or will have bought it on physical media if they have a region free player).

It was then confirmed in October 2025 that Disney would not be renewing their partnership with Bad Wolf - something which came as no surprise to fans. The Special was still going ahead. Lindsay Salt, Director of Drama at the BBC, was quoted at the time as saying "... and we are delighted that Russell T Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas Special for 2026."

As time went by, however, fans started to become concerned when there were no signs of any production work going on for this festive episode, though composer Murray Gold stated in an interview that he knew of several different versions of the script.

On 10th June, 2026, it was then announced that not only was the Christmas Special cancelled, but the BBC were putting the series out to competitive tender. Bad Wolf and Davies would no longer be involved in its production - and he claimed that there had never been a Special. 

This had been announced purely as a placeholder statement whilst they worked out what they were going to do next - proving that the deal with Disney was already dead back in June 2025. It also makes the BBC's Director of Drama out to be a liar, or someone who has been lied to.

The only project still on-going is the proposed animated series for younger children.

The series is therefore at worst cancelled, and at best on an enforced hiatus until someone else is prepared to take on what has become a failing property. The earliest we might see any new Doctor Who would be 2028, though many think the programme really needs to be rested longer than that - and something like 2030 - 25th Anniversary of the revived series - or even the 70th Anniversary might be a more likely, and preferable, relaunch date.

So what went wrong? Much of the blame is naturally being placed on Davies, for giving us a series which the general public had no interest in, and which the fans disliked. However, he had been brought back to rescue a programme that was already failing - so we really have to go back to Chris Chibnall's time in charge. After a lacklustre first season, which ignored old favourite aliens and presented a Doctor who was far from proactive in her own series, Chibnall decided to go heavy on continuity. Rather than build on what was already established, which could be accommodated within the existing narrative of the series, he elected to meddle with its very foundations. As any good builder or architect would tell you, you don't mess about with the foundations unless you really know what you are doing and the structure is stable. Doctor Who was perfectly fine as it was - the tale of a mysterious old man who fled his home planet with his granddaughter Susan, whom we first met in a junkyard at No.76 Totters Lane one evening in November 1963. We would later find out that he was a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey. That was the foundation of the series for the next five and half decades, and we were perfectly comfortable with it. Even the general public knew this much about who the Doctor was.

Chibnall clearly felt that he couldn't simply act as caretaker of the series, as a good showrunner should. He felt he had to make his mark by doing something new with the series. He decided that not only was the Doctor an immortal being from another universe and not a Time Lord at all, but there had been lots and lots of other Doctors before the one played by William Hartnell. 

To the casual viewer, this was of no interest whatsoever - but to the fans this was a heresy. Not only was there no reason to introduce this, and it failed to fit with everything we had seen before as far as the Time Lords were concerned, but it also looked rubbish in practice as we only ever got to see the one incarnation turning up every so often - one that the Doctor isn't even supposed to remember.

Apart from the odd appearance of the Fugitive or mention of his orphan status, the whole concept has virtually been ignored ever since anyway - so what was the point? All Chibnall achieved from his three years in charge was, in the end, the undying hatred of the fans.

He jumped, or was more likely pushed (would someone claiming to be a fan really quit just before a big anniversary?) and the next thing we knew was that Russell T Davies was coming back - which certainly looked like he was being brought in to rescue the series. His tenure after the series returned in 2005 had been generally well regarded and the reaction to his return was positive. The programme couldn't get any worse, was the general feeling...

Things started well enough, with news that David Tennant would be back with Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, in a trio of special episodes for the 60th Anniversary. The first of these was an adaptation of one of the best-loved DWW comic strips, whilst the third would see the return of the Toymaker, before the relatively unknown Ncuti Gatwa took on the role as the on-going new Doctor.

There was some absolute nonsense concerning the numbering of the series, just to keep the House of Mouse happy - but then came Space Babies... 

It was farting Slitheen and burping wheelie bins all over again.

But it's really what happened in the often overlooked middle anniversary special which would prove to be a contributory part of the series' downfall, however.

In Wild Blue Yonder, on a spaceship on the border between two realities, the Doctor resorts to an old superstition involving salt. The Toymaker, as a pre-existing figure, didn't need any excuse to be brought back, but Davies used this incident to introduce a whole pantheon of deities, characters who were usually presented as camp and over the top personalities. Any notion that the series had scientific credentials went out the window as magic became the norm. In the past, magic had always been explained away as only looking like it, but actually having an alien / scientific basis - The Daemons being a prime example.

With his new gods to play with, RTD2 pretty much dispensed with returning monsters other than one he had himself created in the Midnight entity, until it came to the series finales. I've already said above what I think went wrong with this last one, and you can find my opinion of Empire of Death elsewhere. The failings of both are very similar, because he pretty much followed the same flawed formula for both seasons (see below).

One significant complaint, as far as some fans were concerned, was the use of the series as a soapbox. Doctor Who has always had a political edge, covering ecological issues as far back as Planet of Giants for instance, whilst the Daleks have always been a warning of the dangers of Fascism and racial hatred.

