Episode 203: Fury From The Deep (6)

Synopsis:

The Doctor and Jamie have been flown out to the control rig, and the sound of Victoria's cries has brought them to a foam-filled room in which Robson stands - telling the Doctor that they have been waiting for him...

He then informs the Doctor that the weed is their new master and he will help it. The human mind is obsolete and the weed offers life. As Jamie slips away to find Victoria, the Doctor counters that the mind will always triumph over matter.

Robson then attacks him with his toxic breath.

When Victoria appears with Jamie, she lets out a scream and Robson is crippled with pain. The Doctor urges her to scream again and they make their escape onto the foam-covered deck above.

Realising that their pilot won't be able to see them because of the foam, the Doctor decides their only escape route is to use Robson's helicopter.

The Doctor reassures his nervous companions that he ought to be able to master the controls after seeing Astrid Ferrier pilot one of these machines. However, he finds it extremely difficult to steer and almost crashes into the rig before the pilot of the other helicopter begins relaying instructions to him.

They eventually make it back safely to the ESGO airfield and head for the control room.

There, Megan Jones has decided to call for government help and has requested a fleet of vehicles carrying oxygen.

The Doctor enters and tells them that he has discovered another weapon to use against the weed - sound. He informs them of the reaction to Victoria's screams. They had visited the medical bay on their way back from the airfield, and found that Mr Quill is now free of infection.

The Doctor then requests half an hour to prepare their counterattack against the weed, before Jones evacuates the compound. He must generate sound of the right frequency, which will carry all the way to the control rig. This will be achieved by channelling it through the pipeline.

Price will record Victoria's screams, and the tape will be put on a permanent loop for broadcast.

The Chief Engineer then alerts them to what is happening in the impeller room. The weed is about to break out.

At first Victoria struggles to scream on cue - but then she sees the mass of foam begin to burst into the control room - with a large weed creature thrashing around within it.

Harris and Price begin to panic - the former wanting to flee, and the latter frozen in fear.

The Doctor drags Price away and is finally ready - feeding the sound of Victoria's screams through a special amplifier he has put together.

The weed and foam begins to retreat, and after a few minutes the compound is clear of it.

Harris instructs Price to contact the rigs, ordering that a helicopter be flown out to check on them.

On contacting the control rig by video, they are pleased to see Robson and Maggie Harris unharmed. Robson reports that Van Lutyens is also fine.

The Doctor and his companions are invited to a meal that evening with the Harrises, with Robson also in attendance.

After his experiences, Robson has mellowed somewhat - but not to the extent that his staff will have an easier time working for him.

Afterwards, the Doctor has a word with Victoria, letting her know that he is aware that she is unhappy and wishes to leave. He tells her that she could settle down here if she wants. The Harrises state that they would be more than happy to let her live with them. The Doctor tells her that he and Jamie will stay on for another day or so, to give her time to make up her mind.

On their last evening together, Jamie tries to talk Victoria into staying with them, but she gives her reasons for wishing to settle down.

The following morning they all go to the beach where Victoria bids farewell to the Doctor and Jamie. The TARDIS has floated away from the shoreline and they have to use the dinghy to get to it.

Jamie is especially unhappy to see her go, but the Doctor points out that he was very fond of her also.

They see her image diminish on the scanner as the TARDIS departs - spinning up into the air...

Next time: The Wheel In Space

Data:

Written by Victor Pemberton

Recorded: Friday 29th March 1968 - Television Centre Studio 1

First broadcast: 5.15pm, Saturday 20th April 1968

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 57

VFX: Peter Day

Designer: Peter Kindred

Director: Hugh David

Additional cast: Keith Sissons (Helicopter Pilot), Peter Day (Weed Creature)

Critique:

The biggest change made to this final episode was the nature of the weed creature's defeat. The sound which repelled it was originally to have been artificially generated by the Doctor, and to do this he needed equipment from the TARDIS. The Doctor sent Jamie to fetch this, telling him to play his bagpipes if he came under attack by the weed on the way.

Once it was confirmed that this was to be Debbie Watling's final story, it was decided that Victoria should play a more prominent role in proceedings. Watling was well known for her screaming  - earning her the nickname "Leatherlungs" - and so it would be her screams which would prove to be the successful weapon against the weed.