From Chibnall onwards, the messaging in the series was becoming more overt, to the point that the audience was actually being lectured at, rather than to. Davies seemed content to continue this trend, albeit sometimes with more subtlety. There are those - and here I exclude myself - who think there is no place at all for politics or the promotion of certain personal or ideological agendas in a family adventure series, which should stick to telling good old-fashioned story-telling. Davies would argue that you can - and should - do both. If done well, where the messaging is properly integrated and relevant to the overall story, I'd agree with him - provided the story comes first, otherwise the tail is wagging the dog. Viewers just don't like being harangued, which is all some stories like Orphan 55 managed to achieve. If you want to get a message across, don't do it in such a way that people feel insulted and stop watching. (I've always argued that we Doctor Who fans are an enlightened bunch anyway, so they were simply preaching to the converted. The people they might have wanted to reach weren't watching).

We also have to look at the Doctor himself, both as a character and as a performance. Whittaker is a very good actor, but was badly served by scripts. I've no doubt that Gatwa will go on to become a very fine actor, but at present he simply hasn't demonstrated the range I would look for in a great one. He has tended to play the same sort of role which aligns with his own personality. He's playing himself most of the time, and failing to inhabit the character.

The Fifteenth Doctor never worked for me as he was too shallow, vain and fashion-obsessed, and failed to get across any genuine emotion. Bursting into tears at the drop of a hat is okay if the audience at home are feeling the same way. (We weren't). The one time we do get some real emotion from him, it's all negative - as he threatens then tortures Kid, who has been driven to extremes of terrorism out of what happened to his planet. If we're supposed to be seeing a darker side to the Doctor's nature, it is badly handled.

There was never the sense that this was an old man in a young man's body, in the manner achieved so successfully by Matt Smith.

With only eight episodes per season nowadays, it certainly doesn't help when the Doctor hardly features in some.

We've also had a run of poorly developed companions, supposedly the audience identification figures - another victim of the shortened seasons. They really ought to have stuck with Ruby for the duration. Just look how Millie Gibson carried 73 Yards and Lucky Day.

As for UNIT, well it's become a travesty of the original intention. An Avengers rip-off HQ and seemingly infinite amounts of technology which simply shouldn't exist in a contemporary setting. It's interesting to note that the Sea Devil spin-off dispenses with all of this. When the series returns, they really ought to get back to basics with UNIT and strip them of all these plot-convenience devices. Scrap the Vlinx and, if you really must have Rose Noble show up, for goodness sake give her something meaningful to do, beyond play the part of the token Trans character (because that's exactly what it feels like).

Lastly, one of the main problems I think hamstrung the RTD2 era was the way in which the two series were produced. Look at the production dates and you can see that Series 15 was being made a year or so before it was broadcast. I think that Bad Wolf and Disney knew there were problems back in 2024, but it was too late to change course and make the necessary changes for the second year. They were already committed to more of the same as it was already in the can, as it were, when they realised that people were critical of Series 14. 

Just look at the series' structure to see how RTD2 was sticking to a formula:

(1) Outer space romp, (2) recent historical setting with a member of the Pantheon, (3) Space soldiers on hostile alien planet with an element from the past (Vilengard / Midnight), (4) Ruby-centric folk horror tale which doglegs into something political, (5) a story in which the Doctor's current ethnicity is a factor, (6) a story inspired by current popular culture (Bridgerton / Eurovision), and (7 & 8) a finale which ineptly handles the return of a big villain from the series' past, now shoehorned into the Pantheon.

For the story arc, just have the same mature woman show up in a different guise every week.

Personally I do think, for some of the stand-alone episodes at least, that Series 15 was the better of the two, if only because we were spared a sequel to Space Babies.

There were other problems with the last two series, but for me these have been the main ones.

To sum up: was what has just happened inevitable? I'd say it was. The series has been mucked about with over the last few years and run into the ground, and by professional fan writers who really ought to have known better. I'd much rather that the series was rested than have it turn into the joke it was back in the second half of 1980's.

I was there in 1985 when the series was placed on an 18 month hiatus. I was there in 1989 when it was cancelled. I was there in 1996 when we had the false dawn of the TV Movie. I've experienced the wilderness years. I survived. We survived.

The BBC may not always be honest, but they are telling the truth when they say that Doctor Who is important to them. It has an infinitely variable format - which is why sticking to one thing like pantheons of gods, or any sort of formula, is a really stupid idea. If done well, it has proven itself time and time again that it can be popular. It has also proven, on more than one occasion, that sometimes it needs to lie fallow and, well, regenerate.

It will be back, of that there is no doubt. It's just a matter of Time.

Episodes - Afterlife: The Quarks

Thanks mainly to the falling out between writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, and the production team of Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin, the Quarks were never to return to the series - at least not in any new adventure of their own. That, and the fact that the latter pair really weren't at all happy with The Dominators as a story.

It's a pity, as the costumes probably cost a bit of money, in a season that was stretched financially, and they are such a distinctive shape - lessened slightly by coming so close after the Servo Robot perhaps.

We did get to see one of the robots on screen at the end of the season, when the Doctor requested a thought channel during his trial to show the Time Lords some of the dangers he had fought whilst they were content to simply observe. The Quarks were deemed as threatening as the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Yeti.

The Quark was operated in studio by Freddie Wilson, one of the three stage school pupils who had performed this task in The Dominators.

The producer and script editor had been looking for a new monster that could be brought back for rematches with the Doctor, in place of the Daleks and to give the Cybermen a rest. The writers, on the other hand, had been looking for a lucrative merchandising deal that might have matched that previously negotiated with Terry Nation.

Another element of the falling-out had been over the rights to use the Quarks (and Dominators) in TV Comic. The BBC had pressed ahead with this in late May 1968, without proper consultation with Haisman and Lincoln. For a period of 12 months, the Quarks could be used in the "Dr. Who" comic strip, though the Dominators themselves would never appear.

The robots made their first appearance in Invasion of the Quarks (issues 872 - 876, August / September 1968). This had a setting of Claw Castle in Scotland, and the Doctor - as you can see from the panel above - claims never to have encountered them before, though he has heard of their "unparalleled" reputation for destruction. The thing about the Quarks in the comic strip is that they are now entirely independent of the Dominators - a destructive force in their own right.

After a warning from a fortune teller of great danger ahead, the Doctor ditches grandchildren John and Gillian at Zebadee University, and continues on to Scotland, where he is reunited with Jamie McCrimmon - even though the story is set in the 1960's.

The Doctor and Jamie steal a Quark saucer and fire upon their approaching invasion fleet, causing confusion as the robots don't know which ship is firing at them. The invasion is thwarted, and the Quark leadership, back on their home planet, vow revenge.

Interestingly, had the writers not had their big falling-out, a Scottish castle would have formed the backdrop to a further Yeti / Great Intelligence story.

The Quark revenge came quickly - in the very next story in fact. The Killer Wasps (issues 877 - 880, October 1968) has to be one of the oddest stories ever. The Quarks grow giant wasps to attack the Doctor and Jamie on the planet Gano. However, the oversized insects attack their own masters, allowing them both to flee back to the TARDIS.

The Quarks have a "Death Chant" in this story, and a secret laboratory on their home planet sign-posted "Secret Laboratory"...

After an interlude with Ice Apes, the Doctor and Jamie encountered the Quarks once more in Jungle of Doom (issues 885 - 889, November / December 1968).

In this, the Quarks just happen to come across the Doctor and start off by trying to bury the TARDIS under a rockfall. The Doctor and Jamie are aided by some workers clearing the jungle nearby, and at one point a bulldozer is used to attack the robots. The Quarks counter by getting the natives to attack the interlopers, but the Doctor starts a stampede of local wildlife which destroys the Quark force.

After another brief gap, the Quarks returned in yet another oddity - Martha The Mechanical Housemaid. This appeared in issues 894 - 898, through February 1969. 

This one sees the Doctor as a famous inventor, who appears on American TV demonstrating his amazing household-helping robot invention. The Quarks find out about this and plan on taking over the "Martha" robots, employing them for their own ends. The Doctor regains control over the "Marthas" and a war breaks out between them and the Quarks, which rages across the USA. By the end, after the Quarks have been defeated, the Doctor is being put forward as President of the USA...

This is the last of the strips to feature Jamie.

The Quarks were back in the following story, however. This was The Duellists (issues 899 - 902, March 1969). Despite the apparent Regency England setting, this actually takes place in 2044 on the Earth colony world of Hekton. A group has set up a Regency-inspired society here, and indulge in all manner of cruel sports. The Quarks are around - ready to kill the Doctor if he survives the various ordeals the men put him through. The Doctor simply manages to escape back to the TARDIS, without doing anything about the nasty colonists or the Quarks.

This was to be the final appearance of the Quarks in the comic.

Doctor Who Monthly used to run Doctor-less back-up strips featuring characters from the series, and in issue 64 (April 1984) the Quarks made a return appearance more in keeping with their origins. In The Fires Down Below, they were simply the robot servants of the Dominators once again.

The plot has similarities with parts of The Power of the Doctor, in that we have an alien force trying to trigger volcanoes to cause devastation on Earth. Here, a UNIT squad investigate seismic activity at an Icelandic volcano and find the Dominators preparing to set it off, aided by Quarks. UNIT activate the Dominators' own equipment prematurely to destroy them.

Due to their distinctive shape, Quarks have also appeared as background figures in a couple of the lead DWM strips, in panels involving large groups of creatures and robots.

A further comic strip outing for the Quarks, serving the Dominators again, came in IDW's 50th Anniversary epic Prisoners of Time. The Quarks featured in the Tenth Doctor / Martha Jones section titled Quiet on the Set, which was centred on 1950's Hollywood. In this, the Dominators are going to use the movies to enslave the human race through subliminal messages. The Doctor exploits the Quarks' clunky design against them, and basically just chases the Dominators off the planet.

More recently, Candy Jar Books have begun publishing works based around characters created by Haisman and Lincoln, with the blessing of the writers' estates. Ironically, the range has expanded to include characters created by Derrick Sherwin, such as Benton and Tobias Vaughn.

The first batch centred around the Brigadier, and have featured the likes of Professor Travers and his daughter, and the Great Intelligence. The Dominators appear in several books, not always accompanied by Quarks. Two which do feature the robots are those pictured above - "Mutually Assured Domination" and "Legacy of the Dominator".