Pemberton's original script stated that there were numerous weed-infected beings on the control rig -  specifically its crew, Maggie and Van Lutyens - as well as Robson. They surrounded the Doctor's helicopter to try to stop it taking off.

Robson's dialogue with the Doctor mirrors the words of the mud-possessed Hugh Deverill in The Slide. In the radio drama, it was light which countered the threat rather than sound.

We are never told on screen how Maggie survived walking into the sea, but Pemberton dealt with this point when it came to novelising the story. He claimed that the foam acted as a protective cocoon around her.

Sunday 4th of February was the day when the regular cast were present at Botany Bay on the Kent coast, and this is when Hugh David filmed the shot to be seen on the TARDIS scanner of Victoria watching as the ship rapidly rose up into the air, all captured by a helicopter-mounted camera. 

The farewell scenes on the beach, with actors Roy Spencer and June Murphy as the Harrises also present, were filmed the following day.

Troughton refused to go up in a helicopter, but Frazer Hines and Watling were given a flight with Pilot Mike Smith - "Mad Mike" - doubling as the Doctor. They found the experience rather terrifying when they thought they were going to crash into the cliffs. Smith had worked out the helicopter sequences with the director and they extended them to make this a big action set-piece for the final episode. Smith was asked to fly the aircraft under the sea fort's external walkways at one point.

David would later cut the sequences to make it look like the helicopter was doing impossible things, like looping the loop.

As with last week's episode, all of the helicopter close-up material was filmed at the airfield at Denham, with the aircraft stationary on the ground, surrounded by a mass of fire-fighting foam for the scenes set on the rig. Most of this material was filmed on Monday 12th February.

Pilot Keith Sissons, who had been flying one of the 'copters during the location shoot, provided the dialogue talking the Doctor through the controls. He mostly ad-libbed.

David mounted a camera in a dolls pram (borrowed from one of his daughters), for fast tracking shots across the side of the helicopter.

The climactic scenes of the weed creature attack on the control room were filmed at Ealing between Wednesday 7th and Friday 9th February.

The creature itself was designed by Martin Baugh in consultation with Peter Day, who was going to be wearing it. It was basically X-shaped in form, made from a sacking material and covered in plastic seaweed fronds bought from a plastic flower manufacturer. Rope-like tendrils of material were attached to the ends of the "arms", which Day would wave above his head. Only one costume was produced, as it had been decided that it would be more practical to have the creatures concealed in foam for much of the time, with only the odd tentacle being seen. Day and the director realised that the tendrils on the arms would capture the foam and throw it about in whiplash fashion, which might make for a striking effect.

There was only very limited air available in the costume, so Day could only wear it for short periods.

In interviews he has spoken about the very last sequence in which the creature breaks into the control room from a corridor filled with foam. Unable to see, a piece of string was attached to his foot - to be pulled when it was time to burst through the doors. As his air ran out, he couldn't wait any longer and so made his entrance whether David was ready for him or not - but luckily this coincided with the cameras rolling.

Troughton found the costume hilarious and struggled to keep a straight face as it thrashed about.

The foam gave everyone a form of snow-blindness under the bright studio lights.

Shots of Victor Maddern in the foam filled rig cabin were filmed on the Thursday, for the sequence bridging Episodes 5 and 6.

Rehearsals began on Monday 25th March - Patrick Troughton's 48th birthday.

Studio recording on this episode saw a significant change to the weekly routine. Production returned to Friday evenings, and the venue would no longer be Lime Grove Studio D on a regular basis. That studio would continue to be used occasionally, but TV Centre would take over (with the odd return to Riverside) before finally settling at Wood Lane.

Derrick Sherwin was continuing to rewrite scenes up to the last minute - including adding the Doctor's dialogue about checking in on Quill in the medical bay when he spotted that the sinister technicians simply vanished from the story after Episode 5. Graham Leaman was also given a little more to do as Price.

After setting up the idea that Victoria's screams would save the day, there was a problem in that Watling was suffering from a cold and could not scream. A radiophonic effect previously used for the Goddess Amdo in The Underwater Menace was employed to treat AFM Margot Hayhoe's voice instead.