You'll find the full range on their website.

Episode 214: The Dominators (5)

Synopsis:

Toba orders a Quark to kill the prisoners one by one until they tell him where Cully and Jamie are.

Educator Balan is the first to suffer, and Toba informs the Doctor that he will be next to die...

As the robot confronts him, Rago suddenly returns from his trip to the Capitol. Once again he berates his underling for wasting resources, referring both to the energy levels of the Quarks and the destruction of their labour force. He demands to know progress on the drilling, and Toba announces that the perimeter boreholes are completed, with rockets primed, but work has yet to begin on the central one. Rago warns his Probationer that he will be left to die on this planet if he does not complete the work on schedule. He asks if the atomic seed capsule is at critical mass, and Toba checks an egg-shaped metallic object. He reports it is almost ready, then is sent to ensure the central bore hole is completed, taking the captives with him.

Rago then contacts their Fleet Leader for feedback on the use of the Dulcians as slave labour.

Jamie and Cully are in the bomb shelter, planning their next attack on the Quarks. Through the periscope, they see the Doctor and the others arrive outside the museum, for this is where the central borehole is to be drilled.

They decide to free the prisoners and bring them down here. Jamie takes a sheet off the bed, and slips outside to try to tie up the legs of one of the Quarks. Seeing him, the Doctor creates a diversion and the Quark is overpowered. Everyone escapes into the shelter.

On hearing the alarm, Toba rushes to the scene. He is ordering the Quarks to seek out and destroy the captives when Rago appears and countermands the order.

He points out that the Quarks have barely sufficient power to complete the drilling and cannot be wasted on searches. He tells Toba that the Fleet Leader has advised that the Dulcians would not be suitable as a slave labour force, and so their escaped prisoners will die soon enough along with the rest of their people once their work is done.

The quicker they finish, the sooner they will see them perish.

In the shelter, the Doctor explains the Dominator plan to the others. They know that their spaceships absorb radiation to use as a power source. The outer crust of Dulkis has been found to be at its thinnest here. The Dominators are drilling down into the molten magma, which will trigger a volcanic holocaust into which a powerful source of radiation will be introduced - the atomic seed capsule. The planet will be transformed into a radioactive mass, which will act as fuel for the Dominator fleet. The Dulcians will be wiped out, their planet destroyed.

He points out that the central bore hole, which is the one down which the capsule will be dropped, is the one only a short distance from the museum building.

Jamie suggests digging a tunnel from the shelter to the borehole, using the periscope to align it. The Doctor agrees. They will need time, so the drilling must be disrupted as much as possible.

Once they get the direction, he starts off the tunnel using his sonic screwdriver to burn through the shelter wall.

As the others take turns digging, he and Zoe mix up some chemicals from the medical kit - creating a small explosive. Jamie and Cully will go back on the hunt, now armed, to try to wreck as many Quarks as they can find and so hinder the drilling.

They destroy a small group of the robots. Toba is forced to restrain himself from going off to kill the attackers. When Rago appears, the Probationer angrily claims that he should have been allowed to destroy the Dulcians earlier. Rago indicates that they only have eight remaining Quarks, which is only just enough to complete the drilling. He sends Toba to the museum site.

However, Jamie and Cully then attack Toba's party at the central bore, halting the drilling.

Rago orders him to continue his work, as he will personally deal with their attackers. He organises the remaining Quarks to form a pincer movement which will trap Jamie and Cully. This almost succeeds, and Cully is hit. Luckily, the low energy reserves of the robots means he has only suffered a temporary paralysis in the arm.

Jamie manages to get him back to the bomb shelter.

Through the periscope, they are shocked to see that the central borehole is complete, whilst they have a few more feet to excavate. They see Rago approach the hole with the atomic seed capsule.

The Doctor completes the tunnel just as the capsule is dropped, and he succeeds in catching it. 

He is alarmed to find that it is perfectly sealed, however, and he will not be able to open and defuse it. As it could be detonated at any moment, he realises that they must get it off the planet immediately - and there is only one way of achieving this.

Rago and Toba return to their ship, preparing to contact their fleet to approach the planet for refuelling.

The Doctor rushes out of the museum, running with the capsule towards the Dominator spaceship which is just about to lift off.

The Doctor slips it inside the main entrance, narrowly avoiding becoming trapped with it as the doors close.

The ship takes off.

Rago and Toba spot the capsule too late. Before they can halt the countdown or eject it from the ship, it explodes and the craft is obliterated. The rockets at the perimeter bore holes have been detonated, witnessed by the Doctor and his companions as they reach the TARDIS - the young Dulcians having been sent to use the travel capsule to return to the mainland.

The Doctor explains that there will be a volcanic disturbance, but it will be confined to the island. 

Jamie points out to the Doctor that this is where they are - and they see a torrent of lava bearing down on them...

Next time: The Mind Robber

Data

Written by Norman Ashby

Recorded: Friday 14th June 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 7th September 1968

Ratings: 5.9 million / AI 53

VFX: Ron Oates

Designer: Barry Newbury

Director: Morris Barry

Critique:

As we said last time, Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman had submitted a script for Episode 5 of this story, only to be told the very same day that Derrick Sherwin and Terrance Dicks had rewritten the fourth instalment and were going to wrap the adventure up in only five parts instead of six. Presumably very little of what we see here is theirs.