The episode opened with a filmed reprise of the cliff-hanger, and David elected to insert new close-ups of Robson which did not match his appearance in the other footage - the foam positioning being impossible to replicate.

A significant amount of the episode had been pre-filmed.

Maddern and Murphy appeared on a TV monitor to show that they were alive and well on the rig, but John Abineri had moved on to other work so Robson and Maggie simply tell the others that he is fine.

One camera break allowed everyone to reposition themselves for the evening dinner scene on the Harris patio set. This opened on a close-up of the record player.

Closing titles began over the shot of Victoria's image rapidly diminishing on the TARDIS scanner.

A trailer for the following week's story, The Wheel In Space, was shown immediately after broadcast.

This was Hugh David's final work on Doctor Who - a series he might have starred in back in 1963 had Rex Tucker had his way.

Unusually for the time, we get to see several scenes showing the aftermath of one of the Doctor's adventures - about seven and a half minutes worth. Not only do we see him stay on for a while and socialise with some of the main guest characters, but we also see Robson return to work at the control centre, where he chats with Price and even has a little joke with the Chief.

The main concluding scenes, however, concentrate on Victoria's departure. Compared with some, hers has been reasonably well set up, with her unhappiness at their dangerous lifestyle being threaded in dialogue through the earlier episodes. She does not suddenly tell the Doctor she's not going with them as they are about to return to the TARDIS.

The Doctor has been a surrogate father-figure to her, whilst Jamie has played the role of the protective big brother, and they get to give their reactions to her departure. Jamie is so upset the tells the Doctor that he couldn't care less where they end up next, and the Doctor has to remind him of his own feelings.

All of the video recordings of Fury From The Deep were wiped by late 1974, after earlier instructions for their destruction hadn't been actioned. The film copies were withdrawn from sale and junked the same year.

These 16mm film prints had been sold to Australia, where the censors took exception to some scenes which were cut. New Zealand took it in December 1970, then elected to reject it and never broadcast it.

It was also sold to Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar.

David's set of John Cura telesnaps turned up in 1993.

The censored scenes were found in 1996 by Australian fan Damian Shanahan and sent back to the BBC. Prior to that, the only sequence known to survive from the story was the TARDIS landing, due to it being reused in the final episode of The War Games.

In 2003, some silent film trims from the final episode turned up in the BBC Film and Videotape Library. These included alternate takes to broadcast scenes.

To date, no full episodes have been recovered, making Fury From The Deep the last Doctor Who story to be missing entirely from the archives.

As mentioned last time, its status as missing has added to the mystique of this particular story, but this can also be put down to the atmospheric soundtrack and those brief glimpses which, due to their source, feature especially creepy and disturbing scenes.

The story overall has the reputation of being one of the scariest of the monochrome era.

It's not entirely clear what happens to the weed at the end. Has it been destroyed, or has it simply been forced to retreat back into the depths of the sea? It would be nice to think the latter, as it could make for an atmospheric sequel - a brisk base-under-siege tale set on an isolated location using the VFX of today to realise it. Then again, if it really is as good as people remember it, maybe best just leave alone...

As well as Debbie Watling's departure, this was to be Victor Pemberton's final contribution to the series. He did submit a further idea - "The Eye in Space" - which involved a huge octopus-like creature, but this was never taken up. He would reuse elements of Fury From The Deep in one further Doctor Who project, however - the Fourth Doctor / Sarah Jane Smith audio adventure Doctor Who and the Pescatons. This was released on LP by Argo in July 1976, with a CD version following in 2005. Demon Records re-released it on vinyl in 2011. Pemberton also novelised the story for Target in September 1991.

The writer expressed an interest in producing Doctor Who as an independent co-production after it was taken off the air in 1989.

Trivia:

• After the steady decline over the last month the ratings suddenly take an upswing of a million viewers, and even the appreciation figure goes up.
• There's a nice continuity point as the Doctor states he learned something of piloting a helicopter from Astrid Ferrier (in The Enemy of the World).
• This is the 30th consecutive episode to be set on Earth, though the run ends here.
• Design assistant Tony Cornell was present at Ealing when the climactic scenes were filmed, and he captured some of the action in colour on his 8mm cinecamera. This was included on the unofficial documentary VHS "The Doctors", and later on the Lost In Time DVD set. From this we know that the control room decor was light blue, and Price wore a pink tunic.
• Stage And Television Today was still talking about the serial in late June 1968, describing the story as poor, with its "crazy foam threat".
• John Wyndham's 1953 novel The Kraken Awakes, which deals with a marine threat, also has sound being used as a weapon.
• The story was adapted for the stage in March 2002, by the Bedlam Theatre Company. It made use of specially filmed location footage, including helicopter shots. Actor Michael Sheard had a cameo role playing rig chief Baxter on video, and Van Lutyens and Perkins became female characters.
• On leaving Doctor Who Debbie Watling went into the theatre for a time but soon landed a TV role in a soap called The Newcomers, in which she once more got to work with her father, Jack. The series, which began in 1965 under the producership of Verity Lambert, ended only four months after she joined the cast - Debbie appearing in a total of 26 episodes. Thereafter theatre work was her main employ, though she also landed a couple of films with a musical bent - starring opposite Cliff Richard in Take Me High, and appearing with David Essex and Ringo Starr in That'll Be The Day (both 1973). 
• She and her father appeared together in a celebrity edition of The Generation Game in 1972. Another TV success followed in 1979 with Danger UXB, a wartime drama about a bomb disposal squad. In this she played a character known as "Naughty" Norma.
• She dated Frazer Hines for a time after leaving the series.
• She was invited to take part in The Five Doctors, but had to turn it down due to the offer of a full series with comedian Dave Allen. Unfortunately this got cancelled, so she missed out on both jobs.
• She did come back as Victoria for the Children in Need Doctor Who / EastEnders charity crossover Dimensions in Time. For some reason she was dressed in Victorian fashion, the shawl helping to hide her injured arm. JNT should have known she left the TARDIS in the late 20th Century.
• She also reprised Victoria, in the correct contemporary setting this time, for the unofficial spin-off video production Downtime (see my post Episodes: Afterlife - the Yeti) - again getting to act alongside her father. She can also be seen in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
• Debbie Watling passed away, aged 69, on 21st July 2017. 
• Victor Pemberton, writer of her final Doctor Who appearance, died only a few weeks later, on 13th August.
• Ironically, Hugh David's first story as director - The Highlanders - was the very first to be wiped by the BBC, and his only other story was the last to suffer this fate. He passed away on 11th September 1987.
• Finally, a pensive Troughton on the control room set:

Devil's Planet - a Review

The interim episode of The Daleks Master Plan already exists in the archives, so we move on to the Doctor's escape from Kembel in Mavic Chen's purloined Spar 7-40 space yacht. Bret is at the controls, with Steven and Katarina also on board.

The Daleks use a device to randomise the ship's controls, causing it to crash land on the planet Desperus - the "Devil's Planet" of the title, as it is a hellish penal colony.

This is the first of the "adventures within the adventure", helping the story span its 12 weeks. Terry Nation had previously given us the quest story The Keys of Marinus, in which the travellers encountered mini-adventures in different locations across the planet in search of the titular keys; and The Chase, which again saw self-contained incidents within the larger narrative of the Dalek pursuit. (Episodes 5 - 10 of this story will end up following the same pattern as The Chase, with a Dalek time machine pursuing the TARDIS).

In this episode, the Doctor is separated from the TARDIS and having to rely on Bret's piloting of the Spar, before the Daleks intervene.

This was more of a mystery, visually, than The Nightmare Begins. We do have a bit of a clue as to the ending of the episode, as the shocking resolution to the cliff-hanger survives thanks to Blue Peter (though it was nice to see more of the ship's interior. I liked that huge round porthole / screen, and there was our old friend, the Morok Freezing Machine prop, as well).

There was also a lengthy clip of the Daleks first attacking the Spar with their randomiser, as its occupants are told by Bret about the planet they are being diverted towards.

The bulk of the instalment takes place on Desperus, and we have always had very little idea about this world. 