The conflict between the writers and the production team extended beyond the troubled writing of the story, however. Originally asked to come up with a new monster which might replace the Daleks as a recurring foe, the prospect of merchandising opportunities was also very much on the minds of the creators of the Quark robots.

With their relationship already strained, you can imagine how the writers felt when they discovered that the BBC had already given permission for the Quarks to appear in the "Dr Who" strip in TV Comic.

This had been agreed on Thursday 23rd May, between the BBC and Polystyle Publications, and allowed the use of the Quarks for up to 12 months in the strip.

Haisman and Lincoln, however, had entered into negotiations with Walter Tuckwell - the man who marketed the Daleks for Terry Nation - in the belief that they owned the Quarks outright, and had even copyrighted the name.

The writers also claimed that the actual design was theirs, or near enough to take legal action over. When DWM covered this story in their 'Archives' feature (Issue 262), they published a drawing of the Quark as the writers had envisioned it. This wasn't contemporary with the production, however, but drawn much more recently from memory. 

We see a square box with a dome covering the top - not a globe - and which has a pair of eyes to the sides. Two tiny caterpillar tracks can be seen on the bottom of the box, and emerging from the sides are a pair of spindly metal arms. The writers did specify that these were intended to accept different attachments of weapons or tools.

Other than the box-like body, there's no similarity between their design and Martin Baugh's final version, which Sherwin also claimed to have had a hand in. 

A meeting was held in July with John Henderson of the BBC's Copyright Department, to discuss the conflicting opinions over ownership. As well as the writers and Bryant and Sherwin, present at this meeting were Baugh and Dicks. Baugh claimed never to have seen the sketch put forward to the production team, and Sherwin stated that he had come up with a rough draft based around the Servo Robot from The Wheel in Space, adding the arms which folded into the body. Both Sherwin and Bryant explained that the writers had been asked to incorporate a new monster, so the idea came from them originally.

Henderson agreed that the writers could have 25% ownership.

There was also confusion over the TV Comic deal, which the writers had hoped would include both the Dominators and the Quarks. The meeting ended with the 25% offer, whereas Haisman asked for a lump sum rather than a percentage. This was refused.

The following Monday, the writers came back with a request for a lump sum of £5000 and 65%, plus a deal with Tuckwell, whilst the BBC countered that there would be no commercial exploitation of the Quarks, or the Yeti, unless the 25% offer was accepted.

The arguments continued until the writers threatened to pull the story entirely, as well as barring the use of the Quarks in the comic strip, by seeking an injunction. The BBC then settled for an undisclosed sum - but it was the last time the writers were involved with Doctor Who, permission already having been given back in May for the reuse of the Lethbridge-Stewart character from The Web of Fear in a forthcoming Cyberman story. "The Laird of McCrimmon" - a third Great Intelligence / Yeti story, which would have written out Jamie - never got beyond the outline stage.

In a later interview, Haisman claimed that Henderson had come down fully on their side and reprimanded the production team, but what paperwork survives disputes this.

Whilst the robots were allowed to appear in TV Comic, the Dominators would be nowhere to be seen. The comic strip Quarks now operated as an independent and autonomous hostile force - as we'll see in the next "Episodes: Afterlife" post...

Much of the location filming we see in this episode was conducted between the Gerrards Cross and Kent sandpits between Thursday 25th April and Friday 3rd May. It was on the final day at the Gerrards Cross location that Artur Cox sustained an injury to his ankle, requiring his leg to be put in plaster.

Hines and Cox were filmed running around the locations as they first attacked the Quarks, and then began to be hunted down by them. At one point Hines seems to slip out of character as Jamie apologises to Cully for having stumbled on the sandy surface, so probably an ad lib by the actor to his colleague.

The filming at Gerrards Cross on Thursday 2nd May was in place of a day's work originally scheduled for Ealing, which the director sacrificed in order to get all the location material he wanted.

A second extra day was then organised for Friday 3rd May, when only the Quarks and actors Ronald Allen and Kenneth Ives were required.

We know that Chris Jeffries was present at Gerrards Cross on the very first day of filming, so the sequence where the Doctor runs towards the Dominator ship with the seed capsule was presumably filmed on that day. It is noticeable on screen that Troughton is being doubled in this scene.

The model filming for the final episode had taken place on Friday 26th April, at the Puppet Theatre in Television Centre. The lift-off of the Dominator ship was simply the film of its landing in Episode 1 reversed. Its explosive destruction was filmed during this session.

The burning of the wall with the sonic screwdriver was filmed at Ealing on Tuesday 30th April.

 

The final studio recording on the story began with a filmed reprise of Balan's death. An extra then stood in for Johnson Bayly for the remainder of the scene.

A camera inlay was used to indicate the view through the bomb shelter's periscope.

This is the earliest surviving episode to feature the sonic screwdriver, and here we see a pen torch being used as the prop - identical to one which William Hartnell had used in The Brink of Destruction, where the Doctor employed it to demonstrate to Susan what had gone wrong with the Fast Return Switch.