One thing I wanted to know was just how different they had managed to make the sets look from those of Kembel (bearing in mind that Mira is also just around the corner). 

There's one photograph of a Screamer I know of, but it's just a black shape at the top of a blurry image, and there are only a handful of images of the hirsute convicts themselves.

I wanted to see how the Screamers were realised, and also if the episode featured any model shots.

Mavic Chen gets to appear in two scenes - the execution of Zephon, and a later one where he first starts letting slip his arrogant attitude towards the Daleks before returning to Earth.

When the Master of the Fifth Galaxy perishes, we see Chen casually leaning nearby, studying a Dalek monitor - not even bothering with what's just happened. 

The Dalek control room contains lots of equipment dating back to their first appearance.

For some reason I felt sure that at least some of the other Planetarians featured this week, witnessing Zephon's demise, but it's another episode in which they don't appear.

Sadly the Screamers turn out to be just wing shapes being flapped about above the actors' heads.

And as for all the spaceship action in this episode, we do get a shot of the Spar in space, but all the other stuff is simply 'noises off'.

Desperus is rendered different from Kembel, being more sparsely forested. 

One nice shot is a landscape view of the planet as seen by the Doctor and Katarina - a painting of mountainous terrain with three small lights superimposed, indicating the torches of the approaching convicts. I noticed they all have a big letter "D" on the back of their overalls, to indicate their destination.

Courtney has less to do this week but I do enjoy his sardonic humour, and it's very much a pity that he couldn't have been retained for more of the story. 

Hartnell is still great to watch, though he does have a little difficulty with his lines in this episode.

"The Daleks will stop at anything to prevent us..." for instance.

There's a little silent character moment for the doomed Katarina, as she is fascinated by the stars on one of the monitors.

The interplay between Steven and the Doctor, and between Steven and Bret, is also nice to observe.

Overall, whilst it's fantastic that these two episodes are safely back, and that we have been able to enjoy them so quickly, you do come away with a disappointment - because you really, really want to watch the rest of the story even more now. At least these episodes come from the start of the story, and can be linked by the already surviving second instalment. For me the first half of The Daleks' Master Plan is by far the superior half. 

Oh, for The Traitors...

The Nightmare Begins - a Review

The Nightmare Begins has the task of setting up a  a 12 part epic, though it has been helped on its way by the prequel episode Mission to the Unknown. That laid the groundwork as to the Dalek plan to invade the Solar System, aided and abetted by an alliance of beings from the Outer Galaxies. (They go by various names, but we'll go with Planetarians).

 

This episode follows on 6 months or so later, bringing the Doctor into events and introducing us to the agent who came looking for Marc Cory - killed in the stand-alone instalment. Bret Vyon is played by Nicholas Courtney, the future Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and so this marks his very first appearance in the series.

We also get to spend some time with short-lived companion Katarina, who only joined the series in the (now lost) previous episode. There's another direct link to that episode as Steven has contracted blood poisoning from a sword wound inflicted during the fall of Troy, and he's seriously injured.

We're back on the densely jungled planet of Kembel, where the Daleks have assembled their invasion force and where their alliance meets.

Having sat out Mission to the Unknown, the Doctor is unaware of what is going on here, and is simply looking for medical help for his companion. We know far more about this place than he does.

The Dalek Master Plan is shown to have expanded to include an enemy working within the Solar System itself - its Guardian, Mavic Chen. 

His appearance is certainly one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing when it was announced that this was one of the two episodes recently recovered from a private collection by Film is Fabulous. Kevin Stoney is superb, and he is responsible for two of the greatest villains in the history of Doctor Who - Chen and Tobias Vaughn.

Despite the absence of telesnaps, we did know a little about what this episode looked like. Three clips survived - the TARDIS materialisation, the landing of the Spar 7-40 at the space-port, and the longer sequence showing the ambush and death of Bret's colleague Kert Gantry. Also, the jungle and some sets for the Dalek city are seen throughout the surviving second episode.

What we have been missing are the TARDIS interior sequences, and the Communications Centre scenes on Earth.

We can now see Chen's introduction, via a couple of incidental characters - Lizan and Roald - watching a news broadcast featuring him. The bald-headed Technix, who featured prominently in publicity images back in 1966, have only been seen very briefly (crewing the Spar).

They're one of the more obscure characters in the series thanks to all those photos - but a lack of actual footage. And no-one talks about them in dialogue. Is it simply policy that these workers have to shave their heads, like part of a uniform, or are they - as I suspect - some sort of genetically engineered drone workers, or clones. (Spin-off literature goes with them being clones in one place, and cyborgs in another). Sadly we still don't know, but at least we now get to see them.

One thing which strikes you even more is how the Earth of the year 4000 resembles a fascist technocracy. We had already seen the literal uniformity of its people - everyone seems to wear tabards - and the jackbooted security forces which police it, but this episode certainly reinforces the image.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see any more of the Planetarians here - they aren't introduced until The Day of Armageddon.

The Daleks themselves don't show up until quite late on in the episode - the ambush on Gantry - and are merely shown waiting to welcome Chen later on. (One thing I didn't know was that the Dalek Supreme doesn't feature in this instalment). 

The episode concentrates instead on Bret and the TARDIS crew.

Despite playing another character of military bearing, Bret is a very different character to the Brigadier, which demonstrates just how good an actor Courtney was.

Things we wouldn't have known about without the visuals include Bret's communicator resembling the ones later used by the Cybermen.

Whilst he and Kert mention Varga Plants, they don't actually feature in the action - but we see a couple of them lurking in the jungle. 

I certainly had no idea that Steven spent the entire episode shirtless and in modern trousers. I had expected him to still be wearing his ancient Greek gear.

One rather shocking image is a lingering shot of the dead Kert's face, eyes wide open and mouth agape.

Something else I wasn't aware of from the soundtrack was the way Roald mouthed the words of Chen's speech, clearly having heard it all before. 

It's these little details which we lose out on by only having the audio.

As well as being a very good episode for Courtney, William Hartnell is at the top of his game here, even though he spends most of the episode talking to himself.

I think you can also see, very clearly, why new companion Katarina simply wasn't sustainable. 

P is for... Pting

Diminutive creatures noted for their insatiable appetite for anything inorganic - especially if it provided them with an energy source. They were reputedly indestructible and could survive in the vacuum of space. One of them once wiped out an entire space fleet. They could be rendered immobile for short periods by staser fire, however, but made for extremely difficult targets.

The Doctor and her companions encountered one when it infiltrated a hospital ship, the Tsuranga, carrying them and a number of patients and staff. The creature began eating its way through the ship's infrastructure, aiming for the anti-matter power core. 

An attempt to lure it into an escape pod failed, so the Doctor was forced to devise an alternative scheme. A detonation device was rigged to attract it and it consumed this instead, before being ejected from the vessel through an airlock.

On exploding, the Pting merely absorbed the resulting energy and survived to float away through space.

The Doctor later encountered another member of the species, which she nicknamed "Tiny", on a penal asteroid run by the Judoon.

Appearances: The Tsuranga Conundrum (2018), The Timeless Children (2020), Revolution of the Daleks (2021)

• Though the episode was written by Chris Chibnall, the Pting was actually the creation of writer Tim Price. He had been a member of the writers room for Series 11 but had been unsuccessful in getting a story commissioned. Chibnall liked the alien he had devised, however, and Price agreed he could use it.

P is for... Psi

Psi was one of the people recruited by the Doctor to help rob the Bank of Karabraxos - notorious for its high levels of security. None of the thieves knew that the Doctor was behind this heist - even him, as they had all willingly handled a Memory Worm which wiped their recent memories. This was so that they couldn't reveal anything if captured. The bank employed a creature known as the Teller which could psychically sense guilt.

Each of the gang was promised a reward - something which the bank held in its vaults. Psi had undergone a technological upgrade which allowed him to interface directly with any computerised systems. In doing so, his longer term memories had been removed and stored on a chip, and getting this would be his reward. 

They were also given a suicide device - a ripper - to use in the event that the Teller caught them and destroyed their brains seeking their guilt. After helping to breach the security systems, Psi sacrificed himself by downloading data about various notorious criminals into his mind, which drew the Teller away from the Doctor and Clara. This then allowed them to reach their goal - actually the rescue of the Teller's mate.