An overhead mirror shot was used to show the Doctor sketching out the Dominator plan on a table top with a chinagraph pen, as used to mark film reels for editing.

The Doctor describes the pills from the shelter medical kit as "No. 9 Pills". This probably comes from Troughton himself as an ex-Royal Navy man. During the First and Second World Wars, the British military issued these to troops as a laxative...

A small flash charge was rigged to be detonated when Troughton threw the homemade bomb behind him.

Recording breaks were mostly to allow cast movements from set to set, and to set up the chaotic scene after Toba and the drilling party have been attacked.

The end credits ran over stock footage of a volcanic eruption - that of Surtsey Island, off Iceland, in November 1963.

There were two small cuts to the ends of scenes made in editing. The first was the Doctor hurriedly telling Cully to give his regards to his father, and the second featured Toba vainly trying to stop the countdown for the seed capsule's detonation.

The Dominators was sold as 16mm film prints to a number of territories, one of which was Australia where a number of sequences, mostly from the fourth and fifth instalments, were cut prior to broadcast. These included the deaths of Tensa and Balan, and the torture of Teel. The BBC Film Library had retained 16mm copies of all but Episode 3. The British Film Institute held the censored Australian copies, plus a 35mm copy of Episode 3. An uncut version of Episode 5 was later loaned to the BBC by a private collector for copying, and the Australian censor cuts then turned up in 1996. The complete unedited version of the story was only to be found on the DVD release, as the earlier VHS release did not feature the cut scenes.

The paperwork accompanying the overseas sales of the story still had Haisman and Lincoln listed as the writers.

I'll make a confession here, and that is that I actually rather like The Dominators - but in the sense that I adore cheap 1950's sci-fi and horror B-movies. They're a guilty pleasure.

I certainly don't agree with the political sentiments of the original writers, but this is a perfectly okay adventure. Far from classic, but serviceable.

We have aliens who are threatening a peaceful planet with a sound motivation - not just invasion for no real reason. There's the complication of the native population being pacifists, without weapons or armies to use them. The Doctor and companions arrive, and fortunately meet one local who thinks differently to the societal norm. Together, they decide to take action on their own. We also see Teel, who is initially as committed to pacifist principles as the rest but - through contact with the friendly alien visitors - comes to see their point of view and is prepared to take up the struggle. Haisman and Lincoln may have had a negative view of the younger generation, but hopefully this story ends with people like Cully and Teel representing that generation on Dulkis, ready to shake up their dithering elders.

One thing which does concern, obviously, is what does the Dominator fleet do next? There's a very good chance that they'll simply turn up and obliterate the planet in revenge for the destruction of their ship.

The one silver lining I can see is what I've mentioned a couple of times already. Are the Dominators really as hard as they like to make out? Are they really masters of ten galaxies? If it's all bravado, they might think the Dulcians aren't as weak as Rago stated, and Dulkis is capable of defending itself - so simply steer clear.

We also have to wonder if all Dominator spacecraft have crews as dysfunctional as this one...

Another concern, probably due to the way the story was truncated, is what happens to Cully, Teel and Kando. Hopefully they can all squeeze into that little travel capsule, and Rago hasn't sabotaged it to stop his much needed labour force escaping in it - assuming they have time to find it before the molten lava reaches them. We don't see the Doctor give them any specific directions to find it, assuming he even knows where it is considering it was Rago who used it last. He simply tells Teel to take Cully and Kando to the capsule and return to the Capitol.

A rushed ending is the price to be paid for the condensing of the story's second half into just two episodes.

As well as having a soft spot for the story, I've also loved the Quarks ever since the first Weetabix promotion, and that was long before I ever saw them on screen and heard the malicious child-like voice they were given.

The regulars are also very good in this, with Jamie taking up the action and Zoe, in what is her first proper story as a TARDIS traveller, joining forces with the Doctor to use their scientific knowledge to work out what the Dominators want here. This will be the template for the remainder of the Troughton era: Hines getting the action and Padbury the more cerebral contribution in concert with Troughton's Doctor.

We also get some more Doctor / Jamie humour after the latter suggests digging the tunnel:

The Doctor: "But Jamie, it's a brilliant idea! It's so simple only you could have thought of it".

If the story has a problem, beyond the writers' mean-spirited intentions, it's that it is rather slow to get going - so the idea of cutting it back by an episode was a very good one - even if this was very messily done (more off screen than on). A pity in some ways that Sherwin and Dicks didn't intervene with the narrative sooner.

We also have to lament the loss of a third Yeti story due to the breakdown between the writers and production team, which sounded like a promising one judging by its brief synopsis. The Great Intelligence would have to wait until 2012 to make its return.