It later transpired that the ripper was really a teleport, which took them to the safety of the TARDIS. Psi gained his memory chip, which allowed him to recall his family.

Played by: Jonathan Bailey. Appearances: Time Heist (2014).

• Pretty much everywhere these days, he started off as a child actor with the RSC and also played Gavroche in Les Miserables in the West End. His first significant TV role was as the corruptible local journalist in Chris Chibnall's Broadchurch.
• Period drama Bridgerton really put him on the map, before he moved to the big screen with Wicked and its sequel, and the male lead role in Jurassic World Rebirth.
• He hasn't given up the theatre. I saw him in the title role of Richard II at the Bridge Theatre in London in 2025.
• In 2024 he set up an LGBTQ+ charity - The Shameless Fund.
• Voted sexiest man alive in 2025.

P is for... Programmers

Two of the staff who helped to operate the Game Station - the space station in orbit above Earth formerly known as Satellite Five. They were employees of the Bad Wolf Corporation, responsible for ensuring that the station continually broadcast hundreds of game shows to the inhabitants of the planet below.

Programmer Davitch Pavale noticed irregular activity in one of the Big Brother games, and alerted his female colleague who had noted similar activity in a Weakest Link she was monitoring. This involved a pair of new contestants who were not taking the deadly games seriously. The Doctor and Rose had been abducted and transported into the games - the Doctor into the Big Brother house and Rose into a Weakest Link contest. The situation worsened when the Doctor broke out of his game, taking another contestant, Lynda, with him. When they alerted the Controller, through whom all output from the Game Station was broadcast, she instructed them to take no hostile action.

The Doctor, Lynda and Captain Jack Harkness - who had ended up on What Not To Wear - were captured by security guards but soon escaped and began making their way towards the control room.

Despite the fact that they appeared to be armed, the Controller once again refused to take action against them. 

This was because she was under the control of the Daleks, who had been responsible for bringing the Doctor and his companions here.

The Doctor warned them of an imminent Dalek attack, and the Programmers joined Jack in helping to defend the Station. Both were killed when their weapons proved ineffective against the invaders.

Davitch had carried a torch for his colleague, only letting her know of this before they perished.

Played by: Jo Stone-Fewings (Davitch Pavale), Nisha Nyar. Appearances: Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways (2005).

• It would probably be cause for controversy these days but the Female Programmer doesn't merit a name.
• Nisha Nyar has featured on many Big Finish audios.
• She previously played (uncredited) a Kang in Paradise Towers. 
• Jo Stone-Fewings is primarily a theatre actor, having appeared in over a dozen Shakespeare productions, many with the RSC.
• He had previously worked on a Russell T Davies drama - Mine All Mine - in 2003.

P is for... Pritchard

Richard Pritchard was a representative of Vector Petroleum, who controlled a mining complex known as The Drum in the Highlands of Scotland. He was Vice President of Subaquatic Resources, for The Drum was located deep beneath a man-made lake in a flooded valley.

As senior company staff member on the team, he took charge when commander Moran was killed in a freak accident. A capsule of unknown origins had been found on the floor of the lake and brought on board. Its engines fired unexpectedly and Moran was killed. Pritchard was interested mainly in how this apparently alien technology could be exploited by the company. He was especially interested in a missing power cell, which the Doctor had drawn the crew's attention to. 

Despite the appearance of ghostly figures which had begun to haunt the complex - including spectres of Moran and a figure dressed like a funeral director - Pritchard decided to don diving gear and go outside alone to find the power cell. Moran's ghost turned up and killed him, trapping and drowning him in the airlock before he could suit up.

Pritchard then joined the ranks of the ghosts. All were lured into a Faraday Cage where they were trapped by the Doctor, and this was then fired into space where the ghosts - really psychic transmitters - would dissipate over time.

Played by: Steven Robertson. Appearances: Under The Lake / Before The Flood (2015)

• Robertson is best known for his regular role in crime drama Shetland. He was born and raised on the Shetland Islands. 
• He also appeared in supernatural drama Being Human. This was in its fifth series, when he played civil servant Dominic Rook whose government department dealt with supernatural phenomena.