Trivia

• The ratings for this story end with a steep drop of more than 1.5 million viewers, though the appreciation figure rallies a little.
• The Doctor was originally to have caught the atomic seed capsule in his woolly hat, as worn in Fury From The Deep - something added by Sherwin.
• A BBC Audience Research Report was prepared on 19th September, looking at the opening instalment of The Dominators. Whilst Troughton and Hines were praised, some felt the series had now ceased to hold any interest or appeal, the Quarks were just "square Daleks", and stories were too fantastical now that there were no more purely historical stories. It was generally felt to be an "unrewarding" story.
• This would prove to be Morris Barry's final contribution to the series as a director. He would go on to produce a number of BBC dramas, including the excellent 1977 adaptation of Dracula, which starred Louis Jourdain as the Count. It was this production which led to Horror of Fang Rock being hastily written to replace Terrance Dicks' vampire story, which would eventually be resurrected as State of Decay. Barry did have one final encounter with Doctor Who after returning to acting late in life, when he played engineer Tollund in The Creature From The Pit. He can also be seen in the Blake's 7 episode "Killer", The Day of the Triffids, and an episode of sitcom Are You Being Served?
• The September issue of Recorder and Music Magazine featured an item about Troughton's playing of the instrument in the programme, mentioning letters to Radio Times about whether it was a left-handed version or not.

• Frazer Hines held a press call on the evening of 4th September to announce that he would soon be leaving the programme, under pressure from his agent to move into feature films. This made the following day's newspapers - such as this from the Daily Mirror:

• Finally, another excuse to show an image of the replica Quark from the 2025 exhibition at Peterborough Museum:

What's Wrong With... The TV Movie

Another of those cases where it might be quicker to list the good points?

Let's start at the beginning, with that pre-credits sequence. It's narrated by Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor - despite the fact that we won't see him for another half hour. We go from him talking to McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, so this probably confused the casual viewer.

The dialogue mostly concerns the Master, and we know that actor Gordon Tipple, playing the "Old Master", did record a version - only for them to go with the McGann version instead.

Then there's the narration itself...

The Master has been captured and put on trial by the Daleks, on their homeworld of Skaro. His last request is for the Doctor to be allowed to collect his remains and return them to Gallifrey.

Lots to unpick here. 

Last time we saw it, Skaro was being destroyed by the Hand of Omega (Remembrance of the Daleks). Even if this is a new Skaro, or the planet at an earlier time before its destruction, since when did the Daleks have any sort of judicial system, especially one pertaining to inferior alien races? The Master would simply have been exterminated on sight.

The idea that they would honour any kind of request from any other species is another nonsense - and that they would allow their greatest enemy to visit the planet and collect the remains and freely depart an even bigger one.

We don't even get to see the Daleks. They're just noises-off and sound terrible. The voices on Day of the Daleks are great in comparison.

How exactly does the Master survive being blown to bits? One theory is that he was in league with the Daleks all along, which is how he survived - and also might go to explain their extraordinary behaviour in allowing the Doctor to turn up and leave again without killing him. 

If this was the case, it certainly isn't mentioned. A single line of dialogue might have gone a long way to explain some of the problems above.

Assuming there was one, and this isn't all just improvisation, what was the Master's plan if the Daleks had refused his final request?

As it is, the Master does make it - but how does he know what the Doctor is going to do with his remains? How does he know he will be in a position to break free and infiltrate the TARDIS? Do all Time Lords have their remains stored in caskets which the Master is able to work out in advance how to break out of?

It all starts to look pre-planned - but, as I've said, there's absolutely no evidence of this on screen.

Read any fanzine or Doctor Who Monthly of the early 1990's and you'll see a common theme in the letters pages, once talk got out that Spielberg was showing an interest. That was the dread of the series being "Americanised". It would be all car chases and shoot-outs.

These letters from UK fans were always accompanied by some from t'other side of the Atlantic actually agreeing. The reason they liked the programme was because of its quirky and eccentric "Britishness", and they certainly didn't want to see this element reduced.

What do we see happen about ten minutes in? Teenage gang members involved in an urban gunfight, straight out of any derivative brain-dead action series / movie. And later on we get the chase. It's not cars, but it has the same function.

This TV movie is clearly aiming itself at the average US viewer who has little or no knowledge of the series, instead simply serving up stuff they are used to.

No doubt this is also why the hero of the show has to, at some point, kiss the heroine. Usually, it goes further than that - they actually couple up, but mercifully we don't see the Doctor and Grace jump into bed together. There are two kisses between them. The first is when the Doctor is ecstatic about remembering who he is, which is pardonable under the circumstances. The second time, after the Master has been defeated, is more of a romantic snog and harder to justify. He's only just met this woman after all.

Going back to the shooting of the Doctor, why didn't he check the scanner before opening the doors and stepping outside?

Why does the gang not carry on and kill Chang-Lee, who appears to be their main target as they mention him specifically by name. They've just killed two men so the man from the blue box's death shouldn't put them off their stride. They only run away when they hear a siren - which isn't even coming for them as we never see any police arrive. If they are that jumpy, why did they not run away when a box materialised out of thin air in front of them?

A young man is found down a dark alley standing beside the corpses of two other young men of similar background - plus a badly wounded man who doesn't appear to be local - and yet we never see the police take any action regarding Chang-Lee, like dragging him downtown to headquarters for questioning.

Four paragraphs in, and I've hardly got beyond the opening section of this story...

The Doctor gets taken to hospital, and we've heard ambulance driver Bruce say that you need to be rich to go there. The Doctor is a John Doe found in an alleyway, victim of a gang feud judging by the other bodies found with him - but no-one checks if he has money or credit cards.

Talking of not checking, the Doctor's X-ray shows an anomaly - but no-one seems to confirm if the image is right by taking a pulse or using a stethoscope, or studying the ECG print-out?

For such a wealthy hospital, it also seems to be semi-derelict.

Would a group of presumably wealthy patrons / potential donors of the hospital really be getting shown around in the middle of the night?

Why did Grace not simply go home that night? If she had done, she would have seen her boyfriend magically moving out of their home taking big items of furniture like the sofa with him, all in the middle of the night if he stayed to see the end of the opera.

Grace leaves the hospital at 3.40pm, but it's 3.20pm when she gets home...

That isn't the only problem with Time here, for it appears to be midnight across the entire planet simultaneously at the climax. 

Was San Francisco only chosen as a location for this story because Vancouver can pass for it? A story about the Millennium really ought to have been set in London, home of the Greenwich Meridian, and home from home for the Doctor.

And everyone knows that the new Millennium didn't start until the following year. We only went daft about this because the numerals changed from 19-something to 20-something.

The new TARDIS looks great, but the destination things on the console are wooden rollers that would only fit a handful of times / places on them.

And just what is the "Rassilon Era"? Does this mean that the TARDIS can go back into Gallifrey's own history? That could surely mean the creation of all manner of paradoxes. And does the "Humanian Era" simply mean Earth history, or anytime in the universe after the human race has evolved?

The biggest issues revolve around the Eye of Harmony.

In The Deadly Assassin this was buried deep beneath the Panopticon and even the Time Lords had forgotten all about it, despite it being their power source. Just tampering with it, let alone opening it up, causes serious damage to the Capitol.

Here, however, the Eye is inside the TARDIS, and is seen to open a couple of times. What opens it is the eye-print of a person - and seemingly any old human being can do this. Indeed, it looks like only a human eye can do it...

Why? Because it responds to the Doctor's eye, and he's half human (on his mother's side).

They've already referred to the TARDIS as having a Cloaking Device, no doubt because some viewers might not know what a chameleon is, or how it relates to camouflage.

Therefore, go down the Star Trek route of explanations. 

Having the Doctor half-human instead of fully alien is probably done for similar reasons. He's just like Mr Spock.

Did they think that the audience simply wouldn't accept a hero who is an alien? Hard to believe, as all the principal characters throughout the Star Wars franchise hail from a galaxy far, far away. 

I can't think of any other reason, however, for making this change. Luckily it has never been revisited - and, indeed, later developments totally discount it being true.

So, is this the Eye of Harmony, or does every TARDIS have one of its own?

The other thing about the human eye opening the Eye is that the Master assumes any human can do it - which is why he uses Chang Lee in the first place. It's only after he does this that he realises / remembers the Doctor's parentage.

A problem which the Master really ought to have thought about, and not for the first time either - destroying a planet that you happen to be on at the time. Does he not remember what happened to him the last time he tried to mess about with the Eye of Harmony?

The new Doctor has developed the sudden gift of knowing little details of random people he meets on Earth. He tells Gareth what questions to answer on a future exam, and advises Chang Lee to be elsewhere the following year. And yet he doesn't know that Grace will turn down his offer to travel with him in the TARDIS?

This new talent may be down to his knowledge of future events, but it seems unlikely he would know such tiny details as how Gareth came to pass that exam, even if he does go on to become a noted scientist. Has he simply cheated and looked up Chang Lee's future before leaving the TARDIS? Is his advice to Chang Lee specific to him, or is something bad going to happen to San Francisco in 2000? If so, shouldn't he do more than warn one person? 

Did he always know that Grace would turn him down, and is just being polite in asking her?

Or does he somehow have the hitherto unseen gift of foreseeing people's individual futures?

It's a terribly unlikely coincidence that there just happens to be a clock component nearby which the Doctor needs to fix the TARDIS - and he's met a woman who's on the board of the place which houses it. 

The TARDIS can move backwards, forwards and sideways in Time - but can it really alter time within itself, and so bring dead people back to life? Just because it goes back a day, Grace and Chang Lee should still be dead within its confines. The Doctor's age doesn't vary every time he travels back and forth. He doesn't suddenly grow a beard if he goes two days into the future, or revert to being a baby if he goes back a few centuries.

Why does the Master care what he looks like - dressing up for the occasion - if he's about to steal the Doctor's body and discard Bruce's?

The Master is a skilled hypnotist, so why did they resort to having him spew up some weird gloop to possess people?

Grace is a surgeon who claims not to be able to set an alarm clock, so how was she able to rewire an alien space / time machine, using alien tools?

And finally, why does Grace turn him down at the end? She's lost her job, her boyfriend and half her furniture, and she's just met a man who can bring her back from the dead. What's not to like?

Doctor Who - The TV Movie has its problems, lots of them, but at least they are self-contained problems. In purely television Doctor Who terms, so long as you don't mind someone looking like Paul McGann turning up in flashback sequences every so often, you could just jump from Survival (3) to Rose and be none the wiser - as just about everything we see here gets discarded in the revived series.